Germany and the euro

[AndyDT]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/8898945/Germany-The-reluctant-superpower.html

This extreme provincialism was the bane of visionary administrators. After visiting London or Paris, they would return scarlet with embarrassment at how laughably backward Germany was. Poor Goethe, in his years as administrator in the economically underwhelming state of Saxe-Weimar, would sometimes head off to the village of Ilmenau, try to persuade the locals to get their little flooded copper mine functioning, give up, and instead hike into the mountains where he would write poems and plays and study geology.

This, of course, changed with tremendous speed during the 19th century. Napoleon effortlessly defeated the forces of the Holy Roman Empire, abolishing the whole lot in 1806, and swept up the microstates into larger and more coherent units. There then followed a series of convulsions and wars which rubbed out more and more anomalies. A jigsaw of jokey backwaters was transformed into a superpower by trade – abolishing internal tolls, building railways and canals, creating a global merchant fleet. It was a magnificent success.

This is what I alwaqys find strange. A country like Germany that evolved in a completely different way to Britain trying to pressure a one-size fits all onto it, not to mention the rest of the continent.

[rumborak]

I didn't even read the quote there, Andy. My eyes scanned over it and I saw the words "Napoleon" and "19th century". Which means, it's the usual anachronistic ramble of the Telegraph.

rumborak