A long time ago in a part of Germany far, far away …
… comes this little gem.
But, as usual, some background first …
The first bit is that many Germans are awfully impressed by academic titles and Germany offers an impressive number of academic titles to be awfully impressed by. You see, a PhD in Germany isn’t just a PhD and it comes in over 50 different flavours. A doctorate in the natural sciences is not just a doctorate, for instance, but officially a Doctor rerum naturalium or, for short, Dr. rer. nat. (Germans love abbreviations too. But, given some of the words they are regularly confronted by, they have to.)
(Ok. Most PhDs have specializations. It’s not as if I know anything much about medieval English literature (or literature from any period, period) and would never try to pass myself off as an expert on it with my doctorate. However, very few have semi-mandatory, Latinized specializations. Mine doesn’t (in fact, it doesn’t list any specialization) and my alma mater has been the living embodiment of pomp and circumstance for literally centuries now.)
(The love affair with academic titles is actually so strong here in Germany that there are actually more than a few Dr. Dr.s running around the country for those people who have completed two doctorates for some bizarre, unknown reason. Got a professorship? Throw that it there as well to make Prof. Dr. Dr. And, although it’s not an academic title, you can even add your gender up front to make Frau (or Herr) Prof. Dr. Dr.)
The second bit of background is that Germany is one of a few countries that allow their citizens to have their academic titles listed on their passports and ID cards and driver’s licenses. Having found this out shortly after moving to Germany (and also being a German citizen; thanks, dad), I naturally had to do it as well. This was, I admit, motivated by equal measures narcissism and envy. The narcissism part I hope is clear. The envy comes from my wife at the time having Dr. rer. nat. Schmidt on her passport (not her real last name, unless she’s remarried someone named Schmidt in the meantime) and I wanted to officially be a “rare nut” as well.
(It should, however, go without saying that any form of narcissism does potentially have its price, even in the case of a few small letters like this. Having your doctor title on your passport is pretty darn impressive until the stereotypical announcement comes through asking if there is a doctor on board the plane. Lufthansa employees probably understand the many medical limits a Dr. rer. nat. has. Air Canada ones definitely will not.)
So, off I go to the local city hall, documents in hand, ready to feed my narcissism and quell my envy. The admin type looked everything over and told me to come back in a week or so. One very long week later I returned and was told that it all was “Not Possible”. Because my PhD was not a German PhD, no one would know which German flavour it was equivalent to. What if someone was looking for a Dr. iur. (law) but instead got this “rare nut”? Two very (very) different things entirely. What could be done, however, was one or the other of the following, equally grotesque options that all the many foreign medical doctors here in Germany seem to be forced to use (forced if only because I can’t see them actually wanting to use it):
- Dr. (University of Not-In-Germany) Me Myself I
or
- Me Myself I, PhD (University of Not-In-Germany)
On the surface, the rationale behind the rejection sort of makes sense, even to me. But, here’s the thing. Even though Germans have 50+ different flavours of PhD, they hardly, if ever, use them. Except for the poor medical doctors, it’s really just Dr. this or Dr. that. Even the passport of my then wife just said “Dr. Schmidt”. (So that joke about the Lufthansa versus Air Canada employees? Pretty much pure unbridled artistic license. The reality is that the Lufthansa employees would be equally clueless from my passport as to just how clueless I am medically when it involves anything more complicated than a single Band-Aid. (Which would include two Band-Aids.))
Even though the grotesqueness of either solution had a vague sadistic appeal to it (what would English-speaking people think when they saw my passport?), I decided on remaining plain old “Mr.” for reasons of common decency. But hope sprang anew a few short months later …
In the meantime, you see, I had gotten my professorship here in Not-Bielefeld. A German professorship. Forget Dr. rer. nat. (without the rer. nat.), I was now taking my quest one step further up the narcissism ladder. How could they possibly refuse? Like I said, it was a German professorship. So, same city hall, same same desk, same admin type. Same general request on my side too and same general, initial answer of come back in a week or so.
Unfortunately, same final answer too: “Not Possible”.
The reason this time around is that Professor (like Herr or Frau) is not an academic title in Germany, but merely an academic rank (unlike Herr or Frau) and fundamentally no different than, say, Student Assistant. A job title in other words. Once I retire, I go back to being a plain old doctor. (Sort of. Retirement for professors in slightly odd in Germany in the sense that we don’t retire until we ultimately do, if you know what I mean. Like in North America, we do mutate into a Professor emeritus (another academic rank), but we keep drawing a “retirement salary” instead of a true pension. (Want to make this really confusing? This retirement salary in German is called a “Pension”, which looks exactly like the English pension (but only when it starts a sentence). The analogue of the English pension in German, however, is “Rente”. All sort of like how an English billion is not a German one, with or without the leading capital.)) And passports and other official, personal documents only list academic titles, not academic ranks. (Unlike bank cards, with mine proudly proclaiming my ego-feeding status as Prof. Dr.)
But …
Suddenly, it now was possible to have Dr. listed on all my personal documents. Not Dr. (University of Not-In-Germany), just plain old simple Dr. (University of Not-In-Germany). And, as is usually the case in admin matters such as this, I have absolutely no idea why. In getting my professorship, as was just pointed out to me, all I gained was an academic rank. My foreign, flavourless doctorate remained the exact same foreign, flavourless doctorate it was before. The admin type also remained the same admin type and should have known all this given that this was not the biggest of city halls or the biggest of time intervals. (How big wasn’t the city hall? Put it this way: two desks and no machine to pull a number from. That big.)
Sometimes it’s actually better not to question admin, so I took the offer and ran. Narcissism must be fed after all. In retrospect, however, I can honestly say though that having these few extra letters on my personal documents has impressed exactly no one that I wanted it to. I’ve never been bumped to first class because of it nor to the front of any line anywhere.
But then, I’ve also never had to answer the call of whether there is a doctor on board either …
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