Stefan Schütz
From the Chiemgau in Bavaria (780 km², about 500,000 people) comes a regional currency that actually works. Started in 2003 by a teacher and his Waldorf-school students, the Chiemgauer is now Germany's largest regional money. It is pegged one-to-one to the euro, but with a twist: it carries a small holding fee, so it loses value if you sit on it. That 'circulation pulse' keeps it moving through local shops rather than pooling in accounts.
The holding fee is 'demurrage', from Silvio Gesell's idea of money that ages like goods do. Its most famous test was Wörgl, Austria, in 1932: in the depths of the Depression the mayor issued local scrip that had to be re-stamped to stay valid, and it revived the town's economy, until the central bank shut it down in 1933. When a business changes Chiemgauer back to euros it pays a small fee, and a share of that goes to a nonprofit the user chooses.
The currency grew into a climate tool. The pattern is simple: inform and measure, reduce what you can, then voluntarily offset the rest into a local climate fund. Climate-friendly choices, home insulation, a balcony solar panel, carsharing, a local veg box, are rewarded in Chiemgauer. The KlimaKlub runs free workshops so a local climate club can mirror the international one.
Twenty years of running it teach the honest lessons. What helps: a dedicated, stable core team and a lot of voluntary work, clear rules and a mission, attractive public events, donations, cooperation with regional banks and local authorities, university evaluations, and, a must, convenient card and app payment. What stands in the way: platforms and AI cross-selling, sheer customer convenience, an economy that feels 'too good', administrative overload for small shops, political resistance, legal hurdles, and the exhaustion of volunteers.
The second half of the talk turns from money to making. The Impulsraum Neubeuern is a small maker space, run as an association for the common good, headquartered at the commons hub. Two ideas guide it. Frithjof Bergmann's New Work asks 'what do you really, really want?'. And the Fab City principle flips the industrial model: data in, data out, not products in and trash out, so knowledge is global and production is local.
It is not theory. Leka in Barcelona was the world's first open-source restaurant, its furniture cut on a CNC router from shared design files by Fab Lab Barcelona. Low-cost open machines (Maslow, LowRider) put that workshop within reach, and a scrapyard becomes a place of resources for upcycling. The Chiemgau shows the regenerative side too: living soil (EM), earthen architecture (Anna Heringer), and social textiles (Manomama).
The stance is optimism with evidence: working alternatives already exist, in money and in production, and the task is to build and connect them, not to wait. What is light (designs, knowledge) travels the world; what is heavy (making, growing, living) stays local. As Don Bosco put it, what good is cursing the darkness? Go light a candle.