Interesting story about Europe's medieval history, is that the bankers and loan officers and financial professionals were all drawn from a certain ethnoreligious community. And this intrinsic nature of being the foremost, and usually the only, bankers and financial professionals, who were essentially authorized to commit usury and extract interest from the populace... probably had a lot to do with their public perception, their lack of assimilation or integration into the prevailing local faith/religion/cultures, and their relentless persecutions, expulsions, and genocide.

Nevertheless, all that ugly history doesn't seem like it's put a damper on their ambitions or status through the 21st century.

> Germany is a remarkably rural and insular country compared to the Netherlands whose foundational myth comes from bankers and merchants.

There existed no "Germany" before the second half of the 19th century, only a list of various sovereign states.