Word: german
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...converging palms, which grasp each other in a crushing grip and pump each other up and down like a frantic seesaw. It is accompanied by a snappy bowing of the head-almost as if to show that the participants have not paralyzed each other. It is, of course, the German handshake, a social act of such importance and frequency that it sometimes seems to dominate German life. More than any other people, the Germans firmly believe that a man's handshake shows his character, and they go through life grasping at hands to prove that their character is both...
...German shakes hello and he shakes goodbye, even if he has seen you only ten minutes earlier. He shakes the hands of his fellow workers when he arrives at work in the morning, and again before he goes home. He shakes before lunch and he shakes after dinner...
...Some German personnel managers figure that their employees spend a minimum of 20 minutes a day on the job just shaking hands. Every social gathering or business meeting that a German attends bristles with outstretched hands, and a foreigner stumbling into a roomful of Germans can be practically disabled by the unaccustomed exercise of pressing palms if he has not previously prepared himself for the Teutonic rite. In fact, one of the first social lessons the newcomer to Germany must learn is: if it moves, shake...
...even the Germans are beginning to realize that they have gone too far, and compulsive handshaking is finally on the wane. A recent poll showed that 23% of all German adults are against handshaking as the normal way to greet people. Germany's largest tabloid daily, Bild Zeitung, recently denounced handshaking in a front-page story, declaring that "not only is handshaking unhygienic and impractical but it also wastes too much valuable time." West Germany's unquestioned arbiter of social grace, the Expert Committee for Good Manners (a branch of the German Dancing Teachers League), has joined...
According to leaks from the supposedly secret Warsaw meeting (among those present: Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, who decided not to accompany Premier Kosygin to Britain in order to attend), the Poles and East Germans urged their neighbors to stop an unseemly rush to Bonn. If they must establish relations, ran the advice, they at least ought to support East Germany in rejecting Bonn's claim to be the sole legitimate representative of the German people. The pleas did not have much effect, and the communiqueé issued at the meeting's end was so bland that...