WHEN Bundesbank president Dr Hans Tietmeyer fulfills a busy profile programme around Dublin today, he will be received with a respect and solicitude associated less with a central banker than with the visiting head of state of a great power.
Every effort will be taken to make a good impression on this influential visitor and each word he utters will be noted down carefully and anxiously analysed for signs of his secret intentions.
Two topics will be of particular interest to Irish policymakers and business. One is whether Dr Tietmeyer expects monetary union to go ahead on schedule in 1999. And the other is whether he believes the Irish pound will be one of the founding members. For having failed to offer anything but perfunctory support for the pound during the currency crisis of late 1992 and early 1993, doubts may still linger in Irish minds about how Europe's most powerful central bank sees Irish prospects.
As president of the Bundesbank, Dr Tietmeyer is, of course, no ordinary central banker but a key player in the financial world who holds the power of life and death over almost every currency in Europe, a fact not lost on Irish government officials and the Central Bank who dealt with him during the currency crisis. Dr Tietmeyer is no ordinary Bundesbank president. A lifelong member of Germany's governing Christian Democratic Union, he is the most uncompromisingly political figure to head Germany's post-war central bank. His relationship with Dr Helmut Kohl is so close that he was known as "the chancellor's sherpa" during the 1980s when he was a senior adviser at the Economic Ministry. When Dr Kohl decided to press ahead with monetary union between the former GDR and West Germany in 1990, against the advice of Dr Karl Otto Pohl, the Bundesbank chief at the time, he chose Dr Tietmeyer as his architect for the plan.
Another monetary union is due to take place by the time Dr Tietmeyer's term of office in Frankfurt ends in 1999, this time involving the sacrifice of Germany's beloved deutschmark for the unknown quantity of the euro. The Bundesbank boss has adopted the role of stern chaperon of the deutschmark during the unruly courtship of Europe's currencies, keeping a beady eye on disreputable suitors, especially those notorious Latins, who might threaten the virtue of his charge.
The problem with playing such a strict chaperon is that some observers have been left with the impression that Dr Tietmeyer is so disappointed with the standard of prospective partners that he would prefer to call the wedding off entirely rather than risk a mismatch.
A sophisticated, intellectually formidable, man who often leaves an impression of arrogance, Hans Tietmeyer was born in 1931 as one of eleven children into a devout Catholic family in a small town in Wesphalia. He originally intended to follow two of his brothers into the priesthood but abandoned his theology studies in favour of economics after three semesters. In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine before he became Bundesbank president, Dr Tietmeyer traced his personal ambition and self-confidence to his Catholic background.
After a brief flirtation with Catholic social theory, Dr Tietmeyer became a zealous admirer of liberal economics and the market economy. He joined the civil service as an adviser to the Economics Ministry in 1962, becoming so influential that, by the early 1970s, journalists were already identifying him as the grey eminence behind the government's economic policy.
Despite his allegiance to the Christian Democrats, Dr Tietmeyer forged a close relationship from the late 1970s onwards with Count Otto Lambsdorff, the Liberal economics minister. This reached its apogee in 1982 when Dr Tietmeyer wrote the so-called Lambsdorff Paper, an economic manifesto which heralded the Liberals' abandonment of the ruling Social Democrats in favour of the Christian Democrats and Dr Helmut Kohl.
Dr Tietmeyer was being tipped for the top job at the Bundesbank throughout the 1980s but it was not until 1989 that he was appointed to the board, becoming vice-president in 1991. His brash manner won him few friends at the Bundesbank and Pohl made no secret of his contempt for the plans hatched by Dr Kohl and his sherpa to merge Germany's two Currencies.
As vice-president and the Bundesbank's representative on the EU Monetary Committee - the group of officials and central bankers which effectively runs the EU exchange rate mechanism - Dr Tietmeyer was a central figure during the currency crisis. According to the controversial book The Rotten Heart of Europe by former EU official Bernard Connolly, Dr Tietmeyer approached the Irish officials on the way into a meeting to decide on a Spanish and Portuguese devaluation in November, asking if they would consider devaluing the Irish currency. The answer was no but the question left the Irish in no doubt about the Bundesbank's attitude to the pound.
Ultimately the attitude of the German central bank was a central consideration in the final decision of the Government to devalue the pound.
The currency crisis confirmed Dr Tietmeyer's capacity to be cool under fire. This talent was never in doubt. In 1988 Dr Tictmeyer affected indifference when he was the target of an assassination attempt by Red Army Faction terrorists. Dr Tietmeyer's qualities were given ultimate recognition in 1993 when he was appointed to the presidency of the Bundesbank. The seventh person to hold the post since the bank was founded in 1958.
The Bundesbank has a statutory duty to protect the stability of the German currency and, in the period prior to the introduction of EMU, Dr Tietmeyer has set his sights on ensuring that the euro will be at least as stable as the mark. While Dr Kohl's more Europhile advisers, such as Mr Karl Lamers, insist that EMU is too important to be postponed just because of a few stray economic statistics, the Bundesbank has been backing the tougher line taken by finance minister Theo Waigel.
Dr Waigel insists that the new currency must not only be stable on the day it is launched but must remain so in perpetuity. This means that the tough constraints on inflation and public debt will have to be maintained indefinitely.
Dr Tietmeyer sees the new European Central Bank, modelled on the Bundesbank of course, as the proper body to preserve Europe's financial virtue after EMU. But although he remains cautious in his public utterances, he is now widely perceived within Germany to favour a postponement of the single currency until Europe's economy improves.
Asked some years ago, what he would like to be, Dr Tietmeyer replied with characteristic self-assurance, "Myself, only better." His vision of any future common European currency might be summed up in the words, "The mark, only better." When he leaves Ireland tonight we may have a better idea of whether he feels the pound fits into this grand plan.
