What is Swabian? For Wolfgang Schäuble, Peer Steinbrück is "the ideal choice" for a "Sauschwabe." Possibly because he, like Herta Däubler-Gmelin, is convinced that in Swabia "a whole lot of things come together that don’t happen elsewhere." Heiner Geissler says: "The Austrians are just as German as the Swabians." And Herbert Knaup believes that "with the dialect, you are closer to the soul." Perhaps also because "Swabian can be very tender," as Natalia Wörner has discovered. Above all, the identity-forming significance of language runs like a red thread through this highly fascinating, immensely informative, and humorous book. For writer Sibylle Lewitscharoff, dialects "carry much more than the standard language." And when the "socialist" Erhard Eppler refers to Ludendorff, who...