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last updated 8 January 2015

Saarland, Germany

The German state of Saarland has launched a campaign to teach Germans to be more polite. Other European countries routinely rate Germans as the most obnoxious tourists, and even at home Germans have begun to complain about a culture of rudeness. The Saarland campaign, called “Things Go Better When You’re Nice,” covers such topics as polite language, appropriate dress, and decent public behavior. Some Germans, though, see the admonitions as an ominous echo of the country’s authoritarian past. “We’d rather have brash, critical, and obstreperous young people any day,” said youth leader Christian Klein, “than dull, deadened, and assimilated ones like the kinds we know from earlier days.”