Private space
I shall never forget my first experience with German proxemic patterns, which occurred when I was an undergraduate. My manners, my status and my ego were attacked and crushed by a German in an instance where thirty years' residence in this country and an excellent command of English had not attenuated German definitions of what constitutes an intrusion. In order to understand the various issues that were at stake, it is necessary to refer back to two basic American patterns that are taken for granted in this country and which Americans therefore tend to treat as universal
First, in the United States there is a commonly accepted, invisible boundary around any two or three people in conversation which parates them from others. Distance alone rves to isolate any such group and to endow it with a protective wall of privacy. Normally, voices are kept low to avoid intruding on others and if voices are heard, people will act as though they had not heard. In this way, privacy is granted whether it is actually prent or not. The cond pattern is somewhat more subtle and has to do with the exact point at which a person is experienced as actually having crosd a boundary and entered a room. Talking through a screen door while standing outside a hou is not considered by most Americans as being inside the hou or room in any n of the word. If one is standing on the threshold holding the door open and talking to someone inside, it is still defined informally and experien
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ced as being outside. If one is in an office building and just "pokes his head in the door "of an office he’s still outside the office. Just holding on to the doorjamb when one’s body is inside the room still means a person has one foot "on ba" as it were so that he is not quite inside the other fellow's territory None of the American spatial definitions is valid in northern Germany. In every instance where the American would consider himlf outside he has already entered the German's territory and by definition would become involved with him. The following experience brought the conflict between the two patters into focus.
It was a warm spring day of the type one finds only in the high, clean, clear air of Colorado, the kind of day that makes you glad you are alive. I was standing on the doorstep of a converted carriage hou talking to a young woman who lived in an apartment upstairs. The first floor had been made into an artist's studio. The arrangement, however, was peculiar becau the same entrance rved both tenants. The occupants of the apartment ud a small entryway and walked along one wall of the studio to reach the stairs to the apartment. You might say that they had an "eament" through the artist' s territory. As I stood talking on the doorstep, I glanced to the left and noticed that some fifty to sixty feet away, inside the studio, the Prussian artist and two of his friends were also in conversation. He was facing so that if he glanced to one side he could just e me. I had noted his p
rence, but not wanting to appear presumptuous or to interrupt his conversation, I unconsciously applied the American rule
蒲柳人家and assumed that the two activities--my quiet conversation and his conversation--were not involved with each other. As I was soon to learn, this was a mistake, becau in less time than it takes to tell, the artist had detached himlf from his friends, crosd the intervening space, pushed my friend aside, and with eyes flashing, started shouting at me. By what right had I entered his studio without greeting him? Who had given me permission?
I felt bullied and humiliated, and even after almost thirty years, I can still feel my anger. Later study has given me greater understanding of the German pattern and I have learned that in the German's eyes I really had been intolerably rude. I was already "inside" the building and I intruded when I could e inside. For the German, there is no such thing as being inside the room without being inside the zone of intrusion, particularly if one looks at the other party, no matter how far away.
面条Recently, I obtained an independent check on how Germans feel about visual intrusion while investigating what people look at when they are in intimate, personal, social, and public situations. In the cour of my rearch, I instructed subjects to photograph parately both a man and a woman i
n each of the above contexts. One of my assistants who also happened to be German photographed his subjects out of focus at public distance becau, as he said, "You are not really suppod to look at other people at public distances becau it's intruding. " This may explain the informal custom behind the German laws against photographing strangers in public without their permission.
猜瓜子Germans n their own space as an extension of the ego. One es a clue to this feeling in the term "Lebensraum, "which is impossible to translate becau it summarizes so much. Hitler ud it as an effective psychological lever to move the Germans to conquest.
In contrast to the Arab, the German's ego is extraordinarily expod, and he will go to almost any lengths to prerve his "private sphere." This was obrved during World War Il when American soldiers were offered opportunities to obrve German prisoners under a variety of circumstances. In one instance in the Midwest, German POWs were houd four to a small hut. As soon as materials were available. each prisoner built a partition so that he could have his own space. In a less favorable tting in Germany when the Wehrmacht was collapsing, it was necessary to u open stockades becau German prisoners were arriving faster than they could be accommodated. In this situation each soldier who could find the materials built his own tiny dwelling unit, sometimes no larger than a foxhole. It puzzled the Americans that the Germans did not pool their efforts and thei
r scarce materials to create a larger, more efficient space, particularly in view of the very cold spring nights. Since that time I have obrved frequent instances of the u of architectural extensions of this need to screen the ego. German hous with balconies are arranged so that there is visual privacy. Yards tend to be well fenced; but fenced or not, they are sacred.
The American view that space should be shared is particularly troublesome to the German. I cannot
document the account of the early days of World War ll occupation when Berlin was in ruins but the following situation was reported by an obrver and it has the nightmarish quality that is often associated with inadvertent cross-cultural blunders. In Berlin at that time the housing shortage was indescribably acute. To provide relief, occupation authorities in the American zone ordered tho Berliners who still had kitchens and baths intact to share them with their neighbors. The order finally had to be rescinded when the already overstresd Germans started killing each other over the shared facilities.
Public and private buildings in Germany often have double doors for soundproofing, as do many hotel rooms. In addition, the door is taken very riously by Germans. Tho Germans who come to America feel that our doors are flimsy and light. The meanings of the open door and the clod door
are quite different in the two countries. In offices Americans keep doors open; Germans keep doors clod. In Germany, the clod door does not mean that the man behind it wants to be alone or undisturbed, or that he is doing something he doesn't want someone el to e. It's simply that Germans think that open doors are sloppy and disorderly. To clo the door prerves the integrity of the room and provides a protective boundary between people. Otherwi, they get too involved with each other. One of my German subjects commented, "If our family hadn't had doors, we would have had to change our way of life. Without doors we would have had many, many more fights When you can't talk, you retreat behind If there hadn’t been doors, I would always have been within reach of my mother.”
Whenever a German warms up to the subject of American enclod space, he can be counted on to comment on the noi that is transmitted through walls and doors. To many Germans, our doors epitomize American life. They are thin and cheap; they ldom fit; and they lack the substantial quality of German doors. When they clo they don't sound and feel solid. The click of the lock is indistinct, it rattles and indeed it may even be abnt.
The open-door policy of American business and the clod-door patterns of German business culture cau clashes in the branches and subsidiaries of American firms in Germany. The point e
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ms to be quite simple, yet failure to grasp it has caud considerable friction and misunderstanding between American and German managers overas. I was once called in to advi a firm that has operations all over the world. One of the first questions asked was, "How do you get the Germans to keep their doors open? "In this company the open doors were making the Germans feel expod and gave the whole operation an unusually relaxed and unbusinesslike air. Clod doors, on the other hand gave the Americans the feeling that there was a conspiratorial air about the place and that they were being left out. The point is that whether the door is open or shut, it is not going to mean the same thing in the two countries.
The orderliness and hierarchical quality of German culture are communicated in their handling of space. Germans want to know where they stand and object strenuously to people crashing queues or people who "get
out of line" or who do not obey signs such as "Keep out," "Authorized personnel only, and the like. Some of the German attitudes toward ourlves are traceable to our informal attitudes toward boundaries and to authority in general.
However, German anxiety due to American violations of order is nothing compared to that engender
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ed in Germans by the Poles, who e no harm in a little disorder. To them lines and queues stand for regimentation and blind authority. I once saw a Pole crash a cafeteria line just "to stir up tho sheep.”甄宓
Germans get very technical about intrusion distance, as I mentioned earlier. When I once asked my students to describe the distance at which a third party would intrude on two people who were talking, there were no answers from the Americans. Each student knew that he could tell when he was being intruded on but he couldn't define intrusion or tell how he knew when it had occurred. However, a German and an Italian who had worked in Germany were both members of my class and they answered without any hesitation. Both stated that a third party would intrude on two people if he came within ven feet!
Many Americans feel that Germans are overly rigid in their behavior, unbending and formal. Some of this impression is created by differences in the handling of chairs while ated The American doesn't em to mind if people hitch their chairs up to adjust the distance to the situation- tho that do mind would not think of saying anything, for to comment on the manners of others would be impolite. In Germany, however, it is a violation of the mores to change the position of your chair. An added deterrent for tho who don t know better is the weight of most German furniture. Even the great arc
hitect Mies van der Rohe, who often rebelled against German tradition in his buildings, made his handsome chairs so heavy that anyone but a strong man would have difficulty in adjusting his ating position. To a German, light furniture is anathema, not only becau it ems flimsy but becau people move it and thereby destroy the order of things, including intrusions on the "private sphere." In one instance reported to me, a German newspaper editor who had moved to the United States had his visitors chair bolted to the floor "at the proper distance" becau he couldn't tolerate the American habit of adjusting the chair to the situation.
