Gold Still The Standard For Germans

By Frank Wiebe There are echoes of the mythical Nibelung and their sunken treasure in the exhibit on gold opening at Germany’s central bank this week. The very title of the book accompanying the exhibition – “The Gold of the Germans” – evokes a devotion to the yellow metal dating back centuries. Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle of operas about the treasure of the Nibelung is testimony to the tenacious hold that gold has on the German imagination. But it hardly explains why today’s Federal Republic has the second-largest hoard of gold in the world, trailing only that of the United States, which is steward of the world’s main reserve currency. Nor does it explain why the Bundesbank decided as recently as 2012 to repatriate nearly 700 tons of its gold reserves held abroad, bringing the tally in its own vaults to half the 3,400 tons of total gold reserves. Some 90 tons were transported from France to Frankfurt as part of the controversial repatriation. Since one of the func...

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