It is a very unusual case for the Bundesbank: it has never had to process so much wet and dirty cash as from the flood disaster in the Ahr Valley.

From July 2021 to the end of January 2022, it accepted and refunded notes and coins worth more than 100 million euros.

If more than 50 percent of a note was left, it returned the value in other banknotes.

"That eclipsed everything we've had in similar cases in eastern Germany or Bavaria," said Bundesbank board member Johannes Beermann at a press conference on Wednesday.

A good 1.5 million wet banknotes were handed in, some of which were also contaminated with oil and dirt.

The number was also so high

because Volksbanks and savings banks in the region had also been flooded with their safes.

Around a million wet banknotes came from banks and 500,000 from private individuals.

Christian Siedenbiedel

Editor in Business.

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The process also shows what cash some people keep at home: There was one case in which someone had more than one million euros at home - and this money then got wet during the flood disaster, as the Bundesbank reports.

In general, more wet cash was handed in per person than people usually say they have at home in surveys.

In such surveys, the citizens otherwise said on average that they had 100 euros in their wallets and 1364 euros at home – with the spread being very high, said Beermann.

People often kept larger amounts at home for two to three weeks before making purchases.

The Bundesbank has hired additional employees to dry the banknotes and has purchased a number of household tumble dryers.

One of them is now coming to the House of History in Bonn to commemorate the extraordinary event.

The bills had to be carefully dried in order to be counted;

otherwise bundled bills in particular would have formed hard packets.

True, the money was not put back into circulation.

But the Bundesbank had to know the amount in order to be able to reimburse the owners.

Their counting machines, however, were not suitable for wet banknotes.

"It wasn't celebratory"

"It is only thanks to the innovative spirit of the employees that these problems could be solved," said Beermann.

In addition to the dryers, tennis balls were purchased, which were put in the dryers to avoid tilting during drying.

The Bundesbank also used cobblestones to smooth the banknotes out of the dryer.

Fragrance additives were also put into the dryers, because otherwise the fumes from the dirty flood money would have been unbearable.

"It wasn't solemn," said Beermann.

In addition, one could only fill the money of one submitter in one round at the dryer, so that it was clear afterwards how much the person was reimbursed.

In the case of the banknotes, it was particularly “imminent danger”, which is why the Bundesbank preferred drying the coins to cleaning them.

She wants to be finished with the coins by mid-March.

This is about 1.2 million coins, worth about one million euros.

Some of the coins were also very dirty and rusty, so that they could not be put into the counting machines.

The Bundesbank sometimes even used pipe wrenches to break up rolls of coins that got wet from the bank vaults.

The coins were cleaned with water and then dried in the air and partly with kitchen paper.

Some could then be counted by machine, others by hand.

Bundesbank board member Beermann said that it was necessary to develop a certain amount of expertise in order to dry the money undamaged in two to three hours with the dryer on the gentle cycle – people should definitely not do that at home: “You also have to talk about drying money in the oven definitely discouraged.”