In the first part of your journey to the secrets of Europe’s largest economy, Kate Ferguson looks at once more precisely on the German Obsession par excellence, when it comes to money: Saving. A blessing or a curse?
Maybe you have, since you were twelve, a day a or two boxes of cigarettes smoked, or chew them since their Childhood to the nails. Have you tasted nikotion pavement and disgusting-tasting nail Polish – nothing helped, the bad habits remained habits.
Which, we all know that only hard to get rid of. But you should try a good habit to get rid of: This is much, much harder. Believe me, I tried it.
When I came seven years ago from Ireland to Germany, I quickly realized that we would like to thank a bus driver when he brought a safe to the destination. And yet, I’m sticking to it: I say Thank you before I leave and pretend I didn’t notice the confusion or even disdain, which provoked my gratitude to others.
The more one is accustomed to, well-behaved and virtuous, to be, the more difficult it is to stop.
The native Irish Kate Ferguson from the DW-business editorial
The beautiful German virtue of thrift
With nothing better illustrated than with the generations-old German obsession to save money. This custom, so deeply in the national character is rooted as beer and sausage, has survived wars, a Hyperinflation and totalitarian regimes.
To find out how this can be, I’m on to the German Historical Museum in Berlin, to meet Robert Muschalle, the curator of the exhibition “Save the history of a German virtue.”
I was prepared to lead a conversation about the economy and had written me some frame data, so I wouldn’t seem so clueless. One of these Figures was “299 billion dollars”: That is the sum that will put the Germans at the end of this year, likely to be set aside. I had a surplus laid even a punch line: “The world’s greatest Currency! A title that Germany even defended – in contrast to the world Cup title in football!”
But if you can learn something from Mr Muschalla, it is this: The Germans and the Save – this is much more than a question of economic reason.
The savers is a good and peaceful citizens
This is much more than any economic theory, the basic thesis of the exhibition, which span from the early 19th century. Century to today and includes many documents and objects are gathered, the eternal German love relationship illustrate.
This story of the money accumulating, so I’m learning has started with the industrialization. As the population grew, grew, and poverty, were considered banks as institutions that would help the poor.
Workers, your earnings back, to were regarded as morally superior to those playful your money, or in the tavern at the head ran. And besides, you could assume that they would be facing a revolutionary transformation of the ownership rather reserved.
Always the French …
From this assumption, Muschalla, when he says that the German habit to have to Save to their roots in social control. You should consider this quite far-fetched, keep in mind what French workers did, while their German colleagues used their savings books.
“In France”, Muschalla, “you have revolted and in Germany you have saved.” These habits, he believes, have survived to the present day.
“If you look at the labor struggles in France, you will see armed workers. In Germany, we are proud of the fact that the social partners sit down at a tables to. This says much about the differences in European countries.”
Save, however, is not always a good idea
As a business journalist, you can have it soon to report, not only because of the impact filled German state coffers, and his habitual dizzying trade surpluses. The thought of Saving can be a Form of social and political conditioning, is an interesting Alternative to the idea that Saving means only that a reasonable German temptations to resist.
But it is also a theory, which remind us of the darkest periods of this country: times you don’t want to bring a lot of people here with a national virtue.
In the twenties, the Germans saw their savings due to Hyperinflation destroyed the national solzialisten claimed to know the perpetrators of this, and pointed the Finger at the Jews. Jewish money-lender, so they claimed, far away from the truth and plausibility, are to blame for the financial crisis of the post-war years.
In schools and workplaces has been propagated, however, the Save as a national virtue. To borrow money or to invest – it was almost regarded as a Vice.
However, it should pay off in Savings in the twelve years of the “thousand year Reich”. In 1938, began tens of thousands to save a German, for a “Volkswagen”, as the prototype was presented to the.
The soon turned out to be a fatal miscalculation, As Germany, the war broke out, were those who should produce the “Volkswagen”, moved in and her colleagues were allowed to continue to work in Wolfsburg, buildings, bucket trucks for the Wehrmacht. A car got nobody.
The Germans, Saving and anti-Semitism
Although the exhibition was very well received – Muschalla got requests from Australia and Canada – find a lot of German, it is very irritating, Muschalla, the advertising for the Save associated so closely with the anti-Semitism to see:
“There is a certain resistance to it, to take a step back and look at the Whole of the outside of a narrow economic Definition. This means that you also have to look at yourself closer.”
This is a suitable idea, I think, if you want to understand the German economy. After all, What do we do with our money, we do, in the end, to ourselves and to our fellow human beings. And that leads us to a point where we realize that, Ultimately, we are all a strange mixture of blessing and curse.