because he brought down the wall and reunited my fellow countrymen from east and west germany, it's a mystery to me why the americans didn't make him president yet! (if you don't believe me, you can watch footage from the day he brought down the wall right http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIwLuy7grSM&feature=related here)

seriously though, there is a german genre of music called "schlager", a weird mixture of folk and pop music that can only be enjoyed when you are either over 60 years of age or have drunk quite a lot of german beer. hasselhoff released several schlager songs (even in german) around here at the height of his popularity in the late 80's, early 90's. old people and drunk people still listen to that shit and adore hasselhoff for it. add to that the fact that all his scandals were not major news in germany and you got an alcoholic ex-star with a frighteningly large fan base (which grows even larger because many young people are "in on the joke" and play his music at parties just for shits and giggles). it also helps that he still performs pretty regularly in germany, check this shit out, my grandma watches that, its hasselhoff, drunk german pensioners and people in lederhosen all compressed in 2 minutes of german culture overkill :-)