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  • German native speakers would never use the first name for a contact like that unless you'd known them for years (or you'd become friends on holiday or something like that, or you were closely related) and 'drunk to brotherhood' ("Brüderschaft trinken") with them, which means that you address each other in the familiar form ("du") rather than the polite/formal form ("Sie"). It's like tu/vous in French. Obviously, that English doesn't have grammatically-enabled polite forms doesn't mean that you can't be polite in it, it's just done in other ways. It means that there's a barrier to calling people over the age of 18 by their first names or using "du". At school, teachers used "Sie" for us from when we started sixth form, from about 16.

    In the decades that I haven't lived in Germany, this seems to have become loosened somewhat in that people in trendy shops sometimes seem to want to address you as "du" even if you're clearly older, but I spend too little time there to know what the rules or indicators are for how that works.

    You should address him as 'Mr Gruber' (or Dr, as the case may be) and never as Hans, and certainly not as "Herr Gruber" unless you speak German to him. I'm sure many native German-speaking businesspeople are by now very used to doing business with native English speakers and many have been addressed by first names, but it would usually jar and would certainly come across as unprofessional.

  • What should I do in this case.
    I work for a German company that trades around the world, the boss of our division is Austrian and uses the title Magister (indicating he has a Masters degree). My German colleagues ignore it and refer to him as Herr X.
    I do use the titles Dr and Professor for other colleagues but Magister has no English equivalent and sounds weird when I use it so I use Herr which seems rude.

  • I've never heard of anyone in the German-speaking world using "Magister" as how they want to be addressed. It's extremely old-fashioned in that way. There used to be quite a few job titles that used it when Latin was still used to make such titles, but it's not a form of address in German that I've ever heard. Maybe it's an Austrian thing, or there's something I've missed completely, or he's miffed that he didn't manage to do a PhD? I'd say that if your German colleagues ignore it, you can safely ignore it, too.

    Magister has no English equivalent

    Of course it does, it's equivalent to 'master' for academic degrees. In fact, in the course of educational reform, quite a few German degrees have been re-christened 'master' from the older "Magister".

    Edit: Or is it just something in his e-mail signature? Then it's not meant as a title, just to tell people about his education.

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