Cash-Loving Germans Are Finally Joining the Stock Market Frenzy

For the better part of five decades, Heiko Thieme urged and prodded his fellow Germans to invest in the stock market, to no avail. “The joke used to be that it was easier to break stones in Germany than to sell stocks,” says Thieme, a former broker and fund manager who did stints at Deutsche Bank AG and White, Weld & Co.

Money was rarely the issue. Germans are among the most disciplined savers in the world. The problem was, in a country where the scars of hyperinflation still run deep, the appetite for risk was never there, and so equity ...