Wed, May 26, 2010 page9

• Germans yearn for the return of the deutschmark

  • By Kate Connolly / THE GUARDIAN
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  In the back of the Berliner Republik bar on the banks of the river Spree, Matt, Otto and Christian’s eyes are fixed on a screen in front of them. The names and prices of 18 German draft beers flash up, bright green on a black background, and change every few seconds, according to who’s ordered what.

  It’s a pub game for the modern age, based on supply and demand. The trick is to buy the beer cheap and then give yourself a pat on the back when demand pushes the price up.

  “It gives a bit of a risque edge to ordering,” says Otto, a graphic designer. “But it also makes you feel strangely vulnerable.”

  The screen is more fruit machine than stock market, but it reflects the sense of playing a lottery common in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Germany as it has pumped billions of euros into bailing out profligate Greece and propping up the single currency, without knowing whether the injection will do any good.

  As the prices of the beers rise, news comes through from Frankfurt that in the real world Germany’s DAX index has fallen 106.86 points, despite the 750 million euro (US$918 million) rescue package that the Bundestag has just narrowly approved. On Wall Street and elsewhere the markets wobbled, a sure sign that no one believed the crisis was anywhere near over.

  Outside the bar, drawing on a cigarette, Pamela Schreiber pauses in contemplation.

  IDENTITY

  “Do I consider myself European? Well, of course, but first and foremost I’m a German,” the 33-year-old set designer says with conviction.

  The answer is not one that you would have expected a few years ago from a young person in Germany. This is the country where European enthusiasm has been easiest to find and where since World War II European interests have taken precedence over nationalist ones.

  According to Schreiber, however, Germans feel themselves increasingly torn over Europe.

  “We always knew in our heart of hearts that the euro would never be as solid as our deutschmark, but we gave up our beloved currency, which was actually central to our identity, because we believed in the European project so fervently,” she says.

  Now there is talk, albeit based on blog gossip and a tabloid desire to whip up a good tale, of a return of the mark. Some even claim that secret supplies of the defunct currency — the strength of which was seen as a legacy of the sweat and tears that Germans spent to build up their ruined economy after the war — are being printed in secret underground locations.

  Cabaret artists have been making jokes about wheelbarrows of notes, or telling the one about the German and the Greek who go out to eat, the German choosing the cheapest item on the menu, the Greek gorging on a range of dishes, before the waiter brings the German the bill at the end. The audience doubles over. But the reality is stomach-churning.

  “We are building up an almighty bubble of debt which is going to burst in one great bang,” says Hans-Werner Sinn, chief of Ifo, one of the country’s leading economic think tanks.

  That means a bitter round of budget cuts, deeper than any seen since 1945. Every area of German life is expected to take a hit, from education to welfare benefits, swimming pools to autobahns.

  Far-fetched as talk of the return of the mark seems, the more it is talked about, the more it is likely to become popular, despite Merkel’s insistence that if the euro fails, so will Europe.

  NOSTALGIA

  “Should we start printing d-marks again?” the conservative Die Welt asked recently.

  In the news magazine Der Spiegel — next to a lengthy cover story about how Germany, against all the odds, rebuilt itself “out of rubble and guilt” after 1945 — the 56-year-old Dutchman Leon de Winter, one of the best-selling authors in Germany, zealously pleads for the abolition of the euro, which he calls an “artificial construct.”

  He recalls with nostalgia the days when he’d hitchhike through Europe, and “the Germans had their solid mark, reliable like a Mercedes-Benz. I had the gulden, which had the dependability of a 17th-century Dutch merchant, the French had their elegant franc with the flair of an overcrowded Parisian brasserie and the Italians had their lira, as tarty and seductive as Mastroianni and Ekberg in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.”

  Most importantly, he adds, “back then no one forced us to take responsibility for the pension of a Greek civil servant.”

  Former German central bank head Karl Otto Pohl has joined a growing number of voices declaring the birth of the single currency was pushed through without proper discussion of the risks.

  “Greece, for instance, should never have been allowed to become part of the eurozone in the first place,” he said in an interview. “The European commission and the ECB [European Central Bank] must have realized that a tiny country like Greece, with no industrial base, would never be in a position to pay back 300 billion euros worth of debt.”

  German anger towards the Greeks has manifested itself in cancelled holidays.

  “It is the only way I can voice my protest,” one woman who recently pulled her booking to Corfu told the tabloid Bild.

  Her statement sums up the frustration of a country that for years, to make up for its warmongering past, shouldered the burdens of the European project. For decades it paid the largest share of Europe’s bulging budgets and grand schemes, putting its own interests second.

  But now it’s tired, indebted and running out of cash, and wants other members to show that they are as dedicated to the project before it continues to allow them access to its ATM.

  WEARY

  Germany’s weariness over recent days was summed up last Friday in the facial expression of its leader. Still reeling from a devastating election blow in Germany’s largest state, largely put down to her mismanagement of the euro crisis, Merkel looked tired, pale and drawn, her eyes aqueous from sleep deprivation as she held a red-carpet reception for ruddy-cheeked British Prime Minister David Cameron. Afterwards the two leaders emphasized the importance of stabilizing the eurozone.

  Back in the Berliner Republik, the three young men watch the prices of their chosen beers rise.

  “Time to be a bit more choosy, boys,” Christian says.
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