It wasn't just the Japanese. "Korean time" was a thing back when Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world. Germans also used to be stereotyped as dishonest, thieving, dull and overly emotional before their country industrialized.

There is correlation between stereotypes and GDP.

The Brits used to be

> passionate, melancholy, romantic, and tearful

https://m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/thomas-dixon/british-stiff-up...

> overly emotional before their country industrialized.

After all some of the most famous Romantic artists came from Germany: Heine, Beethoven, Hölderlin and Goethe himself. The latter's Werther was the most emotional novel until at least Madam de Bovary, which was written about 80 years later.

Like the sterotypes common in (Western) Europe regarding Eastern Europe, like for the Polish people?

>Germans also used to be stereotyped as dishonest, thieving, dull and overly emotional before their country industrialized.

Any links on this?

>Any links on this?

https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=h...

TL;DR (it's a 213 page grad thesis) Old Germany used to be basically Hufflepuff, a simple-minded, loyal, obedient rustic bumbler who's too stupid to really be a threat or even much of a partner. New Germany arose post-German unification and especially post WW1, where the stereotypes shifted to the modern more sinister concept of a nation of amoral mad scientists and clockwork soldiers - largely as an attempt to justify Germany being the great rival of England.

That’s just extending the already existing stereotype of Prussians to all of Germany.