"[...] like a child on a recorder; a sound, but not in government."
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

In Germany, it seems to me that that the "lifelong musical memories" left by the recorder have, shall we say, not led to a deep love for the instrument among most people.

Too bad, because it can be a nice instrument. I used to play the recorder but I stopped after I got complaints, not about the recorder but when I started playing the trumpet. As soon as I could get a sound out of the latter, I started playing with a mute, so that was settled, but I decided that it would be better to not play any wind instruments that couldn't be muted. Anyway, I only have plastic recorders and you can stand on your head and nothing will make them sound good.

The idiotic "German" fingering system should have been banned, however. They still use it in schools here, which leads to the manufacture of hundreds if not thousands of inferior instruments being made, wasting tonewood, which is a valuable and disappearing resource.

From the companies Moeck and Mollenhauer in Germany, and probably others, you can get recorders out of any imaginable kind of tonewood. I have some reservations about making recorders out of woods like rosewood, grenadilla or mahagony. I won't say that an oboe or a clarinet is somehow "more worthy" than a recorder, but one of the former two is necessary, or at least extremely desirable, for them, whereas you can make a perfectly good recorder out of pearwood, maple or other non-endangered woods.