The Deutsche Bundesbank mourns the passing of its former president, Helmut Schlesinger. He was Vice-President of Germany’s central bank from January 1980 to the end of July 1991 and then President until the end of September 1993. Mr Schlesinger passed away on 23 December 2024 at the age of 100. 

He shaped the Bundesbank in a career there spanning more than 41 years. From 1 August 1991 to 30 September 1993, he served as the Bundesbank’s President. 

Commitment to monetary stability

In his over 41 years at the Bundesbank, he made a great contribution to making the D-Mark one of the world’s most stable currencies and also the anchor of stability in the subsequent European Monetary System,” Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said in memory of Mr Schlesinger. 

He will be remembered for his commitment to a stable Deutsche Mark, which brought him both recognition and some criticism. During his career, he was called a “Bavarian Prussian” or “inconvenient admonisher”. US Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III is once said to have accused Schlesinger of “looking for inflation under every stone”. In 1993, the Bundesbank’s then-President Hans Tietmeyer said that Schlesinger had expanded the German central bank into a “bulwark of stability”. Germany’s business daily Börsen-Zeitung described him as a “stability policy pelican” because pelicans are held in high regard owing to their reliability, their willingness to make personal sacrifices and their nurturing skills. What is certain, though, is that this native of Upper Bavaria was highly esteemed on the national and international stage. 

During Mr Schlesinger’s tenure as President, the Bundesbank raised interest rates in order to combat inflation resulting from German reunification. Its stubborn high-interest-rate policy also met with criticism abroad. Many of the European Monetary System (EMS) partner countries blamed the Bundesbank for the currency crises and rounds of depreciation of 1992 and 1993. 

Mr Schlesinger always felt it important to explain monetary policy – in personal contributions and in the Bundesbank’s Monthly Report, which he edited meticulously and with a sure sense of style. That is how the Bundesbank’s current President Joachim Nagel described him on the occasion of his 100th birthday in September 2024. Many at the Bundesbank will remember the notes he made in pencil – he preferred an HB, or medium, hardness grade.

“Home-grown product”

He became President of the Bundesbank in summer 1991, at the age of 66, after Karl Otto Pöhl had stepped down. It was the culmination of the passionate mountaineer’s impressive central banking career, which had begun in 1952 at what was then known as the Bank deutscher Länder. He was already demonstrating his credentials as the central bank’s pioneering mastermind when he was appointed Head of its Economics and Statistics Department in 1964. In 1972, he was promoted to the Bundesbank’s Directorate, where he took charge of economics and statistics and thus also joined the Central Bank Council. These were the turbulent years following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates. At Mr Schlesinger’s instigation, the Bundesbank introduced the concept of monetary targeting, the implementation of which contributed significantly to the Deutsche Mark’s reputation as an especially stable currency.

In his capacity as the Bank’s Vice-President and “interior minister”, he covered then-President Pöhl’s back in the early 1980s while the latter took care of the central bank’s international duties. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Deutsche Mark proved one of the most stable currencies. This period saw it evolve into an anchor currency of the EMS. 

The path towards a single European currency

Helmut Schlesinger himself once said that, in the early days of European unification, the main focus had been quite a different one – no more war in Europe ever again. With his commitment to a stable Deutsche Mark, he contributed as Bundesbank President to making the Deutsche Mark not only the dominant currency in the European monetary system, but also the stability anchor of the system, and thus potentially paving the way for a single European currency.

The Bundesbank now bids farewell to Mr Schlesinger, who passed away on 23 December 2024 at the age of 100.