Wednesday, November 18, 2015

How We Address Each Other

   “A parrot interrupted conversations when it shouted Humboldt’s most common instructions to his servant ‘Much sugar, much coffee, Mr. Seifert.’” Johann Seifert, had been Alexander von Humboldt’s “devoted servant” “for three decades.”
   Parrots don’t make up words; Humboldt did not call his servant Johann, but addressed him by his surname. When I read this passage in Andrea Wulf’s recent book on Humboldt, I was reminded of noting the different modes of address in Germany, from which we had emigrated in 1939, and the United States where we had come. I was twelve at the time and didn’t take much notice of such niceties of address. As I became older and essentially “Americanized,” I too adopted the practice of addressing people by their given names, in most instances ab initio.
   Not so my parents, in particular not my father, whose given name was Jacob. He started a business located on Fourth Avenue (now gentrified as Park Avenue South) off 27th Street, where the books were kept and stock was shelved and shipped to New York area drug stores, after the three or four salesmen, of which my father was one when not minding the office, had placed an order. The office itself employed, as I recall, three or four people, most or probably all of them, German Jews. While English mostly was the language spoken at 381 4th, there certainly were lapses into German.  Never abandoned, however, was the practice of addressing everyone by their last names, prefaced by Herr, Frau, or Fräulein.
   The person who kept the books, for example, was a single woman who had come to New York from the same little town in Baden where my father was born and grew up. Nevertheless, at 381 Fourth she was Fräulein Bierig, so consistently that even though I was often in and out of the office, occasionally even doing some chores, that I don’t remember finding out her first name.
   One of the salesmen was Mr. Dukat whose first name, I believe, was Max, though I am not sure. Mr. and Mrs. Dukat, no children, also lived in “our” apartment house in Jackson Heights. Nevertheless he was Herr Dukat—always.
   Another salesmen was Hugo Blumenthal from Stuttgart who came to New York around the same time we did. He and my father met as bunkmates in the concentration camp in Dachau to which they had been sent the day of Kristallnacht in November 1938.  You’d think such a common fate would lead them to refer to each other as Hugo and Jacob. But no. I’m even a little surprised that I even know his first name—perhaps because his son and I became good friends.
   You can see that at least then in Germany the normal form of address was Herr, Frau, or Fräulein followed by the last name. Exceptions to that were essentially limited to close relatives—e.g. cousins of more or less the same generation. I suppose--though I don’t really know this—that young kids in school called each other by their given names and perhaps persisted in that practice if they remained friends into an older age. Boys often called each other by their last names without preceded by a title. Sag’ mal Schmidt. Was willst Du Müller?
   Another exception was a relatively big deal; but to explain it, I have to insert a short German lesson. There are two was of saying “What are you doing” and “How are you.” There is the formal way that goes with using the interlocutor’s last name: Was machen Sie? and Wie geht es Ihnen? (notice the required caps). If the exchange is between persons who are on a first name basis, it is Was machst du? and Wie geht’s dir?
   That relatively big deal I referred to occurs when two persons who had been addressing each other by their last names decide to become more intimate by changing to given names. They then—at least in my younger days—formally decide to Duzen, to henceforth address each other with the informal du.
   My parents didn’t do much Duzen and I think never wholly approved of the American practice of moving quickly to a first name basis. While that was many years ago, I am sure that German habits have changed toward the informal since then, though I very much doubt that formality, in Berlin or Heidelberg, has come as close to attenuating as it has in New York or New Orleans.
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Note. I realize that I am flirting with a much bigger topic than I am actually discussing. Class differences should be taken into consideration and even different regions. But I am quite ignorant of those ramifications. Further, an analogous distinction exists in French and Spanish, as well as in other languages about which I know little or nothing. There is thee and thou in English that at one time signaled informality, though the story of those modes of address is also much more complicated.
Comments and additional examples are welcome.
 


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