What Germans Are Reading
the-american-interest.com
the-american-interest.com
> Toleranz: Einfach Schwer (Tolerance Isn’t Easy)
is an improper translation. That's "Tolerance: Simply Difficult" and that translates fine in English too since you can keep the same style while being accurate.
Tolerance: Simply Hard
(Or Easily Hard)
It more closely mirrors the German cadence and I've generally translated schwer as hard. I always understood diffizil to be the correct translation of the word difficult.
Granted, I learned most of my German from my mother (plus a little self study and I lived there for nearly four years in my twenties), not in school. There are no doubt substantial gaps in my knowledge
I think that’s misleading or even wrong. Source: native speaker.
First, it’s a very rare word that would definitely stand out, even in an already formal conversation. More importantly, “diffizil” is mostly reserved for problems that require a lot of fine motor skills or finesse. It would be wrong to say that lifting some large boulder is “diffizil”, for example, except as a joke. You might use it for repairing a watch or a complicated negotiation (“eine diffizile Angelegenheit”), however.
Translating „difficult“ to „diffizil“ would be a poor translation IMO.
I know the word and I'm only semifluent in German, so it would never occur to me that it was anything seriously obscure.
(Though this is also tangential and has no real bearing on whether or not to translate the book title as difficult or hard. I would have translated it as hard if someone asked me for some reason.)
Tolerance: Hardly Easy
i do believe that in english simply can always be used in place of just, it's just less common so tolerance: simply difficult has the same meaning and sounds better as a book title.
However, the meaning of just is varied and the extent of the influence of Lat ius, "right" or Ger just, jeh + -st (please don't make me elaborate on je), is well hard to estimate. Cp "right now", jetzt "now".
I thought you might be takin a round trip from simple to einfach to just, inadvertantly mixing differently sensed variants of einfach. I shouldn't be assuminc, but the influence of ein- "one" or ein "in" (cp Fr en, Gr ana etc, etc) is again hard to gauge even for native speakers and encoded in contextual usage patterns (cp e.g. einfältig vs Einfall "quick idea; in-spiration"; respectively).
Since ein and sim- reflect old roots deemed to mean "one" in different idioms (the latter especially in Hittite, but also e.g. Ger sämtlich) it is tempting to equate io- with those and the Indo-European reconstruction *oynos "one".
I have found the Spiegel list a bit weird for years, it contains a lot of highly light reading or polemic stuff like that guy yelling at today’s youth. That it does not include Amazon data explains quite something.
The lists are at https://www.amazon.de/charts/2019-08-11/mostread/nonfiction?... https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/bestseller-buecher-belletristi...
It's all German, obviously. And note that Spiegel has at least two different lists, for hardcover and paperback (plus a few more, less relevant).
FWIW I'm surprised by the claim that Spiegel has too much "light-reading" in its bestsellers. The usual charge is that they exclude certain lowbrow titles/categories.
However if I only look at a single Spiegel list of 20 items, e.g. hardcovers there are only two items left in common.
I think you will agree that a book sales data analysis that has not made a successful effort to include one of the biggest book sellers in Germany for years can still safely be called garbage. It is baffling for me how much reputation the Spiegel lists still have.
Also, the hardcover Spiegel list has entries like the new book by Spiegel journalist Todenhöfer on rank 10 (rank 2129 on Amazon Germany right now).
[1] I ignored the Spiegel audiobooks list because this data is irrelevant without Audible.
DER SPIEGEL gets its book data from der Buchreport which uses sales info from a few hundred actual bookstores.
Thus the list is not 'garbage', but a represents what bookstores sell and what is currently trending. The list is also filtered by some criteria, which are listed on the SPIEGEL site.
A list of German Language Bestseller lists: https://www.boersenverein.de/de/158283
https://www.welt.de/kultur/article167043384/Spiegel-verteidi...
But great to include the source.
[1] https://m.jpost.com/International/Wiesenthal-dean-labels-Aug...
The additional use of "books" is further misleading and technically not correct. It is one single book.
Is see no reason to defend this spreading of misinformation. Do you?
"Books" may not be correct in this context because it's been a single one thus far, but if another antisemitic book appears, they'd probably delete it too, so I'd argue it sounds more like a norm than a one-off event. By removing a book they didn't like, they opened a can of worms, so to say.
No, the reason is clearly stated. "Did not like" is a reason. I am sure there have been many books on that list that the people at spiegel didn't like. It's just that "I don not like that" is not the same as "this thing is considered by me and many others to spread antisemitic propaganda and I don want to support that".
The original statement implies that "we don't like it" is sufficient reason for the spiegel to remove a book from the list. That is just incorrect.
> ... they opened a can of worms, so to say.
Now you seem to be arguing that it is fine to spread a lie as long as you are sufficiently convinced that that lie will become truth in the future?
That's what happens with having editorial control: either you play sides (by removing stuff you don't want and maybe pumping up stuff you like[]) or you don't play sides (by publishing the rank without modifying it). And Spiegel is playing sides here.
[]I'm not saying Spiegel has done or will do this, this is just an example.
But I think I argued my point as well as I can. If I couldn't convince you yet that the original statement should not be considered "correct" and should not be defended when somebody mentions the actual facts, I don't think any more of my words will.
The words OP used are not precise, but they aren't wrong either - they communicate how he feels about the incident in question.
I think that is actually a great summary, thx.
I guess my long conversation here is just an expression of my underlying impression that political discourse should in general focus more on facts than on feelings.
People seem to be more focused on how they feel about an issue than its actual contents. But this is getting of topic.
- What is published in the German language (much smaller than in the English corpus)
- What is published at all (choices from local publishers)
- What matches the political/media agenda of the day/year: people are well known to read about the topics that is being talked about thru the numerous media channels they consume.
What is published and what sells is not always a reflection of the actual interests of the population at large - an easy proof is to show that it changes drastically from one year to another, akin to fashion more than anything else.
> Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series looking at the books, authors, and ideas capturing the zeitgeist in various countries this summer.
Isn't capturing the zeitgeist exactly trying to understand what's occupying the thoughts of a country? Also I think you're greatly exaggerating the speed of "fashion". These are all issues we have been talking about for a long, long time. From tolerance [1] to education [2]. I don't see at all how this arcticle talks about a irrelevant topics, I can assure you these are all isssues we have been discussing for a longer time now.
[1] since the refugee crisis it's one of the main themes of political discourse. We also experience a rise of the right and far-right and many are not sure how to react to this change of the policial landscape and where tolerance ends. I was quite active in politics 4 years ago and I remember it being important back then (which was even before the refugee crisis) because I had contact with a group organizing a counter demonstration to a far-right gathering.
[2] During my time in school i was in one of the first in a new system and when I finished (5 years ago) many switched back to the old system. Our pisa-scores are still a major point for public dicsussion.
That's very recent, so it may be fashion, who knows whether tolerance & diversity will still be a major topic in 2025.
From my personal experience, education is a big topic, but mostly top-down. It's in politics, it's in the media, it's in literature, but it's not like average parents discuss the education system a lot. They're involved with details, but I've never witnessed a discussion at dinner or a party about the education system (while it'll quickly go to politics, economics etc, and most of my friends have children of school age).
Maybe it's really a matter of definition or "recent" and "fashion", but I am not sure whether tolerance & diversity will still be a major topic in 2025. I hope not, 2025 is in 6 years and would like to see that we have moved on and got to a mutual agreement in our society.
2025 would be 10 years after the migrant crisis! I don't think we absolutly need to drag every topic out for whole generations to be not counted as "fashion" or "temporary".
> From my personal experience, education is a big topic, but mostly top-down. It's in politics, it's in the media, it's in literature, but it's not like average parents discuss the education system a lot. They're involved with details, but I've never witnessed a discussion at dinner or a party about the education system (while it'll quickly go to politics, economics etc, and most of my friends have children of school age).
I don't know if you're german? This is not what I experienced, like i said, i experienced two changes of the school system during my education, which lead to a lot of discussion. Also, while i am now out of school and in university for some time, the school system is still a topic of discussion in my extended family due to parents having to choose in which school their kids they should go. We have some private schools in germany that follows a different philosophy (and I really mean philosophy, there's a whole educational theory behind them), the "Montessori education". A part of my family is very convinced that the montessori philosophy is superior to the more rigid and less free philosophy in the public school system. This is not my point of view (I went to a public school), which I am willing to defend. This leads to real discussions over dinner or in the evening.
At least in my filter bubble it is pretty standard nowadays.
Of course that is a long etablished genre, but lately it gets a bit too obvious regarding any socio-political sentiment, relationship, diet or parenting style[1].
Germany's book and magazine market is also drifting into that category a lot, as basic information gathering shits more and more towards "free" online sources.
[1] as stated in the OP, Winterhoff is contrarian to most current research and just peddles his own theories for some decades now, as well as being a well booked pundit in talk shows.
Is there some particular reason to be interested in what Germans are reading? As opposed to say Swedes?
The first book, "The Dumbing Down of Germany", suggests a frustration with the decline of their education system -- something that Germany has traditionally valued highly. This is particularly concerning because sentiments like this lead to the rise of Hitler and eventually WWII.
The second book, "Tolerance Isn’t Easy", offers comfort with the influx of immigrants. This may be viewed as an attempt to stymie the tension. Alternatively, this may be viewed as an anesthetic that is wearing off. As of checking today this title is actually 13th on the list.
To answer your question. Why Germans as opposed to someone else? I suppose it is partially because Germany is a big player in the EU. It is particularly concerning because of Germany's role in WWII. To some it seems like things are trending in the same direction. As stated in the last paragraph: "Germany has been undergoing dramatic social change since the fall of the Berlin Wall, which occurred 30 years ago this November... Fear-mongering arguments against immigration and an Islamic takeover continue to attract scores of German citizens whose future economic prospects are less than rosy. Regardless, one cannot help but detect the political vestiges of an old GDR intolerance in its novel political manifestations."
Hence my interest in hn's focus on Germans. It's not so much what's happening in germany more than why would western english media analyse german reading trends.
That is not a question of what's happening in germany...but rather one of english speaking media somehow deemed this interesting. Why?
Not sure how to understand this. I have traveled to the DDR and to East Germany after the reunification many times, and by far and large life is much better than it ever was. People can actually buy cars instead of Trabants. Of course an economic gap has long lasting consequences (the long tail of economic policies) but what you should point out is how much better it is now than it was during the DDR era.
AfD is not thematizing any of this but is currently on a well funded campaign run to retcon and ursurp the civil movement of 89/90 as a nationalist movement and branding itself of it's heir. All this while having no problems of having high ranking Stasi-Officers in the party itself.
East Germany's larger cities with significant university clusters (Leipzig, Dresden, Halle, Rostock, Potsdam, Jena-Weimar-Erfurt) are doing well, the rest is aging away on well paved streets. That populist reigns there is no suprise if educated post reunifcation youth works in those cities or elsewhere and might return some day. But wouldn't write off the east yet, since a populist right with maximum 1/3 support of electorate is not too uncommon and it's all about how conservative CDU positions itself in relation to that.
I don’t believe that the article is saying that the situation was better during DDR time.
Also, we would need to check in the economic History of Germany if the Eastern Lander of Germany were not always poorer compared to the Western Lander. The large economic output of the Rhur should already have tipped the economic scale way before the DDR.
Siemens was originally started and HQ'ed in Berlin, until the wall split happened, making them relocate to the south.
Afaik this is the case for a couple of other rather successfull Western German companies.
It was actually way better during DDR time, a whole lot of stuff was manufactured there was then sold in the West trough catalog order.
Didn't happen out of anywhere that even companies like IKEA had stuff manufactured there [0], back then the DDR was a bit what China is nowadays to the Western world.
Sadly a lot of those industries were simply sold off and liquidated, sending millions of people into unemployment, by the Treuhandanstalt [1]. With nobody really investing much to replace these lost jobs, only plenty of money for infrastructure trough the Soli.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/nov/16/ikea-regret...
That's why for many, the GDR also meant stability and progress. I can still remember my grandmother living in a house with wood ovens for heating, no running warm water, and a literal drop toilet on the second floor where you had to manually rinse with a big water pitcher.
She then got moved to an apartment inside a newly built Plattenbau [2], offering quite some comforts that were previously reserved to only very few households.
After the wall fell, she moved out to another flat, but by now is back to living in one of those Plattenbau apartments. Guess how negative her opinions on the GDR time are?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie
[1] https://www.dw.com/de/ddr-als-billiglohnland-f%C3%BCr-den-we...
> It is in these eastern Länder where the AfD has gained the most ground. Fear-mongering arguments against immigration and an Islamic takeover continue to attract scores of German citizens whose future economic prospects are less than rosy.
Not everyone is happy. You can have some people unhappy while others are being better off.
People don't feel rich. In many families, both partners have a job. Median incomes didn't increase much in the last 10-15 years. With an after-tax monthly income of 5,160€ as a family (or 3,440€ as a single), you belong to the top 10% [1] (translates to roughly 100,000€ / 70,000€ pre-tax anually). The median monthly net income is 1,869€ (roughly around 35,000€ pre-tax anually).
At the same time, people are highly suspicious of the stock market. People have less time for their kids, which spend more time in the educational system. So people wonder if the educational system is really that great for their kids.
I think this is interesting. It's like a vicious cycle: According to [2], 23% of Germans own stocks (although I remember that this number used to be around 15% a few years ago). So, people read books about how everything is going to crash down soon, because they're suspicious of the stock market (and to be able to say "told you so" afterwards). At the same time, these books reinforce the idea that owning stocks is risky.
Most people would rather buy a home, but houses got very expensive in cities in the last 10 years. In major cities, a house for a family of 4 would cost around 800,000€ and more, which is quite expensive for the low salaries of 90% of the people.
Then, major newspapers now have articles about the climate crisis every day. There's the uncertainty of the Brexit. There is uncertainty about immigrants, but also uncertainty and fear of the rise of right-wing parties in Europe (and the AfD in Germany).
So, we have books about how "the system" is shit, how "the crash is coming", how "Germany gets dumber all the time", how "something needs to change". Add some fears about the before-mentioned topics and there's your new book every few months, same content, different cover.
[1]: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-08/institut-der-deutsche...
[2]: https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-08/geldanlage-sparen-ver...
> Add some fears about the before-mentioned topics and there's your new book every few months, same content, different cover.
Talkshows and other media make these books even more profitable and popular. Publishing such a book almost guarantees that you'll be able to tour talkshows for a few weeks, give interviews to newspapers etc. as free marketing for your books.
I don't really see a clear divide between book publishers and media publisher on this issue. Most news media companies are going for the same content: everything is terrible, the world is constantly very close to ending, and you need to buy this paper to find out how to save yourself today. Bad news is good news after all.
Well to be fair the top book was about how to eat correctly. Isn't that about how the reader has to change?
> There has been at least one book about how "Germany/Germans are getting dumber", "The Big Crash is Coming" or something similar on the Spiegel Bestseller list at all times.
Not all books on the list are like that but there is indeed at least one of them at any given time. And those particular books never require the reader to change.
I too had a lower number in memory (~11%), and the first result I looked up [1] showed 16%, sourced from [2].
[1]: https://orange.handelsblatt.com/artikel/62761 [2]: https://www.dai.de/files/dai_usercontent/dokumente/studien/2...
Deriving the reason for the different helper verbs from first principles is endearing, in principle, but you've merely given names to it that you somehow take for granted. It makes sense to have cut wood, and it makes no sense to do come or have come, except for a potatoe plant which if it cometh will have a Keim or Keimblatt to be precise; I'm guessing here.
German rather differentiates is and have in the perfective, "sie ist ge-kommen", "sie hat ge-sehen"; We don't say has come because we are intuited to think it is wrong. That is, you might as sell say the crisis is not ye(t)come.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20647651
Add to that all time lows (zero and below) for German bond yields which has bleak consequences for long time savers (future pensioners). Germany is a nation of savers.
Swiss 10y bonds are at -1%.
We are living in interesting times.
Because Germany is a high-tax-country. People also generally don't have a lot of private pension funds, that's tied up in a publicly organized system that's based on income, and "shared" between employer and employee (that is, the employer will pay half of it directly, which generally means that your pay is lower by that much). You get pension claims instead of building personal wealth.
While there's still a lot of personal wealth to be inherited over the next decades, families appear to have more difficulties building wealth. It's why, whenever somebody says "Germany is a rich country", my instinct is to ask them "what is this Germany you speak of", because there are large differences when you look at the average/median citizen, a very well-off knowledge worker or rich person, or a person living at/below the poverty line.
It's not clear what your point of reference is. If you're wondering why it's much lower than in the US (where the 90-percentile household is probably around 170k USD pre-tax or 9k-10k post-tax), there are many many factors that contribute to the difference. The most important ones (unordered) are IMO:
- USD is probably overvalued by 15%-20% [1]. In the past 10 years, the EUR/USD rate fluctuated between 1.05 and 1.55, currently it's 1.12. It's unlikely that the relative living standards between the US and Germany fluctuated as much as 50% in this period, so a lot of the nominal incomes differences are not real.
- Americans work 30% more hours than Germans [2]
These two factors can explain most of the pre-tax income differences.
The net difference is a bit higher still, due to higher taxes/mandatory payments. I don't have references at hand, but at the €100k level, take-home pay is around 60%-62% of gross, while for an American at $112k it's closer to 70% (federal, state and payroll). No comment about justness, proper accounting for transfers, subsidies, other taxes, mandatory insurances, etc. This is a huge sprawling debate topic, but it's indisputable that disposable income at the same gross is higher in the US than in Europe. IMO, the first 2 factors accounting for differences in gross incomes are more important anyway.
A fairly mainstream economic theory is that the higher European (marginal) taxes are actually a major cause of the lower working hours (and hence lower personal income) [3]. The highest marginal rates actually don't differ that much (typically around 50% in Europe, 45% federal+state in the US), but in Europe the higher rates typically kick in at much lower levels: US marginal rate at $100k is probably around 30%, whereas in many European countries it's already in the 40%+ bracket.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-11/trump-has... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_annual_labor_h... [3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB109830788286551061
You answered the question yourself no ?
As a side note, the 5k are not actually "purchasing power" or really-really "after tax" as it is usually intended in the US, in the EU there is VAT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_tax
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_value_added_tax
which is similar to the "sales tax" in the US but that is usually much higher.
In Germany (Mehrwertsteuer) it is (relativaly) low at 19% standard.
Do German states have income taxes?
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-06/how-th...
Old man yells at cloud.
>> “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
― Socrates
What we know from Socrates, this doesn't sound like something he would have said.
Although, having done no writings of his own, we have two main sources for his life.
But then again, Plato often put his own words into Socrates' mouth and this is something Plato could have said. :-)
I only knew of some leads back to the 50s or 60s.
There were accounts of cringeworthy even for the day dressing up in a dirty short cloak in immitation of Spartans.
Socrates is a bizarre joke invented by Plato and a few of his friends while drinking in Athens one night. Plato just went all L. Ron Hubbard on it.
He says that the development of children is negatively affected by adults, who lack authority by elevating children to their level. Information technology had further enabled children to fortify this power imbalance.
Maybe he has a point, but as a psychologist for children you probably get a warped image after a while. Job hazard probably.
He recommends adults to take walks in the park for example to get distance and perspective from the horrible stuff younger people post online. That can align with my wishes to ban all politicians from Twitter at least.
But I think it should be pretty controversial to say that younger people form some kind of tyranny while keeping demographics in Germany in mind. Well, easier to take advantage of people that believe you a fool.
Still, younger people are the end of civilization as we know it, as is tradition. I believe there never was a metric or any empirical evidence but it might just be one of these timeless classics people seem to love. Maybe there is a hint of truth in a way that people drawn to these stories do indeed feel overtaxed.
This specific author has alread done that every 2 years or so for the last 10 years...
Kids who are being raised in communism are bound to behave differently then the ones who are being raised for capitalism/democracy. For that matter, generation that grew pre-WWII and during it was raised completely differently and towards different values too - especially in Germany. They were in fact taught to obey much more. You was not in fact supposed to think for yourself, while in todays world it is more of an advantage.
The real question is how much of this complain is "real" and how much is just politics to push for changes author would like. And how much of what is real change is bad and how much is actually adaptation to more competitive more free world.
I remember a documentary on Berlin and Berlinners have a slang term there that basically means "you have been controlled" when one of the many petty bureaucrats, pulls you up over some trivial infraction
Reminds me of when American friends were SHOCKED by a political poster that quipped "Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser" - they thought it meant "Trust is good, control is better", but it actually means "Trust is good, but checking things is better"
It's no longer the first verse due to the Nazi history, but it doesn't come from that time.
It actually comes from the mid 1800s (IIRC) when Germany didn't exist as a unified state. People lived in many different kingdoms and principalities and many yearned for a German state.
The anthem comes from this time and this line is supposed to mean that Germany is preferable to the various smaller states of that time.
Source: "Germany, memories of a nation" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23113270-germany
But the first time a foreigner hears it, it sounds a lot like "Germany over everyone in the world", which can carry the implication :P
It's not about petty bureaucrats and trivial infractions, it usually is referring to someone getting checked on the subway for tickets - and sometimes not having the proper ticket (or maaaaaybe being asked for id due to anti-social behaviour)
On the u-bahn everybody is checked. As for anti-social behaviour, it's usually the ones with certain clothing, possibly depicting some symbols or personal appearance that are often targeted.
Oh please. I feel like reading old books these days is some invitation for criticism about how "the youths" are the problem.
It is pleasant, however to retreat to the 19th-century Germans, and bathe in their erudition and learning, from the period before the world went sour.