I want to at least mention "Frühjahrsmüdigkeit."
What, you ask, and quite rightly so, is "Frühjahrsmüdigkeit"? Literally, this translates as "spring fatigue" and all I can say is...it's a syndrome Germans think they get in early spring.
The idea is that, contrary to what you'd think (it's spring! new energy!), the transition from winter to spring is actually tough on the body, and leaves us feeling tired and drained of energy for a while, until we adjust to the strange new seasonal conditions of warmth and longer sunlight.
Zeit magazine suggests this is a real phenomenon (article in German). Germans will certainly insist it exists, and that it's the reason they're tired/having trouble concentrating/whatever else in the early spring. (One American acquaintance of mine jokingly excused himself for being particularly scatterbrained this spring with the words, "I have Frühjahrsmüdigkeit...whatever that is.")
So why do no other cultures seem to have this problem?
Germans will probably counter that, well, they live further north, and thus have more extreme shifts in length of daylight to contend with...yet I don't think I've ever heard Canadians or Scandinavians complain. Americans certainly pooh-pooh the idea – and I have to say, my part of the US may not be as far north as Germany, but we experience the four seasons far more intensely than anything Berlin ever gets.
Any thoughts? I really am intrigued: Is this a case of Germans being more in tune with their natural environment (often true) or a case of Germans maintaining weird superstitions long after you'd think an industrialized society would have discarded them (also true)?
I'll give the last word here to one poster on the language forums at the dict.leo.org dictionary (where there was, unsurprisingly, some disagreement on how to translate "Frühjahrsmüdigkeit") who suggested – with a wink and a nod toward the clichés of the German angst-ridden mentality [and I'm translating here] – "So, in other words, in Germany, autumn depression is followed by spring fatigue, interrupted only by a terrible winter – that's normal, isn't it?"
xx-müdigkeit, where xx==Sommer, Herbst and Winter all seem to be reasonably popular on the internet (about 1/10 as popular as xx=Frühjahrs).
ReplyDeleteIf there's a name for a disease, there will be be people suffering it.
Interesting! Sounds partly real and partly cultural to me. Anecdotally, I always feel happier in the spring, but when the weather first gets nice enough for me to spend a lot of time outside I also get more tired than I expect -- probably from being out in the sun more, being more active, and not drinking enough water for that level of activity. If I'm working inside, I can have trouble focusing -- I'd just rather be outside. Since in American culture we consider spring energizing, that's how I see it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe melatonin production is involved -- light seems to decrease melatonin production, so longer hours of daylight might decrease melatonin. But then why do only Germans notice?
Very interesting, Anna, you've actually just backed up the German position that the early spring is tiring, even though we'd think it would be purely energizing!
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you, Noah, for confirming that Germans like to be depressed all year round ;)
Hmmm, I am a German and I always claimed that my favourite time of the year was automn, as it doesn't expect anything from you but meditative contemplated state - and then you can surprise yourself of being energetic and all, whereas spring kind of gives you the feeling of underperforming, that you just can't keep up with the bollywoodesque outbreak of colors and "love is in the air" and all that (plus don't get me started on all those allergies that drag you down) - after all it might have a cultural component, as I think Germans tend to focus on the downside of things, and spring maybe just puts both (the pluses and minuses) under a magnifying class (and some things like "Winterspeck" are not realized until then).
ReplyDeleteHere is another, somewhat sad, companion-thought. I have never checked the statistics on this, but some psychiology guy once told me that suicides happens - contrary to what you might think - very often in spring, when the longed for change in mood just doesn't happen as expected, giving one a feeling that if not even spring can do anything about it....
so what I am saying is that spring is so overcharged with expectations it possibly cannot satisfy, which leaves once hopes disappointed, thereby causing some sort of Frühjahrsmüdigkeit...? just a thought
Oh...what a sadly philosophical perspective on spring! It seems sad to think of spring as a time where we can't possibly meet the expectations we have... Though I'm not surprised by the suggestion that more people become seriously depressed in spring – the same happens at Christmas.
DeleteOn a (somewhat) lighter note, I know Germans who claim to still be suffering from their "Winterdepressionen" now, in June, which kind of makes me want to ask...really?