Eccentricity

[stek]

My point in mentioning Germany is that I think Germans as a clulture are generally stiff, conventional and conformist.
And for them to be more tolerant than us indicates a change for the worse in our society.

It's the Germans that still smoke everywhere and still have Marlboro ads on huge posters and have little beer fridges in the office and have sweets called 'Negroes Kiss' and humongous Gay Parades.

Mind u - they still wait for the Green Crossing light when there's not a car in sight and still the banks close at lunchtime and sunday is a dead zone....

I love it me, there, I do.

[Mich the Tester]

My point in mentioning Germany is that I think Germans as a clulture are generally stiff, conventional and conformist.

I don’t really experience that and I visit Germany a lot. I think Germans are often well mannered and politically and economically conservative, but they are generally pretty good at ‘letting their hair down’. They do have a reputation for ‘gruendlichkeit’, which basically means ‘doing things properly’, as opposed to doing things on the cheap. The Dutch admire what they call ‘Duitse degelijkheid’, or ‘German correctness’, basically referring to the fact that if something’s built by Germans, it’s probably built to last. This doesn’t preclude eccentricity though; in fact, the correctness in human interaction gives the eccentric the space to create without fear of hostility and the correctness of construction of objects allows the non-conformist to use an object to its limits without the fear of it failing.

[Sysman]

Who was it who noted that the state of a country's civilisation could be gauged by the number of eccentrics it tolerated?
Judging by that criterion, Germany's is a far superior culture to ours.

Poor nutters = nutters, loonies, etc.
Rich nutters = eccentrics.

Could it be something to do with the state of the respective economes?

[minestrone]

I knew one quite eccentric chap, he was German but left one night when he was 8 in the back of a freight train. He became a professor in the end..

Now was his eccentricity down to his German roots, his Jewish religion or his education in English boarding schools? Or just down to him?

[EternalOptimist]

Poor nutters = nutters, loonies, etc.
Rich nutters = eccentrics.

Could it be something to do with the state of the respective economes?

No, I think Adolph was definately a bit on the eccentric side. Any normal dictator would have a bird called blondie and a dog called evil, but oh no, not him

[TimberWolf]

No, I think Adolph was definately a bit on the eccentric side. Any normal dictator would have a bird called blondie and a dog called evil, but oh no, not him

Okay, since we are talking about Hitler, why didn't he order the filling of the V1 & V2 with biological, chemical or radioactive materials, instead of high explosive?

[sasguru]

Okay, since we are talking about Hitler, why didn't he order the filling of the V1 & V2 with biological, chemical or radioactive materials, instead of high explosive?

OMG did the Germans have WMD? Lucky for them Blair wasn't around then

[EternalOptimist]

Okay, since we are talking about Hitler, why didn't he order the filling of the V1 & V2 with biological, chemical or radioactive materials, instead of high explosive?

oh, thats a serious question for a serious thread

[TimberWolf]

oh, thats a serious question for a serious thread

I thought this was the Hitler thread?

[Sysman]

No, I think Adolph was definately a bit on the eccentric side. Any normal dictator would have a bird called blondie and a dog called evil, but oh no, not him

Adolf was Austrian. It's perhaps no coincidence that the Austrians are the butt of many a joke in Germany and Switzerland.