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14 1 Civility DURING THE 1920S, salutations served as one foundation for Hildesheim’s civil society. Hildesheimers offered a friendly greeting as the overture for the exchange of ideas, goods, currency, and services. A friendly greeting between friends and neighbors generated a sense of integration in a community of equals, though notably, Hildesheimers used the same customs of conviviality to lay claim simultaneously to status and power in a diverse and hierarchical society. They negotiated these contradictory desires with a friendly greeting, keeping neighbors “neither too close nor too far.” Thus a proper salutation did more than just initiate the other, “more important” relationships and exchanges that constituted the economy and shaped the polity. Significant for its own sake, a proper greeting preserved that minimal amount of respect necessary to keep neighborly relations civil. This cultural mechanism is hardly new. In his travel log for the journal Le Tour du Monde in 1883 (reprinted 1974: 7), E. del Monte wrote that Hildesheimers responded politely and in kind whenever he said good evening . Yet the particular circumstances of interwar Germany exacerbated the need for soothing salutations. The Weimar Republic witnessed acrimonious political debate, a high degree of political mobilization, as well as noteworthy incidents of political violence from street fighting and vandalism to assassination and coups d’état. In this context, seemingly ordinary neighborly interactions often threatened to release barely contained animosities. In response, Hildesheimers issued a proper greeting in order to bind their neighbors into moral relationships of reciprocity. Salutations thus afforded ordinary Hildesheimers a sense of control over circumstances that seemed out of their control. Greetings evoked a sense of community within a modern and modernizing society. They promised a fair and salutary outcome to social relations in an era of uncertainty. Above all, they presumed—and thereby generated—a sense of normalcy in extraordinary times. Civility 15 Good Day German salutations were sufficiently diverse that folklorist Karl Prause could publish a 250-page survey of them in 1930, using both dialectical dictionaries and questionnaires. In the colloquial High German of towns, Prause argued, you offered the time of day: good morning, good day, good evening, or good night. Perhaps you inquired as to your neighbor’s condition if you had not seen that neighbor for a long time. Yet this salutation remained formulaic. “In town, one often greeted only to attend to the responsibility to be polite.” Just saying good day would be taken as unfriendly or insulting in the countryside. Rural salutations, he offered as a contrast, were more evocative of trust, and involved a longer conversation: what my interview partners also called taking part (Anteil nehmen) in the lives of neighbors. The so-called rural man could also sometimes greet by asking a question or making a joke. More so than good day, such greetings match the etymology of the word grüssen: these salutations were a means to address someone (anreden). According to Prause, rural greetings preserved native customs both as language and as social life. Unfortunately, a rise in commuter traffic and the Great War helped dissolve the urban–rural distinction so significant to folklorists like Prause (§3). When migrants moved from the countryside to provincial towns like Hildesheim, they abandoned their rural dialects and adopted more “civilized” manners. Prause’s urban–rural dichotomy arose more from cultural pessimism than social-scientific accuracy. His exaggerated, temporal hierarchy of allegedly authentic rural salutations over modern, urban ones reproduced a politicized distinction of community and society that had a long tradition in German academic research (Bendix 1997; Liebersohn 1988; Tönnies 1988). My interview partners strongly disagreed with Prause’s argument about the superficiality of urban greetings. Heinrich Weber recalled his stepmother’s encounters with neighbors in the 1920s: We all knew each other, and it was always a—we could say—almost a friendship with neighbors. At least a good acquaintanceship. I know that not only would they greet but they would also detain each other with: How’s it going? How are things with you? What’s up at home? and vice versa, as it were. This was how the neighborhood got informed about everything —what I was doing in the future, who was getting married among the daughters or sons. (G/145b R/170) Whenever Günther Seidner ran into people he knew, he greeted them, gave them his hand, and asked how things were going for them (G/81b R/80). As a matter of habit and propriety, Hildesheimers took part in...

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