For a bit of fun, just enter the search word „Miss Baden-Württemberg“ in the Internet. What will you find at the top of the list? The Fairest in the „Ländle“ perhaps? Far from it. „Miss Baden-Württemberg“ refers to the award for Leoni, a cow bred by Simpert Dangelmaier. Martin Walser, the famous author who lives on Lake Constance, likes to speak in this connection of an „inward-looking state.“ There is something charming about that, no doubt, but in an age of globalization it is very „Gaulish.“ So the government, whose head prefers to cycle around Walser’s homeland on his holidays, decided to put an end to this tendency to hide one’s light under a bushel. And what was the result? The campaign „Wir können alles – außer Hochdeutsch,“ i.e. we are capable of everything – except High German, which in modern German could be called a paradigm shift in the local population’s view of themselves.
Initially, peopled laughed a lot about it all. Scoffers even wondered whether the government was perhaps referring to the „Let’s putz“ campaign initiated by the lord mayor of Stuttgart. For the edification of non-Swabians, that involved the revival of the legendary „Kehrwoche“ or sweeping week, when the citizens were obliged to clean up the fields and footpaths, traditionally done on Saturday morning throughout the state. The mass clean-up effort under the lord mayor’s direction was obviously necessary because the younger people only tended to clean up when there was dirt lying around.
But the malice stuck in the critics' throats when they were presented with a list of what we really are capable of here, and about which we have every right to speak – in all modesty, of course: Europe’s number one in high-tech, our role as export champion, and of course, DaimlerChrysler, Porsche, Boss and Bosch, which are all over the world, but at home in Baden-Württemberg; and the many medium-sized companies from Fischer (dowels), Stihl (saws) and Würth (screws) to Ritter Sport (chocolate). Everywhere in the state of Baden-Württemberg there are diligent workers and inventers who apply for more patents than anywhere else in Germany. According to historians, this inventiveness has to do with the absence of raw materials, and with Protestantism. They point out that this particular religious persuasion forbids people to entertain silly ideas. From this it has often been deduced that though the Swabians were well able to build houses, „schaffe, schaffe Häusle baue,“ they otherwise subscribed to the words of the austere poet Eduard Mörike, „Mir macha kein Lebtag, mir halta kein Tanz,“ and allowed themselves little time off for amusement.
