Weimar Lesson #3
The composition consists from original bills. We are happy to report about the information we posses, although we weren’t so lucky in restoring full historical context of all bills in the composition. Banknotes 1-4 belonged to a man from Berlin who came across of two world wars. We speculate that he wasn’t a collector, because the bills aren’t especially rare and we have no bills of extremely large denominations (up to trillions). We also guess that while demobilized this Weimar citizen could work as employee at German railroads since we have found some Railroads “Notgeld” (Emergency Money) in our set.
About the first note, the "Darlehnskassenschein", we have found translated text from German Wikipedia. They were
loan notes were issued in Germany between 1914 and 1922 by the Reich Debt Administration (Reichsschuldenverwaltung). Formally, these notes were not "real" banknotes, but had to be accepted by all public treasuries as a means of payment. With the start of their issuance at the start of World War I, these loan notes were legally covered by loans on industrial and agricultural goods, but like all other means of payment, they were not redeemable for marks-gold. Concretely, these values were used to constitute additional cash used during and after the First World War. They circulated alongside “Reichsbank”, “Reichskassenscheine” banknotes, private banknotes, emergency notes and many other currency substitute symbols issued by federal states, municipalities or large companies …
Thus, the 1st item is exceptionally good in telling us the story where the Great Weimar Hyperinflation has begun: unbaked irredeemable money surrogates. The 2nd item is 50 Mark Reichsbanknote. In according to book "When Money Dies" by Adam Fergusson, people in 1919 might still believe that "Mark just Mark" recover and become redeemable for gold again.
The 3rd item makes whole composition closer to United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection. Although we are not agree with the Museum’s classification of the note as “emergency currency” and the observer can see it. There is “Reichsbanknote” on the face side. This is not "Darlehnskassenschein" or “Notgeld” and thus, this is not “emergency currency/money”.
The 4th item illustrates peak of hyper-inflated currency. At this face value it should hard to believe that anybody had any illusion about restoring Papermark to Goldmark parity. Finally, 5th item we put just for fun. Martin Luther gives a hint how typical “Notgeld” looked like: informal and usually having some local details of municipality or business they were issued by.
How do you like this story?