The scandal that toppled Bundesbank President Ernst Welteke last week was a typically German one - no sex, no espionage, no bribery, just a relatively minor lapse of judgment that smacked of greed.
With Germans already furious at welfare cuts handed down by their leaders and fat bonuses paid to top business excutives, news that Mr Welteke let a commercial bank pay a €7,661 hotel bill for him was a career killer.
Mr Welteke, 61, tried to hang on for almost two weeks as calls for his resignation mounted. But reports on Friday that he also accepted an invitation by carmaker BMW to see the 2003 Monte Carlo Grand Prix dealt the fatal blow, and he stepped down.
"This reflects the inability of an affable man to understand that standards have become stricter and that practices that used to be tolerated are not accepted anymore," Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper wrote in an editorial on the affair.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government, acutely aware of the mood in the country and facing tough elections this year, was especially vocal in demanding that Mr Welteke go, breaking ties with the fellow Social Democrat it appointed in 1999.
Sueddeutsche Zeitung wrote in an editorial: "Since the Welteke scandal has been boiling, many have begun to see the Bundesbank as just another one of those companies led by money-grabbers - and politically appointed at that."
Berlin stressed that Mr Welteke's conduct in letting Dresdner Bank pay for a four-night stay for him and his family at Berlin's Adlon Hotel during the January 1, 2002 launch of euro cash risked hurting the central bank's moral authority.
It would be unacceptable behaviour for a cabinet minister, the government said the day a magazine reported about the bill in early April.
The past decade or so has indeed seen a number of ministers toppled over seemingly minor abuses of office.
Juergen Moellemann, who committed suicide last year in a parachute jump, quit as economy minister under former Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1993. He had sent letters on official notepaper promoting a product manufactured by a cousin.
Transport Minister Guenther Krause resigned in the same year for billing the government to move house for about $4,000.
After he was voted out of office in 1998, Mr Kohl himself was disgraced. He admitted accepting about $1 million in illegal campaign donations and in 2001 paid a fine to end a criminal fraud probe against him, although it was not alleged he had profited personally.
His successor Mr Schroeder sacked Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping in 2002 after Mr Scharping said he had received payments from a public relations agency, albeit before he became minister.
The private use of airline bonus miles gained on official trips has also got politicians into hot water here.
Sex scandals are almost unheard of in a nation where the chancellor and foreign minister have each had four wives and the two biggest cities, Berlin and Hamburg, are run by gay mayors.
But even the suspicion of irregularities involving money or of anti-Semitism can bring careers to an abrupt end. Berlin last year quickly fired a top general who had applauded remarks by a member of parliament widely seen as belittling the Holocaust.
With the ruling Social Democrats trailing the opposition conservatives by 20 points, Mr Schroeder cannot afford to let his government be tainted by scandal and has so far been spared ministerial upsets in his second term since 2002.
But the vigour with which it distanced itself from Mr Welteke right from the start of the allegations two weeks ago has stoked suspicions among conservative MPs that there was a conspiracy to remove Mr Welteke, who had criticised Berlin's policies.