Kultur 3

This weeks readings were an odd mix of different topics, ranging from Germans patriotism, education, and bureaucracy, to Austrian history. The two most entertaining and interesting articles to me however, were those on bureaucracy along with Austria.

On Bureaucracy, the Germans seem to have a bizarre fascination with documenting and cataloguing everything. According to the article, this extends from the business, to government, all the way down to the individual. The tedious and meticulous cataloguing of every achievement and certification stands in high contrast to the American standard of more simple, to the point resumes and references. I wonder if this has to do with Germany traditionally being a more centralized state (since its actual formation in the 1800’s). I know this is kind of a leap, but the only place I’ve seen such gross over-use of paper cataloguing and record keeping was in the military—a highly centralized and bureaucratized institution. A bit of a stretch, but it makes me wonder about their political nature either way.

Similarly, it was nice to move away from Germany to highlight Austria in our cultural readings. The two readings on Austria shed a little light on both its cultural as well as political history. In the latter of the two, a brief synopsis of its territorial arrangement was given (empire to state to dependency to state again). As it is a German speaking state, one of only a few exclusively German-speaking states in the world, and with close cultural and historical links to Germany, I wondered whether there is any desire to unite with Germany? After doing a little further research, the answer is pretty much no. The annexation (Anschluss) is generally perceived as a terrible event in Austria’s past, in spite of having mixed support at the time. Although there has been right-leaning, pan-German political movements in Austria since WWII, the popular sentiment is primarily nationalistic and neutral, favoring an “Austrian” Austria, vice a German one.