To the death of the Bundesbank presidents: Hans Tietmeyer – The apologist of the stability – daily mirror

“Westphalian oak trees grow slowly, but they keep mostly to the Storms, which direction they are coming,” said Hans Tietmeyer once about yourself. The Bundesbank, recalled on Wednesday, in her obituary on the man who was introduced in this Institution from 1993 to 1999, as President of the Board of management up to the year in which the Euro as a book currency, and the Bundesbank made their most important competences to the European Central Bank (ECB). And your President the same: Tietmeyer of the ECB.

Hans Tietmeyer, had died on Tuesday at the age of 85 years. Jens Weidmann, his acting successor at the Bank, praised him for an “outstanding President”. EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, called him “one of the most important architects of the Euro”. “With him to Europe, the Euro, and I personally lose a important companions.”

The Euro he asked, in 1998, the Oracle

Who, once again, by the many appreciations scrolls, which have not yet been during his lifetime to be published, finds a more imaginative title. Not all are flattering, but all have a degree of respect and reverence to recognize. He was referred to as the “icon of monetary policy”, as the “Greenspan of Europe” in reference to the legendary US Central Bank Chairman Alan Greenspan, the “Tietmeyer of America”, as one might say.

The French sociology, Pierre Bourdieu, described in Europe, once the most powerful Central bankers as “high priest”, the “grand prêtre du German mark”. Because Tietmeyer was instrumental in the creation of the European economic and monetary Union. For its taste but to little economy stuck in the construct of the Union. The monetary stability was also against the policy of the “southerners” – to defend. Tietmeyer was an incorrigible apologist for the stability.

Like the man who was raised in a modest village and explained to her his thoughts in a factual and dry. So he gave the anecdote, he was asked, in 1998, in the year of the Euro introduction of the Oracle of Delphi, which currency will be more stable: the Mark or the Euro. The answer he received: “The Mark is not the Euro.” Open Tietmeyer, what currency it was left – at which point the Oracle, the comma, whether before or after the “not”, explained he’s aware of it.

brothers in spirit. Hans Tietmeyer, President of Deutsche Bundesbank and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, 1988.photo: imago stock&people

With his paper broke in 1982, the coalition

Personal Acquaintances described the strictly Catholic socialized, the son of a Amtsinspektors, one of eleven children, as a loyal, principled, orderly, strict. The passionate table tennis player and doctorate degree in Economics and believed in God, saw the people, but never as a herd animal, he would stress regularly its own responsibility.

In his thesis (“The Ordo-term”) brought together Tietmeyer in 1958, the ideas of the neo-liberal with Catholic social teaching. A Piece Of Art. A little later came out with his Mentor, the Cologne Professor Alfred Müller-Armack, to the Federal Ministry of economy, head of unit for matters of principle. In 1982, the CDU-man state Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance. For the Minister Otto Graf Lambsdorff (FDP), a ordoliberales plea, made as a “Lambsdorff paper” career – and a reason for the collapse of the social-liberal coalition, and Helmut Schmidt (SPD).

So Tietmeyers career continued under the new Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, would have been in September 1988, almost by terrorists of the RAF finished. A machine gun of jammed, Tietmeyers driver roared off on a bullet-riddled tires. “He continued his day’s work without interruption,” writes the Bundesbank on that day.

greetings from Clement and Schäuble

the year of the new Millennium had reached Tietmeyer, the retirement age, a committed, however, until 2012, including as Board Chairman of the Initiative New Social market economy, which advertises in the Public for liberal reforms. “Really, social policy is always a policy that encourages self-initiative”, was quoted by the INSM Tietmeyer of the launch of the Initiative in the year 2000. His successor, Wolfgang Clement, said: “His commitment to the Social market economy was a stroke of luck and his consistency, continuity, and integrity remain the INSM a model”

Personal words also came from the Federal Ministry of Finance, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU). Tietmeyer was in the Federal Ministry of Finance and as President of the Bundesbank, always an important guarantee for stability and a market economy. “Personally, he has impressed me with his competence, in the negotiations for the state Treaty on economic, monetary and social Union, to which we are both involved. Its wise, admonitory voice will be missed."