The outcome was a sudden fall in the value of the dollar, which depreciated by 50 against the Deutschemark.

Moreover, an increasing number of Germans, openly or secretly, want to have the Deutschemark back.

Germany was reluctant to give up the Deutsche Mark, a symbol of its economic power and commitment to price stability.

For 2000 to 2001 the official exchange rate of 1.95583 deutsche mark per euro has been used to convert deutsche marks into euros.

2.2 In 1948, the Deutsche Mark was introduced in the Federal Republic of Germany, and stocks in Reichsmark were reissued.

Germany discovered this during the 1960 s and 1970 s, and resisted the Deutschemark s trend toward becoming an international reserve currency.

In the early 1990 s, when the plans for the European Monetary Union (EMU) were drawn up, Germany insisted on a Stability Pact as a price for giving up the Deutschmark.

If Spain and Germany still had the peseta and the D mark as their respective currencies, the differences in trade balances would cause the mark to appreciate and the peseta to decline.

As the DM became a major international reserve currency during the 1980 s and 1990 s, large gyrations in the dollar exchange rate did, indeed, have at times a dramatic impact on the German economy.

The change is evident by asking a single question would it still be possible today to give up the D Mark and introduce the euro as a common currency? The answer is a resounding no.

One reason why Germany agreed to merge the DM into the euro was the hope that a monetary union would distribute the burden of the reserve currency role over a wider area.

After all, the eurozone is not a federal country, and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (article 123 in particular) explicitly forbids monetary financing of the member states, which was Germany s condition for giving up the Deutschmark.

Indeed, adjusted for inflation, the dollar is now nearly as low against the euro as it was against the deutschmark in 1992, when German unification resulted in the breakdown of the European currency system.

Exports initially did not constitute a path to recovery because the deutsche mark was overvalued, and some manufacturing capacity had been lost during the unification boom.

When German officials pushed in the 1990 s for the Stability and Growth Pact as a prerequisite for giving up the Deutschmark, they did not anticipate that Germany would be the first country to violate the pact.

Soon the new dinar also became stable with the parity 1 new dinar for 1 deutsche mark, and has been such for six months now, while prices in the first five months increased by only 0.8 per cent.

Germany agreed to relinquish the Deutsche Mark on the condition that the new currency area would not lead to direct or indirect socialization of its members debt, thus precluding any financial assistance from EU funds for states facing bankruptcy.

When a group of individual currencies is replaced by a single currency, as the Deutsche mark, French franc, Italian lira, Spanish peseta, and others were by the euro, there are two primary benefits lower transaction costs and greater transparency.

In 1979, when West Germany adopted a fixed exchange rate regime with a support mechanism for its partners (the European Monetary System), the Bundesbank ensured that it was not committed to unlimited currency interventions and that it might stop when the stability of the Deutsche Mark was endangered.

In 1993 the average pension amounted to only 40.5 new dinars (equivalent to the same amount of deutsche marks) and retained only 17 per cent of its real 1990 value, or only 13.6 per cent of the purchasing power of the average 1989 pension.

Perhaps it will be possible to persuade the Germans if the alternative is eurozone collapse, which would put the Deutschemark, or a Northern Euro, in the uncomfortable position that the Swiss franc occupies today too strong for its own good.