The German mentality

Hail, the Swabian housewife

Views on economics, the euro and much else draw on a cultural archetype

Feb 1st 2014 | STUTTGART | From the print edition

THE Swabian housewife made her debut on the world stage in 2008, when Angela Merkel, neither Swabian nor a housewife but the
chancellor of Germany, mentioned her at an event in (Swabian) Stuttgart. The American banks which were failing, she said, should have
consulted a Swabian housewife because she could have told them how to deal with money.
Yes, shes a clich, but much more than a clich, says Winfried Kretschmann with some pride, because the Swabian housewife
represents the starting point in German thinking on the euro and fiscal management. As the (Green) premier of the rich south-western
state of Baden-Wrttemberg, Mr Kretschmann should know.
In this section

Praying for peace

Statue of limitations

Madness on the Bosphorus

Hail, the Swabian housewife

An all-female race

The euros hellhound

Correction: Milagros Morago

Reprints

Wrttemberg, as distinct from the former grand duchy of Baden with which it has now merged, is where most Swabians live (though as
one of Germanys traditional tribes, their turf stretches from Augsburg to Switzerland). They are known for their quaint dialect, which
adds the diminutive le to almost any noun to make it sound cute, as well as for such delicacies as Maultaschen, pockets of dough
filled with meat and vegetables. But above all they are famous for being frugal, hating debt and getting the best deal. Buy British, zahl

schwbisch (ie, pay Swabian), a British electronics vendor once advertised in a Baden-Wrttemberg newspaper.
We used to be dirt-poor, says Gerhard Raff, a historian of Swabia whose books in Swabian dialect are barely comprehensible to other
Germans. Viel Steine gibts und wenig Brot (We have many stones and little bread), runs one old saying. Swabians in the 19th
century responded by emigrating to America or Russia, or by becoming master innovators. Swabians revere their inventorsmen such
as Gottlieb Daimler and Robert Bosch, who spawned world-class firmsand poets and philosophers, including Schiller and Hegel.
That tinkering creativity is the flip side of Swabian frugality, says Mr Kretschmann, because scarcity makes
innovation. Maultaschen came about when Swabian housewives wanted to reuse every last morsel and adapted Italian ravioli. Their
heirs are Baden-Wrttembergs hidden champions, according to Mr Kretschmann, the mainly family-owned firms that excel in tiny and
often obscure productsventilators, say, or ball bearings. To their owners, reusing every morsel means reinvesting the profits.

These traits stem from Pietism, thinks Andrea Lindlohr, a Green member of the state parliament. Pietism, which is to Lutheranism as
Puritanism is to Anglicanism, dominates the psychological landscape of Swabia. (Were the Piet Cong, jokes a real housewife.) It
crops up in some surprising contexts, such as a minor controversy attacking Harry Potter novels for their embrace of superstition. But its
main effect is to prize hard-working lives, with debt ( Schulden in German) frowned upon as akin to guilt (Schuld).
This Swabian cultural cocktail is seen as so successful that it colours German attitudes to the euro crisis. Germanys prescription of
austerity is most associated with Mrs Merkel. The daughter of a Lutheran pastor, she even gave a speech to the Pietists of Swabia last
year. Her finance minister, Wolfgang Schuble, is a native of Baden-Wrttemberg. Though technically from Baden, whose people
consider themselves bons vivants beside Wrttembergs Swabians, he still preaches to southern Europeans a good Pietist gospel of
saving, hard work and self-improvement.
If the Swabian contribution to these attitudes is obvious, the emphasis on its female and domestic sides is also appropriate, Ursula
Knupfer thinks. She is the spokeswoman for the Wrttemberg chapter of the German Association of Housewives. For a century her
outfit has trained women in good housekeeping, from cooking good Maultaschen to watching the family purse. It is still going strong,
with the only concession to a changing Zeitgeist being a rebranding in 2011 that put more emphasis on housekeeping than on wives
(there are a few male members, says Mrs Knupfer).
Such frugal values are not just for southern Europe to learn from. We Swabians look to Berlin and think: my, how loosely theyre
spending money up there, while we here think so hard about it, says Mrs Knupfer. Baden-Wrttemberg is one of three German states
(with Bavaria and Hesse) that send money to the other 13. Just as Germany doesnt want a transfer union in Europe, so Swabians
dislike the notion in Germany itself.
From the print edition: Europe

Swabia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the historical region of Germany. For the administrative region
(Regierungsbezirk) of Bavaria, see Bavarian Swabia.

Map of the Swabian Circle (1572)

The coat of arms of Baden-Wrttemberg shows the three lions passant of the arms of the Duchy of Swabia, in origin the coat of arms of the House of
Hohenstaufen. Also used for Swabia (and forWrttemberg-Baden during 19451952) are the three antlers of the coat of arms of Wrttemberg.

Swabia (/swebi/; German: Schwaben, colloquially Schwabenland or Lndle; in English also

sometimes Suabia orSvebia) is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany.
The name is ultimately derived from the medieval Duchy of Swabia, one of the German stem
duchies, representing the territory of Alemannia, whose inhabitants were interchangeably
called Alemanni or Suebi. This territory would include all of the Alemannic Germanareal, but the
modern concept of Swabia is more restricted, due to the collapse of the duchy of Swabia in the
13th century. Swabia as understood in modern ethnography roughly coincides with the Swabian
Circle of the Holy Roman Empire as it stood during the Early Modern period, now divided
between the states of Bavaria and Baden-Wrttemberg.
Swabians (Schwaben, singular Schwabe) are the natives of Swabia and speakers of Swabian
German. Their number was estimated at close to 0.8 million by SIL Ethnologue as of 2006,
compared to a total population of 7.5 million in the regions of Tbingen, Stuttgart Bavarian
Swabia.
Contents
[hide]

1 Geography

2 History
o

2.1 Antiquity

2.2 Duchy of Swabia

2.3 Later medieval period

2.4 Early modern history

2.5 Modern history

3 Swabian people
o

3.1 Language

3.2 List of notable Swabians

4 Pejorative usage of "Swabian"

5 See also

6 References

7 External links

Geography[edit]

Swabia within modern Germany. The area shaded in red corresponds to the districts of Tbingen, Stuttgart and Bavarian Swabia, to the exclusion of of MainTauber-Kreis (Stuttgart), and the inclusion of Calwand Freudenstadt (Northern Black Forest),Rottweil and Tuttlingen (Freiburg). Shown in yellow
is Schwarzwald-Baar-Kreis, situated at the transitional area between the Swabian, Upper Rhenish and Lake Constance dialects within Alemannic. Swabia as
marked on this map has a total population of close to 8 million (as of 2012), or roughly 10% of total German population.

Like many cultural regions of Europe, Swabia's borders are not clearly defined. However, today it
is normally thought of as comprising the formerSwabian Circle, or equivalently the former state
of Wrttemberg (with the Prussian Hohenzollern Province), or the modern districts
of Tbingen,Stuttgart, and the administrative region of Bavarian Swabia.
In the Middle Ages, the term Swabia indicated a larger area, covering all the lands associated
with the Frankish stem duchy of Alamanniastretching from the Vosges Mountains in the west to
the broad Lech river in the east: This also included the region of Alsace and the laterMargraviate
of Baden on both sides of the Upper Rhine Valley, as well as modern German-speaking
Switzerland, the Austrian state of Vorarlbergand the Principality of Liechtenstein in the south.

History[edit]

Duchy of Swabia around AD1000 shown in gold yellow including (present day) southern Alsace, the southern part of Baden-Wrttemberg, Bavarian
Swabia, Voralberg in Austria,Liechtenstein, eastern Switzerland and small parts of northern Italy. In green: Upper Burgundy.

Antiquity[edit]
Like all of Southern Germany, Swabia was part of the La Tne culture, and as such has
a Celtic substrate. In the Roman era, it was part of theRaetia province. In the 3rd century, it was
gradually settled by the Elbe Germanic Suebi and other components that came to make up

theAlemanni. The Alamanni were ruled by independent kings throughout the 4th and 5th
centuries. By the late 5th century, the area settled by the Alemanni extended to the Alsace and
the Swiss Plateau, bordering on the Bavarii to the east, the Franks to the north, the remnants
ofRoman Gaul to the west, and the Lombards and Goths, united in the Kingdom of Odoacer, to
the south.
[1]

Duchy of Swabia[edit]
Main articles: Alamannia, Duchy of Swabia and Dukes of Swabia
Swabia became a duchy under the Frankish Empire in 496, following the Battle of Tolbiac.
Swabia was one of the original stem duchies of East Francia, the later Holy Roman Empire, as it
developed in the 9th and 10th centuries. Due to the foundation of the important abbeys of St.
Gallen and Reichenau, Swabia became an important center of Old High German literary culture
during this period. The Hohenstaufen dynasty (the dynasty of Frederick Barbarossa), which ruled
the Holy Roman Empire in the 12th and 13th centuries, arose out of Swabia, but following the
execution of Conradin, the last Hohenstaufen, on October 29, 1268, the original duchy gradually
broke up into many smaller units.

Later medieval period[edit]

Charlemagne's family is known to have hailed from Swabia. The major dynasties that arose out
of the region were the Habsburgsand the Hohenzollerns, who rose to prominence in Northern
Germany. Also stemming from Swabia are the local dynasties of the Dukes of Wrttemberg and
the Margraves of Baden. The Welf family went on to rule in Bavaria and Hanover, and are
ancestral to theBritish royal family that has ruled since 1714. Smaller feudal dynasties eventually
disappeared, however; for example, branches of the Montforts and Hohenems lived until modern
times, and the Frstenberg survive still. The region proved to be one of the most divided in the
Empire, containing, in addition to these principalities, numerous free cities, ecclesiastical
territories, and fiefdoms of lesser counts and knights.

Early modern history[edit]

The territory of Swabia as understood today emerges in the early modern period. It corresponds
to the Swabian Circle established in 1512. The Old Swiss Confederacy was de facto independent
from Swabia from 1499 as a result of the Swabian War, while theMargraviate of Baden had been
detached from Swabia since the 12th century.
Fearing the power of the greater princes, the cities and smaller secular rulers of Swabia joined to
form the Swabian League in the 15th century. The League was quite successful, notably
expelling the Duke of Wrttemberg in 1519 and putting in his place a Habsburg governor, but the
league broke up a few years later over religious differences inspired by the Reformation, and the
Duke of Wrttemberg was soon restored.

Imperial abbeys and Free cities in Swabia in the late 18th century

The region was quite divided by the Reformation. While secular princes like the Duke of
Wrttemberg and the Margrave of Baden-Durlach, as well as most of the Free Cities,
became Protestant, the ecclesiastical territories (including
the bishoprics of Augsburg,Konstanz and the numerous Imperial abbeys) remained Catholic, as
did the territories belonging to the Habsburgs (Further Austria), Hohenzollerns and the Margrave
of Baden-Baden.

Modern history[edit]

In the wake of the territorial reorganization of the Empire of 1803 by

the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, the shape of Swabia was entirely changed. All the
ecclesiastical estates were secularized, and most of the smaller secular states, and almost all of
the free cities, weremediatized, leaving only Wrttemberg, Baden and Hohenzollern as sovereign
states. Much of Eastern Swabia became part of Bavaria, forming what is now the Swabian
administrative region of Bavaria.
The Nazi propaganda film Jud S took place in the Kingdom of Wrttemberg, with the
Swabians shown being terrorized by Jews.

Swabian people[edit]
Main article: Swabians

Language[edit]
Main article: Swabian German

The traditional distribution area of Western Upper German ( = Alemannic) dialect features in the 19th and 20th century

SIL Ethnologue cites an estimate of 819,000 Swabian speakers as of 2006. This corresponds to
roughly 10% of the total population of the Swabian region, or roughly 1% of the total population
of Germany.
As an ethno-linguistic group, Swabians are closely related to other speakers of Alemannic
German, i.e. Badeners, Alsatians, and German-speaking Swiss.
[2]

Swabian German is traditionally spoken in the upper Neckar basin (upstream of Heilbronn),
along the upper Danube between Tuttlingenand Donauwrth, and on the left bank of the Lech, in
an areal centered on the Swabian Alps roughly stretching from Stuttgart toAugsburg.
Many Swabian surnames end with the suffixes -le, -(l)er, -el, -ehl, and -lin, typically from
the Middle High German diminutive suffix -eln(Modern Standard German -lein). Examples would
be: Schuble, Egeler, Rommel, and Gmelin. The popular surname Schwab is derived from this
area, meaning literally "Swabian".

List of notable Swabians[edit]

This article contains embedded lists that may be poorly defined, unverified or indiscriminate. Please help to clean it up to meet
Wikipedia's quality standards. Where appropriate, incorporate items into the main body of the article. (October 2014)

Friedrich Adler, Jugendstil and Art Deco designer

Roland Asch, race driver

Dieter Baumann, Olympic gold medalist and anti-doping activist

Albrecht Behmel, writer and historian

Gtz von Berlichingen, "the knight with the iron fist"

Robert Bosch, inventor, industrialist and philanthropist

Berthold Brecht, poet and playwright

Gottlieb Daimler, developer of the second modern car (presented November 1886), 10
months after Karl Benz' patent of January 29, 1886. Founder of Daimler Motoren
Gesellschaft, today: Daimler

Dieter Dengler, Wildberg-born US pilot & Vietnam POW

Rudolf Diesel, Engineer & Inventor of the Diesel Engine

Josef Eberle, Swabian Poet who versed Swabian poems

Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate

Siegfried Einstein, poet

Georg Elser, tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler in Munich in 1939

Roland Emmerich, Hollywood director

Gudrun Ensslin, a founder of the German terrorist group Red Army Faction or RAF, a.k.a.
the Baader-Meinhof Gang

Hartmut Esslinger, industrial designer and founder of design consultancy Frog Design
Inc.

Johann Georg Faust, protagonist of tales and dramas

Wilhelm Groener, railroad chief in the German General Staff, Minister of Transportation,
Minister of Defense, and acting Minister of the Interior in the Weimar Republic

Alfred Haag, Communist & member of German Resistance

Lina Haag, Communist & member of German Resistance

Philipp Matthus Hahn, priest and inventor

Erich Hartmann, highest-scoring ace of WWII, 352 victories

Wilhelm Hauff, poet

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, philosopher

Martin Heidegger, philosopher

Ernst Heinkel, aircraft designer

Herman the Cripple, blessed of the Catholic Church and author of the "Salve Regina"

Hermann Hesse, poet, writer, 1946 Nobel laureate for Literature

Theodor Heuss, former President of the Federal Republic of Germany

Friedrich Hlderlin, poet

Uli and Dieter Hoene, former football players and managers

Friedrich Gustav Jaeger, German officer during World War II who participated in an
assassination attempt on Hitler

Alfred Krcher, Inventor, founder of Krcher Cleaning equipment

Johannes Kepler, astronomer and mathematician

Justinus Kerner, poet

Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer, biologist

Kurt Georg Kiesinger, former Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany

Jrgen Klinsmann, football (soccer) player, current coach of the United States men's
national soccer team, and former coach of the Germany national football team and FC
Bayern Mnchen

Jrgen Klopp, football coach, current coach of Borussia Dortmund

Sndor Wekerle, former Prime Minister of Hungary

Ignaz Semmelweis, physician and an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures

Stefan Hell, Nobel Prize-winning physician

Ferenc Erkel, composer

Franz Liszt, composer

Carl Laemmle, founder of Universal Studios in Hollywood

Johann von Leuchselring, Chancellor of Augsburg

Ottmar Mergenthaler, inventor of the linotype

Eduard Mrike, poet

Leopold Mozart, father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozartthe family originally came from
Swabia

Gerd Mller, former football (soccer) player

Johannes Nauclerus, historian, university rector/chancellor

Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer, theologian, philosopher and patron of Hegel

Erwin Rommel, World War II general

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, philosopher

Friedrich Schiller, historian and writer, Wilhelm Tell, Die Ruber, Maria Stuart, "Ode an
die Freude"/"Ode to Joy"

Harald Schmidt, late-night talk show host

Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer, highest scoring nightfighter ace of WWII, 121 victories

Hans Schober, structural engineer

Hans Scholl, founder of the White Rose resistance against the Nazis

Sophie Scholl, member of the White Rose resistance against the Nazis

Bernd Schuster, former football player and coach

Gustav Schwab, writer, most popular for "die schnsten Sagen des klassischen
Altertums"

Claus von Stauffenberg, leader of the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler

Margarete Steiff, toy maker

Andreas Stihl, founder of Stihl Maschinenfabrik

Ludwig Uhland, poet

Richard Vogt, aircraft designer

Richard von Weizscker, former President of the Federal Republic of Germany

Pejorative usage of "Swabian"[edit]

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources.
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2015)

In Switzerland, Schwab is a generic term for Germans. It may be turned into a derogative by
prefixing Sau- "pig", as in Sauschwabe. The division of Alemannic Swiss from the Swabians can
be traced to the Swabian War of 1499. In Macedonian, Polish, and Bulgarian, "Shvab" or
"Szwab" may be a pejorative term for any German, not just one from Swabia. In parts of the
former Yugoslavia (i.e., Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina), the
more neutral term vabo is somewhat applied to all German peoples who lived in those regions
until shortly after World War II (called Danube Swabians though most of them came from
neighboring Lorraine and the Palatinate), and to their descendants; it is even occasionally used
as a slang or derogatory term to refer to all German speakers including Austrians and Swiss
Germans.

See also[edit]

Danube Swabians (Donauschwaben): Banat Swabians, Germans of Serbia, Satu Mare

Swabians, Swabian Turkey

Duke of Swabia

Swabian children

New Swabia

Swabian League

Schwaben Redoubt (World War I)

THE GUARDIAN

The Swabian housewife exemplifies

everything that is wrong with Germany
Phillip Inman
Many young Germans are opting not to have children who can blame them in a
traditional culture where they get scant support?

German mothers are forced to take

on the job of sole childcarers in contrast to their UK and French
counterparts, where the state shares the job. Photograph: Catchlight Visual
Services/Alamy
Friday 21 September 2012 10.57 BSTLast modified on Wednesday 21 May
201409.01 BST
The Swabian housewife praised by Angela Merkel for her thrift and nononsense attitude to life (accumulating wealth but not flaunting it) is
undermining Germany's economic and cultural health. Far from being the
perfect citizen, she and her husband are causing untold damage. Britons on
left and right may look to Germany for lessons of success, but the Swabian
cliche exemplifies everything that is wrong about Germany. It is why many
young Germans reject the traditional lifestyle that comes with Germany's

traditional economic model disastrously, by avoiding the expense and

restrictions connected with having children.
Young, middle income people across Europe are more alike every year.
They share similar tastes and yearn for similar futures. Young Germans are
the same. Yet looking ahead, they fail to see how they can match their
parents' lifestyles. They are living in an ageing society that insists on
retreading a traditional culture so stultifying and straightjacketed that it
suits only those who like repetitive work practices that date back to the
1950s.
Of course young Germans can, with training and education, create and
enjoy world-beating incomes and wealth for themselves, but the education
and training needed to win a decent, well-paid job takes time. Many are
deep into their late 20s or early 30s when they qualify.
There will be many boring years in and out of university and the same lowlevel on-the-job training experienced in the UK, unless engineering or
another form of metal bashing is the chosen subject.
And when they gain the good job, there is the expectation that they will go
through the old routine of working incredibly hard while living up to
traditional norms of family life.
Women are the worst affected (hence the popular emphasis on the Swabian
housewife, who, like a member of the Women's Institute, is championed by
the prime minister as the backbone of society rather than an outmoded
throwback).Mothers are forced to take on the job of sole childcarers in
contrast to their UK and French counterparts, where the state shares the
job. Like Italians, they are also told to look after an elderly relative without
much state support. For young people from poorer backgrounds, the
situation is even worse.
So it is no coincidence that the birth rates in the UK, Sweden and France far
outstrip that of Germany. Berlin has thrown some money at mothers in
recent times the recent debate over Betreuungsgeld (childcare subsidy) is
one example but there is no sign of a change in attitude.
Making matters worse, wealthier families act as bulwarks for tradition
bykeeping much of their riches offshore to minimise their tax, restricting
the power of the state to step in and help. Contrary to the myth of the
thrifty conservative German middle class, they were some of the biggest
investors in US sub-prime mortgages ahead of the 2008 Lehmans crash.
Many young people enjoy the traditional system. Others choose to opt out.
As elsewhere, there are the unmarried couples, mixed-race and
reconstituted families, yet it is a trend only recently acknowledged and
certainly not embraced by the state.

Without a hopeful, plentiful and enthusiastic young workforce, Germany

will find it increasingly difficult to maintain living standards. Its foreign
ministry, which is dominated by free marketeers, is convinced the free flow
of labour, or mass immigration, is the answer. Lots of young foreign
workers will invade Swabian villages to do the jobs left vacant by a selfimposed "no child" policy, say its economic experts. Will the Swabian
family approve? German economists argue it is the only answer.
The UK, rather than holding out, has long embraced a more laissez-faire,
flexible approach to labour rules that allow young people, whether
homegrown or imported, to displace the old. There is, of course, plenty
wrong with the UK's approach to building a better society: the suburbs of
our cities harbour increasing numbers of older people, many of whom
cheerlead for an austerity budget that hurts the young. But they are feeble
and disorganised compared with their German counterparts.

Angela Merkel's austerity postergirl, the thrifty Swabian housewife

Frugal housekeeping and balanced budgeting stems from an area with a history of
poverty and a religious avoidance of worldly amusements

Waltraud Maier and Heide Sickinger

enjoy their Swabian housewife roles in Gerlingen, near Stuttgart and
would never buy on credit. Photograph: Frederick Florin/AFP
Julia Kollewe in Gerlingen
Monday 17 September 2012 12.06 BSTLast modified on Wednesday 21
May 201408.51 BST
In the sleepy, picturesque towns and villages of south-west Germany, the
paragons of thrift are doing what they do best. They shop frugally, use
credit cards rarely and save up to a third of a property's value before
applying for a mortgage.
The schwbische Hausfrau southern Germany's thrifty Swabian
housewife is frequently invoked by Angela Merkel. The German
chancellor argues that Europehas been living beyond its means and can
learn from these women's frugal housekeeping and balanced budgeting.

Heide Sickinger and Waltraud Maier, two housewives from Gerlingen, near
Stuttgart, agree. "A housewife keeps the family together and the money,"
says Maier. "I don't buy on credit. People never used to live beyond their
means here," she adds, before noting that the younger generation are more
cavalier. She and her friend only use credit cards when they go on holiday,
and make sure they have enough money in their accounts to pay off the
debt immediately. Both believe that "southern Europeans are a different
breed. They are more easy-going".
The two women say that they only tend to buy what they really need (with
the exception of a flatscreen TV). Even a wardrobe counts as a luxury
purchase because Swabians don't buy cheap. They value quality, which
means a wardrobe has to be solid wood, so it lasts a lifetime.
Similarly, the two women buy their food at the butcher's, local farms and
markets, rather than at discount supermarkets such as Aldi and Lidl. "The
quality is better," says Maier, "and you can buy two carrots rather than a
whole kilogramme." She never throws anything away old bread is made
into bread dumplings, for example. Many people in this rural area grow
their own fruit and vegetables, and bottle or pickle them.
This outlook is informed by a national psyche profoundly shaped by the
experience of the Weimar republic's debt mountain and hyperinflation in
the 1920s, when people pushed carts overflowing with banknotes through
the streets.
You won't find any luxury boutiques in Gerlingen. Nonetheless, its 20,000
inhabitants have more purchasing power an estimated 500m (400m) a
year than any other town in Baden-Wrttemberg. Even the nearby state
capital, Stuttgart, doesn't have many luxury shops. Compare that with
Munich's Theatinerstrasse, which is lined with international brands such as
Dolce & Gabbana, Armani and Swarovski.
"Bavarians live the baroque life," says Angela Schmid, head of the German
housewife association's Wrttemberg branch. "Swabians do buy luxury
clothes and other goods, but they don't like to show off. You might see a
Swabian housewife enter a luxury boutique who is dressed like her cleaner.
You won't see amazing hats in the street either or jewellery people only
show them to each other in private."
Swabians even have an expression for this hlinge reich, which means
"secretly rich".
Catharina Raible, director of the Gerlingen town museum, says that when
Swabians do splash out on something like a fur coat, they wear the fur on
the inside. "Not outside so you don't see it."
She recounts that Robert Bosch, the founder of the electronics company,
whose family still lives in Gerlingen, used to wear a thick loden coat with an

inside fur lining: "a typical Swabian". Despite the family's wealth, the
children wore clothes that had been mended. Sickinger says: "You learn
how to save from the rich."
Gerlingen is wealthy because many Bosch managers live there the
company has its headquarters in the town and its hillside homes are
popular with those working in Stuttgart, which is a 25-minute commuter
train ride away. Baden-Wrttemberg's former prime minister, Lothar
Spth, also lives in Gerlingen.
Both Sickinger and Maier drive Mercedes cars, but Sickinger recalls that
she and her husband drove battered old cars until her father-in-law died.
That's when they bought a one-year-old Mercedes. Her mother-in-law said
at the time: "Grandpa would never have bought a car, but a field." Maier
chips in: "People never sold any land. The older generation were far more
thrifty than us."
Southern Germany's frugality has its roots in the 19th century, when the
area was very poor. Another influence was Pietism, a movement within
Lutheranism that emphasised hard work and shunned worldly
amusements.
The Swabian saying Schaffe, schaffe, Husle baue which translates as
"work and work to build a house" also dates back to that time. "You feel
guilty when you're not working," says Sickinger. Swabians typically buy or
build their own homes in their late 20s to early 30s, and they also start
saving for retirement from a young age.
Mortgages are traditionally provided by building societies in Germany and
the rule of thumb has been for people to save a third of the purchase price
and to borrow at fixed mortgages for up to 25 years. Unlike in the UK,
where people usually upgrade to bigger homes as soon as they can afford to,
a house is bought or built for life.
German families are squirrelling away almost twice as much as UK
households, according to a Lloyds TSB report this year. The typical German
household has 8,609 in savings and investments, against 5,009 in the
UK.
The chunk of their incomes that Germans put into savings, investments and
pensions has been stable at 10% in recent years, while Britain's savings
ratio was on a downward trend until the recession and has since risen to
around 7%.
Swabians lead the way when it comes to saving in Germany. "BadenWrttemberg has a lot of industry, so people are budgeting on a secure
basis it's not pure misery," says Schmid. Today the south is Germany's
wealthiest region.

Deutscher Hausfrauenbund, the German housewife association that she

works for, offers courses in how to run a household, from practical skills to
teaching young people how to budget. It also offers a "master housewife"
qualification for the more ambitious. This used to be a badly paid job but
that is changing now. Hospitals, old people's homes and rehabilitation
centres increasingly need people with those qualifications, under a federal
German law that was passed five years ago. Other master housewives run
organic food shops.
Gerlingen, for its part, offers housewife tours of the town, which are very
popular the guide Diana Schneider dresses up as a schwbische
Hausfrau, complete with overall, apron and broom.
"I'm Erna Schwtzele she knows how to clean and work and keep the
money together. Nothing comes from nothing."

FINANCIAL TIMES FT

July 16, 2013 10:08 pm

A supercharged Swabian housewife

From Mr Florian Schartau.
Sir, As an admirer of Niall Fergusons work I was astonished by his piece on Chancellor Angela Merkel being a
proponent of the deutsche Michel attitude (Merkels deutsche Michel ploy is bad economics, July 12).
First, Prof Ferguson relates to Ms Merkel only at the beginning and at the end of his article. In between he sandwiches
the opinion of Prof Hans-Werner Sinn who is, to put it mildly, not at all a fan of the chancellors policies because the
government doesnt buy into the Greeks-steal-from-German-taxpayers-theme.
Prof Ferguson points to the German current account surplus since 2007 and attributes it solely to the euro. What he
doesnt mention is the years since 2003. Germany accomplished dramatic labour market and welfare reforms that
boosted German competitiveness. The sick man of Europe turned into an economic powerhouse with huge exports.
So, what exactly is Prof Ferguson talking about when he mentions the alleged attempt to Germanise the periphery?
There is a lack of competitive companies and an efficient welfare state in many European countries that would be central
to a full recovery. The deutsche Michel is an outdated image of a provincial, naive and slow-paced Germany. In recent
times Germans could be better described as an urban Swabian housewife supercharged by globalisation.
Florian Schartau, Essen, Germany