What are the German people really like?
A few days ago I ordered a copy of this highly popular essay by Marei Mentlein and I excitedly received it on the late afternoon of the 21st. No sooner had I opened the small book than I began reading voraciously. It was written in two languages: German and Japanese. The German author had first written it in her native tongue and then so adroitly translated it into Japanese. Not being so good at German, I read it in Japanese translation. My Japanese is so good as to have made it possible for me to read it through in less than an hour. Now what I've got to say about the book is that it does deserve being regarded as a must-read if you need to master German and to know something out of the ordinary about the German people. Having been a Germanophile for more than three decades now, I've admired them for almost everything except the Tripartite Intervention and the Holocaust and I must say I'm very happy to find my admiration for them to be as unchanged as ever.
What I found great about the essay was that it helped me know how German people tend to behave in certain situations. Of course not all people in any society behave in exactly the same way in every situation, but the majority of the people still don't seem to be so free from what we call the stereotype and therefore it is safe to say that generalization is more or less useful even if there are always some exceptions, which are to be regarded as only marginal and even negligible.
As a matter of fact, to know something about the German people before flying to Germany last July, I had collected quite a bit of information through the Internet and several books and I was sure that I wouldn't be shocked or puzzled if the Germans weren't so good to me as I imagined. So what were they really like? It would bore you to death if I mentioned all the Germans with whom I communicated back in Germany, so let me take only one example.
At the hotel reception in Berlin
One late morning in early July 2025 I - an evangelical Christian Zionist from Japan - was at the hotel reception in Kreuzberg, Berlin. It was sprinkling outside. I asked the receptionist a quick question in English.
'Do you have an umbrella to lend?'
What was her reaction like? Did she ignore me? Did she demand that I should speak German? Did she tell me to help myself? Or did she tell me to go out without an umbrella because it was just sprinkling?
Here's what really followed my question. She understood me immediately, stood up to go into the backroom, got back with a folding umbrella and handed it to me.
'How much should I pay you?' I said to her.
'You don't need to pay me at all,' was her reply.
I thanked her and went out to get something at the grocer's nearby. About half an hour later I returned to my hotel, handed the umbrella back to the receptionist and tipped her a 2-euro coin.
Most people in Japan would say that the scene described above is such a commonplace in their country that there's nothing surprising about it, but I was really impressed that the Berliner treated me so fairly in spite of the fact that I was a foreigner who didn't speak German. I now firmly believe that I am absolutely right not to have taken it for granted that she acted for me. Being kind to foreigners is nothing to be taken for granted. It's something very special. What the receptionist in Berlin did for me was therefore something special and nothing to be taken for granted. Once outside Japan, it's risky to think the way most people in Japan do. After all, 99% of them don't believe in God, you know. So what's the use of taking them seriously? It would get us nowhere.
