Susanne Thelen's first whiff of easy money came when a property investment consultant cold called her and promised her a 14 per cent yield on investment.
"He had such a lovely warm voice," she remembers. She invested her entire savings of 20,000 deutschmarks (€10,226) in his dubious scheme and lost everything. Another East Berliner tricked out of her savings by fast-talking west Germans, she says ruefully.
Rather than put her off, however, her rude awakening to free market capitalism only made her more determined to invest again - this time to recoup the money she had lost.
Ten years after they exchanged their ostmarks for deutschmarks, former East Germans have enthusiastically embraced the stock market. Today, one in three former East Germans has either shares or investment bonds.
They are steadily catching up with the "capitalist enemies of the state" in former west Germany, where over half the population has stocks or bonds.
Ms Thelen is just the type of person Mr Klaus Zumwinkel has been trying to woo. For weeks, the chairman of Deutsche Post has been travelling around Europe trailing a canary yellow, life-sized plastic bull behind him.
Last Monday, just like Jack and the Beanstalk, he brought the bull to market and exchanged it for magic beans. But the bull is Deutsche Post and the magic beans are the 278 million shares in the company that were sold this week in an initial public offering (IPO) that raised €6.6 billion. Deutsche Post spent more than €51 million on advertising to encourage Germans to buy the "yellow shares", named after the post office's yellow livery.
In doing so they hoped to emulate the hugely successful flotation of Deutsche Telekom, the former telephone monopoly whose "T-Aktie" or Telekom share introduced Germany to the concept of mass share-ownership. The company had been worried private investors might have been scared off by recent heavy losses in Telekom shares and technology shares on the Neuer Markt.
But their fears were unfounded. The 25 per cent stake in the company was oversubscribed by a factor of eight, with more than 450 million share applications from private investors alone. Finally, they had to make do with only half of the 278 million shares issued, with the rest going to institutional investors.
Shortly after trading began, the shares actually fell below the €21 issue price, but by the end of their first day, they had recorded a modest 2 per cent gain.
"The high demand for the yellow share and the lively interest in our business have clearly shown investors worldwide view Deutsche Post as an attractive stock," said company chairman Mr Zumwinkel last Monday.
Deutsche Post is thinking big. It has been on a spending spree in recent years, buying more than 30 logistics firms, including the international arm of logistics firm DHL.
The company is transforming itself into a pan-European logistics operation and has rebranded itself Deutsche Post World Net.
One cloud on the horizon for new shareholders, however, is an EU antitrust investigation into allegations that Deutsche Post financed its acquisition spree with profits from its letter service monopoly.
Another is that the letters monopoly, the source of a third of the company's revenue, is only guaranteed until 2002.
Already there are more than 600 private postal companies operating around Germany. They have been granted special licences from regulatory officials by showing they offer services going beyond what Deutsche Post already offers.
Private firms may, for instance, collect post from the sender, deliver it on a particular date or charge a customer after delivery. Some even give their staff mobile phones so customers can stop delivery.
Agil is one of Germany's most successful private operators. Since it went into operation in February last year, it has built up a network of 262 post carriers around the country and now delivers about 50,000 letters daily. Although the 600 private companies handle less than 2 per cent of post in Germany, it hasn't stopped Deutsche Post, dubbed the "Yellow Giant", suing almost all of them.
Agil's managing director Mr Harald Busse is optimistic the lawsuits will end with Deutsche Post's letter monopoly in 2002.
