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Comment by skytreader | Hacker News Reader

I liked the account but to be honest this line about Herr Doktor and Moses really flew over my head. It's just a bunch of cultural allusions but I don't see how they connect.

- Herr Doktor is a traditional German title, roughly equivalent to the more-known "Doctor of Medicine (MD)" or "Juris Doctor (JD)".

- Is the allusion to Moses due to this story being post-war/unification and Moses is a Jewish figure? (There might be technicalities between "Jew", "Israelite", and "Abrahamic" but I'm even more ignorant here than I am of German customs.)

- Is "space on the stone tablets", "11th Commandment" an allusion to the (in)famous German noun-phrases? Like "Wohnungsgeberbestatigung" which is actually three words (trans: "apartment-provider's confirmation"/"landlord's confirmation").

So...explainer from anyone who got this line?

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It's a humurous statement about arrogance, in a nutshell : The Doctor is always correct, no matter the context.

The Moses 11th Commandment, is a comment on the biblical story of Moses. He was given 10 laws from God, and etched them onto a stone tablet. The Doctors of Germany are annoyed becuase the there should have beeen an 11th COmmandandment and it should have been, 'The Doctor is always correct'. The Doctors of Germany have forgiven God for this oversight.

I feel like you might be overthinking this a little ;) it's simply that commonly and (mostly) ironically Mose's commands are seen as the corner-stone of Christian societies.

And since the fact that ein Herr Doctor is always right is such a fundamental law in German society (again, this is obviously a hyperbole and meant ironically) one would've expected it to be included in Mose's list of commands. But since it isn't, ehe only rational reason for it to have been omitted must've been the fact that he didn't have much space left for that 11th command. That's all.

Oh.

That makes sense.

Herr Doktor just means Mister Doctor. "The Doctor is always right is the 11th commandment. Moses ran out of space to add that to the stone tablets (where he wrote the first ten)."

I think it is worded awkwardly. I also had trouble parsing that.

German is also famous for stringing several words together, so you will also see "Herr Doktoringenieur" for someone who has a PhD in engineering. And is even more right than a regular Herr Doctor because he is also an Engineer.

> Doktoringenieur

Never seen it in practical German though.

> And is even more right than a regular Herr Doctor because he is also an Engineer.

On the contrary. The traditional universities didn't want to accept technical universities as full ones.A full university is supposed to have theology, jurisprudence, philosophy and medicine. Technical universities were more practical oriented and to some degree looked down upon. So they couldn't give "proper" doctor titles. Just "dr.-ing." (note the hyphen), compared to "Dr. Med.", "Dr. Phil."...

The Dutch apparently do have a double title for doctors, which are also engineers.

> The Dutch apparently do have a double title for doctors, which are also engineers.

I suppose this is technically true, but AFAIK, you'd just use 'dr.', which would imply that you're also 'drs.' or 'ir.' (as you can't be one without also being the other).

Of course, these days, communication is more casual and you'd be just as likely not to use your title. When I was in University, all of my Dutch professors signed their emails with just their name (no titles), but one of my professors from Germany would stubbornly sign all his emails as 'dr. ir. nat. habil.' :D

>Never seen it in practical German though.

Well, google does give 180K matches

"Mountebank" gives me 763k matches, "Chirurgeon" 185k.

Never come across them before I looked for uncommon terms for doctors in the English language. I am not saying it is not a word or incorrect, but that I haven't seen it in practical use. Have you observed that?

To add to the other explanations, there are Herr Doktors that think so high of themselves that they put the title everywhere, business cards, emails addresses, name on the letter box, and everywhere else they are supposed to write the name, you even get to write it on personal data online forms.

Coming from a country (Portugal) where having an Engineering degree still has a similar connotation and there are still some that make the point to be called Eng. SoAndSo, specially on smaller towns and villages, it was kind of ironic to find a society where it is taken to the next level.

Making sure that an academic or honorific title is correctly interpreted in a German data models is a little project in itself. I once had the pleasure to write out the business logic that generates the correct honorific address for printed letters. It was surprising how much time we spend on that part and how often it had to be revised because of some special exception or case no one had thought about. To give you an Idea, every class: clergy, government administration, political, academic, nobility and professional, has their own rules, which can be mixed and combined, but these rules differ in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It was a quite archaic and exciting problem to solve.

To further your point, here’s the German government’s 173 page guide on how to address people correctly: https://www.protokoll-inland.de/SharedDocs/downloads/Webs/PI...

Besides government officials and foreign signatories, the largest section is indeed about clergy.

Note that this is super formal. In most business you can get by with Dr. and Prof., nothing else.

My favourites:

"Eure Spektabilität" and "Eure Magnifizenz" for the "Dekan" (dean) and "Rektor" (president/chancellor), respectively, of a university. I wish to meet one, just to use that term.

Hah, I used to be active in student politics and managed to use both of these in writing and heard them plenty of times in speeches.

I can imagine how hard it turned out to be, thanks for sharing.

Germans have a cultural fetish for displaying (and being subservient to) authority expressed by titles, signs and such.

"Wenn diese Deutschen einen Bahnhof stürmen wollen, kaufen die sich erst eine Bahnsteigkarte!" - Lenin (probably not really though.)

If you find this a strong feature in Germany, Austrians take it to the next level

Or as my coworker put it: the Japanese follow rules and hierarchy because they have been indoctrinated and they know the will be punished if they don't; the Germans, Austrians as Swiss do it because it makes them horny.

(Disclaimer: we live in Japan and he lived in Switzerland before)

I find the situation even funnier when you consider that France, Germany main partner in the European Union and direct neighbor, views having a PhD outside of research as a waste of time and something which will be held against you. The cultural differences between European countries are fascinating.

Indeed, however I feel when you immerse into local culture, eventually we find out there is a thin common culture across the continent, regarding what everyone was watching while growing up or certain points of view versus other continents.

As a European living in the US, I think Europeans have much more in common than they think. The differences between countries seem big until you're looking at them from a distance. I'd even argue that the UK has more in common with 'the continent' than with the US.

As an European living in Japan, I totally agree with you. And obviously Western countries (including AU and NZ) have much more in common with each other than with Asian/African/whatever countries.

Are you French? I am, I have a PhD and work in a large French tech company.

Having a PhD has never been an issue, usually an advantage, often neutral.

I am French. Most of my friends have PhD. You still get the usual "you must not be very practical" during interviews and your salary is never better that what someone from a good engineering school would get.

If they get such a message, sorry but they are applying to the wrong companies. The ones I know very well (top tech in France, to take the French ones) would not say something like this.

As for the salary - this is normal. You apply to an engineering position so your experience in engineering positions/education counts. A PhD is not a hinder but not a huge booster either. This is not different from other countries, except for Germany and to some extend Poland and Italy.

Please note that France is extremely unique when it comes to engineering schools. Our pride in prépas and then top schools does not count at all abroad. You finished Polytechnique? OK, that's an engineering school in the top 100-400 of international schools.

>If they get such a message, sorry but they are applying to the wrong companies. The ones I know very well (top tech in France, to take the French ones) would not say something like this.

Well, it's common in the US too, from what I've read. Tech companies (in IT at least) don't particularly care for PhDs...

Yes, they do not particularly care about PhDs. It does not mean that a PhD is a problem, though.

I worked in IT for two large US companies (from mid-90's to end-00's) and the first job my PhD was not a particular asset (but nothing wrong with that) and it helped for the second one.

>It does not mean that a PhD is a problem, though.

No, but it is often perceived as a sign that "let's skip this person, they are too researchy, older than a college graduate, and likely to ask for more too".

don‘t come to Austria, over here even BSc is a title worthy for a business card.

Yeah, that is like Engineering in Portugal, but we don't go as far as in German cultures.

Depending on country, the title of Doctor might become part of your legal name - enough that you're going to get issued new IDs and the like

Honorifics are cultural.

In undergraduate -- It was always Professor LastName. In grad school, other cost, it was Doctor Lastname. We had a discussion there, and learned that in Germany, it was Herr Doctor Professor Lastname.

Little fix in the order: Herr Professor Doktor. But only in formal writing.

When talking to them, it's Herr Professor.

Austria loves their honorifics, though. Every school teacher is a Professor, and the Professor's wife is Mrs. Professor.

Strictly speaking, only Austrian grammar school teachers appointed as civil servants were allowed to carry the title Professor. That appointment (Pragmatisierung) is somewhat comparable to academic tenure: you had a job guarantee and the right to stay at "your" school, whereas non-tenured teachers had to switch schools in case of insufficient work hours. But a tenured teacher had a lower salary compared to a non-tenured one and so emperor Franz Josef had the idea with the additional Professor title. A smart move, because he satisfied the academic "vanity" of the teachers which kept salary costs lower.

Since the difference between tenured and non-tenured teachers is beyond the understanding of 10-18 year old pupils, they called every teacher "Professor".

Small correction: only grammar school teachers are called Professors in Austria, junior high school teachers just "Herr/Frau LehrerIn". In earlier days, you needed a master degree to teach in grammar school and just a bachelor degree for junior high.

*every school teacher after secondary school. Before that they're still mostly "Mr./Mrs. Teacher".

> Every school teacher is a Professor.

Same in Poland! But only for high school.

Definitely cultural! In my undergrad (UK) we called our professors by their first names.

I knew a chem. eng. professor at a university, who I believe had come from Austria, and had "Professor Doctor Engineer" as the title on his doorplate. Very much stood out in the US and it was something students and other faculty would tease him about.

Doktor is also the equivalent of a PhD. He probably had a PhD in CompSciene.

Or in Math or some engineering field. CS wasn't a thing in German universities until the 70s, I think. So for someone in a senior position in 1990 it seems quite likely to be around 50, too old to have finished a PhD program around 1980.

Yes - there are quite a few engineering doctors in Germany - the ex-CEO of Daimler is one, Dr Dieter Zetsche.

My dad worked a lot in Germany for Dow Corning in the 80's and 90's and it's a very distinct engineering culture from many other places.

More likely to be anything else but CS (and frankly, medicine). A doctorate in almost anything plus a smart suit gets you into management track quickly. There's a reason why Germany had quite a number of fake doctorate scandals in politics. And probably will continue to do so for a while...

Most of which have been JDs, by the way, which are both rarer and more important sounding in Germany.

And if you think this is getting a bit ridiculous, let me introduce you to our neighbor Austria. Take it away, Herr Geheimrat…

The old testament says that Moses received the 10 commandements from god and he wrote them down on stone tablets.

The author says that people with a doctor degree are always right. Moses would have written that down as well but he had no space on his stone tablets left.

(a) Herr Doktor = the professor (the academic, the PhD guy, the big fish in a goverment organization, the one with the most credentials)

(b) "Herr Doktor is always right" - a central tenet of German society (or basically, organization politics) according to the author.

(d) Benevolent as they are, however, the Doktors, forgave Moses for that oversight.

The idea is that "a Herr Doktor is always right" is a holy commandment in Germany, just as important as the other ten and it should be noted along with the other ten. He's saying the Germans have forgiven Moses by now for leaving it out, but they still consider it as much a holy commandment as the others.

You aren’t a Mel Brooks fan? “The lord has given me these fifteen *trip* these ten commandments..”

Are you autistic?

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