The Germans and their manners

Good old-fashioned dance classes are popular once again. Good manners are making a strong comeback, too. But is hip-swaying really part of ‘good form’?

“Don’t you see, it’s existential/ forget material things/ forget your job, forget Mercedes-Benz” - that’s what the Fantastischen Vier tell us to do in their song Einfach Sein from 2007: away from consumerism and back to traditional values. A Saturday afternoon in Munich: forty heels click-clack in time to this song with its typical Foxtrot rhythm. The neo-baroque ceiling in the Deutsches Theater arches over the twenty dancers taking standard dance lessons here. These beginners are aged between 14 and 19 and are also learning to Slow Foxtrot, Quick Step and Vienna Waltz.

May I have the honour, curtseys and hand kisses

The participants are young – unlike the Vienna Waltz, which dates back to 1770. The dance lessons are not like Sunday afternoon tea dances – etiquette calls for shirts and pleat-front trousers in place of jeans and hooded sweatshirts – although they’re not entirely dissimilar either. After all, these carefully rehearsed steps weren’t conceived for a night club, and a Vienna Waltz wouldn’t go down particularly well on the dance floor of a disco. All the same, the dancers are busy practicing elbow positions, step sequences and turns. Does this mark a return to good etiquette, to 'may I have the honour’, curtseys and hand kisses – and if yes, why?

It is not by chance that the students at the Deutsches Theater are learning good manners as well. In the fifties and sixties it was a natural part of all dance lessons. Today the German Dance Teachers Association (ADTV) quite openly calls it the Anti-Blamier-Programm (How to make sure you don’t disgrace yourself in public). It includes advice on the appropriate clothing and make-up, tells participants how to hold their cutlery at the dinner table and how to address the different people they meet. This desire for a set of rules is also reflected in the plethora of books published on good conduct: if you look in the German National Library’s database for the word “Knigge” (etiquette), there are 67 hits just for 2007. In April of this year, an excerpt from On Unwritten Codes of Conduct was even part of the school leaving exams in Baden-Württemberg. This book by the Ethiopian Prince Asfa-Wossen Asserate was a bestseller in Germany.

Massive interest in dance schools

Dance classes are selling well, too: the number of people taking dance classes has risen by 10 percent every year since 2000. There are now two million dancing Germans, according to the ADTV. More than half of them are under 30. It seems that knowing how to dance has become part of good form again, just like in the post-war period. “The Waltz definitely has”, says Andrea Sydow, editor of the etiquette services website www.knigge.de. But does that apply to guys, too? The men’s magazine Playboy wanted to find this out and commissioned the Emnid Institut to identify which forms of social etiquette are still considered relevant in today's society. According to the survey results, the most important things are helping a woman put on her coat, opening the door for her and giving her a light.

Standard dance was not on the Playboy list. Neither are the young people taking dance lessons at the Deutsches Theater thinking about social etiquette rules: 15-year-old Alfred, for example, wouldn’t use an etiquette manual. “Never”, he says. He just wants to “pull some chick” at the Deutsches Theater, he says, laughing. The others are also primarily here to meet other young people and to get a bit of exercise. Etiquette is “not their primary concern,” says Louisa (17). She is taking the course together with her friend Julian (17). “Dance is only really useful at weddings and family get-togethers,” Thomas (16) and Roman (15) comment. It was presumably the television show Let’s Dance on RTL that gave them the idea for their new hobby. The show gave television audiences the opportunity to vote on the performance of the hip-swinging celebrities and ballroom dancers. At times it had over seven million viewers – dancing on the small screen went down well.

So it seems that standard dance is more about having a fun pastime than about How to make sure you don’t disgrace yourself in public. Behavioural expert Silke Schneider-Flaig doesn’t take the public debate about good conduct that seriously either. Although she is the author of the book Der neue große Knigge (The New Social Etiquette), she reminds us that, “There are many people who don't have a feel for dance steps or a sense of rhythm. But outing yourself as a bad dancer is not the same as putting your foot in it.”