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The Swabian Housewife: myth or reality?

August 8, 2012

"One should have just asked a Swabian housewife," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel when asked about the Lehman Brothers' collapse in 2008. In Germany, the traditional image of a housewife in the southwestern region of Swabia has typically been a positive one: a woman who is wise with her family's money.

https://p.dw.com/p/15lUT

Yet is there anything behind that stereotype? Does the frugal Swabian housewife actually exist? Reporter Joachim Eggers takes that question to Gerlingen, a small city near Stuttgart that prides itself on Swabian values.