Germans lament 'disaster' in Greece talks

Chancellor Angela Merkel may appear to be the victor in the Greek bailout standoff, but many Germans looked on in dismay at the heavy cost to the country's image.

Merkel and her hard-line finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, drove a tough bargain at the marathon negotiations, in line with Berlin's stated goal of defending the cause of fiscal rectitude.

But while Merkel, often called Europe's de facto leader, has grown used to Nazi caricatures on the streets of Athens, a backlash appeared to be mounting this time at home too.

Commentators of all political stripes said they feared that Berlin's "bad cop" stance in Brussels had brought back "ugly German" stereotypes of rigid, brutal rule-enforcers.

"The German government destroyed seven decades of postwar diplomacy on a single weekend," news website Spiegel Online said.

"There is a fine line between saving and punishing Greece. This night, the line has disappeared," tweeted Mathias Mueller von Blumencron of the conservative standard-bearer Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as the details of the German-brokered austerity-for-aid deal emerged.

The center-left daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung wrote, "Merkel managed to revive the image of the ugly, hardhearted and stingy German that had just begun to fade.

"Every cent of aid to Greece that the Germans tried to save will have to be spent two and three times over in the coming years to polish that image again."

After a shock Schaeuble proposal for a temporary Greek exit, or "Grexit", surfaced over the weekend, spooking Athens and many European partners, the Sueddeutsche asked in an online forum, "Is Germany too hard on Greece?" It drew an outpouring of sympathy, along with some criticism, for Athens.

Spiegel called the package that was finally hammered out a "catalog of cruelties" that read like a "plan to humiliate Greece".

During the negotiations, two German comedians captured the mood, creating an Internet sensation with a viciously satirical video called Our precious German euros.

The pair mimic loudmouthed wealthy Germans having a phone conversation in which they simply quote headlines from the powerful pro-Grexit daily Bild.

"I think we Germans should be asked if we want to keep paying!" shouts one. Screams the other, "Sell your islands, you broke Greeks, ... and the Acropolis too!"

Nils Minkmar, a German historian and journalist, said that the tortuous series of negotiations with Athens appeared to have been conducted by bean-counters rather than diplomats.

"Had someone communicated the German position professionally, then perhaps we would not come off looking so horribly disagreeable," he said on Twitter.