[aleph_minus_one]

> she said she can't identify as a German because nobody made her feel like one

As a native German, I actually have difficulties with concepts like "identifying as [nationality]", "feeling like [nationality]" or "naturalization". I really would say these are concepts that US-Americans (or people who were "shaped" by US mentality) seem to deeply care about, but Germans very typically don't.

So, my opinion/advice is: she should simply abandon such concepts ("identifying as [nationality]", "feeling like [nationality]", "naturalization") that, as a native German, are simply far away from the mentality that I observe in daily life.

Don't forget that a unified Germany was a concept that only involved in the 19th century, so "Germany" is more of a somewhat "synthetic" unification of various historical, and very different, federal states where the unifying element is rather what is now considered to be a shared language, ethicity, culture and history.

With this in mind, the advice should be obvious:

This woman should concentrate on getting really good in German, and learn about the more than 1000 years of (what is now German) culture and history, and additionally learn about the laws and rules to survive daily life. Otherwise, she should live her life.

What she should not do, is caring about what "identifying as" or "feeling like a" German means - she should put this out of her mind, since modern Germany is a very synthetic unification of what were historically very different sovereign nations that share what is now considered to be a common language, ethicity, culture and history.

[torginus]

I think what she meant that even if you live in Germany/work with German colleagues, basically you will enternally made to be felt that you are not one of them by all but the most liberally minded Germans (and even those are rare even in the big international cities). So your friend group (if you decide to have one, rather than concentrate on family), will consist of other expats/immigrants.

Btw most Europeans are like this - but some are more polite about this than others.

Americans are the incredibly weird outlier (in a good way!). If you speak decent enough English, then basically if you get along, they forget about where you come from. At least it felt like it - Americans basically don't make headspace for this kind of stuff.

[aleph_minus_one]

> I think what she meant that even if you live in Germany/work with German colleagues, basically you will enternally made to be felt that you are not one of them by all but the most liberally minded Germans (and even those are rare even in the big international cities). So your friend group (if you decide to have one, rather than concentrate on family), will consist of other expats/immigrants.

Thanks for your interesting point.

Nevertheless, I think the situation is a little bit different:

Many Germans indeed also have the feeling "that [they] are not one of them", but I would say it is part of the German mentality to worry much less about that than in other countries.

A lot of connections at work are rather "communities of purpose" [English translation of "Zweckgemeinschaft(en)"], i.e. you work together because of a common goal/hobby/... which makes collaborations a really good idea.

I read somewhere that in the USA a lot more of the social life is centered around the work/company than in Germany. So, it is not untypical to get social connections at work, but this is only one way among many. I would even claim that the social connections from work are often not the most important ones.

Immigrants who are used to the US mentality that work is much more important for social connections than in Germany thus feel that "[they] are not one of them", when in reality this is not the case.

I am very certain that typically German colleagues treat immigrants colleagues as they would treat their German work colleagues (as far as possible). The misunderstanding is rather that many people from other cultures want to be treated quite differently.

> So your friend group (if you decide to have one, rather than concentrate on family), will consist of other expats/immigrants.

In my observation the reason for this is rather because many migrants have very different wishes on their surrounding group than what is common in Germany (also and in particular for Germans).

[crossroadsguy]

Immigrants who go to Germany are not used to US mentality, they don't have a mandatory few years of pitstop in the US to pickup US mentality before they finally land in Germany. You are "certain" (literally) about a lot of things that you are typically missing (or rather ignoring) any points the other commenters are trying bring in. Maybe that's also a point?

As for work connections - someone just landed in a foreign country and spends decisively most of the "waking hours" with a bunch of people… as in literally, it's not even a metaphor… that's called being human, social, etc.

[ShinyLeftPad]

Are you also German?

[dr_hooo]

> If you speak decent enough ~~English~~ German, then basically if you get along, they forget about where you come from.

This has been my exact experience in Germany though.

[p00dles]

I don’t think that she means it as literally as you are interpreting her. It’s a _feeling_ of not belonging to or probably feeling welcomed to join the culture that surrounds her daily life, I don’t think she cares whether she belongs to the history-based definition that you outlined of modern “synthetic” unified Germany.

This experience is usually invisible to the people who are part of the in-group, in this case Germans, but if someone lives in a foreign country for an extended period of time and tries to make it their home, I think they understand what that woman was saying.

[aleph_minus_one]

> I don’t think that she means it as literally as you are interpreting her. It’s a _feeling_ of not belonging to or probably feeling welcomed to join the culture that surrounds her daily life

I wrote something about a related point in my parallel post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48824800

With this in mind, I think that

> This experience is usually invisible to the people who are part of the in-group, in this case Germans, but if someone lives in a foreign country for an extended period of time and tries to make it their home, I think they understand what that woman was saying.

is not a feeling that is felt as strongly by people from Germany as for people from other countries.

1. As I have hinted in my original post, there simply is not that much of a feeling of "belonging" also for Germans who live in Germany.

2. I wrote in the linked post

"I would really say that a lot of life in Germany is organized around 'if you don't have anybody to do something specific together (and be it because of different interests), you simply do things alone on your own'. There is simply not a feeling of urgency/necessity to socialize if not both sides profit from it."

So, people from Germany are often much more used to the situation that they do things alone on their own, and thus in my opinion indeed have much more internal tolerance to the situation what people from other cultures would call "a feeling of not belonging".

This is exactly why I wrote further above:

"This woman should [...] learn about the laws and rules to survive daily life. Otherwise, she should live her life."

The reason is not knowing the laws and rules can get her into trouble, but living your life on your own (without a sense of "belonging") is something that is easily doable (as I hinted: quite some Germans feel this about their life in Germany) - if you don't "belong" or have few contacts, you can still live.

[BeetleB]

I can only speculate, but usually when such phrases come up, it's about things like not being part of the in-group - people they know throwing parties and not inviting them, etc.

[aleph_minus_one]

> I can only speculate, but usually when such phrases come up, it's about things like not being part of the in-group - people they know throwing parties and not inviting them, etc.

Concerning "part of the in-group": It is very usual that in Germany, you don't become a "friend" fast (the German translation of "friend", [der] Freund, has a much deeper meaning than the US-American understanding of the English word). Friendship is much deeper and takes much longer to establish, but is also there to stay.

The same is said about Nordic countries.

If you come from a country where you become a friend much faster, but in a much more shallow sense, you will indeed likely be disappointed.

My advice based on my feelings/observations:

- If you do shallow smalltalk (as it is very common in the USA), you signal that you only want a shallow relationship. If you want a deep friendship, better bring something deep to the table.

- In particular referring to the point "people they know throwing parties and not inviting them": I would really say that life in Germany is much more "live your own life" (which is also what I wrote in my post above: "Otherwise, she should live her life."), i.e. you do much more things on your own. For me, for example, a very common evening is filled with learning (which I do on my own).

I would really say that a lot of life in Germany is organized around "if you don't have anybody to do something specific together (and be it because of different interests), you simply do things alone on your own". There is simply not a feeling of urgency/necessity to socialize if not both sides profit from it.

With this in mind, I think that "people they know throwing parties and not inviting them" is not something that you will commonly experience (and people likely would consider this to be unfair), it's rather "people not throwing parties, so you are not invited to a (non-existing :-) ) party".

[Dylan16807]

> If you do shallow smalltalk (as it is very common in the USA), you signal that you only want a shallow relationship.

That sounds like an extremely obnoxious judgement.

> If you want a deep friendship, better bring something deep to the table.

At some point sure. Are you suggesting launching into deep conversation when you meet someone?

[aleph_minus_one]

> Are you suggesting launching into deep conversation when you meet someone?

I am strongly suggesting not to start with shallow smalltalk, as it is common in the USA.

I would start with serious conversations when I meet someone to get a feeling. But if the "vibe" is right, you can indeed get deep rather soon.

[Dylan16807]

It's very strange to see you simultaneously say that that friendships take longer to develop but also that I'm supposed to avoid shallow talk the entire time even when my friendship is very shallow.

Especially since it's usually Americans that have the reputation for treating strangers overly familiar in conversation.

[aleph_minus_one]

> It's very strange to see you simultaneously say that that friendships take longer to develop but also that I'm supposed to avoid shallow talk the entire time even when my friendship is very shallow.

I don't get your point:

- Avoiding shallow talking means not wasting the other person's time - this is politeness.

- You can also talk about deep topics with people who are outside of your friendzone.

[oblio]

> That sounds like an extremely obnoxious judgement.

Or just a cultural difference.

[SJetKaran]

Hypothesis - I wonder if this is about places with lot of movement vs places that don't. Internal movement within US, even within rural communities, might be more than in Germany? and so, society tends to be more accepting of new incoming people?

[aleph_minus_one]

From my observations about Germany and what I read about the USA, there was historically much less internal movement in Germany than in the USA. But over the last decades, shifts occured: internal movement increased in Germany and decreased in the USA.

> and so, society tends to be more accepting of new incoming people?

I would say the topic is more multilayered:

Traditionally, Germany was not an immigration country (yes, there exist exceptions in history: migrations of big groups from other countries, but let's ignore them for the sake of the argument), so there barely exist any traditionally grown structures for immigrants from other countries or cultures; they are much more on their own.

I wouldn't say that this bare existence of immigration structures is a bad thing per se, or that such people are unwelcome etc. It's just that there exist no really structured way for immigrants from other countries or cultures to set foot in Germany's society.

On the other hand, the increased internal movement over the last decades in Germany has not lead to the situation that incoming (German) people have an easier way to get into the existing structures, but I would rather say that this lead to a more tolerance of new incoming people doing their own thing separately.

In other words: it lead to the situation that people living next to each other often having few common things in their ways of living.

So, the increased internal movement rather lead to a loss of "common grounding" of people living in some place, without anything new appearing that replaces this loss of common grounding.

[BeetleB]

Knowing Germans, I'm not disagreeing with you - merely pointing out the perception.

(I have heard bad stories from Germany, but that was decades ago).

[snovymgodym]

> since modern Germany is a very synthetic unification of what were historically very different sovereign nations

This is fairly revisionist. Germany is no more synthetic than most other modern European countries in that regard. The lands of modern Germany were more culturally and linguistically unified than say, France or Spain (which had more diverse minority languages that were suppressed, e.g. Catalan, Basque, Occitan, Breton).

Virtually everything that is now Germany (and lots that isn't) was part of the same polity, the Holy Roman Empire, for roughly 1000 years before being dissolved by Napoleon in 1806. Yes, it was highly decentralized even for the time, but the fact that there was a common language in the core lands was not lost on people at the time, and a gradual informal standardization of the written language was already taking place during this time.

So Germany's unification in 1871 was essentially re-unifying lands that had been part of the same state for centuries before, only this time they did it under the justification of the then-fashionable concept of the nation state and with a centralized power in control of the whole thing.

Unfortunately for everyone, that centralized power was Prussia.

[warumdarum]

She should also not listen to fringe left extremism wanting to disolve the nation state.

[eldaisfish]

would you say that a swiss german and someone from Hamburg have more in common than someone from Bavaria and someone from Helsinki?

[kuschku]

That's an interesting question. Personally, I'd say the north of Germany has more in common with Danish and Dutch people than with Bavarians (who in turn have more in common with the Austrians than with us).

[FabCH]

It’s a super interesting example because the Swiss German in the question would also vehemently disagree that they have anything in common with the German :)

I’m actually curious if the GP expects „yes“ or „no“ as an answer, because I couldn’t even say. It’s probably „yes“, but…

[e5ur6ud6u]

ADP