The lost honesty of the Germans

From our People are People series.

I'm shocked at how dishonest this country has become.

The person who made this strong statement is German American, and we met at the grocery store.

We were in line, chatting, when the lady in front of us turned her attention from the checkout woman: "I have to ask now, are you American?"
After our affirmation, she finished paying with a few nice words in flawless German for the cashier, then waited until we were done.

We talked, first next to the spring time special hedge clippers for 5.99, then out in the parking lot. It turned out she lived some 150 miles from where we last lived in the States, and we actually had a number of common acquaintances.

This whole "global village" thing has become true, this was more proof.

We met up a few days later at their house a couple of miles away. The house was the reason for her visit. Rather problems with the house.

Born and raised for several years in communist East Germany, the lady had been taken to the West by her mother, fleeing a country that had imprisoned her grandfather in notorious Bautzen penitentiary and done other bad things to her family.

Married with children and living in the U.S. the family had kept their German "anchor house" through the decades, renting it out rather cheaply.

They had been hit by "rent nomads" who not only stopped paying rent after a year, making the owner go through a German eviction process (at best a 12 month affair) but caused flood damage and, to top it off, took the few valuable items left in the house.

The homeowner's insurance paid for the water damage, then cancelled the policy. The repair cost of 60 000 euros, or around 90 to 100 K dollars, was a sweetheart deal between the claims adjuster and local builders - that's the only possible way this payment came about. Who knows, maybe they shared some with the renters, too.

Tiling the floors of two rooms, putting in cheap wood paneling and replacing a couple of yards of burst water pipes near the gas furnace for 60 K is plain fraud.

That price should get you gold plated pipes.

These events were but one contribution to the statement at the beginning of the post. We'll save others for later.

She still loves Germany, is not as the fancy term of modern day assertive Germans is "anti-German".

It's an everybody fights for himself world, stingy, money grabbing without the American "easy come, easy go" or philanthropy, is how we summarize our conversations. Or, in her words, everyday pervasive dishonesty, unlike in her old Germany.

We don't know life in German cities well, but out here in the country, belonging to the tribe has historically been important. Which means, your family has been around for two centuries. Yet, there appears to be a regression to tribalism after the days of greater openness, so dismissing her impression would not quite do it justice.