For months, European leaders have been trying to find a way out of the Greek debt crisis. But austerity is merely driving the country deeper into economic despair. Is it time for a radical rethink? Many think the answer is yes. This article was written by Spiegel journalists whose names are listed at the end of this article.

It would have been hard for German Chancellor Angela Merkel to find a more appropriate setting from which to promote her policies for Greece. She is sitting in a wide leather chair in Berlin's Neues Museum, home to Egyptian treasures and classical antiquities. The ancient columns towering behind her lend the scene an Acropolis-like air.

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It's Tuesday of last week, and Merkel has been invited by a foundation to join in a discussion on the future of Europe. A young woman stands up and identifies herself as a foreign student studying in Germany and a "despairing representative of a younger Greek generation." She says that, of course, she would like to return to her home country after completing her studies. "But whenever I make inquiries about work in Athens," she says, "I'm only offered jobs in Germany."

Merkel nods. The situation in Greece is "extremely difficult," she says, adding that she cannot imagine a currency union without the highly indebted nation. "I want Greece to keep the euro," she says. And then, unasked and unambiguously, she provides something akin to a letter of guarantee for the Greeks. "I would not participate in pushing Greece out of the euro," she says. "That would have unforeseeable consequences."

It was a clear message at the beginning of a week in which those seeking to save the euro once again lost fundamental control over their drama. Europe's leaders had been hoping to finally present to their skeptical citizens a convincing and viable plan for rehabilitating Greece and fortifying the will to preserve the currency union in its current form at any price.