Jeremy F. Walton, Money and mimesis — trailer
‘The position I am taking here is that a portrait can be convincing regardless of whether such a thing has ever been seen or whether it is credible…’ – Erich Auerbach, Dante, the poet of the secular world (1929)
On January 1, Croatia embarked on the latest experiment at the behest of the European Union on whether the monetary ‘presentation can be convincing’, when they replaced their national currency, the kuna, with the euro, becoming the first member to do so after Lithuania in 2015. Like all EU countries except Denmark, Croatia officially accepted the commitment to join the eurozone when it joined as the 28th – and still the last – member of the Union in 2013. Its relatively quick adoption of the currency contrasts with the persistent Euroscepticism of countries such as Sweden, the Czech Republic and Hungary, which continues to maintain its own currencies despite being a much older member of the EU. This can largely be attributed to the undiminished enthusiasm for Brussels emanating from the centre-right government of Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and his Croatian Democratic Union party (HDZ; Croatian Democratic Union). Under Plenković, the HDZ transformed into a Christian Democratic party, which is increasingly rare in the era of rising right-wing populism in Europe and beyond.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, visited Zagreb to dedicate the final acceptance of the euro in Croatia. (She and Plenković clearly paid for their coffees). Such political fanfare was no cure for anxiety about the new currency regime; Croatian citizens are well aware of the earthquakes and consternations that the euro can cause. The majority of real estate transactions and the lion’s share of the tourism industry – the dynamo of the Croatian economy – have long been carried out in euros, while the kuna has been effectively tied to the euro since its introduction in 2002. The Greek crisis of 2009, rooted in the financial and political constraints that the eurozone entails, is more tangible memory in the Balkans than in the richer EU member states in the west. The entry into the Eurozone was nevertheless widely welcomed, especially by the local political and economic elites, as positive proof that Croatia has reached the last stop on its difficult path to ‘Europe’. In light of the euro’s checkered recent past, the almost total absence of domestic opposition to its adoption was remarkable. The decision to invite Croatia to the passport-free Schengen travel area, made in December 2022, only contributed to the feeling that Europe is finally here, and not over the horizon in Ljubljana, Trieste or Vienna. Inspired by the virtuosity of Croatian star Luka Modrić, who led Fiery until the semi-finals of the World Cup in December in Qatar, the mood of the public in Osijek, Rijeka, Split and Zagreb is extremely optimistic.
Like all currencies, the euro is a crucible for political-symbolic allegories and alchemy. While banknotes from five euros upwards are unique throughout the eurozone, banknotes – one, two, five, ten, twenty and fifty euro cents and one and two euro coins – are specific to each member state, although they circulate freely throughout the zone and wider. So: the face of the fifty euro cents in Austria shows the iconic Art Nouveau building of Vienna; The one and two euro coins in Cyprus depict the Pomos Idol, a cross-shaped artifact from ca. 3000 years before Christ; the two-euro coin in Slovenia shows the portrait of the national poet France Prešern (1800–49); and so on. Ideologically, euro coins integrate the historical and cultural distinctiveness of each constituent nation-state into the universalizing project of the Union, reinforcing the dubious conceit that national identities – however problematically conceived and invented – can persist and thrive in the solvent of EU membership. A delicate selection of national icons forge, from historical heroes to material culture, necessarily appeals to the domestic and international public. Euro coins must effectively abbreviate national cultures in a series of recognizable images while embodying a deracinated, bureaucratized Brussels liberalism.
In the summer of 2021, on the eve of Croatia’s entry into the eurozone, Plenković announced the symbols that will be approved by the mint: the Croatian checkerboard (checkerboard) pattern, a key component of the national coat of arms; map of Croatia; pine marten; inventor Nikola Tesla; and medieval Croatian Glagolitic. A competition has been announced to determine the final design of each symbol, and it will be judged by a committee made up of art historians, bankers and various public figures. The winning designs were unveiled to a cheering audience in February 2022, but controversy quickly usurped the ceremony. In light of the struggle between Serbia and Croatia to monopolize Nikola Tesla’s legacy, a certain level of dyspepsia is expected over the inventor’s star on Croatian ten, twenty and fifty cent coins. But the quarrel came from an unexpected side. Only three days after the official presentation of the winning designs, the illustrator Stjepan Pranjković withdrew his winning image of a pine marten, of the same name kunas which gave its name to the former Croatian currency, after Iain Leach, a Scottish photographer for National Geographiche pointed out that Pranjković’s design clearly plagiarized one of his photos.
The shame of Pranjković’s fraud called into question the European aspirations of Croatia in general. In the shadow of the scandal, there were fears of incomplete and insufficient Europeanism, which, as Marija Todorova stressed, beset the Balkans as a whole. The process of forging Croatian European accreditation was infected with failed mimesis. Worse, it was stolen from a European source (leaving aside the geopolitical identity ambiguities associated with Brexit). If the Croatian euro coin was a lie, wouldn’t Croatia’s entry into the eurozone and Schengen be equally plagiarized, inauthentic, fake?
That commotion distracted from dealing with the weight, the more sinister political history wrapped in the shape of a pine marten: the legacy of the fascist Independent State of Croatia, the Nazi comprador regime that ruled both Croatia and today’s Bosnia during World War II. The kuna was first introduced as a currency by the fascist Ustashas in 1941, and it remained in circulation until the end of the war. Like many fascist-era emblems, the kuna was resurrected during the 1990s, following Croatia’s breakaway from socialist Yugoslavia and its war of independence against the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav army.
The re-introduction of the kuna did indeed provoke opposition at the time because of its dark provenance. Ivo Škrabalo from the HSS, for example, strongly lobbied against its adoption: ‘If we rejected the dinar as Yugoslavian money, then we must also reject the kuna as Ustasha money, because neither it nor u is needed in Croatia at this moment.’ (“If we rejected the dinar as Yugoslavian currency, let’s also reject the kuna as Ustasha money, because Croatia does not need either “YU” or “U” at this moment.’) Skrabalo and like-minded members of parliament proposed that the Croatian crown (crown) to replace the Croatian dinar, but the right-wing parliamentary majority overrode them. In 1994, the kuna was returned. This time it would last longer, 28 years rather than just four, and the daily use resulted in a collective amnesia about its origins. Even now, while kuna are rapidly going out of circulation, the pine kuna on Croatia’s one-euro coin is an unmistakable material afterlife of 1940s fascism. But this poses no obstacle to Croatia’s geopolitical aspirations: as Giorgia Meloni and Fratelli d’Italia recently demonstrated in Italy, few things are less controversial in Europe these days than fascist afterlife.
Meanwhile, the residents of Zagreb, my adopted hometown, negotiate the daily dilemmas and irritations of the kuna to euro transition with a bricoleurian mix of pragmatism, cynicism and humor. Lines are growing at bakeries and farmers’ markets as shoppers take advantage of the last chance to pay with the former currency by buying essentials with the help of the long-neglected coins. Cash registers are collected with new calculations. There are reports of customers trying to buy chewing gum with €500 bills; others are immediately nostalgic for marten. At my local market, an elderly customer asks me how I’m coping with ‘our battle with the euro’ before winking and handing me a chocolate in the shape of a euro coin. Even among the tricks and pitfalls of mimesis that Europeanization involves, struggling with a new currency can occasionally offer sweet pleasures.
Read: Wolfgang Streeck, ‘Why the euro divides Europe’NLR 95.