ECU Konrad Adenauer

The ECU coinage issued by West Germany — and after reunification, the Federal Republic — occupied an odd institutional space: legal tender nowhere, commemorative issue everywhere. These pieces were struck as collector items referencing the European Currency Unit, the accounting currency that preceded the euro but never circulated in anyone's pocket. Adenauer was a logical honoree; his chancellorship from 1949 to 1963 had anchored West Germany's integration into Western Europe, including the 1957 Treaty of Rome.

The ECU denomination itself was pegged to a weighted basket of member-state currencies, revised most significantly in 1989 when the Spanish peseta and Portuguese escudo were added to the calculation.