The Importance of Horizontal Stripes

I wonder why so many illusion enthusiasts seem to be like German and Austrian. I think it has to do with that was where the hot seat of psychology and brain research was at the time. There was a guy named Herman von Helmholtz. He came up with these squares, right, that are not actually, they don't have confining lines or defining lines. But ones that are horizontal seem smaller and shorter than ones that are vertical.