That’s dense and clearly something you’ve thought about deeply.

Rather repeatedly with very big intervals. Deeply - nah.

Western beauty standards largely come from antiquity—Greek and Roman ideals (symmetry, proportion, harmony). This gets revived during the Renaissance, primarily by Italian and French artists, not German ones.

Standards of beauty are not very general.

Anyway, I meant human beauty in this particular case. Which is, first, different from many other things, second, basically some set of familiar appearances, plus health and physique conditions defined by culture of the specific society (say, when child mortality was high and hunger still common in Europe, almost overweight women were considered attractive ; BTW, demographics of developer countries can be a consequence of evolution mechanisms intended to avoid Malthusian traps, say, if there's enough food for everyone for a short period of time, the population should grow as fast as possible, but if it is so for a long period of time, then you'd better stop, - seems counterintuitive, but in nature longer good times often precede longer bad times).

German musos, philosopers, and designs, their prominence peaked in different eras (e.g., Enlightenment, Romanticism, Bauhaus) but didn’t shape Western standards of beauty or culture.

I didn't mean prominence really, I meant associations, and I meant specific kinds in specific contexts, not wildcard. Also by "shape" it depends which kind of influence makes the threshold. Most of the "pompous and official" European music of late XIX century seems to have been influenced quite heavily.

Also about music - well, it's not nice to refer to authority, especially anonymous authority since I don't remember where I've read it, but apparently Ralph Vaughan-Williams would disagree with you, and would consider typical European music of his youth very heavily German-influenced.

Visual design like Helvetica became iconic due to functionality and simplicity, not just cos they were German…

Obviously true, but my point was the other way around, that there's a climate in which various approaches to aesthetic are born, and if some aesthetic becomes popular, some things general for the climate it comes from might become more accepted everywhere. A fuzzy thought really, but the closest I've come to rephrasing my original comment in this one.

Bach is a prime example

As a former fan I have to admit that Till Lindemann is a disgusting person

I've heard about Rammstein so many times that I just don't want to. A bit like a few other very famous collectives.

Except Blind Guardian and Rivendell and Draconian. These one can just listen to indefinitely.

Canada, New Zealand, and Japan. I'm sure plenty don't apply to the cleaner statement, but these places were really nice.

Whatever artifacts might be there... it's a real photo. I know the guy who was carried away.

The weirdness on the left side of his face is actually somebody standing just behind him