Titelverkurzungswelle

Few Germans, except among family and close friends, ever unbend enough to call each other by their first name. Instead, they delight in using strings of titles that proclaim the bearer's academic, professional or aristocratic status. Just about everyone has at least one title, and many people have several. German businessmen and bureaucrats never tire of constructing new and more elaborate handles to stretch across their calling cards and frontdoor name plates. The habit has reached such extremes that some Germans are now revolting against it. Typically, the reformers were unable to resist the temptation to compound a new word of their own. The name of their movement: die Titelverkiirzungswelle--the title-shortening wave.

Judges in the states of Hesse and

North Rhine-Westphalia have voted to drop such ornate titles as Herr Landgerichtsdireklor (state court director) and be called simply Herr Richter (Mister Judge). Contending that many business titles are nonsensical, the U.S. electronics firm of Honeywell, which has a plant near Frankfurt, printed new calling cards introducing their executives by name only. Many student demonstrators now disdain to address university rectors as Magnifizenz and deans as Spektabilitat, Hans-George Schnitzer, whose own title is Bundesvorsitzender des Fachausschusses fur Umgangsformen--federal chairman of the Expert Committee for Good Behavior--is urging his countrymen to "recognize only those titles earned academically or by public election."

Mister Master. The title mania will be hard to snuff out. A senior administrative court inspector, first class, glories in being called Herr Verwaltungsgerichtoberinspektor, and a section manager at the big German electrical firm of Siemens is an Abteilungsbevollmaechtigter (section plenipotentiary), even though he may be in charge of only six men. A man who wants his auto fixed knows that he had better address his mechanic as Herr Meister#151;Mister Master. A university graduate's Herr Doktor becomes part of his name, and if he earns a second degree, he adds it, too, becoming Dr. Dr.

Germans are so obsessed by titles that every etiquette book devotes at least one chapter to their usage. One, in fact, deals with nothing else: Das Grosse Anrede Buck--the giant book of proper addresses--which lists about 1,500 of the most important titles and explains in detail which ones take precedence over others. Often, the lower the title, the greater its length. The winner: Erster Hauptwachtmeister im Strafvollzugsdienst, which denotes the post of first watchman in the penal system.

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