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, she’s a cliché, but much more than a cliché,” 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-Württemberg, 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 euro’s hellhound

Correction: Milagros Morago

Reprints

Württemberg, as distinct from the former grand duchy of Baden with which it has now merged, is where most Swabians live (though as

one of Germany’s 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

schwäbisch” (ie, pay Swabian), a British electronics vendor once advertised in a Baden-Württemberg 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 inventors—men such

as Gottlieb Daimler and Robert Bosch, who spawned world-class firms—and 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-Württemberg’s “hidden champions”, according to Mr Kretschmann, the mainly family-owned firms that excel in tiny and

often obscure products—ventilators, 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. (“We’re 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. Germany’s 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 Schäuble, is a native of Baden-Württemberg. Though technically from Baden, whose people

consider themselves bons vivants beside Württemberg’s 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 Württemberg 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 they’re

spending money up there, while we here think so hard about it,” says Mrs Knupfer. Baden-Württemberg is one of three German states

(with Bavaria and Hesse) that send money to the other 13. Just as Germany doesn’t want a “transfer union” in Europe, so Swabians

dislike the notion in Germany itself.

From the print edition: Europe

SwabiaFrom 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-Württemberg 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 forWürttemberg-Baden during 1945–1952) are the three antlers of the coat of arms of Württemberg.

Swabia (/ ̍ s w eɪ b i ə / ; German: Schwaben, colloquially Schwabenland or Ländle; 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 German areal, 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-Württemberg.

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 Tübingen, Stuttgart Bavarian Swabia.

Contents

  [hide] 

1 Geography

2 History

o 2.1 Antiquity

o 2.2 Duchy of Swabia

o 2.3 Later medieval period

o 2.4 Early modern history

o 2.5 Modern history

3 Swabian people

o 3.1 Language

o 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 Tübingen, Stuttgart and Bavarian Swabia, to the exclusion of

of Main-Tauber-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 Württemberg (with the Prussian Hohenzollern Province), or the modern districts of Tübingen,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-Württemberg, 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 Tène 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.[1] 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.

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 Württemberg 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 Fürstenberg 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 Württemberg 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 Württemberg 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 Württemberg 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 Württemberg, 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 Süß took place in the Kingdom of Württemberg, 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 Donauwörth, 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 -elîn(Modern Standard German -lein). Examples would be: Schäuble, 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 Götz 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 Matthäus 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 Hölderlin , poet Uli  and Dieter Hoeneß, former football players and managers Friedrich Gustav Jaeger , German officer during World War II who participated in an

assassination attempt on Hitler Alfred Kärcher , Inventor, founder of Kärcher 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 Jürgen 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 München

Jürgen Klopp , football coach, current coach of Borussia Dortmund Sándor 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 Mörike , poet Leopold Mozart , father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—the family originally came from

Swabia Gerd Müller , 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 Räuber, 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 schönsten 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 Weizsäcker , 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 Švabo 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 GermanyPhillip InmanMany 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/AlamyFriday 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 no-nonsense 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 low-level 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 self-imposed "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 housewifeFrugal 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 GerlingenMonday 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 schwäbische 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-Württemberg. 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 Württemberg 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 – hälinge 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-Württemberg's former prime minister, Lothar Späth, 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, Häusle 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. "Baden-Württemberg 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 schwäbische Hausfrau, complete with overall, apron and broom.

"I'm Erna Schwätzele – 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 housewifeFrom Mr Florian Schartau.Sir, As an admirer of Niall Ferguson’s work I was astonished by his piece on Chancellor Angela Merkel being a proponent of the “deutsche Michel” attitude (“Merkel’s ‘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 chancellor’s policies – because the government doesn’t 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 doesn’t 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