Interesting, I wasn't aware of the German convention. It seems slightly better;

As for me, I dislike stuff that looks like the end of a sentence but actually isn't or vice versa, so I feel very uneasy when I have to use something ending with a full stop (e.g. “etc.”) immediately followed by something starting with a capital letter (e.g. “I” or a proper name), and I try to avoid that by reworking punctuation to make it clear whether or not I'm starting a new sentence. (Even in iii's comment where “century” starts with a lowercase letter, some part of my brain alieves that there are two separate sentences.)