My landsmen, Germans, are usually seen by foreigners as a folk of engineers. Sometimes as salesmen and engineers with some scientists and some philosophers. So I heard already that Germany would have become economically strong because of BMW. Would this guy have said KMW at least, then I could perhaps have agreed a little. The spell-check here knows BMW, but not KMW, so maybe most foreigners don’t know KMW? No country could economically become strong by selling overpriced cars, also not if they are branded as BMW. But other countries buy the product of Kraus-Maffey and Wegmann (KMW), which is battle tanks. During the second half of the Cold War and maybe longer known as the best battle tanks in all of the world. These certainly added very much to the economical strength of Germany. But they add almost nothing to German self-perception, although Germany is the third-biggest vendor of military products in the world. Once a Chinese confirmed to me that German is a very useful language for science and philosophy. He has been right with this, although I wonder whether he understood why. I met him only once. I also don’t know why he told me that, but it is much closer to German self-perception. Intellectual Germans think of the German people as the Faustian culture. But this involves also Germany’s neighbours. All Germans see their own people as poets and philosophers. Germans consist of eighty percent poets and twenty percent philosophers, but poets are valued higher! Historical German authors wrote that a text isn’t worth to be written and preserved if it can’t be written in rhymes. If a German can’t produce a rhyme, then he (I too) finds comfort in the idea to be a philosopher at least. So people, who know Germans better, won’t see Germans as engineers, but as philosophers and poets. This is still not the whole truth! It is possible to understand Germans still better than this. Who understands Germans best, will know that Germans are very spiritual people. It is more than only a coincidence that Martin Luther was German. Although some towns (including my hometown) have more Churches than roads, the spirituality isn’t limited to the christian faith. The spirituality of Germans was already found in the Heathendom before Christendom and is still found in Germans, who have overcome the pretension of exceptional superiority of Christendom, sometimes together with the whole christian faith. Whatever Germans do, can easily acquire traits of a religion. Germans could be the most spiritual people in the whole world. Only if you understand this, then you also understand my landsmen.