On Friendship,Equality and Introductions: Comparing English and German Regimes of Manners and Emotions

Introduction

1.1 From the first half of the nineteenth century until the 1980s, rules for introductions were a major if not the most prominent topic in English manners books, whereas these rules attracted hardly any attention in the German ones. In an opposite way, the same goes for friendship: the topic was almost absent in English manners books while it was a central theme in German ones, together with topics such as duzen - addressing each other with the informal you: Du - and Brüderschaft trinken - the ritual drinking that marks the transition from Sie to Du, and the kind of brotherhood (Brüderschaft) that is associated with it. To understand the preoccupation of the English was easy enough, but that of the Germans was much harder. An important step consisted of noticing a similarity in both national preoccupations: establishing a ‘friendship’ as well as ‘being properly introduced’ are both ritual transitions from a rather distant and hierarchical relationship in the direction of greater ‘equality’ and intimacy. Both are specific forms of social and psychic rapprochements. This article presents a sociogenesis of these national preoccupations, mainly by placing them in the context of a wider framework of differences and changes in the functioning of their good societies, particularly the regulation of social mobility. The wider framework also includes differences and changes in national class structure and social mobility as well as in national habitus and in the processes of social and national integration. ^[1]

1.2 A highly relevant difference between the two countries concerns changes in the relation between the aristocracy and the middle classes. In the nineteenth century, the middle classes of both countries were expanding in wealth and numbers. Whereas the English aristocracy had opened up their high-society life for an upper crust of middle class families, German aristocratic families continued to exclude middle class families from their social life at the various secluded courts scattered over a disunited German territory. These are differences in the organization of social mobility, hierarchy and equality, and this article is an attempt to show how they are directly connected to differences in the social meaning and significance of ‘introductions’ and ‘friendships’.

1.3 The organization of social mobility and status competition occurred to a large extent in the circles of social acquaintance among people of families who belong to the centres of power, and who took part in their sociable gatherings, thus forming a ‘good society’. In their participation in ‘good society’ (or a functional equivalent further down the social ladder, or in the country or provinces), they sought the protection and reinforcement of their occupational and political interests. The manners and sensibilities of a good society were decisive criteria for inclusion and exclusion, and thus functioned to regulate social mobility and status competition. At once, the code of a good society had a modelling function, for all socially aspiring people directed themselves to these manners as they were decisive in making acquaintances and friends, for winning a desirable spouse, and for gaining influence and recognition. The code of manners and emotion regulation functioned as a model because the proper ways to establish and maintain relations was constructed in these circles, but not in isolation.

1.4 The code that prevailed in good society also reflected the balance of power and dependence between established member groups and outsider groups in the society as a whole. In order to avoid social conflict and maintain their elevated position, the people in the centres of power and good society had increasingly to take the presence of rising groups into account. As part of this, the former had to show more respect for the ideals, sentiments, morals, and manners of the latter. Therefore, as increasing layers of society became emancipated and more socially integrated, the social codes of good society came to represent these layers – they have a representational function. Before, rising groups were also represented in the code, but as long as they remained excluded, the manners of good society allowed for representations that range from negative and ambivalent to positive. Among the excluded, this eventually leads to the formation of a good society of their own, which was what had happened in what was to become Germany. There, as aristocratic good society only exceptionally opened up to members of the bourgeois classes, among the excluded, universities had come to function as the good societies of the middle classes. Thus, until Germany's unification in 1871, two largely separated good societies spread over the German territory in the form of a large variety of courts and universities. In contrast, England had seen the development of one strong good society, called ‘high society’, with the royal family as its pinnacle, and London as its centre. Accordingly, the English dominant code of manners came to reflect the collective emancipation of the middle classes and their integration into society, including, for some of their members, into good society.

1.5 In contrast to individual social ascent, the ascent of an entire social group involves some form of mixing of the codes and ideals of the groups which have risen with those of the previously superior groups. In the twentieth century, the successive social ascent of larger and larger groups has been reflected in the dominant codes and habitus – being a shorthand expression for the mentality, the whole distinctive emotional make-up of the people who are thus bonded together. The sediments of this mixing process can be found in manners books: the patterns of self-regulation of increasingly wider social groups came to be reflected in the codes of manners. They can be perceived in changes in the ways in which authors of manners books address their readers, how they draw social dividing lines, for example between public and private, formal and informal, and what they have written about social introductions and forms of address.

1.6 As a rule, any regime of manners and emotions symbolizes and reinforces ranking hierarchy and other social dividing lines, while the same rule has it that changes in these regimes reflect changes in social dividing lines and in balances of power. This helps one to understand why in many European countries the nineteenth century witnessed an aristocratisation of the bourgeoisie alongside an embourgeoisement of nobility, to be partly succeeded and partly supplemented in the twentieth century by an embourgeoisement of the working classes and a proletarianisation of the bourgeoisie: informalisation.

The Formality–Informality Span in England

2.1 Compared with courts, the circles of the new good society were larger, more open, and more competitive, and as they expanded the people in them developed increasingly detailed and formal manners regarding social circulation. Particularly in nineteenth-century England, a highly elaborate and increasingly formalised regime of manners emerged consisting of a complicated system of rules for introductions and for the maintenance of relations in the circle of those who were properly introduced, such as rules regarding invitations, calls, leaving calling cards, ‘at homes’ (specified times when guests were received), receptions, dinners, and so on. Early in the nineteenth century, claiming the right of privacy was developed first in English good society. By appealing to this right, groups of established people succeeded in maintaining their superior position by keeping others at a distance whilst avoiding social discrimination. In his excellent study of nineteenth-century English etiquette, the historian Michael Curtin shows that ‘privacy and precedence were types of deference which were relatively formal and explicit’ (1987: 83). Privacy included the right to be asked beforehand whether or not to accept an introduction to an inferior. Any introduction required the previous permission of both parties and its importance was also demonstrated by the rite de passage of shaking hands: ‘In Britain, people shake hands on being introduced, and may never do so again’ (BOLTON 1961: 49).

2.2 Thus it was impossible to enter good society or to move upwards within its many overlapping hierarchical layers without an introduction. In every such layer, the question whether a person or a couple had the proper credentials to be introduced was discussed extensively, for each introduction was to be supported by a wider inner circle: ‘The problem of how, when and whom to introduce frequently exercises the mind of the novice in society. He soon discovers that it is as fatal a mistake to effect too few introductions as too many, and that this social responsibility calls for considerable tact and discrimination’ (Etiquette for Gentlemen 1923: 27).

2.3 Privacy also included to the right of recognition. After being introduced, a variety of relations could develop, a minimal one being the bowing acquaintanceship, in which the individuals involved acknowledged each others social existence by bowing. It was an open question whether such a relation would develop any further: ‘A bowing acquaintance is a difficult and tiresome one to maintain for any length of time, when opportunities do not arise for increasing it’ (Manners and Rule 1910: 207). To bow, however, was a form of recognition and as such an important social fact: ‘A lady should not bow to another who, being a stranger to her, has addressed a few remarks to her at an afternoon party, as the fact of meeting at the house of a mutual friend does not constitute an acquaintanceship, and does not authorise a future bowing acquaintance’ (Manners and Rule 1910: 207). Advice like this is remarkable for its detailed distinctions, for its authoritative tone, and for its use of the word ‘authorise’, which clearly suggests the presence of higher authorities in control of it all. It was only in England that introductions had to be acknowledged; it allowed a class of social superiors the possibility of not ‘authorising’ them. This privilege was perceived as their privacy. The ‘right of recognition’, as it was called, implied the option not to renew the acquaintanceship at the next meeting. Not being recognised implied being treated as a stranger or being cut, that is, being completely ignored. A typically English advice was that after an introduction that turned out to be ‘unwelcome’, ‘it is wiser to appear oblivious of the presence of the person concerned than to convey the impression that you wish the intimacy to progress’ (Etiquette for Ladies 1923: 18). Here, the word ‘intimacy’ is telling. A German or a Dutch author would never have even thought of using a word like this to indicate the consequences of an introduction. In England, however, introductions provided access to intimacy, friendship, and elevated equality.

2.4 Obviously, this regime of manners did not only regulate sociability, but also functioned as a relatively refined system of inclusion and exclusion, as an instrument to screen newcomers seeking entry into social circles, ensuring that the newly introduced would assimilate to the prevailing regime of manners and self-regulation, and to identify and exclude undesirables. Sometimes, this was made quite explicit, as in Etiquette for Ladies of 1863: ‘Etiquette is the form or law of society enacted and upheld by the more refined classes as a protection and a shield against the intrusion of the vulgar and impertinent’ (quoted in CURTIN 1987: 130).

2.5 This elaborate, highly formal and hierarchically differentiated system of screening and restricting those one met ‘in company’ functioned as a necessary condition for the development of ‘the requirement that a gentleman treat those he met in company on the basis of equality’, and this was, as Curtin observed, ‘one of the commonest and most frequently reiterated principles of etiquette’ (1987: 121). Quite often this was expressed in what became known as the Golden Rule of manners: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The system was completed and complemented by the development of an important means of seclusion: the maintenance of ‘reserve’, that is, the avoidance of exactly the kind of manners and emotion regulation required when one was ‘in company’. Some – those who had been ‘properly introduced’ – were treated with relative intimacy. Others were treated with reserve and thus kept at a social distance. In short, members treated everyone either as an equal or as a stranger.

2.6 These formal codes, and the whole formalised, hierarchical system of introductions, cards, calls, etc. had the double function of keeping all those one rung down the social ladder at bay, while gaining access to those on the next higher rung. This system is typical of a highly secluded good society with an elaborate and strict regime of gatekeeping and rigorous social control. However, this regime had also allowed for a relatively early shift from avoiding people to avoiding certain feelings and certain displays of feeling, producing that highly demanding English blend of easy-going sociability and reserve. According to Michael Curtin, the attainment of a formalistic control over demeanour was not the salient issue of nineteenth-century good manners, ‘but rather a perfected and extended control which realised all the old objectives but with effortless nonchalance. The formalities of manners were by and large readily mastered, but the easy, self-confident, and unself-conscious style turned informality itself into a difficult art’ (CURTIN 1987: 18). Indeed, sociability as an art depends upon the smoothly controlled decontrolling of emotional controls.

2.7 The whole system also functioned to regulate status competition, to diminish status dangers and fears, and to avoid explicit expression of superiority and inferiority. A significant symptom of this function is the fact that after the 1860's, English manners books no longer contained open references to class. From reading these books, one often gets the impression that, except for servants and an occasional parvenu, all readers belonged to the same class – good society – and all were expected to participate in the ‘Great Events’ of ‘the Season’. Within good society, differences in rank were extremely important, of course, but references to their existence had become a delicate matter. The same goes for references to those outside good society. Even at a time when many ‘new people’ with ‘new money’ were entering good society, as was happening around 1900, this style of writing remained dominant.

2.8 It seems likely that the scarcity and delicacy of references to class differences in English manners books is also related to the development of a rather intense feeling of community among the English. During many centuries of relative freedom from external threats, England had become a highly urbanised, unified, and homogeneous country, with a high degree of national integration and London as the great centre of a national culture (ELIAS 1960, 1962; DAVIDOFF 1973: 16-17). The feeling of community is also demonstrated in the continued social integration of new groups into political centres of power and their good society. At an early stage, the latter, ‘High Society’ as the English called it, was characterized by the ideal of being a gentleman. This ideal demonstrates the way in which the English aristocracy had entered into agreement with the rising middle classes, for a gentleman personified both middle-class and aristocratic ideals and manners: egalitarian manners in a strongly class-segregated society, consisting of layers of equals. This continuity in being a society with a strong class segregation as well as a high level of social integration and a strong unifying centre, in combination with the possibility of treating everyone alike, either on the basis of equality or as a stranger, allowed and obliged the authors of manners books to keep silent about problems connected with the social mingling of different classes, whereas these issues were openly and frequently discussed in manners books from other countries.

2.9 An unobtrusive insight into the significance of the elaborate and rather rigid system of manners of the English can be derived from the following warning against the ‘visiting card trick’, published in a 1906 English magazine:

2.10 This confidence trick demonstrates the importance of visiting cards and, at the same time, the high degree of seclusion and integration, the strength of the sense of belonging and protectedness that good society provided. Each layer within good society largely consisted of networks of people that are perceived as friends - the stolen cards were presented to ‘friends of the people whose names they bear’: without this context, a con game like this could not have been successful. Only within the protective environment of each other's ‘good company’ could tact and consideration be developed more fully. From appreciating how directly introductions and social recognition in England were connected to friendship and equality brings an additional layer of meaning to George Orwell's ‘All animals are equal, some are more equal than others.’

2.11 The certainty of being more or less equals ‘in company’ may also explain why many English people, to this day, tend to behave in a rather easy and informal way in formal situations, whereas on the other hand, in informal situations where this certainty is lacking, they tend to cling to a relatively greater formality. Outside their protected circles, they may traditionally cling to an attitude of reserve towards strangers. To put it in theoretical terms, the English adhere to a code of manners and emotion regulation characterised by a relatively small formality?informality span: a relatively small difference of behaviour in formal and in informal situations and relations or, more precisely, a relatively small difference between behaviour in contacts with people of socially higher and lower standing on the one hand, and behaviour with people of relatively equal status on the other (ELIAS 1996: 28-29). In England, for a long time, the dividing line between private and public was also subordinate to the question whether one was in good company or with strangers.

The Formality–Informality Span in Germany

3.1 Particularly in comparison with the attention focused on privacy and introductions in English manners books, both these topics are virtually absent in nineteenth- and twentieth-century German manners books. In contrast, the Germans have tended to distinguish rather sharply between public and private, formal and informal. In the words of Stephen Kalberg, ‘the public realm is generally characterised by social distance and purely functional exchanges with only formal involvement. Conversely, all “impersonal” values – … such as achievement, competition, and goal-attainment – are strictly banned from the private sphere’ (KALBERG 1987: 608; also LEWIN 1948). Germans still behave rather formally in the public arena, as if they distrust it, particularly in the absence of a clear hierarchical setting with clearly designated superordinates and subordinates. In private, however, relationships tend to be experienced as highly personal and as ‘immediate, not domesticated by general rules, intent on honesty and profundity’ (DAHRENDORF 1969: 300), which implies they may involve almost unlimited rights and obligations (PEABODY 1985: 113).

3.2 These characteristics can be interpreted as a process-continuity deriving from a distinction made by the bourgeois intelligentsia in eighteenth-century Germany. Blocked from the political centres of power and confronted with an uncompromising aristocratic code, they emphasised their ‘depth of feeling’, ‘honesty’ and ‘true virtue’ as against the ‘superficiality’, ‘falsity’, and ‘mere outward politeness’ of the nobility (ELIAS 2000: 15-23). A similar social inheritance of the German bourgeois habitus is evident in behaviour in public, where a kind of formality is demanded that varies with hierarchical differences:

3.3 Accordingly, in the public sphere Germans tend to cling more strongly to hierarchically differentiated formal rules, whereas in private and informal situations, they allow themselves to let go to a greater degree. Throughout the twentieth century, German manners books contained questions such as Ehrlich oder höflich ? (honest or polite? – a chapter title in OHEIM, 1955: 29) as well as many warnings against confiding too much and against duzen (using the familiar you). Their formality-informality span has remained wider than that of other countries (ELIAS 1996: 28).

3.4 Duzen (the use of the informal you) and the use of Christian names remained quite restricted until the 1950s, from which time onwards repeated complaints about too hastily crossing these important borderlines signified the presence of the informalising trend. An habitual warning in German manners books is the one against becoming too confidential and going too far by starting to duz at office excursions and parties. The authors always insisted that, at the office, the next day such an offer will surely be regretted. For in the daylight of public life, colleagues will realise they were in a night-time cocoon of intimacy when the Du was ‘offered’ – by the eldest or highest in rank, it is never given or requested – and they will want to return to the social distance that used to prevail and that was expressed in sietzen. To use the formal Sie is to show respect and to appreciate a person in full. Teenagers therefore eagerly await the moment they become entitled to be addressed as such by adults. In the last decade of the twentieth century, the moment at which a young boy or girl is entitled to the Sie was specified as lying somewhere between the age of sixteen and eighteen. At that age, ‘a young person can claim equalisation’ (UFFELMANN 1994: 19). In contrast to its usual meaning, equalisation in this case means being entitled to a larger social and psychic distance. Apparently, a large variety of subtle differentiations of proximity and distance – of involvement and detachment – endured, even tended to increase, together with elaborate rules for transitions between public and private, Sie and Du.

Friendship in Germany and England

4.1 Compared with the manners books of the other countries under study, German ones are also unique in their emphasis on friendship. They presented extensive accounts on the subject, often as extensive as those on marriage and the relationship between spouses. To rank a friend even higher than a spouse was not exceptional: ‘All poets have sung the praises of friendship. … Goethe ranks friendship “more holy, pure, and spiritual than love” … No blood ties, no constraints of external relations determine the friend. In love, human beings also follow a natural urge. The friend is chosen freely!’ (Weißenfelt 1951: 42-4). This praise of friendship stands in a long tradition. In Knigge's famous manners book, for example, the chapter on manners in relating to friends was longer than the one on relating to women:

4.2 German manners books have continued to present elaborate advice on friendship. Nearly always the topic is directly connected to Duzen, which may partly explain why English and American manners books have been much less prolix on the subject. But not altogether, for in comparison with even Dutch manners books, the German ones paid far more attention to friendship and duzen. An obvious reason for this difference is that neither Brüderschaftstrinken, the ritual drinking that marks the transition from Sie to Du, nor the kind of brotherhood (Brüderschaft) that is associated with it, ever existed in the Netherlands. This is related to another difference, already indicated by the term Brüderschaft, namely, that in Germany the term Du has been primarily, and remained, a kinship term, much more than the Dutch je and jij. But more importantly, in discussing the topic tutoyeren (using the personal pronoun), Dutch manners books never contained lengthy remarks nor the short essays on friendship that were common in German books. Nor did Dutch authors warn people not to start using familiar personal pronouns at an office party. In the German books, however, the topic of the office party and this warning always went hand in hand. Apparently, the special social meaning of the transition from Sie to Du, marked by a special rite de passage, is related to a much stronger sensitivity regarding the public-private distinction.

4.3 Most likely, the question why intimate relationships were hardly ever discussed in twentieth-century English manners books, also finds an answer by referring to the public-private distinction. But the inference is opposite: the intimacy of friendship and love was apparently considered to be private and delicate, and therefore not really a topic for an etiquette book. English etiquette rules of the nineteenth century occasionally referred to friendship, distinguishing degrees of intimacy that corresponded to the public–private distinction (CURTIN 1987: 8), but these distinctions were not repeated in the twentieth century. Authors usually referred to ‘friends and acquaintances’. What counted was the protection offered by privacy, the certainty of being in each other's good company. Further distinctions were important, of course, but not socially important, and there was accordingly no need to discuss them.

4.4 The different connotations of the expression ‘to be in good company’ is another case in point: the English would tend to think of a social gathering in good society, whereas the Germans would think of being among friends, that is, behind the scenes of good society, in private. Duzen means friendship (or kinship), and only among friends is one among equals. In all other relations, the Germans search for and find hierarchy, inequality. Therefore, friendship is a very serious matter and the familiar second-person pronoun Du is equally important. A section on Duzen from 1893 says: ‘The word “friend” offers many and high rights. Therefore one should carefully deliberate to whom to grant that title’ (SCHRAMM 1893: 172). The choice of words in this formulation of friendship was quite principled, the words ‘title’ and ‘high rights’ even suggesting a precedence akin to aristocratic rights and title. A century later, this very attitude was still alive. A Dutch journalist, for many years a correspondent in Germany, reported that he had rarely come across politically mixed friendships, because Germans who would reject a political stance tended to reject the whole way of life that it implied (MEINES 1989).

A small excursion to the internet networks of ‘friends’ and Google Street View

5.1 The arrival of Facebook and other such networks of ‘friends’ on the internet presents interesting comparative material. The differences in the meaning of friendship would lead us to expect a significantly smaller participation of the German population in these largely ‘public friendship’ networks. An indication in this direction is found in the different percentages of Facebook penetration in countries with more than one million Facebook users. These percentages range from 45 percent in Norway to 5 percent in Poland, and the UK is number 5 on this scale, with a penetration percentage of 38.67, and Germany appears to be number 38, with a penetration of 8.89 percent. ^[5] In Germany, until the second half of 2009, VZ Networks had a larger penetration than Facebook, but both networks had less than 20 per cent penetration, ^[6] which is about half the penetration in the UK of Facebook alone. However, this comparison is complicated by the fact that internet friendships are a mixture of public and private as well as of virtual and real time, while they are relatively easy to end, which is called ‘unfriending’ or ‘defriending’. The difference between the two countries is nevertheless large enough to remain impressive.

5.2 The continued German preoccupation with the borderlines between private and public also appeared quite strikingly in the media outcry - backed by government ministers - over the perceived breach of privacy by showing private houses on Google's Street View. In September 2010, Der Spiegel reported that ‘hundreds of thousands’ of Germans petitioned to have their homes blurred on Google's Street View, while Google reported Germans to be the most enthusiastic users of the panorama picture service among the nations where Street View is not yet operative (Spiegel 38/2010: 187).

Concluding remarks

6.1 The striking differences in national habitus on which this article has focused, can be recognised and traced up to the present day. They can be understood and largely explained by placing them in the wider context of differences and changes in national class structures, that is, by connecting them to differences in social and national integration. Particularly important are differences in the organisation of social mobility, in the degrees and ways in which national centres of power and their good societies opened up their ranks to newcomers of the rising strata.

6.2 Establishing a Freundschaft and duzen in Germany as well as ‘being properly introduced’ in England can be characterised as functional equivalents in opening the door to (greater) equality and intimacy, and as specific forms of social and psychic rapprochements. The comparison of the German ideal of equality as expressed in Duzfähigkeit or duzability with the English one of introduceability has also provided a key to understand why ideals of friendship and equality for Germans came to lie behind the scenes of public life and why the transition from Sie to Du is a withdrawal from public life with Brüderschaftstrinken as a rite de passage. The British place(d) their ideals of equality and friendship much more strongly in the public sector, consisting of clubs of friends, so to speak, whose equal members have all been introduced or co-opted with shaking hands as a rite de passage. It explains why in English manners books the key question dealt with is when and how someone could be introduced, and why German authors did not treat this question as important. In England, someone who was properly introduced into a particular circle was an equal and a friend, and could lay claim to be treated with equality and treat others that way. That was, and still is, nonexistent in Germany. There, all public life is saturated with ranking and hierarchy; equality and friendship can only exist outside.