Strict order

EVERY summer, southern Europe’s tourist spots look forward to the arrival of planeloads of Germans on holiday. But this year encounters between Germans and their hosts have become loaded. In Knossos, in Crete, Giorgios Papadopoulos, a tour guide, interrupts his explanation of Minoan matriarchy to ask a visitor from Berlin about the relationship between Germany’s finance minister and its chancellor: "What’s up between Schäuble and Merkel?” Like many Europeans after July’s bitter bail-out negotiations over Greece, he has become intrigued by the internal workings of a country he sees as trying to “dominate” the European Union.

To Germans such outside fascination with their domestic politics is new, and it makes them uncomfortable. America, as a superpower, may be used to foreign scrutiny. But the rise of “Berlinology” frightens Germans. They have no appetite for becoming Europe’s “leader” (the German word is Führer). Given their past, Germans do not want to seem domineering.