20 years after the introduction of the euro: European cash in wallets


Who will find the Grand Duke? It would not only be evident from the Luxembourg mint that this is not the content of a current German wallet.
Image: FAZ – PHOTO DIETER RÜCHEL

Twenty years following the introduction of the common European cash, € 1 coins from other euro countries make up the majority in German wallets. The number of foreigners is also increasing when it comes to change. To the statistics of a mixing.

THEThe above picture shows the contents of a German money box, a bell bag or a wallet – that is not exactly what has come down to us. Because the recording is a bit older. That is already suggested by the penny from America, since Corona people have not been flying there as often, as well as two coins from the time before the introduction of euro cash on January 1, 2002. On top of that, the eleven 20-cent pieces include whose national embossed side can be recognized, one from Luxembourg. The small country has little coinage in Europe, and according to a publication by the Deutsche Bundesbank, only 0.98 percent of the 20-cent coins in circulation in this country in 2019 bore the portrait of His Royal Highness Henri, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg. The picture should therefore come from a time when coins from Luxembourg had already spread sufficiently in Germany, but had not yet disappeared in scrapbooks in the same order of magnitude as they are today.

Ulf von Rauchhaupt

Responsible for the “Science” section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

Can the photo be dated more precisely? The diagram shown can help. Some of the data was collected by the mathematician Dietrich Stoyan, a professor emeritus for stochastics at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg. Stoyan had used the unique situation of the introduction of the euro to follow the spread of national coins. To this end, he has been collecting reports from German citizens regarding the spectrum of coins in their wallets over the years. Would foreign euros, as the scientist expected, diffuse into Germany, that is, would spread out from border areas and large cities with airports and on international railway lines to increasingly remote areas?

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