Call me unpatriotic but, although I’m German, nothing could ever have persuaded me to date a German man. I married an Englishman, finding Teutonic attitudes towards romance unbearable. Dating can go on for years, often ending in a quiet, dry dissolution after a decade. If you’re lucky, the relationship will limp on towards marriage, driven more by the need to save on taxes than any belief in what many Germans consider an antiquated institution.

Two hundred years ago, we had the tragic intensity of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther , a cornerstone of the Romantic movement. It was so wildly popular that it sparked one of the first waves of romantic consumerism: perfumes, clothing and even mugs depicting scenes from the novel were sold. Fast forward to today, and we have Fack ju Göhte

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