Hello to you in Germany!

You are, of course, correct that this is no more than an illusion of the imagination. The imagination comes from the children of German immigrants who truly know nothing of the "old country" except what parents and grandparents have told them. The other interesting thing is that when people immigrate, their experience of the "old country" becomes locked in time. The old countries progress like everywhere else, but in the mind of the immigrant/ emigrant, everything is imagined as they left it.