EXACTLY 20 years ago today, a lifelong dream came true for millions of East Germans.
The Berlin Wall had tumbled the previous November but, on July 1st, 1990, East Germans finally got what they had craved for decades: the Deutschmark.
From the early hours, excited easterners stormed banks to dispose of their little-loved Ostmarks - in total DM100 billion worth of Marx and Engels banknotes and cheap aluminium coins.
It was the bargain of the century - a 1:1 exchange rate to trade in an old currency worth seven times less than the new one. Small wonder DM3.4 billion changed hands on the first day.
"The mood was stressful and euphoric at the same time," recalled bank employee Ellinor Heinicke from Magdeburg in Super Illu magazine. "On Sunday, we got our west goods and on Monday the customers stormed the place." Two decades on, most easterners still smile when asked what they did with their first Deutschmarks. "We did very well from currency union," says Berliner Regine Standke. "Our parents gave us the money to buy a car in Ostmarks and, fair play to them, we only had to pay them back in Deutschmarks half the amount, the 2:1 rate for savings."
For Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the 1:1 exchange rate was a political decision with emotional and tactical elements: to show solidarity with easterners and to halt the wave of mass migration as promised in their demonstration slogan, "Bring the Deutschmark to us or we'll come to the Deutschmark." For many economists, the 1:1 exchange rate was and still is a moment of financial madness.
Economist Jürgen Stehn warned in reports to the Kohl government the exchange rate would cause a chain reaction in eastern states of exploding wage costs, bankrupt companies and mass unemployment. "It all came just as we predicted," said Mr Stehn of the Kiel Institute for World Economy, who remembers being attacked as a "traitor" for proposing a 1:4 exchange rate. "Large-scale migration still happened and those who didn't move west lost their jobs on a massive scale."
Like many great love affairs, this was a brief one: just 12 short years later, eastern Germans queued up again - less enthusiastically this time - to exchange their Deutschmarks for the euro.
Unification has left Germany infinitely richer culturally but, 20 years and €1.6 trillion in west-to-east transfers later, financially considerably poorer.
Remembering the Deutschmark's dozen years in the former east is crucial to understanding German doubts about the euro zone, doubts Angela Merkel has had to take into account in negotiations on the euro stability fund.
Surveys show Dr Merkel's fellow easterners lead the pack of German euro sceptics. "For decades, easterners had a long-distance, emotional relationship with Deutschmark and what it represented - the epitome of prosperity," said Mr Stehn. " . . . [To this] the euro can't hold a candle."