I don't think German governing and financial elites ever wanted Greece in the euro, and were happy to seize the wall-slamming opportunity. Yet there's a contradiction between their debt-sinner-needs-punishment attitude, and their manipulation of the single currency to their advantage -- both by using internal devaluation to gain a competitive advantage wrt euro area countries (and the "converging" countries whose currencies are euro-pegged), and in benefitting on world markets from improved terms of trade thanks to a softer currency than the DM would have been, as a result of the very presence of weaker economies in the euro-mix.

That contradiction is fundamentally Protestant: judgemental puritanism on the one hand, hard-nosed business attitudes on the other -- and some self-congratulatory bullshit about how you deserve your success because you are virtuous (not underhanded and greedy).