When Josef Joffe, then foreign editor of the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, wrote a 4,000-word essay in December 1997 attacking the planned formation of the European single currency, he published it first in English, in the New York Review of Books. “Never in the history of democracy have so few debated so little about so momentous a transformation in the lives of men and women,” noted Mr Joffe. As if to confirm his point, the article appeared in an abridged German translation in the Süddeutsche Zeitung more than a month later, unobtrusively buried in a weekend supplement.
1997年12月，時任德國日報《南德意志報》(Süddeutsche Zeitung)駐外編輯的約瑟夫•約費(Josef Joffe)寫了一篇4000詞的文章來抨擊計劃中的歐洲單一貨幣的成立。他這篇用英文撰寫的文章最初發表在《紐約書評》(New York Review of Books)上。約費說：「對於一個人們生活中如此重大的變革，幾乎沒有人爲此辯論一番，這在民主的歷史上是前所未有的。」似乎是爲了強調自己的觀點，一個多月後，該文的德文節譯版在《南德意志報》上發表——但不起眼的藏在一份週末增刊裏。