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| You are in: | | Front Page > Programmes > World Today > Euro Special |
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Peter Schneider  | |
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To coincide with the launch of the Single Currency across 12 members of the European Union, The World Today has commissioned seven short original works from leading European writers. | |
 Peter Schneider: The German View | |
I was never in love with the tight-lipped Deutschmark, but my relationship to it improved as my age and income increased. One of the things that helped was the astonishing change in its appearance. In its youth and even in its middle age, no person with the slightest sense of beauty could take it from his pocket without embarrassment. I recall a scene about 15 years ago in a branch of the Banco di Napoli in a small town in southern Italy. I watched uneasily while the attractive young bank employee shook her head as she leafed through the DM notes I had handed her to exchange for Lire. "My God, how ugly they are!" she finally called out and looked at me disconcertedly. Both of us looked at the faces of the morose, bushy-bearded old men that Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, was accustomed to printing on the money that was my country's only pride at the time. But as I said, that was a long time ago. Intelligent and gifted women meanwhile gaze at us from our bank notes, women clearly worthy of more tender feelings: the poet Annette von Droste-Hülsoff on the green 20-Mark bill; the composer Clara Schumann on the blue 100-Mark bill.  Adieu, fair ladies, farewell, alas! Latecomers to distinction, already you are headed for the oblivion of the shredder! But please, not forever! Because the current design of the Euro is, of course, a scandal: nothing less than a vote of no confidence against us, the Europeans. I see no women, no men, not even any buildings, nothing but computer-generated architectonic connecting elements: bridges, gates, window arches. Apparently they don't trust us Europeans to identify with Europe's best minds and monuments without first vetting their national origin. And what has become of the German eagle, whose pitiful shadow we find on the reverse side of the Euro coin? A lugubrious bird, with wings rounded off, who will never fly. And what should his talons hold on to: the Deutschmark? No, we don't want to start out the new era with such pettiness and self-distrust. I humbly request a little more largesse. When one day we discover a picture of Clara Schumann on a French Euro bill and the image of Margaret Thatcher on a German one - then, yes then... | |
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Todays programmes More Essays | |
 | Colm Tóibín |
| | Michèle Roberts |
| | Carsten Jensen |
| | Nico Helminger |
| | Antoni Libera |
| | Peter Schneider |
| | Manuel Rivas |
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 Is time running out?  A currency's wild ride  Notes & coins guide |
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