I’d expect it’s a Cold War thing. When Germany (or West Germany, at the time) was concerned that it could be the frontline of WW3 at any moment, it probably wanted somewhere to keep its gold reserves that wouldn’t be captured. The current German gold reserve is the second largest of any in the world, so on the assumption that at least most of that was from West Germany then it’d be a huge thing to capture in the event of war. If it could magically all be sold at the current London gold fix price, it’d be worth well over 300 billion USD
I’d expect it’s a Cold War thing. When Germany (or West Germany, at the time) was concerned that it could be the frontline of WW3 at any moment, it probably wanted somewhere to keep its gold reserves that wouldn’t be captured. The current German gold reserve is the second largest of any in the world, so on the assumption that at least most of that was from West Germany then it’d be a huge thing to capture in the event of war. If it could magically all be sold at the current London gold fix price, it’d be worth well over 300 billion USD