The old lady explained how people are trying to guard against losing everything: ‘Those who have money want to put it in property. We’d rather invest money in our own country than send it to Greece. We’re worried we’re going to have to pay for others. But what can the small man do? Other people don’t particularly like the Germans. They want the Germans to pay for everything. This currency splits people ever more. It’s divided Europe. And the Germans didn’t want to have this currency in the first place. One just doesn’t know what’s going to happen.’
Round the corner, at the house where Hegel was born, Frank Ackermann, an expert on that profound but mysterious philosopher, was unable to say what Stuttgart’s greatest son would have thought about the euro. But Ackermann knows what he himself thinks: ‘If we’d been allowed a referendum, we’d never have agreed to this Esperanto money.’
I am well aware that the Germans did not want the euro. When I lived in Berlin in the 1990s, I watched Helmut Kohl push it through in defiance of his own people, who wished to keep the German mark, symbol of postwar recovery and healthy national pride. Go into any bar and you could find angry people who told you it was madness to have the same currency as the Italians.
My guess was that on returning to Germany 12 years later, it would be possible to go into any bar and find even angrier people.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in