Today, instead of new scans I am going to share some more information I have found while researching Notgeld several years ago. Richard Holmes has a lot of great information on Notgeld, as well as informative links, on his web-page German Inflationary Notgeld 1922 – 1923. Be aware that this link may be outdated and may refer to an archived version.
Richard states on his web-page: After WWI, Germany was plunged into one of the worst inflations ever to hit a western country as the government struggled with the truly massive punitive damages demanded by the Treaty of Versailles. During this brief period of hyper-inflation, people who did not convert their savings into tangible assets lost them completely . Many bank accounts were closed because even large pre-war sums of 100,000 Marks were longer worth even the price of a postage stamp. The middle class was by and large reduced to poverty, theft and petty crime soared, pensions became worthless and many people starved to death.
Below are two examples of “high value” notes that were printed to cope with the runaway inflation of the day. The first note is a Private Company Issue by Phoenix Mining, 5 Billionen Mark (5 Trillion Marks).
This is a Reichsbahn (German Rail) Issue, 10 Billionen Mark (10 Trillion Marks).
I thought that the one below was quite interesting it is a Munster Landesbank Regional Issue, 4.2 Goldmark / 1 Dollar deniminated.
* Note that in German “eine Milliarde” means 1,000,000,000 (an American billion) and “eine Billion” means 1,000,000,000,000 (an American trillion)
The three scans above are courtesy of Richard Holmes. Please visit the Richard Holmes’s Homepage.
Another source for a concise timeline regarding events surrounding the German Inflationary Notgeld is A Look At German Inflation by Joel Anderson.
I have several of the above Reichsbanknotes issued in 1922. Joel Anderson writes the following concerning this issue of Reichsbanknotes. “When first issued in January of 1922 this note was the highest denomination of circulating currency ever issued by the German government. It would soon become small change. The note is sometimes called the “Vampire Note” . If you look carefully, and have a good imagination, you will see a vampire on the neck of the German worker. This was said to represent the French sucking the blood from Germany through the war reparations. By August the Mark begins a complete collapse due to heavy reparation payments.”
Imagine in January using this note to purchase 250 pounds of meat, and a mere 6 months later only being able to purchase 5 pounds with the same bank note.
“German Inflationary Notge00” by Barry T Horst is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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