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The culture that is German, a continuing series
Economic protectionism, linguistic protectionism, status protectionism, or all three?:
Americans with PhDs beware: Telling people in Germany that you're a doctor could land you in jail. At least seven U.S. citizens working as researchers in Germany have faced criminal probes in recent months for using the title "Dr." on their business cards, Web sites and resumes. They all hold doctoral degrees from elite universities back home...Violators can face a year behind bars.
Here is the full story. And get this: "A male faculty member with two PhDs can fully expect to be called "Herr Professor Dr. Dr. Schmidt," for example."
Update: They just changed the law. I guess I should have titled this post "The earthquake that is Germany," etc. Sadly there is no medium for telling The Washington Post that their front page story this morning is wrong but of course we have a very keen reader willing to leave comments.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 14, 2008 at 07:29 AM in Law | Permalink
Comments
When I attended a German university for a semester, I was very, very careful about using the correct title. Addressing my emails with "Sehr geehrter Herr Professor Doktor So & So" made me feel like I was announcing the arrival of a king to court, however.
Of course, academics in Germany go to school much longer for their degrees (compared to their American counterparts) and for virtually no financial premium, so that allows me some sythmpathy for their salutory sticklerism.
Posted by: Jeff Holmes at Mar 14, 2008 8:14:57 AM
Last two words should be "salutation sticklerism."
or maybe "salutationist sticklerism" to make up two words at once.
Posted by: Jeff Holmes at Mar 14, 2008 8:22:02 AM
"Herr Professor Dr. Dr. Jingleheimer Schmidt,
His name is my name too...."
Posted by: Tom T. at Mar 14, 2008 8:24:12 AM
Wow, thanks for the safety tip! When "simple folk" in the US would ask me, "So you're Dr. Murphy?" I'd get embarrassed and clarify, "Not a medical doctor!" But I never had to worry about jail time.
Even so, this guy's quote in the article amused me: "Coming from the States, I had assumed that when you get a letter from the criminal police, you've either murdered someone or embezzled something or done something serious," said Baldwin, a molecular ecologist. "It is absurd. It's totally absurd."
Has he heard about the lady in Chicago who was arrested for leaving her toddler parked in the car while she walked her other kids over to drop money in a Salvation Army box?
Posted by: Bob Murphy at Mar 14, 2008 8:49:33 AM
Strange that those who get a PhD but go to work for industry or a pure research academic position (often called "research associate" or "research scientist") are entitled (...er...pun intended) to neither "professor" nor "doctor".
Posted by: billb at Mar 14, 2008 8:52:14 AM
'And get this: "A male faculty member with two PhDs can fully expect to be called "Herr Professor Dr. Dr. Schmidt,"'
Being German, I don't understand what's so funny about that.
Two Ph.D.s = Dr. Dr.
Makes sense, no?
But if you want more in terms of German's touchiness about their academic titles, get this true story:
I once wrote a letter to my father which did not include "Prof. Dr." in front of his name. I got a complaint call the next day, he was pretty p---ed off and uttered the now-classic sentence "I didn't do my Dr. for nothing."
In fairness, it cuts both ways. I've received letters addressed to "(name), M.A."
But Austrians are even worse in this respect. Anyone with a degree can expect to be addressed as "Herr Magister". Except for females, of course.
Posted by: LemmusLemmus at Mar 14, 2008 8:55:10 AM
As a German with a Ph.D. from an American university I know this problem. But fortunately, just this week, this regulation has been changed! One can now use the title Ph.D. See this article (in German).
http://www.zeit.de/2008/12/C-Seitenhieb-12
Posted by: SR at Mar 14, 2008 9:07:09 AM
Whatcha wanna bet that this law was originally passed on the theory that foreign academics might turn out to be ... gasp ... Jewish?
Posted by: Anderson at Mar 14, 2008 9:19:36 AM
Silly me, all this time I thought Herr Professor Dr. Dr. Schmidt was Siamese twins.
Posted by: at Mar 14, 2008 9:22:05 AM
My father (PhD Animal Science) likes to tell the story of going back to his quite rural home town after getting his PhD and running into a local.
"So where have you been these last few years. Haven't seen you around as much as we used to."
"I went off to get my Doctorate"
"That's great. We've been having to drive all the way to Manchester to see a doctor. Having a doctor in town will sure help folks."
"Well, I'm not exactly a medical doctor"
"Then what did you study?"
"Animal science."
"A vet then. That'll be great." (most of the folks there were cattle ranchers)
"Well, I'm not a vet, either"
"Then your doctorate ain't good for nothing then, is it?"
Posted by: Jody at Mar 14, 2008 9:24:30 AM
Here is the full story. And get this: "A male faculty member with two PhDs can fully expect to be called "Herr Professor Dr. Dr. Schmidt," for example."
So *that's* what the Thompson Twins were singing about!
...can't you see I'm burning, burning.
Posted by: Mike Moffatt at Mar 14, 2008 9:27:25 AM
People with Doctorates should not apologize for not being sawbones. The root meaning of the word "doctor" is "teacher", and it has been used by professors for at least 800 years. Physicians stole the term less than 200 years ago in order to add a little bit of respectability to a field that relied upon leeches, bleedings and barber-surgeons to remedy our ills. I say we start a movement to take the term back from the quacks.
Posted by: bartman at Mar 14, 2008 9:28:16 AM
I think the whole idea of mandatory honorifics (which sounds like a portmanteau of "honor" and "terrific") is patently absurd. Authority should always be questioned and never automatically deferred to, which is what mandatorily recognizing someone for their degree(s) multiple times amounts to.
Posted by: Christopher Monnier at Mar 14, 2008 9:30:16 AM
Same problem, and even more disturbing because the university system and tittles are identical, with a Swiss Dr. in Germany. Don't mention it!
Posted by: Student at Mar 14, 2008 9:52:07 AM
Same ridiculous custom in my homecountry of Austria, though I'm not sure if there's a similar law there as well. Anyway, this even goes beyond doctoral and professoral titles. Masters titles also give you the right to use "Mag." in front of your name, plus there are some technical degrees such as "Dipl. Ing." for certain types of engineering degrees, among others. So if you have multiple titles you may combine them at will. I've met people with 6 masters degrees, and 2 or 3 doctorate degrees. Conveniently, they sometimes use the abbreviation "DDr." or "Mmag." to denote their multiple degrees. It gets really pedantic. Especially when you consider that at least in Economics, it usually takes two or three years of work in Germany/Austria, while American PhDs require at least four years and are usually more demanding in other ways too. I believe all of this has some form of monarchical roots.
Posted by: Diego at Mar 14, 2008 9:54:01 AM
Overfocused
This was a fun article, necessarily overfocused.
No-one should read this article,
then conclude this is the tone of all German activity.
Remember, Germany was the primary country pushing European Union,
which was costly since Germany agreed to elevate other European countries currency when converting to the Euro.
In Germany, if you walk up to anyone, that person can probably answer your question in English.
In the U.S., no other language besides English would get you an answer, although Hispanic immigrants can answer in Spanish.
Indeed, the typical "modern" American would tend to demean others for their poor English,
while they themselves know no foreign language.
The tone of the article and comments implies Germany is fascist.
I know of no other country whose people have the magnanimity to teach past faults.
Other nations put forth only a pretense,
largely telling half truths about how their country always had reasons for their actions.
The Japanese would never confront incidents like my Chinese wife's aunt,
who while her powerless husband looked on from afar,
was forced to kneel on glass in front of her home
and was then killed.
The world would be far more balanced if every nation
gave some mention of its faults
rather than giving only glorious history.
I'd say the use of "Dr." is reversed in the U.S.
There are so many second rate degrees (eg, in the social sciences) and second rate "universities" in the U.S.
that about the only people I meet using the title "Dr."
are glib but otherwise have no more abilities than a high school graduate.
In particular, I expect a person using "Dr." on a nameplate has fewer math abilities than a typical high school graduate.
Which do you prefer:
a "Dr." in Germany that you know represents real education
(although doesn't account for all such people)
or a "Dr." in America that could be from Bugus University
selling diplomas for $2000?
What this article might have mentioned was that, in whatever profession, the typical German
is better educated for that German's profession
than the typical American is educated.
For example, the German manual laborer gets extensive education.
Nonetheless, Germans are sticklers about degrees;
eg, a German might spend 6 years studying in the computer field,
not learning some computer programming language required in an industry, yet a German employer seldom considers the degreeless person adept in the computer programming language required in that industry.
Posted by: jamesonburt at Mar 14, 2008 10:05:49 AM
Maybe it's necessary to mention that monsters like "Herr Professor Dr. Dr. Schmidt" usually are limited to formal letters. That doesn't make them less funny in the view of Non-Germans or Non-Austrians, though.
Posted by: Rayson at Mar 14, 2008 10:15:12 AM
Rayson: a place I worked at had collaboration agreements with a couple of Austrian and one German university, and we had a visiting prof from one of them who insisted that he be referred to as Prof. Dr. Dr.______ in conversation. Needless to say, he was a source of much mirth and object of much derision for the rest of us.
Posted by: bartman at Mar 14, 2008 10:33:46 AM
While we're at it, why not another anecdote from The Land of Poets and Thinkers:
A friend of mine once met a few friends of her colleague's and one of them intoduced himself as "(name), lawyer"
To which she, quite cleverly, replied: "(name), Dipl.-soz, Dipl.-crim."
Posted by: LemmusLemmus at Mar 14, 2008 10:36:00 AM
*jeez* what kind of german people do you know??
hardly anyone at my university is insisting on titles... a simple "Herr" or "Frau" - and when you're being very polite, it's "Professor" - is enough.
but yeah, i guess, beware of the germans - bad people, all of 'em.
Posted by: Finja at Mar 14, 2008 10:46:08 AM
I doubt if much of the Germen academic world was aware that foreign degrees were not supposed to count. For example, a secretary specialising in protocol once asked me - in excellent English - if I should be introduced at an academic conference in Munich as Herr Professor Doktor or as Herr Professor Doktor Doktor. She was completely nonplussed when I insisted that I was neither Professor nor Doktor, though she was aware that it was almost my first trip to Germany.
Posted by: David Heigham at Mar 14, 2008 10:55:47 AM
I did my post-doc in Germany back in the late 1980s, and I had no idea that there was a problem with my degree "not counting". I was introduced to my landlady, for example, as an American with a doctoral degree, which made me a better catch as a tenant. And I was told by my labmates to keep that "Dr." title ready to haul out when needed, although we certainly didn't stand on so much formality inside our "Arbeitskreis".
I did find the German emphasis on such things odd, though, although I was prepared for it. And the comments above are correct, in my experience - however crazy the Germans may be about official titles, degrees, and so on, the Austrians are even crazier.
Posted by: Derek Lowe at Mar 14, 2008 11:17:38 AM
A perhaps apocryphal story relates that an American consultant who helped people set up American corporations received a request from a German company for a corporate name in the form "XYZ Corporation Doctor". He set it up but asked a German friend why in the world anyone would want such a funny name for his company. The friend said this was not unusual. The head of the company probably did not have a doctoral degree but wanted to be able to answer the phone by saying, if his name was, say, Johann Schmidt, "XYZ Corporation Doctor ..." slight pause "Johann Schmidt" so that callers would think he had a doctoral degree. Note that he didn't try this in Germany.
Posted by: Robert Speirs at Mar 14, 2008 12:04:16 PM
What's wrong about calling a Magister a Magister? It takes four years to get that title.
Posted by: Magister from Austria at Mar 14, 2008 12:14:34 PM
I don't think the Post story is wrong. It refers at the end to the same decision by state education ministers that the story from Die Zeit is talking about; it just describes it as a recommendation (to the Bundestag, I guess), not the final word.
Posted by: Justin Fox at Mar 14, 2008 12:20:45 PM
Isn't going to college and getting a degree common these days in Austria like in many other prosperous countries?
Posted by: Gigi at Mar 14, 2008 12:34:09 PM
My friend who recently completed his law degree (in the United States) recently changed his e-mail signature to "Name, Esquire". When I mocked him mercilessly about it, he had no idea why anybody would consider it funny.
Posted by: iskndarbey at Mar 14, 2008 12:42:37 PM
I think this episode is less a sign of excessive use of titles. It's more about using degrees, concessions etc to shut out competition - something which has a long tradition. In Austria the economic need test for getting a taxi concession even made it into the constitution.
Posted by: no need to call me Magister at Mar 14, 2008 1:35:59 PM
All countries' norms are pretty weird from the point of view of outsiders.
Posted by: Chris at Mar 14, 2008 1:43:11 PM
Hi,
"Whatcha wanna bet that this law was originally passed on the theory that foreign academics might turn out to be ... gasp ... Jewish?"
This is actually true, the law dates back to the 3rd Reich. The fact that they were initially prosecuted is due to required process in German law, that requires prosecuters to act on any suit filed.
That said, I do think that people from the United States should be a _little_ more humble in making fun of other places for having outdated laws. I'm pretty sure it'd be quite easy to compile a large list of crazyness from various state laws.
Posted by: Sebastian at Mar 14, 2008 1:55:03 PM
"Being German, I don't understand what's so funny about that [a male faculty member with two PhDs can fully expect to be called "Herr Professor Dr. Dr. Schmidt]."
Hmm, I wonder if a German would find it funny if an American practitioner of polyandry decided to call herself "Mrs. Mrs. Jones."
Posted by: John S. at Mar 14, 2008 2:47:35 PM
I agree with Justin. The article in Die Zeit actually pertains just to the rule that a foreign University has to be listed in parenthesis after the Ph.D. suffix.
Posted by: Herr Doktor at Mar 14, 2008 2:49:58 PM
"I'd say the use of "Dr." is reversed in the U.S.
“There are so many second rate degrees (eg, in the social sciences) and second rate "universities" in the U.S.that about the only people I meet using the title "Dr."are glib but otherwise have no more abilities than a high school graduate."
I can understand a German (or someone who identifies with Germans) being touchy when others make fun of their society --- which is exactly what the tone of the Washington Post article amounted to; nothing more. But the poster of this comment reveals way too much surging indignation, not to mention a noticeable lack of humor . . . which seems, from my own experience studying in Germany in the 1960s, to be a widespread national trait, alas. Unless, that is, you find some Germans who have drunk lots of beer or schnapps and engage in silly half-inebriated jokes that often involve anal references.
..............................
That said, let me drop my sense of humor and note two or three problems with the poster's comments:
1) The average German university student gets his first degree at roughly the age of 29 (and it is still rising). Not because the undergraduate curriculum is demanding: it isn't, not by the standards of the University of California where I am an emeritus professor --- just the contrary. Rather, because professors ramble on who aren't particularly well-trained in too many cases, because students don't read a great deal (they memorize lecutres), because libraries are very inadequately financed, and because classrooms are inadequate to the demand. But above all, because there aren't lots of jobs in most fields, and the welfare state keeps first-degree students nicely subsidized as a form of "outdoor relief".
Not to forget that, over time --- as is a trend in the rest of the EU --- the once legendary German work ethos has collapsed, and students just don't work steadily and diligently on their studies.
2) In that recent comparative study put out by a Singapore professor who ranked universities around the world in research prowess, the first German university to appear on the list was listed as no. 45. Virtually all the universities were American (a handful, to the British credit, were in that country). A different updated study --- published in 2006 --- didn't rank a French university in the top 100 worldwide!)
3) The problems that beset German universities are particularly vivid in research areas of the social sciences and natural sciences as well as mathematics. One example: back in the late 1980s, the most famous young German mathematician, who had a Ph.D. from Princeton, was lavishly funded to start a new department at a fairly new German university. After two or three years, he resigned: he said it was hopeless to find world-class German mathematicians for his department and decided to take a tenured post at Princeton, where, he said, each and every professor was among the top 5 or 10 mathematicians in their specialities.
If I remember, his name is Gert Faltings, and he won the most prestigious math prize of all --- the Fields medal --- not long after he took his Princeton post.
If you look at the Fields prize-winners --- the honor is awarded every 4 years --- you will find not only lots of American names the last 40 o5r 50 years, but to their credit lots of British and French mathematicians. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0192505.html
....
One other example, this time in chemistry . . . a field in which, earlier in the 20th century, the Germans were the major research innovators. The paucity of first-rate German chemists led the German chemicals industry to transfer virtually all their research facilities to US institutes and universities in the 1980s and 1990s.
Not surprisingly, come to that as a tack-on observation, German has had a big shortage of IT specialists. A few years ago, earlier in this decade, German university associations and unions were up in arms, indignantly opposed to letting the German government give residency to 15,000 or so Indians fully qualified to fill those posts. What! Give the posts to those inferior foreigners?
4)Bad as the standards are in many US high schools these days --- mainly due to drawing in urban areas from inner-city populations and immigrants from Latin America (the drop-out high school rate in L.A. alone is 60% for Hispanics and 55% for blacks) --- German high school students earlier in this decade were way below American students in their reading comprehension, a finding brought out in a wide-ranging exam administered in dozens of countries. Der Spiegel, the weekly pulpit of politically correct hokum for the educated classes in Germany (it specializes in virulent anti-Americanism and hatred of the Israelis, with veiled anti-Semitism to boot), featured a cover story that was entitled, "Are German Kids Idiots?"
American high-school students who live in the states near or bordering Canada score in mathematics and sciences at roughly Korean and Japanese and Singapore levels.
................
As I say, just some ruminations off-the-cuff in reply to the hoked-up, humorless edgy indignation expressed by the poster. Our educational system is riddled with problems, especially below the university level. The same is true of all the European systems, especially now that they too are experiencing a rapid population growth among under-18 of Muslim and African immigrants.
-- Michael Gordon,
the buggy professor: http://www.thebuggyprofessor.org
Posted by: michael gordon at Mar 14, 2008 3:51:53 PM
I just had to reply to a German academic who is also president (prasident) of an entity. So,
he is Prasident Professor Doktor. I have encountered quite a few "Professor Doktor Doktor" over
there. What is it with the multiple Ph.D.s there?
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Mar 14, 2008 5:14:57 PM
'Hmm, I wonder if a German would find it funny if an American practitioner of polyandry decided to call herself "Mrs. Mrs. Jones."'
I rather like it.
Seriously, it seems that the cultural difference here is that Americans see "Dr." mainly as a way of addressing people (like Mrs.), while Germans put the emphasis on it being the name of a title. So, in Germany, calling someone with two Ph.D.'s "Dr. Dr." is like calling a two-time world cup winner "two-time world cup winner" rather than just "world cup winner".
By the way, in Germany, Dr. is officially a part of the name, so calling someone with two doctorates only "Dr." is probably formally incorrect.
Posted by: LemmusLemmus at Mar 14, 2008 5:41:22 PM
1) Here, as a follow-up to my earlier post, are the startling results of the Pisa and Pirls exams --- the former test math and science skills among teen-agers across dozens of participating countries, and the latter reading comprehension.
On science, math, and reading scores, Americans beat their German equivalents, and scored about average . . . not bad, considering the hugely diverse population of the US, and especially the rapid growth of a young Hispanic population, whose immigrant children adn 2nd generation grand-children do poorly in our public schools. The same poor performance, compared to European-Americans and Asian-Americans, is found among the black population, which is also younger on the average than European-Americans.
http://www.spiegel.de/schulspiegel/0,1518,195212,00.html
2) Essentially, as numerous US governmental and non-governmental studies find, the gap in educational performance between white and black children is 4 years in the 8th grade, and it remains the same in the 12th grade . . . yes, even where income levels are taken into account. Children who identify themselves as Mexican-Americans etc fall in between the two groups. In the L.A. public school system --- where only 20% of the school kids are European-American, and where the black middle classes have either moved to the suburbs or send their kids to private schools --- the drop-out rate in High School is about 60% for Hispanics and 55% or so for blacks.
3) Not surprisingly, the international performance of American students in the more recent PISA studies found the average US level had declined since 2001.
Given the trends at work --- an ever larger pool of children from poorly educated immigrants, and an ever larger number of black children who are reared in overwhelmingly 1-parent mother-headed families --- the surprise is that the average American performance hadn't deteriorated even more.
4) And no, the problems aren't at all financial for Hispanic and black school kids. Predominantly black schools across the country, it turns out, spend virtually as much as predominantly white schools. According to the best book I know of on the racial/ethnic gap in US schools --- No Excuses, by Abigail Thernstrom and Stephanie Thernstrom --- the predominantly minority school districts actually outspent predominantly majority-white schools in the early 1990s. (Four categories were distinguished, depending on the percentage of minorities in all four)
When various categories of different expenditures were then taken into account by the US education dept --- say, money urban schools had to spend on teaching non-English speaking children --- the predominantly minority districts turned out to spend 6.5% less, a trivial sum according to the Thernstroms. (Their book came out in 2003, and they noted at the time that no updated studies by the US Dept of Ed. had emerged by then.)
5) The Thernstroms do offer several positive recommendations for reducing the racial gap, some of which seem persuasive.
Still, the larger problem remains. How do you educate children properly who come from broken homes, with illegitimacy in the black community --- funded for decades by US welfare policies until 1997 --- around 70%, or who come from immigrant families whose parents are largely illiterate or semi-literate? And whose children are increasingly socialized, like their black equivalents left in the inner cities, into a "gangsta culture"?
6) Those who think West Europe is insulated from these problems don't know the European scene very well, especially educational. The French --- who have the highest percentage of Muslim immigrants (8% officially, probably 10% or more if you consider illegals) --- found that in the recent PISA exams in science and math, their 15 year old students ended up average . . . way below expectations. As in France, so in the rest of West Europe, the native European populations are aging and not reproducing anywhere near reproduction levels. '
The future there has already been set out in many ways by trends we have been dealing with for decades in this country. We have let the teaching establishment juggle and change and transform our school systems for decades now, with ever greater thrusts in egalitarian ways . . . reinforced by a federally enforced program of school bussing for three decades. Neither has reduced the racial/ethnic gap. At best, there was some improvement in test scores by blacks relative to whites for a few years in the 1980s, largely because of coaching-for-the-tests. Since then, the slight improvement has slide back to what it was for decades and what it remains since then.
We can look forward to European countries doing the same as the ever larger minorities of Muslim and African immigrants grow rapidly in number, absolutely and above all relative to the European-native populations.
Michael Gordon, AKA, the buggy professor
http://www.thebuggyprofessor.org
Posted by: michael gordon at Mar 14, 2008 6:35:05 PM
Ahem, Michael (or should I say Dr. Gordon?),
could it be you're offtopic?
Posted by: LemmusLemmus at Mar 14, 2008 7:09:21 PM
well said LemmusLemmus!,
me thinks Professor Dr. Gordon doth protest to vigorously.....shotgun versus mosquito = MESS
Posted by: nyongesa at Mar 15, 2008 4:52:59 AM
For rehabilitation a quote aboute the affair from German newspaper "Der Spiegel"Polizei und Behörden sind in Thüringen nicht von sich aus aktiv geworden, vielmehr steckt hinter dem Ganzen nach Erkenntnissen der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft ein frustrierter Mensch mit ausländischem Doktortitel, der sich in Deutschland eben nicht Dr. nennen darf. Aus Rache überzieht er Max-Planck-Direktoren mit Anzeigen - und trifft dabei auf willige Beamte.
(somewhat buggy) Translation: Police and public authorities did not initiate the process. Rather, according to findings of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, a frustrated individual with a foreign degree is behind the actions. This individual, who is not allowed to call himself "Doktor" sues the directors of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft out of revenge. His lawsuits are met by willing public officials.
Posted by: Conny at Mar 15, 2008 1:05:29 PM
I didn't spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called "mister," thank you very much.
Posted by: Dr. Evil at Mar 16, 2008 11:46:40 AM
One thing that really surprises me about the WP article is the brief note that the investigation started because of an anonymous tip to German authorities. This is off-topic, but I seem to recall that many German companies selling stock in the United States objected to provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that required companies to set up anonymous tip lines to the boards of directors at companies so employees could rat out senior executives engaging in financial fraud. The claim was that European (and German) privacy laws prohibited anonymous complaints because such complaints were so widely abused during the Nazi era. What gives?
Posted by: M.D. Fatwa at Mar 16, 2008 12:03:17 PM
Call me humorless and fevered...
How can you mock cultural conventions like these in this way? Because it is just that, a cultural convention. So, in your culture you would find it awkward to say "double-PhD", simply because it is not "normal". Other cultures are different however, and you really should respect that.
Regarding those bogus "economic explanations" (economic protectionism, linguistic protectionism, status protectionism): Indeed, there are disadvantages to focussing on Doctor titles. However, there are advantages too. Keep in mind that our economy doesn't have information symmetry, so a doctor title might be an efficient way of transporting some information. Maybe not, but it is extremely inappropriate to call it names like this.
My ancestors learned that we are not superior by losing the worst war of all times, and it seems like you (the Americans) have still to learn how you are indeed not superior either.
Thank you anyways.
Posted by: A German without titles (not even a Dr.) at Mar 17, 2008 3:20:36 PM
I was always saddened by the old American Negro custom of naming one's child Prince or Count because no one down south would ever call them Mister. It was nice if they could have even one title.
Posted by: Kaleberg at Mar 17, 2008 11:02:27 PM
