In my post about the English education system, I explained that in some English schools (rather: in many) students are driven to focus their subject profile in later years on jobs with good earning potential. Interests are to be ignored, making money is what counts. (I explain why this is not the worst decision to make in British society in my post on salaries and cost of living). However, I could have noticed the British focus on money-making years ago. When we were at a party and made small talk, the British usually wanted to know very different things about my work as a physicist than the Germans.
The latter's questions revolved around the set-ups I used for experiments, how the equipment worked, which sample systems were interesting and why, or I was supposed to explain quantum effects. Germans want to understand the world.
On the other hand, when I tried to explain to Britons what I was working on, I was interrupted by the second sentence at the latest. Not all of them, but most of them, didn't want to know about effects. They wanted to know what product I was working on: things that could be introduced to the market in a timely manner to make money.
When I explained that my research could revolutionise the computer industry in principle, but only in a few decades, because my work revolved around fundamental physical effects that were not yet understood, my listeners looked at me with incomprehension. An activity that did not directly serve profit was not part of their world view. They understood neither my motivation nor the necessity for my job.
If I wanted to summarise my experiences briefly and succinctly, I would say Germans are engineers and British are businesspeople. Dividing entire peoples into two different occupational groups is of course superficial... but it can explain many idiosyncrasies.
For example, German engineers have a certain perfectionism in common. Whether they look at a machine or an organisation, they only see the part that doesn't work and want to improve it. On the one hand, this is why Germany is world-famous for high-quality goods and functioning processes. On the other hand, this way of thinking affects the nerves. Because if something is not perfect, it doesn't work at all! For Germans, the world comes to an end because of small deficits.
Germans see problems and not potential. With the British Businessmen, the opposite is the case.
The differences become clear when it comes to innovations, for example. Genuine innovations have a hard time in Germany. They are often not yet fully developed and "threaten" to displace the tried and tested. In everyday life, this results in a slight backwardness.
Especially before the Covid years, I encountered cash money almost exclusively in my home country. Even today some restaurants just accept cash as payment. In Britain this seems absurd. It is more likely that restaurants only process electronic means of payment.
Machine passport controls at airports had been the norm in Britain long before I encountered them in Germany. And I marvelled at the first self-payment supermarket checkouts in the UK almost 10 years before they were introduced in Germany.
On the other hand, the passport control machines now installed at German airports work better than those in the UK.
Also the supermarket supply is far better, and was even before Brexit (Which is why delivery services for groceries are not a big thing in Germany).
It's not as if there were no technological revolutionaries among my fellow Germans. There were Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler with their motor cars, Philipp Reis with the first telephone and Konrad Zuse with the first universally programmable computer.
But it is not enough to have great innovators. It also requires investors with foresight as well as acceptance in the market. Philip Reis met with so much disinterest that you may never have heard of him. And those in power at the time were not interested in Zuse's work (fortunately!).
Of my mentioned examples, only the inventors of the car are the exception to the rule. And because of our great strength, striving for perfection, several German corporations are now in the top group of global manufacturers. At least for now. They fell behind on the trend towards electro-mobility.
The British, on the other hand, used the first electronic computers to decode German messages a few years after Zuse's invention in World War II, the world wide web is based on a protocol developed by the British Tim Berners-Lee, smartphones and tablets use processors with an architecture developed by the British company ARM Ltd. and the highly praised German industry would hardly have come into being without the corresponding revolution in Britain.
Another supreme discipline of British business people is marketing. For example, in the UK many concerns are conveyed via slogans. Whether historical, as with Your King and Country need you and Keep calm and carry on, or in everyday life. The London public transport system alone uses several slogans to communicate with its customers. Besides Mind the gap, Mind your head and See it. Say it. Sorted are ubiquitous. The latter is a request to report suspicious objects or behaviour.
British politics has taken the use of slogans to unprecedented heights. The various phases of the Corona pandemic, for example, can be traced through the slogans devised by government: Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives during the first wave, followed by Stay alert, control the virus, save lives, as well as Eat out to help out and Hands, face, space. During the second lockdown, Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives was reactivated. In the summer of 2021, the world came back to normal, at least according to the government, with Keep life moving.
British politicians also rely more than almost any other group on the supportive effect of adjectives. They like to overemphasise them in the spoken word. A prime example is Theresa May's Lancaster House speech from the beginning of 2017, in which she presented the cornerstones of her policy for the future of Britain, and which played an important role in my further research [1].
It says, among other things, "I want this United Kingdom to emerge from this period of change STRONGER, FAIRER, more UNITED, and more OUTWARD-LOOKING than ever before. I want us to be a SECURE, PROSPEROUS, TOLERANT country... I want us to be a TRULY Global Britain. (Slogan!!!)... A GREAT, GLOBAL TRADING nation, that is respected around the world and STRONG, CONFIDENT and UNITED at home." The examples come from just one paragraph! When I have to listen to British politicians, I quickly get a headache. (FYI, it is a running joke at home that my wife and I have a STRONG and STABLE partnership. May’s slogan for the 2017 election).
After all, there is a phrase that everyone in the UK uses when they want to pitch something. Especially if it's something British. Whether it's a book on English history, goods, infrastructure, the political system, cultural or sporting achievements, the educational institutions or the health system, everything is advertised with the phrase "One of the best in the world!" or something similar.
The wording of the phrase is often true because it is so vague. There are so many countries in the world, most of them in less developed parts of the world. And where to draw the line? Is it still worth praising Britain is in the top 50!? In other words, it is practically without value, pure marketing-speak.
The phrase is also used in other countries. But no nation carries its use in its heart as much as Britain. A situation cannot be absurd enough. I once followed a debate in the House of Commons on adjustments to the Animal Welfare Act (don't ask me why). Virtually every MP’s speech pointed out that the British law was, of course, one of the BEST in the world, but could always be improved. This was followed by examples of unpunished animal abuse from their respective constituencies, which very much questioned the effectiveness of the existing law....
Frankly, I think the British fall for their own slogans often enough. Apart from a lack of drive for perfection, this seems to be one of the reasons why the UK is now one of the most deindustrialised regions in the world, or we don't buy smartphones and computers from British companies. Britons do manage to introduce innovations to the market and perhaps even establish them, but in competition they often fail.
If I think about it a little longer, the British and the Germans would be perfect partners. One side provides new ideas, investment, marketing and an early-adopter-type market, the other ensures a long-lasting technological lead and competitiveness. Perhaps it is no coincidence that many of the things for which we Germans are known in the world have a British origin: Industrial products, tanks and good football...
Oh, if only our two countries could join together in some kind of union, wouldn’t that be something?!
Note: If you would like to be informed about new blogposts by e-mail, please register at the top right of the page.