Large amounts of destroyed cash
In the flood disaster in the Ahr Valley in 2021, enormous amounts of cash were destroyed in addition to the other serious consequences. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports, from July 2021 to the end of January 2022, the Bundesbank accepted and replaced notes and coins worth more than one million euros that had become wet and soiled. According to the law, the value of destroyed money can only be refunded if there is still 50 percent of a note left that can be returned.
This event brought to light how much cash some Germans actually keep in their own homes: according to the Bundesbank, one of the residents actually had more than one million euros in cash at home, which was completely rendered unusable by the water impact in the accident . On average, significantly more wet cash was submitted to the Bundesbank per person than should be the case, according to surveys of how much money people normally keep at home. As reported by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Bundesbank board member Johannes Beermann explained at a media conference in Mainz that many people keep a nest egg at home for imponderables or for upcoming purchases and that the spread here is very high. However, the average nest egg for the people affected by the flood was at an exceptionally high level of 35,800 euros and well above the figure of 1,364 euros determined by surveys.
Bundesbank replaces cash amounting to more than 100 million euros
The Bundesbank spared no effort to enable the injured persons to have their destroyed cash replaced. Not only were several additional employees made available for the purpose of drying the banknotes, the Bundesbank even brought in a whole range of household tumble dryers, one of which is housed in the House of History in Bonn to commemorate the unusual measure. Drying the banknotes was essential because the Bundesbank’s counting machines would not have worked if the banknotes were wet. As the Neue Zürcher Zeitung reports, the employees of the Bundesbank showed themselves to be extremely creative: with fragrance additives against the typical smell of mouldering money, tennis balls to prevent jamming in the washing machine and cobblestones to weigh down smoothed banknotes after the drying process, the hard-working workers succeeded in to replace the vast majority of the cash lost by the victims. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, almost 60 million euros were paid to private individuals, the remaining amount was paid to banks to replace their money stored in safes and lockers. According to board member Beermann, there is no exact number of notes that were no longer refundable despite the efforts of the Bundesbank.
Thomas Weschle / Editor finanzen.net
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