Imagine, it is 1923 and you are living in Germany. The war is over and you have been hoping things will get better for your country, but they only seem to get worse. Each week the mark is worth less, and it takes more to buy eggs, milk and a loaf of bread. You remember early last year you could by an egg for just 3.60 marks, but now, in May 1923 a single egg costs 2400. Milk was just 7 marks, now it costs 3800. When will it end?
When I took these German banknotes from 1923 to show the children they were both fascinated and horrified. At first, because of the massive denominations (1000, 1 million and 10 million), the children thought it was foreign game money and to discover this wasn't the case was, as one child put it, 'mind blowing'. They have heard a lot about inflation recently in the news, but they didn't really understand what it meant. To see German notes, all printed in 1923 move from the relatively small 1000 marks, to 10 million marks was just extraordinary for them. Even more extraordinary and disturbing for them though was the way that daily necessities reflected the changing value of money, from costing just a few marks to costing thousands, even millions.
During and immediately after World War 1 German money (the mark) was reasonably valuable, with 4 or 5 marks to the American dollar. By 1920 though German money was loosing its value, with between 152 and 1040 marks to the dollar. Bread was also 13 times more expensive than it had been, but this was nothing compared to what was to come. In 1922 things started to really get bad in Germany, and by the end of the year there were about 48000 marks to the dollar. Daily necessities still weren't too bad though. Eggs had started at about 3.60 marks each and rose to 9 marks while milk rose from 7 marks to 16.
It wasn't until 1923 though that things became really dire. In March there were 100,000 marks to the British pound but by June the value of the mark had fallen again to 320,000 marks per pound. By December, there were 4,200,000,000,000 marks per US Dollar (in words, that is 4200 Billion!) People were beginning to have real problems supporting themselves. Salaries were often doubled, but it wasn't enough to keep up with the inflation. The cost of living was soaring and people were just struggling to survive. Two medals were printed to commemorate the height of the crisis. One commemorated November 1, 1923 when a pound of bread cost 3 billion marks, a pound of meat cost 36 billion marks, and a glass of beer cost 4 billion marks! Another commemorates the 15th of November, 14 days later, when the prices had risen to 80 billion marks per pound of bread, 900 billion per pound of meat and 52 billion per glass of beer. In 1924 the Mark was replaced by the Rentenmark, which helped the German economy to stabilise again, but it was too late for many as their wealth had already been destroyed. If you would like to learn more about the German economy at this time, click here.
