THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And a black eye for her country as well. The German punditry is questioning her insistence on squeezing Greece dry in the recent negotiations.

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

But German 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 post-war 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 Sunday.

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

Spiegel called the package that was finally hammered out a "catalogue 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 loud-mouthed 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. "Sell your islands, you broke Greeks... and the Acropolis too!" screams the other.

The sketch, which has already been viewed more than one million times on YouTube, ends with the tagline: "This summer, we Germans have a historic opportunity — not to behave like assholes for once."

So far they haven't grasped that opportunity.