Very few good things happen on Twitter. For years, the platform was used as a public medium to spread false information or provoke violence.
Last week, I tried to be a little more teasing on Twitter, commenting on an article by Xochitl Gonzalez from America’s Atlantic Magazine, which asks, “Why do rich people love silence?”
After 5 years of living in Germany, I could easily ask, “Why do Germans love Quiet?”
The obsession with policing neighbours’ and strangers’ volumes is inane. Germany is the only country where I have been shushed outside of a bodega for simply talking. https://t.co/7pc0WRhIvq pic.twitter.com/aT4nuYviVN
— dr. edna bonhomme, mph (@jacobinoire) August 15, 2022
I replaced “rich people” with “Germans,” alluding to German society’s penchant for enforcing silence. The controversy arose from the subtext of my tweet. My tweet was based on observations that showed me that people in Germany like to call the police or call the security forces when strangers are chatting in front of a late night snack bar or laughing out loud on a balcony.
about the author
Edna Bonhomme is a historian of science and cultural journalist with a PhD in history of science from Princeton University. She conducts research on contagion, epidemics, toxicity and disease. Her essays have appeared in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, The London Review of Books and The Nation, among others. Edna Bonhomme is currently writing her book “Captive Contagions” (One Signal/Simon & Schuster, 2023). Edna Bonhomme lives in Berlin.
Within a few hours I found myself in the midst of a loud and divisive debate about the German rest period, a debate in which Germans and non-Germans controversially expressed their viewpoints on “rest” and the culture of stillness and silence. Some thought that silence was being pathologized, while others, non-Germans, were being pathologized. In each case, they talked about each other and silenced each other’s positions.
calm and inspiration
Most Germans know the so-called rest period as a provision that structures the social and legal framework of silence. Through a web of federal, state and local laws, the quiet time is defined as a rule that in Germany states that no noise may be made between 8:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. and on Sundays.
In the 19th century, the tendency to quiet developed in response to increasing industrialization and the need for quiet among the stressed-out working class. This need did not go unnoticed by German scholars either. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once remarked: “Talent develops in quiet places” and stressed that the creative process is ideal in conditions where the noise of machines and people is muted.
How the first earplugs were invented
The groundbreaking moment for German noise abatement came in 1907, when the philosopher Theodor Lessing founded the country’s first anti-noise association in Hanover. Anti-Noise Society members met to discuss how the noises of modernity—including factory and automobile noises—affected, and sometimes constrained, the spiritual and cultural world.
Overall, they had a list of concerns aimed at eliminating the urban noise made by streetcars, sweepers, and deliveries. They even wanted to limit dog barking, which they felt thwarted their quest for sonic peace.
Shortly after this company was founded, the Berlin pharmacist Max Negwer developed earplugs, the first noise-reducing earplugs. In 1917, Negwer advertised the earplugs as protection against the noise of cannons, which caused long-term hearing loss for many soldiers in the trenches. But the invention of the earplug was not enough. By 1974, the Environmental Pollution Act was introduced in West Germany to reduce traffic noise. Since these measures are necessary for living together in any society, it is also worth exploring the science of sound.
Why do you think foreigners are loud?
It is important to know that at levels that are too high, excessive noise can lead to hearing loss. According to the World Health Organization, hearing loss disproportionately affects low- and middle-income countries. Prolonged exposure to noise above 70-85 decibels is considered dangerous to human hearing. Exposure to noise levels above 85 decibels for more than eight hours a day can multiply the risk of noise-induced hearing damage or loss.
In everyday environments, the recommended noise dose should not exceed 70 decibels over 24 hours. It has been scientifically proven that the longer you are exposed to noisy activities, loud headphones or ambulance sirens, the greater your risk of hearing loss. A motorcycle, for example, has a typical noise level of 95 decibels, and in a disco you can measure around 110 decibels. The noise level in residential areas in Germany must not exceed 55 decibels during the day and 40 decibels at night.
Since the acceptable decibel level for an average person is around 60, everyday speech is not considered harmful noise. The probability of suffering hearing damage from a loud conversation in front of a late night shop or on the neighbor’s balcony is therefore very low. So the Twitter debate about noise, and in particular about non-Germans being too loud in public spaces during the day, raises several questions: Why is it assumed that foreigners are too loud? And: Should everyone in Germany really automatically adapt to the ethical code for noise?
Who is allowed to make noise?
Shortly after the Twitter discussion went viral, I spoke to a European with African roots in Neukölln and got to talking about the sociologist Max Weber. As we revisited his work, we attempted to decipher the connection between Pietism and German society. In his seminal work, The Protestant Ethic, Weber not only explains how the rise of Protestantism fostered a particular capitalist labor practice, but also how it shaped social classes in Germany.
Calvinism, according to Weber, dismissed the Christian love of community and transformed the Christian into the rational organization of the social environment and defined man as a farm animal. This means that people whose practices did not fit the modus operandi of the Protestant and capitalist order were potentially subject to hatred and contempt.
Weber died shortly after the First World War. During his lifetime, German society went through massive political and economic changes – including the acquisition of African colonies by the German Empire. Of course, Weber was writing for a different time, and yet some of his theories still hold true. The rise of capitalism is embedded in culture. How we relate to each other is not static, but is subject to a changing perception of ethics, affection and tradition. Noise and who gets to make it are part of this debate.
Today’s Berlin differs from that of the 1980s, 1960s and 1940s. There is a larger proportion of people of African and Asian descent. The doner kebab is part of the city’s identity. Berlin has taken in migrants displaced by wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
A balance between quiet and noise
If you live in a multicultural society where people from a foreign country live, we owe it to each other to live together, learn from each other and grow. This can mean readjusting or, as German officials like to say, assimilating. Unfortunately, it is assumed that the burden of change must be borne by the migrants themselves. And that the “dominant” culture can remain static, i.e. does not have to change.
Of course we know that’s not true. Some of us may proclaim louder and more confidently that Berlin is also home to migrants. Perhaps the narrow and strict parameters of quiet time are not always the best way for a changing Berlin society to function. Recognizing an urban soundscape that is collectively owned, protected in a balanced manner, and offers everyone an equal right to an adequate, healthy and productive urban soundscape is a challenge we must meet together. The challenge is not finding a single way to think about noise, but finding a balance between our right to make noise and our right to live peacefully in our city.
This text was translated from English by Tomasz Kurianowicz.
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