CHANCELLOR ANGELA Merkel has appointed her “pragmatic hawk” economic adviser Jens Weidmann to head the Bundesbank – at 42 the youngest president in the bank’s 53-year history.

Mr Weidmann replaces Prof Axel Weber who announced suddenly last week that he would not stand for a second term and would leave the Frankfurt central bank in April, a year early.

Yesterday, the German leader dismissed criticism from opposition parties that she had impinged on the Bundesbank’s independence by appointing one of her closet aides in the last four years.

“Anyone who knows Jens Weidmann knows that he has excellent professional competence, a brilliant intellect and that he is of an independent mind,” said Dr Merkel.

No fan of the spotlight, Mr Weidmann served discreetly at the side of Dr Merkel in the past four years.

He was a key architect of Germany’s economic stimulus package and the European Union bailout mechanism.

Blond and soft-spoken, Mr Weidmann hails from the south-western state of Baden-Württemburg and studied economics in Paris and Bonn.

He has served at the French national bank and the International Monetary Fund; for three years until 2006, and his move to Berlin, he headed a monetary policy department at the Bundesbank.

A former student of Prof Weber, one Berlin official said yesterday the two men are “quite close in their thinking”.

Prof Weber decided to stand down, he told Der Spiegelmagazine, because his stability-oriented economic approach had left him in conflict with too many euro zone governments.

Dr Merkel said yesterday she was confident the new Bundesbank president would defend the Bundesbank’s culture of stability in the European Central Bank.