Germany is in a stock market frenzy.

Not today, but in November 25 years ago.

Deutsche Telekom is about to go public, the largest Europe has ever seen.

People who have previously only known life insurance and savings bonds are eager to buy stocks.

Grandfather, grandmother, child and cone - three million people register with Telekom's investor service because they absolutely want to get their papers.

One day even the hotline collapses completely.

Every evening on television there are commercials with the then famous actor Manfred Krug from the series “Liebling Kreuzberg”.

In his local pub in Berlin, he chats very close to the people about how great Telekom is.

“Telekom is now going public, I'll go with you,” was his daily advertising slogan.

Dyrk Scherff

Editor in the "Money & More" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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Many people followed him.

For a short time, the risk-averse, German fear savers of the previous decades became a people of shareholders.

By the year 2000, their number had grown to almost ten million.

Telekom shares became popular shares; no other company had such a high proportion of private investors.

The IPO of Telekom achieved something that other people's shares such as Preussag (1959), Volkswagen (1961) and Veba (1966) did not succeed in the long term.

A gigantic advertising campaign attracted millions of private investors

The intoxication lasted until the year 2000. Then the Internet and telecommunications bubble burst and tore the shares deep into the basement, including the T-share. The stock culture was destroyed, Telekom the bogeyman, and there were lawsuits from shareholders. To date, it has not been decided whether Telekom will have to compensate them. To this day, a generation of investors has been traumatized and the negative consequences of the frenzy of the stock market can be felt.

Nobody suspected that at the time.

There was a lot of advertising.

That was also necessary because there was great skepticism as to whether the small German stock market could even accept such an extensive issue as that of Telekom.

After all, the planned volume of around 15 billion euros, including a further issue in 1999, was more than the total volume of all around 220 IPOs in the 13 years before.

And the monopoly urgently needed the money for the approaching competition in the telecommunications market.

Advertising fell on fertile ground because stock market prices were on the up and interest rates were low.

Even André Kostolany bought it

Telekom had the advertising campaign with Manfred Krug and in the newspaper cost around 40 million euros.

A discount and bonus shares for retail investors should fuel demand.

The banks did not attract attention because of their careful investment advice to the many new investors, the analysts published optimistic studies.

No wonder, almost all of them were jointly responsible for the placement; the consortium comprised around 80 banks.

Even skeptical investors like the investor legend André Kostolany let themselves be carried away: “I will buy 1000 shares for my heirs.

Although this stock is not for gamers, it is very interesting as a long-term investment for every father of a family.

After all, we live in the age of telecommunications, ”he said at the time.

He should be dramatically wrong.