Below a Berlin street, behind a succession of thick steel doors, lies a storage room the size of a basketball court. Here, at the German Historical Museum, is a bewildering selection of treasure: Soviet-era busts and sculptures, a black iron trolley from the 1920s, a wooden box marked with the beguiling inscription “Napoleon’s hat”.
Every object here could tell a fascinating story, but what I’ve come to see I hope will tell me something about a German obsession. Robert Muschalla, a curator at the museum, walks me to a metal shelf at the back of the room stuffed with piggy banks and money boxes. The oldest is almost 400 years old but most date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As Muschalla, a 43-year-old economic historian, lifts them up with white-gloved hands, I notice how many of them are decorated with images of a beehive, that ancient symbol of order and prudence. Another thing jumps out: most of these everyday objects are engraved with rhymes and epigrams that point to a purpose far beyond the humble collection of coins and notes. “The fate of the nation rests only in our own strength [Nur in der eigenen Kraft ruht das Schicksal der Nation],” declares one. “Add to the wealth of the German people [Vermehre den Reichtum des deutschen Volkes],” says another.
I have come to the museum to answer a question that has vexed me, and much of the world, for many years: why is saving so important to Germans? It is a question that has exasperated policymakers in Washington and traumatised pensioners in Athens. During the years of the eurozone crisis, complaints over German austerity and German surpluses became commonplace. Governments across southern Europe were forced to impose harsh budget cuts in a frantic bid to bring their wayward deficits into line, and fend off the hounds of the global bond market. The economic picture was as dire as it was complex, but on the street the finger of blame often simply pointed north: to those tight-fisted Germans and their cruel obsession with fiscal discipline and budget austerity.
