Germanic Efficiency / Real Life

Industry & Technology

Industry & Technology

• DIN (Deutsche Industrienormen) standards. Das. Ist. Norm. ^translation"This. Is. Norm."
• When Japan decided to become a modern and industrialized country, they first contracted French advisors and engineers, but quickly switched over to German experts after the Franco-Prussian War.
  • There was a reason why Japan was considered as the "Prussia of the East.""
  • The same is true of law: many developing nations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in Asia, adopted German civil law codes as the basis of their legal systems.
  • Since Germany never really had extensive colonies and lost what little they had after just 30 years in World War I, it is one of the few major European countries that did not leave a lasting negative impression in Asia and Africa as an oppressive imperialist power. Which is part of the reason that one can still find numerous people with rather "naive" perceptions about the Nazi period.
    • Regarding Asia, Nationalist China was friendly with Germany from 1911 onwards. Notably, 1934 saw a team of German military advisors, lead by Alexander von Falkenhausen (who wasn't a Nazi) to bring German weapons and equipment to China and attempt to modernize the Chinese army. Although they were withdrawn in 1938 following Japanese pressure, Falkenhausen's suggestions helped China hold their ground against the Japanese for 8 years, though it was never enough to fully improve the Chinese army.
• Lyndon Johnson owned a German amphibious automobile known as the Amphicar Model 770. Then he'd drive it with guests into a lake pretending the brakes were cut just For the Lulz.
• When rocket engineer Wernher von Braun was captured by the Allies in World War II, he was taken straight to the US to work on their rocket program. Prompting jokes that the Saturn V is a great ride because "Duh, German engineering!"
  • The Right Stuff, among other accounts, suggests that The Space Race was really a contest between "our Germans and their Germans."^note In the film, the American government is reassured when one of the German scientists tells President Eisenhower, "Our Germans are better than their Germans."
    • To be fair to the Soviets, they had one outright brilliant rocket engineer themselves (Sergei Korolev), only problem was he was imprisoned under Stalin and died (aged 59) in early 1966 and the Soviet space program (which had a much smaller budget than NASA) never recovered from that blow. His existence was a state secret during his career, so it is somewhat understandable that older works fail to mention him.
• Heckler & Koch GmbH makes many guns known to audiences today: the MP5, the G36, the USP, the XM8, etc. Practically all of their products were designed with solid engineering and construction in mind.
  • Before H&K, there was Mauser, whose legendary bolt-action design is probably one of the most widely used designs in bolt-action rifles today. Their C96 "Broomhandle" pistol is also highly regarded as one of the first practical semi-automatics, well-made and capable of firing a far more powerful cartridge than most other pistols at the time.
  • It is a bit more complicated. German firearms are often renowned not for their ballistic efficiency (not that they are bad in that aspect) but for their ergonomics and manufacturing costs.
• During WW2, engineers working in the aeronautic branch of the military (especially the armament designers) often joked that their superiors constantly wanted them to break the laws of physics, so some of their inventions might be slightly flawed.
• In terms of fighter craft, the Eurofighter Typhoon built by Eurofighter GmbH in Bavaria, is considered to be an excellent match for most modern combat aircraft while also fulfilling the 'universal airframe' role held by previous widely respected craft such as the F-16, F-15, and F-4. It has managed to slot into almost every role imaginable, able to serve competently as an air superiority dogfighter, defensive interceptor, offensive ground-attack strike craft, or agile reconnaissance bird. Unfortunately, this platform came at a cost of a hilariously delayed delivery of four and a half years off-schedule due to problems with the international collaboration involved.
• Rheinmetall AG. The Rheinmetall 120 mm gun is used on the Leopard II, Abrams, Type-90 and the South Korean K1A1. It is also being considered for the (excellent) British Challenger. This makes it one of the most (possibly the most) common tank guns in the world.
  • And before Rheinmetall, there was Krupp. During its heyday, the company was the backbone of German heavy industry, renowned for the quality of its steel products (after WW2 it was discovered that German steel plate for their tanks was roughly 20% better than British steel). That quality then in turn translated to everything else from artillery to shipbuilding (also mainly for the military). The company still exists as part of ThyssenKrupp, one of the largest industrial conglomerates in the world. One of the bigger contracts for Krupp before the merger with Thyssen was to deliver part of the "Inter City Experimental" which was the Super Prototype for Deutsche Bundesbahn's Inter City Express. Incidentally one of the other involved companies was Thyssen.
  • BASF (Baden Aniline and Soda Factory), the biggest chemical company in the world. And owners of the biggest single industrial complex of the world. Said industrial complex (in Ludwigshafen am Rhein) is a chemical factory, and as almost every chemical factory they burn their unusable gasses every once in a while. The resulting flame can be seen from space, a distinction shared with maybe a handful of other man-made phenomena.
• Going way back, Ulfberht, probably the most well known manufacturer of high-quality swords in Europe from the 9th to 11th century, is believed to have been based in the area near Solingen, which to this day is known for the manufacturing of knives and blades.
• Another ancient German company is Merck KGaA,^note KGaA=Kommanditgesellschaft auf Aktien, "Command Company with Shares," meaning a hybrid partnership-corporation arrangement whereby some "shareholders"—usually holding, collectively, a majority stake—actually have unlimited liability and are thus more like partners, with the "shareholders" being a minority; this arrangement generally exists among family-run German companies as a way to bring the capital-raising benefits of being publicly traded to their firm without running the risk of losing control originally an apothecary's shop in Darmstadt founded in 1668, today a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical and chemical company with a fantastic reputation for innovative products.^note This Merck should not be confused with Merck & Co., which is an American firm founded after the US government seized the German Merck's assets during World War I. Interestingly, Merck & Co. was actually run by a branch of the Merck family until the 1950s; a scion of the family had been sent in 1891 to oversee the US operations, and his children, who ended up running the new American company, were thoroughly American.
• Carl Zeiss AG, one of the oldest and top-of-the-line manufacturers of optical equipment - everything from binoculars to microscopes, to things like planetarium projectors and other equipment used in astronomy, as well as military equipment in the form of rangefinders and sniper scopes.
• Older Than Print: Bloßfechten, Germany's brand of basic swordsmanship. It was and is highly efficient to the point that other European kingdoms, empires and territories ended up adopting and adapting it. For even greater detail, see European Swordsmanship.
• Dieter Rams, product designer at Braun, is famous for his austere minimalist designs that influenced later Apple products.
• Staedtler is an office product company that, among other things, produces high-end fineline pens and engineering pencils. Their main selling point is ergonomic and (naturally) efficient design.
• An engineering example: Karl von Terzaghi. If you can build your house (or skyscraper) on soil today, it's largely thanks to him. None of his work has been significantly improved upon since the 1920s. Before him, there had been no major improvements in predicting how soils behave under heavy loading since the Romans.
• The architectural and design style associated with the Bauhaus school tends to emphasize the functionality of the buildings or artifacts in question.
• The paper sizes commonly used in Europe, or more or less anywhere outside North America, first caught on as the German DIN 476 standard for paper sizes. The basic sheet size has a side ratio of 1:sqrt(2), the only ratio where halving the paper yields two halves with the same ratio again. In mathematics, this setting is called the silver ratio. The A0 sheet has area of one square meter, 841 by 1189 millimetres. A1 is that sheet halved, A2 is A0 quartered, etc. A4, the most common European paper sheet, thus has an area of 1/16th (1/2^4) of the area of A0. The B series for printing books are the geometric mean between consecutive A series sheet sizes. And, finally, C series are the geometric mean between A and B sized of the same number, used for envelopes. Envelope size C4 envelope is designed to contain an A4 sheet.
• Likewise, the European paper hole punch standard is originally German DIN standard. Two 6 mm holes punched 80 mm apart with a margin of 12 mm of the edge of the paper.
• As is the Euro plug used for AC in Europe.
• The German national flag-carrier, Lufthansa, is generally held in high regard by travelers, at least more so than most other international airlines. It is no surprise, then, that they are one of the world's largest airlines (in terms of revenue, fleet size, and annual volume of passengers and cargo), one of five founding members of Star Alliance, the world's largest airline alliance, and the first airline to fly Boeing's new 747-8I.
• German cars, including Mercedes-Benz, BMW ^note Bavarian Motor Works, or Bayerische Motoren Werke in German; the BMW's logo is based on the Bavarian provincial flag., Porsche, Audi, Daimler Motors which was part of Chrysler until it was sold off in 2007, and Opel, which was an overseas division of General Motors until 2017, when Groupe PSA acquired Opel from GM. Outside of Sweden, the Germans were early innovators in car safety before it became the norm. Even the Great Volkswagen Exhaust Caper, which is disastrous for the reputation of German cars, should not be seen as an aversion: It was a masterpiece of cheat engineering - the car "knew" whether it was on the street or just tested, fulfilling the exhaust norms only in the latter case.
• Herbert Ahues, chess problem composer. Was this living trope until his untimely death in 2015 at the age of 93. He even had enough self-irony to discuss the trope a bit in a lecture about the perfect twomover, his speciality: "You know I am German. Germans are supposed to like everything perfect. So do I. I confess I like perfect problems..."
• PC component brand be quiet! is owned by Listan GmbH, which is headquartered in Glinde, Schleswig-Holstein. The brand tries its best to live up to its name by minimizing noise in its line of power supply units, PC cases, CPU coolers, and case fans. Thus, the company develops its own advanced technology and registers patents in diverse regions and countries.

Military & Politics

Military & Politics

• Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. Probably the most famous fighter pilot of all time.
  • Erwin Rommel, the Trope Namer of the Magnificent Bastard.
  • Speaking of famous German military leaders, Germany (or at that time, more precisely Prussia) is credited with inventing the modern military staff college. Aknowledging the fact that landowners of the lower nobility do not neccessarily make great military commanders, the new academy focused on a scientific education in stategy, tactics, and military history, creating professional full-time officers. When this proved to be an extreme advantage over the common practice of selecting commanders through nepotism, the system soon became an international standard.
    • Another innovation was the invention of the military 'operation' and the concept of lower-level initiative as a way of working around the imperfect nature and relatively slow speed of intelligence-gathering and messaging in the 19th century. Since all commanding officers were trained in strategies, tactics, and leadership, Generals were able to explain to their subordinates what goals they were supposed to accomplish and trust that they would adapt to any unexpected changes and exploit opportunities without having to wait for a messenger to bring updated orders. While this worked well for the pre-telephone era, by the time of World War I this approach was dated and caused far more problems than it solved because more often than not subordinates would use their freedom of action to act in the 'self-interest' (reduced casualties, greater glory) of their own formations rather than that of the entire force^note  Insubordination by the Germans' First Army during the Battle Of The Marne forced the German right flank (then due east of Paris) to retreat because instead of conducting a defense-in-depth as they'd been ordered to they'd tried to counter-attack the Franco-British force that was attacking them. This forced the entire German army to pull back, eliminating their chance of taking Verdun that year. Passable operational plans being blown to hell by insubordination at crucial junctures crippled the German war effort and prevented the German army from accomplishing anything in particular against anyone.
    • Despite its general failures, the German military system did have one notable successes. Notwithstanding the critical failures of World War I, the system continued in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic and by the time World War II rolled around, the success of the planned operation against France was expedited by the ability of aggressive officers commanding regiments and divisions to exploit advantageous situations quickly without waiting for orders from higher ups ^note  e.g. Rommel above, who, in 1940, raced ahead with his 7th Panzer Division without contact with higher headquarters for two days, while destroying multiple French divisions and reaching the English Channel ahead of schedule, thus trapping Allied armies near Dunkerque . However it is worth noting that this was the only instance of this actually helping, with the vastly greater scale and scope of the Soviet-German War ^note  Gelb (French campaign) made use of a million combat troops over two months in an area less than 500km by 500km. Barbarossa (initial USSR campaign) made use of three million combat troops over three months over in an area more than 2000km by 2000km. The smallest units ever charted on an overall Barbarossa map were Divisions (15k troops), versus Regiments (3k) for Gelb making initiative at the strategic-operational level critical and initiative at the tactical-operational level actively harmful ^note  e.g. the horrible losses sustained by the panzer forces of Herman Hoth and Heinz Guderian's Third and Second Panzer Armies (part of Army Group Centre) during Operation Barbarossa, attributable to insubordination by Heinz Guderian in attacking unnecessary objectives - which during the July 1941 Battle of Smolensk and November-December 1941 Battle of Tula resulted in the actual objectives not being taken. In Guderian's defense German forces in both cases were only barely adequate to take the (over-ambitious) objectives, even if they had been properly employed .
    • Furthermore, while on the tactical level, the German soldiers where the epitome of Germanic Efficiency, their high command never seemed to grasp the intricacies of strategic planning, especially in the long term. With their goals often being either vague, overambitious or incredibly tactically oriented to the detriment of the strategic plans, or even all three. Besides, of course, them leaving all logistical considerations to the side because they obviously wouldn't matter, and the german soldier could easily beat all opponents before logistics could become any problem.
• The German SWAT Team, the "GSG-9". The Badass Counter-Terrorists in ski masks in Counter-Strike, their first assignment was the liberation of a plane from terrorists armed with small arms and grenades(!). Four hostages were lightly wounded, two terrorists shot, two others survived. Granted they'd trained on that particular plane type, but still... This is not so surprising considering the circumstances of their founding (the aftermath of the Munich Olympic Massacre in 1972) and the political climate in the 1970s Germany, with the Red Army Faction rampant and killing people left and right. But mostly right.
• Many of the characteristics described in the intro probably stem from Germany going up against much of the rest of the world twice in the first half of the 20th century and, while not winning, giving a hard fight^note "We fought in two world wars and almost won both!". The morale and endurance of the German army of those two wars is considered by many historians almost miraculous. Especially in WWII, though not very nice, the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine did hold out long after hope of even a draw was gone.
  • And they might have done better in the second one without the horrendous number of foolish acts and other inefficiencies decreed by the Nazis. There is a school of thought about the Eastern front that, had Germany been waging war against the Soviet Regime (as they tried to lie in their propaganda), rather than against Russian people, they would have won. Contrary to many tropes, even Russians, just like anyone else, don't fight all too well with Comrade Commissar's Nagant pistol as the sole incentive: they slack, they desert, they defect— incidentally all of those happening an awful lot during '41-early '42. However, once information seeped out about just HOW Germans were treating Russian captives and civilians on captured lands, Russian soldiers started to fight, not for comrade commissar and not for comrade Stalin, but for the mother Russia, their own mother, brother, and kids. And the rest is history.
  • But some of their greatest mistakes (Taifun, Zitadelle, their response to Bagration) were neither Hitler's nor the Nazis' doings.
  • And they might have done better in the first one if their command system wasn't so egregiously bad. 'The German Army' was an organisation in name only. In any given operation, there were many 'German Armies' and each one of these would compete against the others. There are no words for how mind-bogglingly stupid this is.
• Current European economic policies, which consist mostly of austerity, are strongly advocated by Chancellor Angela Merkel as the best solution, but she is heavily criticized for it throughout Europe, in Greece and France in particular (it led to government changes in both countries) although many countries in Northern Europe support her approach. In many ways, a ruthless adherence to this trope, insofar as Merkel's austerity agenda while taking a massive social and political in the afflicted countries, also helped keeping the Euro as common currency alive when many of her critics predicted its demise.
  • The Germanic Economic Efficiency is particularly prevalent in the European Union, and more specifically the Eurozone. Germany has 21% of the overall EU gross domestic product (the closest are the UK, with 16%, and France, with 15.5%, but only the latter uses the Euro) and 70% of the union's exports. Add inhabitants of Eurozone countries taking advantage of those ubiqutous cheaper German products, and smaller economies such as Greece could not handle it.
  • The crisis is sometimes blamed on "hard working Germans" and "lazy Greeks", but the numbers might not add up. Some alternate opinion.
• German soldiers in the period of All the Little Germanies were a Double Subversion. Germany was famous for being a Chew Toy, but that was because of their political divisions. When one wanted soldiers, Germans were always a good buy.
• In some cases, in POW camps the Allied prisoners counted on this kind of punctuality and routine expected from Germans. In one case, an escape was successful because the Germans insisted on having soldiers fall in, form up into neat rows, and only then was the counting started.
• Helmut Schmidt^note chancellor 1974-1982 (which is a name so German people wouldn't believe it if you invented it) once famously said about his predecessor as chancellor, Willy Brandt^note chancellor 1969-1974, died 1992, when he accused him of a lack of vision "Wenn man Visionen hat sollte man zum Arzt gehen". This roughly translaters to "If you have visions, you should see a doctor". Though Schmidt later retracted the comment and apologized for it, it shows the different approaches of Brandt (who was very much an ideals guy) and Schmidt (whose middle name might as well have been Realpolitik). Schmidt went on to become one of Germany's most beloved elder statesmen during his long retirement until his death in 2015.
• Herman Lamm was a former Prussian soldier who immigrated to the United States and thought of how to best adapt his military training to criminal activity - namely, robbing banks. Unlike previous bank robbers who were largely improvised with as dubious of a success-rate as that implies, Lamm planned his robberies with same diligence as a military operation. He pioneered "casing" (carefully studying the intended target beforehand) banks, assigned roles to his fellow robbers which they were rigorously trained and rehearsed to perform, and kept his gang members in the bank to a time limit to be prevent risking the police arriving in force before their escape. John Dillinger studied Lamm's methods via two of his former gang members. Lamm is still considered one of the efficient bank robbers in all of history to this day with him and his gang having stolen somewhere in the realm of what would be 17 million dollars today in 12 years, and is frequently thought of as the architect of the modern bank robber's technique.

Sports

Sports

• Michael Schumacher, statistically the greatest Formula One driver the sport has ever seen. So efficient, he tunes his car's settings as he drives. He is also (possibly) The Stig. Which explains a lot.
  • Efficiency: young Michael Schumacher didn't have much money. To get the most out of his seriously limited funds, he performed his practice rounds on the go-kart track when no one else wanted to use it— when it was raining. No wonder that he became a legendary "rainy weather" Formula One driver. He could not only handle unstable behavior from his race car (regardless of whether he was racing on wet or dry tracks)... this was actually his preferred setup. Other drivers considered his car's behavior uncontrollable and simply insane.
  • Now there's Sebastian Vettel who looks set to break Schumacher's Formula One records.
  • Subverted by Nico Rosberg, who is a German national, but ethnic Finn. Not that Finns themselves weren't any less awesome...
• The German football team. They've only missed qualifying for The World Cup twice, and that was because they couldn't enter (The Great Depression meant they couldn't afford to send a team to the 1930 World Cup due to the Great Depression; while the lack of a national federation and ongoing partition as well as the ongoing pariah status for starting and losing WW2 meant they weren't eligible for the 1950 World Cup). Of the times they have qualified, they've reached the last eight or better in every participation aside from 1938 (when they lost to Switzerland in a straight knockout format) and more recently in 2018 and 2022 (but even then in 2022, the squad was disorganized before the tournament and would lose to a Japan side who would also defeat fellow powerhouses Spain) the last four or better thirteen times, and the final eight times, all tournament records. Their four titles are second only to Brazil's five (while tying the only team the Germans regularly lose to, Italy). They've also qualified for every UEFA European Championships (aside from 1960 and 1964 where they declined to take part in the qualification process or 1968 which remains the only time they participated in qualifying for a World Cup or European Championship but failed to qualify) reaching the semi-finals eight times and the final six times (both tournament records), winning three of them (only Spain have matched their number of victories).
  Gary Lineker: Football is a simple game. 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.
  • It's telling that nobody ever says that Germany is "an excellent team." They say that the group with the Germans is "a difficult group."
  • There are few better examples of the German football team's ruthless efficiency than their utter desolation of hosts Brazil in the first semi-final match of the 2014 World Cup. Despite losing two of their best players, the Brazilians hoped it would be a close match. Die gnadenlosen Deutschen eviscerated the five-time World Cup winners by the score of 7-1. But for them, it was Tuesday. (Actually not quite gnadenlos (without mercy) - rewatch the late, lone Brazilian goal, and you will see German defender Boateng is actively trying to get out of the way of Oscar to grant the home team this face-saving goal)
    • The above downplays just how bad it was. Four goals scored within a span of six minutes, it shattered previous records of semi-final scorelines, and also allowed striker Miroslav Klose to overtake Brazilian Ronaldo's World Cup scoring record. This was the first time Brazil had lost at home since 1975.
    • In a sense justified - in the preparation games before the World Cup, Germany had thrown away a 4:0 lead against Sweden, the end result being 4:4 and the German team a laughing stock of the press. "Better score a few more before that happens again!"
  • The women's team too. Two World Cup championships in a row and did not concede a single goal in 2007^note Then they got knocked down at home by Japan 4 years later.... Tied with USA in overall World Cup victories. In the 2016 Olympic Games, the Germans got the gold medal by easily beating a Swedish team whose overtly defensive game made them upset the United States and Brazil. The lowest FIFA ranking the German women ever dropped to? Third. Until their flop at the 2023 Women’s World Cup being knocked out in round 1 where they dropped to sixth in the FIFA rankings.
  • In fact, Germany was the only country to have won both the men and women's World Cup until Spain joined them in 2023 with the women’s world cup victory to add to their 2010 men’s triumph.
  • It's important to note that German football, stereotypically, is usually contrasted to Latino football: no pretty tricks of star players, only mechanical precision and relentlessness. One reason for the success is an overhaul of the youth system in the early 2000s.^note this was a response to disastrous showings at the decades's first European Championships: in 2000, Germany scored only a single goal and failed to advance past the second round as defending champions; and in 2004, the team who had been World Cup runner-up two years prior fell in the group stage with no victories, including a 0-0 tie with Latvia; to show how investing in young players paid off, 2008 had the Germans going to the final, which they lost to Spain
  • In 2014 the men's team won their fourth star. A month later the U-19 team took the Euro and less than a month after that, the women's team took the U-20 World Cup.
  • How many penalty shootouts has Germany lost? One. 1976 against Czechoslovakia when Antonín Panenka invented a style of shooting a penalty that was later named after him - namely shooting the ball dead center in the hope that the keeper had already jumped. When Uli Hoeneß (later manager and president of Bayern München) shot his penalty into the night sky the CSSR was European Champion. Twenty years later Germany won against the Czech Republic by the first ever golden goal.
  • The "Miracle of Bern", when Hungary was the favourite to win the 1954 FIFA finals, was won by West Germany 3-2 in the second half. It's been partly attrbuted to the know-how of Adi Dassler, the founder of sportswear maker Adidas, who had make the West German team's all-weather football shoes with screw-in studs.
    • Interestingly, Adi's brother Rudolf established the Puma brand in 1948, after feuding over how best to manage the business. As of 2022, it's the 3rd-largest sportswear maker in the world, behind only Nike and Adidas.
• Likewise, the German ice hockey team. While ice hockey is far less popular than association football in Germany, the German team is the regular participant in the ice hockey world championships - both men's and women's - ever since the foundation of International Ice Hockey Federation. It is yet to win the World Championship, but two silvers speak their own language.
• Dirk Nowitzki became a very curious case in the NBA in regards to this. His style of basketball is very different from the standard seen in America - he never showboats, he does not risk fouls, he does not make flashy moves - but he can score practically anywhere within range of the basket. And draw a foul in the process. He also rarely misses free throws.
  • His style has some drawbacks. Nowitzki is a pretty bad defender, and his lack of physicality is one of the reasons his 1st-seeded team lost to the 8th-seeded Warriors in 2007.
  • He also doesn't have an agent, which is simply unheard of in pro-sports, yet is able to negotiate contracts upwards of $20 million per year, easily in the top 3 of the league's highest salaries.
• The German American Football national team (yes such a thing exists) has won three European Championships (yes such a thing exists) to date (2001, 2010 & 2014). The latter of which greatly exemplifies the trope of Germanic efficiency. In the final against Austria, which was held in Vienna the referees decided to enforce the college derived rules on "excessive celebration" extremely strictly and voided quite a few big plays because a player had displayed too much emotion afterwards. Germany eventually wised up to this rule enforcement while Austria didn't. This gave them the edge they needed to win the game in triple overtime 30-27.
  • German club teams are also quite successful. The only teams that come close to challenging them in Eurobowl (the equivalent of the UEFA Champions League) wins are Austrian teams. As of 2016, German teams are in a collective three year winning streak in both the Eurobowl and the EFL Bowl (second tier, similar to UEFA cup). In the case of the EFL Bowl, that means all titles in its history have gone to German teams.
  • The first European ever to be drafted by an NFL team without playing College Football? A German. Moritz Böhringer,^note 180th overall pick in the 2016 Draft; i.e. a sixth rounder who incidentally studied mechanical engineering at the time. Naturally many people reacted by quoting this trope. How does he get from his home to training every day? He walks. Three miles either direction. Why? He does not want to spend any of his 150 000 Dollar salary on a car. There is a stereotype of Swabians (the part of Germany he's from) being stingy, but couldn't he at least buy a bike?

In General & Other

In General & Other

• The Germans also prefer efficiency in speech, according to the BBC. They have no word for "small talk", and some of them even perceive it as being quite close to lying.
  • The closest word to "small talk" in German language is the rarely-used "Schwatz", which comes from "Geschwätz", meaning pointless or nonsensical talk.
  • The modern German term for "small talk" is in fact the anglicism "Small Talk".
  • There would also be "quatschen" (which comes from "Quatsch" or "nonsense" in English again) or "plaudern", "schwafeln" or more but these are even more negatively connoted.
  • In the same vein, the concept of "white lie" is not well known in Germany. Lying in any way is seen as an insult, because you either don't care enough to give an honest answer, think someone has to be shielded from the truth like a child, or believe they're not intelligent enough to notice they're being lied to. Also, they wouldn't have asked if they didn't want an honest truth, right? (German directness, again.)
    • The closest translation German has for "white lie" is "Notlüge" ("emergency/distress lie"). As you can tell, this word doesn't exactly imply all too casual usage.
  • And the German word for "talk show" is... "Talkshow".
• The cultural difference shows up in the branding of the Ritter Sport chocolates. In the US: "The handy chocolate square." In Germany: "Quadratisch. Praktisch. Gut." ("Square. Practical. Good.") The chocolate itself is an example: a perfect (4x4) square of chocolate, with the chocolate itself being delicious and the packaging engineered to open in just the right way.
  • Ever asked yourself why it is called Ritter Sport? Well, back in the day the founder of the company thought that normal chocolate just doesn't fit his coat pockets when he is out doing - yaknow, sport - thus the quadratic chocolate was born which packages the same 100 grams of sweet deliciousness just a bit more efficiently.
• People of Königsberg said that they could set their clocks after Immanuel Kant. (Note: Kant was famous for his rigid adherence to his personal time schedules. He is said to have missed his daily walk precisely once in his life, when he was particularly engrossed in Rousseau's Émile.)
• While Germans would have you believe that Deutsche Bahn is the biggest aversion (Germans love complaining, and their favorite target is Deutsche Bahn, don't ask why) of this trope in existence, trains of German making enjoy a very good reputation. The Velaro which is based on the German Intercity-Express (ICE) has been sold virtually unmodified to Spain, China, Russia, Eurostar (which is plurality owned by the French railways) and Turkey. Siemens is one of the biggest manufacturers of trains in the world and a second big one - Canadian Bombardier - grew to its current size mostly by buying up almost all mid sized and small German rail manufacturers that were on sale.
  • The quality of the trains is less of an issue, what drives Germans mad is the notorious unpunctuality of the trains. This might actually be a case of crippling over-efficiency; because the schedules are so tightly packed, there is little room for anything going wrong, so every disturbance wreaks havoc on all the meticulous planning.
  • When the people behind the high speed ICE had to decide on a color-scheme various colors floated around, but none got majority support. Ultimately someone said: "Guys, if you can't agree on anything, we're gonna take white". The prototype was delivered in white with a single crimson stripe along the entire length. More than twenty-five years and four generations of ICEs later, the only thing that has been slightly modified is the color of the red stripe. The overall white design has stuck and earned several design awards.
• During the coronavirus pandemic, Germany was singled out for praise as having one of the best responses to the disease in the world. Said response can be summed up with this stereotype. Chancellor Angela Merkel put her training as a scientist to good use in crafting Germany's response to the pandemic, which consisted of an aggressive regimen of testing, quarantine, and contact tracing almost from the moment Germany reported its first infection in Munich, all while she remained stoic and straightforward. Germany's extremely low mortality rate from the pandemic stood in stark contrast to France, Spain, and Italy, which all struggled mightily with it and reacted too late, such that German hospitals eventually started taking in hundreds of patients from neighboring countries. By May, when countries like the United States or Brazil were still struggling to keep numbers from rising, Germany was reopening two entertainment options canned during the pandemic; movie theaters and football. The Bundesliga was the second professional league to resume play, only after the Korean (another country that has been lauded for its response) baseball league and Korea had about a month’s head start on the virus’s peak.
• The German diaspora is one that has prospered wherever it settled.
  • The German American community is, with 43 million people, the largest ethnic group in America. Some of the largest business empires in America-Levi Jeans, Lehman Brothers, Anheuser Busch, and the Trump Organization ^note Trump was anglicized from Drumpf, and Donald Trump's father falsely claimed his family was Swedish because his German heritage would've made him unpopular among New York's Jewish community-were started by German Americans. German Americans have contributed to the American cultural landscape with hot dogs and kindergarten.
  • Up until the 20th century, Germans held a privileged position in Russian society. One German Princess became Catherine the Great and allowed Germans to settle along the Volga. Many of Russia's elite figures, like Barclay de Tolly and Sergei Witte, were of German descent. But both World Wars, the Russian Revolution, and the rise of Stalin meant many ethnic Germans found themselves robbed of their privileges, if not outright killed due to nationalist hatred.^note One of the reasons Tsarina Alexandra was so hated during World War I was her German heritage made others think she was deliberately sabotaging the war effort on behalf of Germany.
  • The German Empire owned a concession in Qingdao. While they were forced to give it to Japan after World War I, they managed to live behind Tsingtao Brewery, one of China's largest beer producers.