TO HEAR Germany’s critics, one would think that the word and the concept of “austerity” was a dubious Teutonic gift to the world. In fact, Austerität is rarely used in German. It was borrowed fairly recently from English, which got it from French. The French got it from Latin, and the Romans took it from, of all sources, Greek: austeros means bitter. What others call “austerity”, Germans call Sparpolitik, “savings policy”, which has a much more positive connotation. In the week after the new agreement between Greece and its creditors, many people in Germany felt baffled and angry, but also resigned, at becoming the avatar of unloved austerity. Within a day of the plan, leftists in Greece and elsewhere urged a boycott of all things German. Wolfgang Schäuble has been the main bogeyman for opponents of Germany’s hard line in the debt crisis. A pro-Syriza newspaper portrayed the German finance minister in February as a leering Nazi promising to make soap from Greeks’ fat. Though irate, Mr Schäuble took it in his stride, having been in...
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