Every country has its stereotypes – and surely there must be a reason as to why they exist. Right? Well, let’s see what the most common ones for Germans are and see if there is indeed any truth to it.

Germans are always punctual

First of all, yes. Second of all, also yes. Though things have changed a bit over the last decade or so and things haven gotten a bit more relaxed, being on time is still engrained in most Germans. In fact, for most of us, being on time means being around 15 minutes early. If I arrive somewhere five minutes earlier than agreed, I am already getting nervous. If I – god forbid – arrive on the dot, I will apologise profoundly. Even though this is often seen as something silly, I very much enjoy being raised to be punctual. I’ve always seen it as something incredibly positive – to me, being on time simply means that I value your time.

Germans aren’t funny

We’re definitely a funny folk – but we are very specifically funny. I only really realised this after living with my British partners and whenever comedy or jokes came up. German humour can be incredibly dry and, quite frankly, brutal. Not in a black humour kind of way (though we do enjoy this as well), but we do enjoy good wordplays, we like laughing at ourselves – and we really like trying to be funny by undermining someone or something else. Which, as I’ve learned, can be seen as incredibly rude to someone who isn’t in the know. Just to give you an example: If we want to let someone know that we enjoy the meal they cooked, we – with a straight face – will tell them our hunger forces it in.

Germans love beer and pretzels

I do not drink any alcohol, so I can’t really speak for the quality of German beer (though I do believe it is quite decent), but even I can tell that my fellow countrymen do like their beer. I’ve just looked up the statistics of how much beer per capita we drink and found out that I am slightly concerned about the Czech Republic and their consumption – but that Germany, in seventh place, is among many other friends with very similar numbers. Pretzels are amazing though. Not only in pretzelform, though. I’ve already spoken about how common bakeries in Germany are – and every bakery will have pretzels or other baked good made out of the same lye dough. We’ve got [Laugenstangen], [Laugenbrötchen], [Laugenkugeln] – even [Laugenbrot]¹, if you’re lucky! And oh boy are they all delicious!

However, the absolute stereotype of a German wearing [Lederhosen] or a [Dirndl]², having a pretzel in one and a beer in the other hand you’ll only ever find in Bavaria during the Oktoberfest. Nowhere else.

Germans follow every rule

Okay, yes. Yes we do like to do that. Being orderly and disciplined are values that we’re being taught as Germans. And to be fair, I like it! Because it means, that you can generally rely on each other. And it has tons of positives. Be that not crossing the road when the lights don’t show green (you will be verbally attacked for this, I promise you), taking your empty bottles back to the supermarket or separating your trash correctly. As we’re a very bureaucratic country, compliance with applications and laws is very much an everyday occurance.

That doesn’t mean that there’s no room for breaking out of it. Of course there is! We celebrate individuality and non-uniformity. We just also very much love to act in a certain framework.

[Picture by David Nuescheler – thank you!]

1. Laugenstangen, -brötchen, -kugeln & -brot: “Lauge” (lye) plus “Stange” (pole)/”Brötchen” (bread roll)/”Kugeln” (balls)/”Brot” (bread). ↩︎
2. Lederhosen & Dirndl: “Leder” (leather) and “Hose” (pants) and the “Dirndl” are the traditional clothes being worn in the German-speaking areas of the Alps – so a very, very limited area of Germany. ↩︎