re: #156 Sol Berdinowitz

I was trying to agree with you that Germans came from the same genetic stock as the rest of central Europe, it was their period of isolation from Rome that led to the development of their language and the roots of their culture, which, although greatly changed since their contact with Rome and Christianity, still have some characteristics that make them unique.

Yeah, and I disagree with that, since i don’t see any of that pre-Roman culture as having any more than a trivial effect on either modern Germany or even Medieval Germany.

Like their ability to go from being hard-nosed, meticulously practical and brutally efficient to swarmingly emotional, romantic and other-worldly at the sound of a few strains of a Wagner opera…

Like horoscopes, ‘national characteristics’ often fit whoever they’re being applied to. The above categorization could be said of the French or the English, too.