Comment by skytreader
4 years ago
I liked the account but to be honest this line about Herr Doktor and Moses really flew over my head. It's just a bunch of cultural allusions but I don't see how they connect.
- Herr Doktor is a traditional German title, roughly equivalent to the more-known "Doctor of Medicine (MD)" or "Juris Doctor (JD)".
- Is the allusion to Moses due to this story being post-war/unification and Moses is a Jewish figure? (There might be technicalities between "Jew", "Israelite", and "Abrahamic" but I'm even more ignorant here than I am of German customs.)
- Is "space on the stone tablets", "11th Commandment" an allusion to the (in)famous German noun-phrases? Like "Wohnungsgeberbestatigung" which is actually three words (trans: "apartment-provider's confirmation"/"landlord's confirmation").
So...explainer from anyone who got this line?
It's a humurous statement about arrogance, in a nutshell : The Doctor is always correct, no matter the context.
The Moses 11th Commandment, is a comment on the biblical story of Moses. He was given 10 laws from God, and etched them onto a stone tablet. The Doctors of Germany are annoyed becuase the there should have beeen an 11th COmmandandment and it should have been, 'The Doctor is always correct'. The Doctors of Germany have forgiven God for this oversight.
I feel like you might be overthinking this a little ;) it's simply that commonly and (mostly) ironically Mose's commands are seen as the corner-stone of Christian societies.
And since the fact that ein Herr Doctor is always right is such a fundamental law in German society (again, this is obviously a hyperbole and meant ironically) one would've expected it to be included in Mose's list of commands. But since it isn't, ehe only rational reason for it to have been omitted must've been the fact that he didn't have much space left for that 11th command. That's all.
Oh.
That makes sense.
Herr Doktor just means Mister Doctor. "The Doctor is always right is the 11th commandment. Moses ran out of space to add that to the stone tablets (where he wrote the first ten)."
I think it is worded awkwardly. I also had trouble parsing that.
German is also famous for stringing several words together, so you will also see "Herr Doktoringenieur" for someone who has a PhD in engineering. And is even more right than a regular Herr Doctor because he is also an Engineer.
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To add to the other explanations, there are Herr Doktors that think so high of themselves that they put the title everywhere, business cards, emails addresses, name on the letter box, and everywhere else they are supposed to write the name, you even get to write it on personal data online forms.
Coming from a country (Portugal) where having an Engineering degree still has a similar connotation and there are still some that make the point to be called Eng. SoAndSo, specially on smaller towns and villages, it was kind of ironic to find a society where it is taken to the next level.
Making sure that an academic or honorific title is correctly interpreted in a German data models is a little project in itself. I once had the pleasure to write out the business logic that generates the correct honorific address for printed letters. It was surprising how much time we spend on that part and how often it had to be revised because of some special exception or case no one had thought about. To give you an Idea, every class: clergy, government administration, political, academic, nobility and professional, has their own rules, which can be mixed and combined, but these rules differ in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It was a quite archaic and exciting problem to solve.
To further your point, here’s the German government’s 173 page guide on how to address people correctly: https://www.protokoll-inland.de/SharedDocs/downloads/Webs/PI...
Besides government officials and foreign signatories, the largest section is indeed about clergy.
Note that this is super formal. In most business you can get by with Dr. and Prof., nothing else.
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I can imagine how hard it turned out to be, thanks for sharing.
Germans have a cultural fetish for displaying (and being subservient to) authority expressed by titles, signs and such.
"Wenn diese Deutschen einen Bahnhof stürmen wollen, kaufen die sich erst eine Bahnsteigkarte!" - Lenin (probably not really though.)
If you find this a strong feature in Germany, Austrians take it to the next level
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I find the situation even funnier when you consider that France, Germany main partner in the European Union and direct neighbor, views having a PhD outside of research as a waste of time and something which will be held against you. The cultural differences between European countries are fascinating.
Indeed, however I feel when you immerse into local culture, eventually we find out there is a thin common culture across the continent, regarding what everyone was watching while growing up or certain points of view versus other continents.
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Are you French? I am, I have a PhD and work in a large French tech company.
Having a PhD has never been an issue, usually an advantage, often neutral.
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don‘t come to Austria, over here even BSc is a title worthy for a business card.
Yeah, that is like Engineering in Portugal, but we don't go as far as in German cultures.
Depending on country, the title of Doctor might become part of your legal name - enough that you're going to get issued new IDs and the like
Honorifics are cultural.
In undergraduate -- It was always Professor LastName. In grad school, other cost, it was Doctor Lastname. We had a discussion there, and learned that in Germany, it was Herr Doctor Professor Lastname.
Little fix in the order: Herr Professor Doktor. But only in formal writing.
When talking to them, it's Herr Professor.
Austria loves their honorifics, though. Every school teacher is a Professor, and the Professor's wife is Mrs. Professor.
Strictly speaking, only Austrian grammar school teachers appointed as civil servants were allowed to carry the title Professor. That appointment (Pragmatisierung) is somewhat comparable to academic tenure: you had a job guarantee and the right to stay at "your" school, whereas non-tenured teachers had to switch schools in case of insufficient work hours. But a tenured teacher had a lower salary compared to a non-tenured one and so emperor Franz Josef had the idea with the additional Professor title. A smart move, because he satisfied the academic "vanity" of the teachers which kept salary costs lower.
Since the difference between tenured and non-tenured teachers is beyond the understanding of 10-18 year old pupils, they called every teacher "Professor".
Small correction: only grammar school teachers are called Professors in Austria, junior high school teachers just "Herr/Frau LehrerIn". In earlier days, you needed a master degree to teach in grammar school and just a bachelor degree for junior high.
*every school teacher after secondary school. Before that they're still mostly "Mr./Mrs. Teacher".
> Every school teacher is a Professor.
Same in Poland! But only for high school.
Definitely cultural! In my undergrad (UK) we called our professors by their first names.
I knew a chem. eng. professor at a university, who I believe had come from Austria, and had "Professor Doctor Engineer" as the title on his doorplate. Very much stood out in the US and it was something students and other faculty would tease him about.
Doktor is also the equivalent of a PhD. He probably had a PhD in CompSciene.
Or in Math or some engineering field. CS wasn't a thing in German universities until the 70s, I think. So for someone in a senior position in 1990 it seems quite likely to be around 50, too old to have finished a PhD program around 1980.
Yes - there are quite a few engineering doctors in Germany - the ex-CEO of Daimler is one, Dr Dieter Zetsche.
My dad worked a lot in Germany for Dow Corning in the 80's and 90's and it's a very distinct engineering culture from many other places.
More likely to be anything else but CS (and frankly, medicine). A doctorate in almost anything plus a smart suit gets you into management track quickly. There's a reason why Germany had quite a number of fake doctorate scandals in politics. And probably will continue to do so for a while...
Most of which have been JDs, by the way, which are both rarer and more important sounding in Germany.
And if you think this is getting a bit ridiculous, let me introduce you to our neighbor Austria. Take it away, Herr Geheimrat…
The old testament says that Moses received the 10 commandements from god and he wrote them down on stone tablets.
The author says that people with a doctor degree are always right. Moses would have written that down as well but he had no space on his stone tablets left.
(a) Herr Doktor = the professor (the academic, the PhD guy, the big fish in a goverment organization, the one with the most credentials)
(b) "Herr Doktor is always right" - a central tenet of German society (or basically, organization politics) according to the author.
(c) Such a central tenet that it should have been on Moses tablets as the 11th commandment, but Moses run out of space.
(d) Benevolent as they are, however, the Doktors, forgave Moses for that oversight.
The idea is that "a Herr Doktor is always right" is a holy commandment in Germany, just as important as the other ten and it should be noted along with the other ten. He's saying the Germans have forgiven Moses by now for leaving it out, but they still consider it as much a holy commandment as the others.
You aren’t a Mel Brooks fan? “The lord has given me these fifteen *trip* these ten commandments..”
Are you autistic?