Germany: Pining for the Deutschmark

Germans are nostalgic for their old, solid currency, the Deutschmark, said Marc Beise in Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung. Rumblings of discontent with the euro common currency began in May, after the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund bailed out bankrupt Greece. The European bank’s rescue of Ireland last month, which is likely to cost German taxpayers more than $100 billion, has pushed the issue to the surface. Ireland, shackled to the euro, couldn’t devalue its currency to lower its debt burden, so it was forced to turn to other European Union countries for help. Now, with Spain, Portugal, and even Italy teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, “the debate has begun in earnest” over whether to kill the euro.

“Germans never wanted the euro in the first place,” said Jeremy Warner in the London Telegraph. Opinion polls in 1999, when the common currency was adopted, showed a strong majority against it. Even the German politicians who agreed to monetary union did so only with great reluctance. “It was thrust upon them as the price that the rest of Europe demanded” for supporting the reunification of West and East Germany. So it’s no surprise that a leading German industrialist has now proposed splitting the euro into two currencies—a “northern euro” to be used by Germany, Scandinavia, and France, and a “southern euro” for the struggling Mediterranean countries, which would be free to devalue it as needed. The problem is that the northern euro, essentially just another name for the Deutschmark, would be much stronger than the current euro, and therefore Germany’s export industry—the engine of its economy—would suffer due to high prices for German goods. Germany’s miraculous growth and low unemployment would soon be a thing of the past.

Bringing back the D-mark “isn’t merely a stupid idea,” said Philipp Löpfe in Zurich’s Tages-Anzeiger. “It’s a popular, and therefore a dangerous, idea.” Germany’s abandonment of the euro would completely destroy the EU. Germany isn’t just any other European country: As the continent’s largest economy, it plays the key role of buffer against major economic shocks. And politically, the EU needs Germany bound tightly within it to ensure the peace. It’s up to German leaders to explain to their people that this “mixture of economic ignorance and nationalism” is unworthy of them.

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But it’s unfair for Germans to play the role of everyone’s rich uncle, said Rainer Hank in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Germans and the other European peoples signed up for monetary union, not a “wealth transfer union” and still less a “prison union.” European countries can “get along just fine” even without a common currency. “Open markets and mutual trade are adequate pacifying instruments of international friendship.”

Despite ample frustration, we won’t abandon the euro, said Holger Kreitling in Berlin’s Welt am Sonntag. There are plenty of Germans who love the new currency. Euro coins all have a map of Europe on one side, and on the other a national symbol: the eagle for Germany, Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man with outstretched limbs for Italy. Finding euros from other countries in your pocket is a pleasant “reminder of holidays and business trips.” It’s “our money”—our sense of a European “we.” We’re not giving it up.