Do Germans have Asperger's Syndrome?

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I don't think one ethnicity is likely to be more on the autistic spectrum than any other. I am an American, adopted, & found out that my background is German, French, English, Irish, plus some Native American (could be more, but this is all I am aware of). I am very likely an Aspie. Even my shrinks are starting to see my oddities & facts with my personality.

My adoptive dad's ethnicity doesn't seem to include German. All I know about him is that he is primarily Anglo-Saxon American (English, Irish, Scottish), although there is likely to be Viking, French, or possibly other invading nationalities along his genetic history. He is also on the spectrum. I just don't see how one's ethnicity plays into spectrum disorders. So if I interpreted the OPs position correctly, I should be on the spectrum but my dad should not. However, he clearly has special interests, lacks empathy, cannot make eye contact with anyone, prefers having few friends, etc. So again, if only certain nationalities are predisposed to carry autism, than my dad would most likely be exempt.

As for Einstein....he is a German Jew. Einstein translates as "one stone" & is clearly a German surname. Jews have migrated to many nations & although their ability to prosper in their chosen fields, what really sets them apart is their religion...unless they deliberately step away from it. I know of a guy who is catholic, but has a German-Jewish surname. He speaks fluent Spanish as well as English. Turns out that when his family fled their homeland (Poland), they settled in South America. I would bet money that his family had had more than enough of the religious persecution by the Nazis, & converted to Catholicism to avoid further trouble.

Yes, Germans have their quirks: they prefer punctuality, hard work, have a well established hierachy of relating to others (very formal in comparison to other cultures), etc...even their language is fairly rigid (I used to speak fluent German, but not so much now). German has few rules that are broken unlike English, has a rigid sentence structure, etc. But that does not make the nation's majority autistic. I have met many people of Germanic origins who were/are warm & friendly, even if they prefer formalities & titles when addressing each other. It's just how their culture works, & it's been quite successful.

Yes, and we all wear Lederhosen. Just kidding While cultural stereotypes do have some basis in reality, it is usually a very small basis. Germans do show emotion just like any other people, and we don't have more engineers and scientists than other developed countries.
There also isn't much public awareness about Asperger Syndrome in Germany, even among mental health specialists, and I haven't met many people that I seemed autistic to me. I suspect my mother to have AS, but I can't think of anybody else.

PS: Do you have a list of German scientist that have been officially diagnosed with AS during their lifetime? I'm just curious because you wrote "a lot of scientists". What is that estimation based on?

Isn't that a bit like saying "Frank Sinatra was Italian, not American"? Or "Obama is Kenyan", for that matter.

A small population compared to the USA perhaps (26% of the US population), but not on a global scale. Germany has the 15th largest population in the world and the second largest in Europe.

Not quite. People who maintain Obama is Kenyan are part of an elaborate conspiracy theory, however discredited the "evidence".

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo's statement is merely ill informed about how most assimilated Ashkenazi Jews in Germany thought of themselves in the early part of the 20th century.

If you're thinking of Oktoberfest, you're thinking of Bavaria I wish cultural stereotypes about Germany were based on middle or Northern Germany rather than our equivalent of Texas. Bavaria is an odd little "free state" with an own unique culture (a very strange one, I might add), and a language that other Germans can barely understand.

Well, Obama is Kenyan-American. Or English-German-Irish-Kenyan-Scottish-Swiss-Welsh-American, to be precise In the same way, Einstein was Jewish-German. What I mean is that he was both, not either-or. And for the sake of simplicity, I would refer to the young Einstein as German and to Obama as American.

That is so true.

Come to think of it, my ears seem to be incapable of understanding anything but standard German.

I guess I'd put it this way:

Different cultures have different mean levels of all the personality traits, due to culture, history, local causes, and possibly genetics.

Some cultures, like Germany and Japan, have more Asperger's-like traits. These cultures would be seen by other cultures as being very rule-bound, scholarly, etc.

So we'd expect higher levels of Asperger's in these cultures, both because the traits would be less stigmatized and because subclinical levels of the traits would be nonstigmatized.

We all know people who have a special affinity for other cultures, and in most cases their personality is in the direction of that culture--artistic people like France, with its emphasis on the arts, mechanical people like Germany, with its fine engineering, etc.

People with Aspergers are considered rude, so logically that would mean that the French must all have Aspergers. Unfortunately, that's called stereo-typing, & even though most people are guilty of practicing it at some point in life, it certainly doesn't make it a good thing.

I really doubt that all Germans could possible have Aspergers. Aspies are typically the minority in any culture, not the norm. I have met many Germans who are also expert craftmen, but that doesn't make them all perfectionists either. I do my best not to lump everyone into one category that I meet. As I said in an earlier post, I have met some Germans who were very warm & friendly. Yet I have also heard that they are not friendly at all. There will always be surprises with human beings as we are not all completely predictable in nature.

That got me thinking.

Wouldn't it be expected instead that people with AS would have as many problems in participating in such societies (as many as in a society where the social rules are more diverse due to diverse cultures) because they struggle to meet those many social rules?

Note: I don't know what other rules people could be talking about when they think of Germany. I do not think traffic rules and laws are meant with that because knowing these by heart and trying to follow them helps very little when interacting with people.

Verbal, highly intelligent people with an ASD usually have problems here in Germany (and probably everywhere else) because they do not fit into the set of (flexible) social rules and expectations of the majority.

Children with AS in particular are viewed as problematic due to that they won't fit into the social systems of schools, kindergartens, clubs, places for after-school care and do not adhere to the behavioural expectations of adults and of their peers.

We're way back with including special ed students into normal schools because they can't adjust to the traditional social expectations and would need exceptions to be established that require people to make an effort.

Autistic students are deemed especially demanding and difficult to include because people feel we need too many expectations opposed to mildly intellectually disabled students who are thought to blend in better into an established social system.

I'm not sure what the connection between rule-boundedness and actual symptoms of AS is however. Are people with AS more likely to follow rules? The connection is frequently made by popular literature so there might indeed be a tendency for people with AS to be like that.

The rules of a society however are mainly social in nature and are based on the expectations of the people so I don't think an autistic person is more likely to recognise the existence of such social do's and don'ts, follow these rules or guidelines and meet these expectations successfully due to their social impairment.

I can learn rules, but I can't learn instinct. Arbitrary cultural rules are taught, whereas social instinct (posturing, facial expressions, eye contact) is taken for granted.

I think I could function a lot better in a very formal and ritualistic culture where making eye contact is considered rude, where people bow to each other instead of shaking hands and keep a physical distance during a conversation, where people don't hug in public and rarely ever raise their voice, and where language is so formal that I'd always know when it's my turn to speak and when the conversation is over. Alas, there is no such culture in Germany (or in any other Western country, for that matter).

This is interesting-- I was just thinking about this idea the other day.
I read that an Austrian "discovered" Autism, and immediately thought about how my extended (mostly German in origin) family has Asperger-esque quirks. We only seem "quirky" when compared to "acceptable" behavior among typical Americans. We generally like quiet, having personal space, are engrossed in peculiar topics, are not extremely social, are workaholics, are perfectionists, mechanically inclined but not extremely athletic. I say "we" loosely, since some of us are more eccentric than others.
I'm from the US, and most of my ancestors have been off the boat for more than a century. I wouldn't be surprised to find a lot of Aspergers/Autism among Amish and Mennonite children, if they were screened. They consider themselves to be "In the world, but not of it."
I wonder if there is a survival component to Aspergers. Maybe in a land-locked country prone to religious and political wars, it was better off to be "cold" and not look people in the eye, to keep a far distance between strangers and even family, and not make too much noise. Adhering to routine and perfectionism/obsession probably kept people alive when used for purposes of survival.
I say "German" loosely, since the country itself wasn't always "Germany", but a bunch of different states. I also believe there was a lot more religious/ethnic group intermarriage than people think, although maybe it wasn't always advertised. I'm sure there were also a lot of forced or voluntary conversions as well in terms of religion.

I think the question you are trying to ask is "Is their a higher rate of Asperger's Syndrome in Germans?" "Do Germans have Asperger's Syndrome?" sounds accusatory and and almost like you are asking if all Germans have Asperger's Syndrome.

People of all nationalities can have AS.

Actually French culture is highly implicit and there are all sorts of rules of politeness. When foreigners come to their country and do not know all of their social customs and unspoken social rules French people may react in a rude way out of irritation. French culture would be especially difficult for an Aspie because social norms are not necessarily spelled out as they are in more explicit cultures where people say exactly what they mean. In explicit cultures one may not have to rely as much on social cues and facial expressions because people mean exactly what they say and social rules are clearly told to people.