The spectre of a defunct Deutschmark looms as the euro veers towards the rocks, writes DEREK SCALLYin Berlin
TIME HAS stood still in the pub near Berlin's Alexanderplatz. A tiled coal oven stands in the corner, Madonna is still pining for La Isla Bonitaon the radio and a sign in the window encourages customers to "pay with your old D-Marks".
“The marks just keep coming from who knows where – up to DM50 a month,” says waitress Marion. “For us, it’s all part of the service.” Eight years after it was replaced by the euro, the Deutschmark (D-Mark) is still accepted in many establishments across Germany, be it in a Berlin pub, a Leipzig supermarket or even a Düsseldorf lobster restaurant.
The ongoing euro-zone turbulence has revived Germans’ longing for their defunct currency, and stirred up memories of the painful parting on New Year’s Eve 2001.
“For many people here, the D-Mark is still anchored in their minds as the ultimate stable currency,” said Prof Henning Haase, financial psychologist at Frankfurt University.
Older West Germans remember the introduction of the Deutschmark in June 1948 as when wartime food shortages ended. Even younger West Germans trusted the D-Mark far more than any official institution or government.
For former East Germans, the Deutschmark was the most sought-after symbol of economic stability and success, and many were upset to lose it again after little more than a decade in their pocket.
The single currency got off to a bad start with the price-conscious Germans: the exchange rate of almost 2:1 made rampant price hikes on even small items in shops and cafes easy to spot.
Though official figures show inflation steady at less than two per cent since 2002, the euro in Germany remains tainted to this day as the “teuro” after teuer, the word for expensive. That perceived lack of love for the euro is confirmed in countless surveys.
Some 57 per cent of Germans told the Allensbach polling agency last year that they have “little” or “no” confidence in the single currency.
Some 55 per cent of Germans would prefer to have the D-Mark in their pocket, the survey found, while 62 per cent still translate prices mentally into D-Marks.
That, of course, only aggravates the “teuro” anger: comparison D-Mark prices are frozen at their 2001 level. Allensbach found that just 31 per cent of Germans have confidence in the euro and among the under-30s that figure rises only to a modest 44 per cent.
“This all has more to do with the aura of the D-Mark than any aversion to the European Union,” said Allensbach of its figures last year.
But the already-unloved “teuro” has slipped even further in German esteem amid the recent financial turmoil.
Worse, the bailouts have left Germany’s political establishment struggling to explain why, after years of insisting the euro zone did not open a door to bailouts, Germany will this week join up to the euro zone stability fund after green-lighting loans to Greece worth €22 billion.
Already several constitutional lawyers have promised to challenge the bailouts, claiming they breach the Maastricht Treaty and a later constitutional court ruling on the same.
To stir things up further, euro-critical conservative politician Peter Gauweiler, who challenged the Lisbon Treaty, has pointed out the change of tune among leading German public figures.
Last Friday, for instance, German president Horst Köhler expressed his “respect” for the European Central Bank’s buy-up of national debts.
Mr Gauweiler dug up a quote from Mr Köhler from 1998, when he was head of Germany’s Sparkasse state savings bank.
“If a country runs up high deficits by their own hand, then neither the community nor a member state is obliged to help this land,” said Mr Köhler to Der Spiegel magazine. “It will not be the case that the southern states will ask richer countries to pay the bill because, in that case, Europe would fall apart.”
At last count, Germany’s Bundesbank said that notes and coins worth DM26 billion (€13 billion) are still in circulation. As the Bundestag votes this week on its €123 billion contribution to the €750 billion eurozone bailout, perhaps it’s time for a Deutschmark whiparound.