U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby at Lambeth Palace on May 8, 2019 in London | Pool photo by Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images Pompeo is dead to Berlin US secretary of state had better things to do than go to Germany, and it hasn’t gone down well.

BERLIN — Everyone knows Germans hate tardiness. But if you want to really push a Teuton over the edge, cancel a meeting at the last minute.

Just ask U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who canceled a trip to Berlin Tuesday, jilting Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.

"This is difficult to excuse," the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the daily bulletin of Germany's bobo elite, seethed. What could be more "pressing" than what would have been Pompeo's first official visit to Berlin as secretary of state, the paper wondered.

That the answer to that question, at least in Pompeo's view, was Iran, only enraged the Germans more. Berlin continues to cling to the illusion that Europe can save the nuclear deal with Iran that the U.S. abandoned a year ago and regards U.S. policy toward Tehran as belligerent.

The fact that Pompeo skipped Berlin to indulge in some serious saber-rattling vis-à-vis Iran from Baghdad only added insult to injury.

The more troubled Germany's relationship with another country becomes, the more it clings to the rituals of international diplomacy.

Germany's official reaction to the cancellation has been one of equanimity. Behind the scenes, officials are furious.

While that's partly due to the difficult state of German-American relations in the Trump era, it also reflects the deep importance of ritual in German foreign policy.

The more troubled Germany's relationship with another country becomes, the more it clings to the rituals of international diplomacy.

In the German view, dialogue, no matter how devoid of substance, is preferable to silence. Consider Merkel's continued engagement with Vladimir Putin in the wake of Russia's incursions into Ukraine. The German leader spoke to him dozens of times after Russia's annexation of Crimea.

While her efforts failed to convince Putin to change course, her home audience gave her an A for effort.

So even if Pompeo's visit promised to yield little beyond a photo-op and some polite small talk, the Germans expected him to go through the motions.

Never mind that Pompeo made it clear the he plans to reschedule the Berlin trip and visit in the near future, the secretary's no-show was nothing short of an affront.

So just how mad are they?

"The German-American relationship is in tatters," the Süddeutsche concluded.