Hans Tietmeyer: Banker who led German transition to euro

Hans Tietmeyer, the central banker who led Germany's transition from the deutsche mark to the euro despite reservations about a single European currency, has died, aged 85.

As president of the Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, from 1993 until 1999, Tietmeyer was the most powerful central banker in Europe and a leading advocate of policies that prized price stability above all else. But in contrast to some of his more dogmatic predecessors, he was also known as a politically savvy pragmatist capable of compromise.

In the years leading up to the creation of the euro in 1999, the Bundesbank under Tietmeyer set the tone for other central banks in Europe because of Germany's status as Europe's largest economy and the stability of Germany's currency. When the Bundesbank raised or lowered its benchmark interest rates, the central banks of France, Italy and other European countries had little choice but to follow suit.

Tietmeyer played a leading role in the years of negotiations that preceded the euro. He was among those insisting that countries joining the new currency union should be held to strict spending limits, and that the European Central Bank’s top priority should be to contain inflation.

In a 2004 book, Herausforderung Euro (The Euro Challenge), he lamented that many countries – including Germany – had violated the spending limits he had worked so hard to establish.

Tietmeyer expressed doubts about whether the euro could be sustained without a strong European central government to enforce fiscal discipline.

His views seemed to be vindicated in 2010, when the government of Greece was discovered to have systematically concealed its runaway public debt, provoking a crisis that nearly destroyed the euro and remains a source of tension.

Tietmeyer was born in Metelen, close to Germany's border with the Netherlands. He was one of 11 children of Helene and Bernhard Tietmeyer, a financial inspector for the local government.

When he completed secondary school in 1952, Tietmeyer initially studied Catholic theology. But he switched to economics and went on to earn a doctorate from the University of Cologne. At the same time, he became expert at table tennis, winning medals at national championships.

In 1962, Tietmeyer took a post at the West German Ministry of Economics. In 1982, he became a state secretary in the finance ministry. The job included responsibility for issues related to what was then known as the European Community. In that role, he became a close adviser to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, preparing for West German participation in international summits.

Tietmeyer was powerful enough to become a target of terrorists.

In 1988, members of the far-left Red Army Faction fired at his car but Tietmeyer and his driver were uninjured. Kohl’s government nominated Tietmeyer to the Bundesbank’s board in 1990, and he became president three years later.

After his retirement from the Bundesbank, he remained something of a spiritual godfather to German economists and policymakers who have insisted – to much international criticism – that fiscal austerity is the cure for countries, such as Greece, with too much government debt.

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