Germanys Characteristics - Essay Example

Every country has particular traits that are their own people have and are unique to them and to no one else. But they also have a large number of stereotypes that can be based on reality to a wide variety of degrees. Sometimes these stereotypes are simply created in imaginations, and sometimes they are based on real events or characteristics, but distorted, and sometimes they are fairly accurate, and a good characterization of a country’s national character. It must be noted that however good a generalization of a country’s population a stereotype can be, it will never be truly accurate, and will never be accurate on an individual level – for instance, just because most Americans believe in god does not mean that you can assume anything at all about a particular American if you meet them on the street. So when trying to describe the characteristics and stereotypes of the German people, and of Germany in general, it is essential to keep in mind everything stated above, that these characteristics have a wide degree of accuracy and that they cannot be applied to an individual German person even if they are true of the population generally. There are several characteristics of the German people that are popular as stereotypes, some positive, some negative, though most have both positive and negative connotations to them. Generally the positive characteristics are the ones that tend to be more accurate and the negative ones tend to be less so, as a general rule. One of the most popular positive characteristics of the German people is a love of accuracy and precision, and this stereotype has a good deal of evidence to back it up and is probably true, while Germany still has many negative stereotypes that are associated with World War II, including being somewhat war-mongering and racist, and these characteristics tend to be untrue. The first characteristic people often think of when they think of the German people is a love of efficiency and order. People believe that the German people are better than many others at producing things that require a great deal of accuracy and design, and believe that Germans are better than many other people in small-details accuracy. This belief finds its best representation through people’s perception of German engineering and design being of a higher quality than almost anyone else’s. This belief is fueled in part by the fact that many German companies tend to brand themselves this way. Car companies like BMW and Volkswagon, which are both German, tend to play off of the fact that they have high quality “German engineering” in their advertising. But these types of companies also play a large part in creating this image of German detail-orientation and accuracy because they actually do have higher standards than many other companies. So there is something of a chicken or egg question with the perception that German’s are highly detail oriented with exacting standards – did these perceptions happen first and then companies play off of them and try to fit into them, or did the companies originally have higher standards and thus that became the stereotype of German people? The perception that Germans are highly detail-oriented people probably goes back very far in history, and it at least goes back to World War II. In World War II the Germans were known as meticulous record keepers and very efficient and everything they did, even if it was terrible things. Furthermore, Germany invented many things in World War II that required a great degree of amazing engineering, such as rockets and the first jet engines and jet fighters. All of this helped create a long standing perception in the rest of the world that they were highly detail-oriented. A related trait to the German love of accuracy is the supposed German love of order. In popular conception everything about Germany is highly organized, especially its government. German people are supposed to hate chaos and love organization, even to the point of sometimes sacrificing too much or not being creative enough because they like organization so much. They are supposed to like things to be ordered and organized and ordered. This perception is probably based on things like Germany’s huge and incredibly well organized systems of public transit, of trains, its large and well kept highways and so on and so forth. Along with a love of details and accuracy, the Germans are supposed to highly ordered and organized. The traits of being highly precise and organized are mainly positive ones, but they also have some negative aspects to them as well. Though precision is something that is generally admired, it can also be put into contrast with characteristics such as being forgiving or warm. And like mentioned above, the German love for order can be seen as stifling creativity and being overly conformist against new ideas. So while these are generally positive characteristics, in the popular conception they also have their down side, with precision sometimes being conflated with coldness, and order being set as opposed to creativity. So this demonstrates that even so-called positive stereotypes can have a negative edge to them, making it especially important to remember that they don’t necessarily apply to individual people. Some of Germany’s positive characteristics/ stereotypes have their root in World War II, as mentioned earlier, and this is probably also the source of their biggest negative stereotypes as well. That war, and the German government and military’s actions during it, have forever attached some negative stereotypes to the German people, specifically that they can be cold and heartless, and that they can be extremely aggressive and willing to engage in military confrontation. Because Nazism was so prevalent in Germany during World War II, many people who lived there are implicated in its actions even if they may not have been directly involved with them, and it can be hard to reconcile the modern peaceful Germany and German people with the military juggernaut that relatively recently in historical terms tried to take over all of Europe and indeed the rest of the world. Because such a large portion of the German population was involved in the war effort, in popular conceptions Germans can tend to be conflated with Nazis, even after all of these years, and thus many negative stereotypes of the German people stem from this connection that people imagine between modern day German people and the Germans that committed so many deplorable acts during World War II. As mentioned at the start of this essay, stereotypes can come from a wide array of different sources and some can be relatively true while others can be extremely false. I would say that the stereotype that Germans are a people that are highly precise and like order is probably relatively accurate. Germany has been widely successful in the world market because of the skill its people have shown in a wide variety of areas, including manufacturing and design, and it is probably this success that has led in great part towards the characteristics of precision. Furthermore, many of the best and highest qualities goods in the world come from Germany, especially things like automobiles, which have many high quality companies based out of Germany such as Porsche and BMW. Furthermore the German people have had a relatively stable and long lasting form of government since World War II, which combined with their highly structured civil and public transport systems speak to the fact that the stereotype that they love order is probably true. The stereotypes that Germans are very aggressive, cold, and war mongering however are almost certainly not true. They stem from an event that occurred before most German’s who are working today were even born, and I think that the German people probably learned from their dark past and are even better than the rest of the world at respecting peace, prosperity and other’s borders. There are many stereotypes that are both positive and negative about the German people. The stereotype that they love order and are highly precise is almost entirely a positive one, and is very accurate, while the stereotype that they are aggressive and war mongering stems from a historical even that probably produce the opposite effect, making them more peaceful now than they would otherwise be, and is almost entirely untrue as a general rule. Read More