Auswandering is in
One can easily get the impression here that Germans tend to be rather fatalistic. Don’t laugh - those of you who live in Germany - I didn’t intend that to be comic understatement. Seriously, Germans love to moan about their lot in life just as much as the rest of us do only 1) they do it better than we do and 2) they also seem to be more reluctant when it comes to ever getting around to doing anything about it.
Despite, say, the many positive aspects of the German social system which immediately catch a foreigner’s eye; an affordable and efficient health care system, long vacations, a practically gratuitous university education system, generous unemployment benefits etc., the prevailing feeling here about such achievements is one of resignation. Rightly so, perhaps, as many of these benefits have simply become too expensive in the current era of mass unemployment and seem now more like ancient artifacts of a by-gone age: The good old days. Früher war alles besser.
And although of course one doesn’t usually pack up his or her bags and immigrate to another country just because of cuts and reforms to the traditional social order of one’s own, I was nevertheless surprised to discover a television show the other night that made me reevaluate what I thought about the German reluctance to risk-taking and change.
After a few minutes of watching Goodbye Deutschland! Die Auswanderer I was stupefied to see Germans who had not only stopped moaning about their lots in life, they were even willing to put everything they had on one card (not necessarily the green one) and leave their country behind them altogether. It’s what I guess you could call a reality-TV-report-documentary about five German families, all with very different backgrounds, who try their luck in Spain, Sweden, South Africa, a not-yet-disclosed South American country and, gulp, Texas.
This wasn’t the first show I’ve seen like this. And I love shows like these. This kind of thing gets an ex-patriot’s attention, I suppose. These “Aussteiger” (get out, as in drop out or get out of the rat race) shows are in these days, although in this case it’s actually an Auswanderer (immigrant) show. And how could they not be popular? They reflect the sentiments of a huge number of Germans who are tired of all the resignation and consider leaving the country every year. 100,000 a year actually do it. Or at least that’s the number that Goodbye Deutschland! claims.
But whatever the actual number of inner- or outer- immigrants might be, and regardless of where they or you I come from, they all have one thing in common that I really like: They’ve traded in their fatalism for something else.
Deine Green Card macht mich Green vor Neid.
Kommentare auf Deutsch? Her damit!
Es wird dich erschreckend wie kurzsichtig viele Deutsche geworden sind. Die Wenigsten können in Deutschland noch eine langfristige Denkperspektive finden.
Die steigenden Auswanderungszahlen sind nur ein Symptom für ein viel tiefer liegendes Problem.
(OMG! Now that was a typically German post) (Comment this)
It's about emmigration from Germany. (Comment this)
The problem is that a lot of Germans are way to inflexible. They are building their houses of brick and are making fun out of the typical American wooden light constructions. And those Germans are not willing to move to another city if there's no suitable job offered locally. Then politics is beeing blamed for the situation and moaning starts. The German is working hard on tying himself to a certain place and naively expects industry and economy to respect that. He also expects a persistence in the job marked. The offer for a certain job has to be constant over time. And if something doesn't fit into this view of things then who is to be blamed? Right, politics! (Comment this)