Sometimes a story begins quietly, almost unnoticed. And sometimes it begins with a bang – with a gesture, a symbol.

In February 2001, Deutsche Börse Group listed itself on the stock market, and the country seemed eager to reinvent itself. There are few women and many men on the trading floor at that time, the latter wearing suits – some better than others. Journalists holding dictaphones in the air, and in some of the faces captured in photographs from 25 years ago, I detect a flicker of pride that comes across as even a little defiant. As if the Federal Republic of Germany were saying: Look at us – at last – we can do this, too. We’re a financial center now. So very modern. So very global.

Ready for the future, whatever that might mean.

When Deutsche Börse Group made its debut, the euphoria of the telecom era was waning, but not yet gone. Like so many Germans, my father had trusted Manfred Krug’s advertising campaign and, by buying and then adding to his holdings of Telekom shares, had ventured from savings account to the future. 

A crash course in capitalism

When Deutsche Börse Group made its debut, the Neuer Markt was in crisis, though not yet discredited. In the row houses of German suburbs, people discussed price-earnings ratios the way they might discuss Bundesliga standings. These were the days of Germany’s great awakening to the world of stocks – a crash course in modern capitalism, in more ways than one.

Because first, things started to go downhill.

Start-ups that only months earlier had been hailed as revolutionary and brilliant – and therefore foolproof – collapsed like cardboard sets in a Hamburg rainstorm. I remember how my father and I had only just been admiring ComROAD and its founder, Bodo Schnabel; EM.TV and the Haffa brothers, too. Not anymore. Now the conversation was about megalomania. On October 9, 2002, the once-glittering NEMAX stood at 318 points – down 96 percent from its peak just 31 months earlier. Investors like my father suddenly looked like dreamers, people who had never been told that stock prices do not only go up – and that “risk” is not merely a word buried in the fine print of bank brochures.

In hindsight, these were the months and years in which Germans learned two lessons at once: how exciting, imaginative, and intelligent stocks can be – and how painful they can be if embraced too early, too late, or with too much trust.

The IPO of Deutsche Börse Group thus marked not only an economic but a psychological turning point. Germany entered the financial markets like… like… an older gentleman who has spent years watching happy swimmers from the shore, finally wades into the Baltic Sea – and promptly gets a cramp.

Some people would conclude that they should crawl back to dry land. People stop talking about stocks, much as one avoids mentioning the last vodka after an embarrassing night out. Portfolios gather dust; stock-market magazines disappear from newsstands. My father sells his Telekom shares – now T-Mobile shares – at a loss. Yet something remains: a residual fascination, and a sense that the world will keep turning whether we participate or not. My father buys shares in Deutsche Börse Group, Munich Re, and Deutsche Bank.

Then things get even worse.

In 2008, I am a correspondent in New York. I would like to write about the new president, Barack Obama. Instead, I write about Richard Fuld and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Once again, it is a story of megalomania. 

Lehman falls, trust evaporates

It is impossible to tell the story of Germany’s skepticism toward markets without mentioning the date that defines modern financial history: September 15, 2008. That morning, Lehman Brothers vanished – and with it, the trust on which the globalized economy rests. Billions evaporated. Central banks wavered. Economies buckled. For a moment, the belief that the West had created a definitive economic system and that Western democracy had won the competition between systems was damaged.

Today, Lehman’s collapse is seen in New York and Washington as a political failure – a misjudgment that is judged more harshly than the Bay of Pigs invasion and considered to be about as consequential as the Iraq War. Within 48 hours, governments had to decide whether they were prepared to protect a globally interconnected financial system from itself.

And the consequences were enormous: nationalizations, exploding public debt, a global recession. It is no coincidence that since 2008 we speak of “systemically important” banks, bailouts, and the risk of sovereign default. It all begins with Lehman.

Back then in New York, I was fascinated by the duel between two men. One was Richard Fuld, nicknamed “Gorilla”, and the other was Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary in the Bush administration. One driven by faith in his bank, in his life’s work; the other by the fear that a precedent for state bailouts would corrupt the entire system. Their collision that weekend was more than a personal conflict – it was the moment when political power and private financial power collided.

Richard Fuld is a character that even Wall Street, accustomed as it is to extravagance and mannerisms, has rarely seen: a climber without Ivy League sheen, a man who started at Lehman as an accountant in 1969, arrived at dawn and left late at night, fearless and ambitious enough to run 23 departments before he turned 40. An exceptional trader, those who know him tell me – someone who “could smell deals”, as Lehman banker Michael Petrucelli put it. But Fuld struggled with people and disliked talking; he preferred to move money. His face glowed green in the light of his screen as he barked out his infamous “rat-a-tat calls” – decisions made in seconds, involving millions and billions, fired off like rifle bursts.

Richard Fuld calls himself a “Lehman lifer,” as if this bank were at the very least his destiny, or rather God’s work. There were rules: no jeans, no sympathy for Goldman Sachs, constant availability, no exceptions. Lehman, founded in Alabama in 1850 by three German brothers, was less an institution to Fuld than an identity. Which made the collapse all the more brutal when the doors finally closed and the screens went dark.

Back in the storm

The financial crisis hit Germany like a distant natural disaster whose waves arrive late but still shake the house. What initially appeared to be an exclusive problem of unrestrained Wall Street capitalism turned out to be inseparable from our municipalities, savings banks, and mid-sized companies. Cities like Pforzheim or Hagen lost millions on interest-rate bets, as if they had been running secret hedge funds. Banks faltered, were bailed out by governments, and the Germans, of all people, who believed they were protected by moral distance, found themselves back in the storm.

Yes, we felt vindicated: markets can be dangerous, unpredictable, unfair. At the same time, we realised that disengagement was not an option, no matter how many editorials we wrote about the “good old honest Mittelstand”. For a while, we remained undecided. Those who invested were considered gamblers; those who saved were virtuous, but out of touch. Only Germans think this way, I believe. I know no other country whose citizens are simultaneously so conflicted and so wistful – both envious and indignant when they observe that American families hold several times as much wealth.

Then something changed. At first quietly, hesitantly; then unmistakably. Zero interest rates ate away at savings accounts. Riester pensions disappointed. Inflation rose. And now– wiser, cooler, more informed, perhaps even more professional– Germans returned to the markets. They watched. They planned. They diversified. ETFs grew popular. Portfolios with millions became portfolios with tens of millions – and people talked about it. Those who once treated investment forms like tax traps now regard index funds as matter-of-fact as electricity contracts.

Finance? Perfectly normal!

Today we understand how much the IPO of Deutsche Börse Group functioned as a catalyst – a symbolic moment working quietly in the background. It set something in motion.

A nation began debating the relationship between citizens and markets, and with it the question of whether capital markets are something we are merely exposed to, or something we might actually help shape. This was followed by another question: Do we want to open ourselves to the global economy, or pretend that moral purity offers protection?

Only a few Germans still see the stock market as a place populated exclusively by crooks or geniuses– but never by ordinary people. Most have arrived at a different conclusion. They have settled into the normalcy of finance and understood that markets are part of everyday life, not the stage for a permanent drama.

The IPO of Deutsche Börse Group was not a German Wall Street moment. It was an attempt to catch up with a world that was faster, riskier, and more global than anything we were used to. And yes, things went wrong along the way. But that IPO set in motion developments we are only now beginning to understand.

Without a minimum level of risk culture, there is neither innovation nor security. Today we know that stocks are not only unavoidable, but sensible and effective. We have learned to buy ETFs on our smartphones at zero cost, set up savings plans, and sit on a park bench in the afternoon with a coffee, calmly watching our portfolios.

In other words: after Telekom euphoria and the Lehman shock, after years of caution, excess, and insight, we find ourselves once again at the edge of the Baltic Sea.

We are not running. We are not jumping. We are not getting cramp.

We are going for a swim. 

Klaus Brinkbäumer, former editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel and former program director at MDR, is a filmmaker, podcast host, media entrepreneur, and author. His most recent book is Zeit der Abschiede (C.H. Beck).