Bruce Stokes is the director of the Pew Global Economic Attitudes Project.

The deepening European economic crisis, which started out four years ago as a sovereign debt crisis and morphed into a euro currency crisis leading to the fall of several European governments, has now triggered a full-blown crisis of public confidence in the benefits of European economic integration, in membership in the European Union and in the euro.

This slow-motion train wreck has also exposed dissimilarities between Germans and people in other parts of Europe. These differences are not so much over policy concerns, such as austerity or bailouts, but reflect broader dissimilarities in attitudes. And they show how others perceive the Germans.

Germans view the direction of their country, the state of their economy and the value of the European project itself differently from other European Union members.

Positive view of Germans

Germans are the most self-satisfied people in Europe, the strongest supporters of both European economic integration and the EU. At the same time, Germany is the most admired nation in the EU and its leader is the most respected. And the Germans are judged to be Europe's most hardworking people and the most incorruptible.

A new survey of eight European Union countries released this week by the Pew Global Attitudes project finds that majorities or near majorities in most nations now believe that the economic integration of Europe has actually weakened their economies.

This is the opinion in Greece (70 percent), France (63 percent), Britain (61 percent), Italy (61 percent), the Czech Republic (59 percent) and Spain (50 percent). Only in Germany (59 percent) do most people say that their country has been well served by European integration and only in Germany does a strong majority (65 percent) believe EU membership has been a good thing.

German support for the process of European integration may reflect the fact that 53 percent of Germans are satisfied with the direction their country is headed in, compared with a median of only 14 percent for the other seven European countries surveyed, according to the Pew poll conducted from mid-March to mid-April, 2012.

Moreover, 73 percent of Germans believe the national economic condition is good, compared with only 15 percent of other Europeans. And, Germans who think the economy is going well are more than twice as likely to think the process of European integration over the last two generations has been good for Germany.

Germans ready to help out

But, contrary to common perceptions, the German public is not the road block to doing something about the euro crisis. In fact, Germans broadly share the views of other Europeans on a range of public policy options. Only 37 percent of Germans support more austerity, comparable to the median of the other seven EU states surveyed.

Nearly half the Germans (49 percent) would be willing to support more bailouts of financially distressed countries, that is more than in France (44 percent) or Britain (34 percent). And 42 percent of Germans support more Brussels' oversight of national budgets, only slightly more than the EU median (36 percent).

The real difference between Germany and the rest of Europe is in how the nation, its people and its leader are perceived.

Germany is the most respected EU country among those nations surveyed. Roughly eight-in-ten people in France (84 percent), the Czech Republic (80 percent) and Poland (78 percent) hold a favorable view of Germany. The Greeks, however, are harshly critical. Only 21 percent have a positive view of Germany.

However, Berlin's hard line in dealing with the euro crisis may have cost it some support among its fellow EU members. Germany's favorability is down 10 points in Spain since 2011, down six points in France and Britain.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is widely seen as the most effective national leader in dealing with the European economic crisis. Eight-in-ten Germans say she is doing a good job, as do about three-quarters of the French (76 percent) and two-thirds of the Czechs (67 percent), Poles (66 percent) and British (66 percent).

Merkel popular across Europe

In Germany, Merkel is significantly more popular among older people than among the young, but in other European nations her appeal cuts across generations. Notably, there is no significant gender gap in her appeal. Her efforts are appreciated equally by men and women.

In most countries, Merkel is popular across ideological lines, including support by 78 percent of Germans on the left. But, in a difference that bears watching with a new left-of-center government in Paris, only 54 percent of French respondents from the left think she is doing a good job with the crisis, 32 points lower than the approval she gets from the French right. Only in Greece (84 percent) does a majority think Merkel has performed poorly in the crisis.

And the German people are widely respected, despite the German-bashing that has been seen in street demonstrations and in newspaper headlines in other parts of Europe. When asked to name who they think are the hardest working Europeans, people overwhelmingly name the Germans. In particular, the French (86 percent) hold the German work ethic in high regard, as do the Spanish (77 percent). Germans are also seen as the least corrupt people in the European Union.

Europe's current travails have exposed rifts in the fabric of European unity - both about the European project and between the citizens of Europe - that suggest the dangers posed by the current crisis are far greater and the stakes in resolving the problems far larger than many may have been first appreciated. But concerns about anti-German sentiment are, for the time being, not borne out by survey data.

Editor: Michael Knigge