Made in Germany - A proof of technical perfection. Stereotypes of Germans in British advertising

Seminar paper from the year 1998 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography grade: 10 (A) Humboldt-University of Berlin (Institute for Anglistics/ American Studies) course: Great Britain and Europe - Great Britain in Europe language: English abstract: The British attitude towards Germany seems to be ambiguous: there are still many World War II movies on television there are serious newspaper articles and hostile tabloid cartoons unfriendly governmental memos and - last but not least - advertising: The people dealing with this issue are of different political background. Therefore they have contradictory intentions and express either friendly or hostile opinions: Nevertheless certain stereotypes of Germans are recurrent regardless of which attitude is represented. The two following lists of German attributes have only recently been compiled: The first one is the result of the Chequers-Conference in March 1990 when Margaret Thatcher discussed the aspects of German reunification with some confidants: The Conference''s consensus on eternal German characteristics was: insensitivity to the feeling of others [...] aggressiveness; assertiveness bullying egotism [...]. The memo was not designed to be published therefore one can assume that the participants spoke frankly. Several other German features can be found in a poll in which students were asked about national characteristics: According to the majority Germans are: orderly (disciplined organises efficient obedient to rules inflexible punctual); hard-working (laborious and ambitious); arrogant (particularly in intellectual matters); complex (difficult to understand Angst-ridden). My paper will focus on the occurrence of several of these images in advertising especially in four campaigns released between 1993 and 1997: Three of them deal with German products promoted for German consumers one of them deals with a British product for