D-Mark Story

Last night via ZDF (German public TV, Channel Two), there was this really short 'fact' laid out and lasted for about 20 seconds.

We've yet to cross the 20-year point since the Euro arrived, and the old Deutsch (German) Mark was retired.

But here's this little curious fact....12.46 billion Marks still exist (would amount to around 24 billion Dollars).  They've never been exchanged.

Yep.  The law says that the government must honor the changeover (even if it takes a thousand years). And they've tracked this since day one of the Euro.

The division?  6.6 billion Marks are in coins, and 5.8 billion Marks are in bills. 

What the government says is that around 70 to 90 million Marks come in each year....but it's on decreasing scale....fewer and fewer each year.

So where is the money?  No one is really sure.

There are several theories to this.

One is that the crime syndicates from the 1960s to the 2000 era....stashed away a lot of D-Marks, and it'd be awful hard to walk into a German bank and present 16-million D-Marks and explain how you came to acquire it.  You could easily get away with presenting 100,000 D-Marks, and claiming that Grandma left it in a shoebox and died five years ago.

Some people believe that the old East German government had a fair amount of the money (maybe up to a billion Marks) hidden away (in personal bank boxes).  But again, how would you explain this at the bank if you wanted to exchange the money? 

Retired Russian generals holding millions?  Maybe. 

The coins?  Lots of Americans came in this era of the 1950s to 2000, and everyone went back to the states with dozens of coins.  So there might be easily two or three billion coins out there....in the hands of hundreds of thousands of former military folks.

In my own house?  There's probably 20 D-Marks still residing and there's little interest in returning the currency.

Does it create a problem for the currency and banking folks?  Well, it simply lays out a curiosity.  I don't think any of them anticipated it adding up to 12-billion Marks.