Top Bavarian politicians have always had the gift of unleashing waves of indignation through strong choice of words. This can currently be observed again in the bickering over the heating, and it is not at all surprising that ancient clichéd ideas about Bavaria and its inhabitants are suddenly flaring up. It’s kind of part of the country’s folklore. Some of the mockery sounds similar to that with which the publicist Johann Kaspar Riesbeck amused his brother in Paris in 1783. In Bavaria there are “sometimes the funniest characters in the world,” Riesbeck writes in his letter, adding that the residents have bloated chests, short stamped feet and narrow shoulders, “on which a fat, round head with a short neck sits very strangely.”
In the land of beer and eagle noses – Bavaria
