Germans: Not as Unified as It Looks
After 24 years in Germany, one observation stands out: Germans often dislike each other long before they dislike foreigners. Bavarians mock Prussians, East and West Germans still distrust each other, Swabians and Franconians trade stereotypes endlessly and nearly every region believes the others are somehow arrogant, provincial, lazy or backward.
The same logic extends outward. Many Germans associate Eastern Europeans with cheap labor, Muslims with aggression and parallel societies, Africans with welfare migration, Russians with authoritarianism, Americans with political dominance and Asians with wage competition. Whether fair or unfair is almost irrelevant here - these perceptions exist, they shape political behavior and pretending otherwise solves nothing.
Toward South Americans, Germans are mostly neutral simply because there are not many of them in Germany. Most South Americans move to Spain or Portugal instead, so Germans rarely interact with Brazilians or Argentinians.
Americans are not especially liked either because many Germans feel Americans constantly tell Germany what to do and that Germany still cannot act fully independently. At the same time, Germans often admire countries they perceive as socially harmonious or geographically distant from Europe’s political tensions.
Who do Germans like? Sweden occupies a special place in the German imagination. Germans are told Sweden is the ideal social state and many see it as an example to follow even though most know almost nothing about the country itself. Whenever I describe how Sweden actually works, I lived there for some time, people look at me in disbelief and say: “That can’t be true.”
Germany also romanticizes Australia and New Zealand. Many Germans dream of moving there simply because those places feel distant, exotic, relaxed and untouched by Europe’s historical burdens. For some reason, Australia in particular exists in the German imagination as an exceptionally attractive and exciting country.
What many outsiders misunderstand is that Germany is not a socially unified nation hiding occasional tensions. It is a country built on layers of historical, regional, economic and cultural mistrust that long predate modern migration. Immigration simply attached itself to fractures that were already there.
The irony is that Germans often describe themselves internationally as highly tolerant and post-national, while internally remaining deeply tribal in ways foreigners rarely notice.
