Auswandering Is In
One can easily get the impression here that Germans tend to be rather fatalistic. Don’t laugh - those of you who live in Germany - I didn’t intend that to be comic understatement. Seriously, Germans love to moan about their lot in life just as much as the rest of us do only 1) they do it better than we do and 2) they also seem to be more reluctant than others are when it comes to ever getting around to doing anything about it.
Despite, say, the many positive aspects of the German social system which immediately catch a foreigner’s eye; an affordable and efficient health care system, long vacations, a practically gratuitous university education system, generous unemployment benefits etc., the prevailing feeling here about such achievements is one of resignation. Rightly so, perhaps, as many of these benefits have simply become too expensive in the current era of mass unemployment and seem now more like ancient artifacts of a by-gone age: The good old days. Früher war alles besser.
And although of course one doesn’t usually pack up his or her bags and immigrate to another country just because of cuts and reforms to the traditional social order of one’s own, I was nevertheless surprised to discover a television show the other night that made me reevaluate what I thought about the German reluctance to risk-taking and change.
After a few minutes of watching Goodbye Deutschland! Die Auswanderer I was stupefied to see Germans who had stopped moaning about their lots in life, they were even willing to put everything they had on one card and leave their country behind them altogether. It’s what I guess you could call a reality-TV-report-documentary about five German families, all with very different backgrounds, who try their luck in Spain, Sweden, South Africa, a not-yet-disclosed South American country and, gulp, Texas.
This wasn’t the first show I’ve seen like this. And I love shows like these. This kind of thing gets an ex-patriot’s attention, I guess. These “Aussteiger” (get out, as in drop out or get out of the rat race) shows are in these days, although in this case it’s actually an Auswanderer (immigrant) show. And how could they not be popular? They reflect the sentiments of the a huge number of Germans who are tired of the resignation and consider leaving the country every year. 100,000 a year actually do it. Or at least that’s the number that Goodbye Deutschland! uses. But whatever the actual number of inner- or outer- immigrants might be, and regardless of where they or you I come from, they all have one thing in common that I really like: They’ve traded in their fatalism for something else.
Comments
What I really fancy in this blog is how you invariably write about "the Germans" as a group of people and the perceptions how this group of people generally behaves.
"They" (thus the entirety of all 82.4 million people holding a German passport) "also seem to be more reluctant than others are when it comes to ever getting around to doing anything about it". Aha. So you're in a position to judge about the volition of every single one of them.
In case in did not occur to you: with such a blunt, undifferentiated and presumptuous statement you are putting yourself above everyone else. It would really do you good to cut down your statement and refer to people you have actually met or read about, and talk about a "tendency" rather than facts. This is a slap in the face of a large number of young German people facing their fate, leaving home to work hard.
How else would you expect someone not belonging with the "others" to respond to such utter arrogance?
Meckla; August 29, 2006 5:38 PM
Whoa, Meckla, hypocrite alert. Unless you don't consider "the Americans" to be comparably diverse -- but you don't, do you?
Christy; August 31, 2006 11:26 PM
I consider nothing. I really hope Americans are diverse. Personally I try not to be general, towards no group of people. Of course do I fall for the temptation at times, but it's a really bad thing.
Meckla; September 4, 2006 1:44 PM