German+Hyperinflation+Primary+Sources

Hyperinflation Primary Sources


Below you will find a number of primary resources concerning the period of hyperinflation in Germany from 1918-1924. Your task is below

Activity
1. Identify which source(s) focus on what it was like to live during these times. Provide some evidence from the source. 2. Identify which source(s) focus on how some actually benefitted from hyperinflation. Provide some evidence from the source. 3. Identify which source(s) focus on the results of hyperinflation in German society (what effect did it have on the thinking and feelings of German people?). Provide some evidence from the source. 4. Identify which source(s) provide an amusing anecdote. Provide some evidence from the source.

Source 1
Bartering became more and more widespread. . . A haircut cost a couple of eggs. . . A student I knew. . . had sold his gallery ticket. . . at the State Opera for one dollar to an American; he could live on that money quite well for a whole week. The most dramatic changes in Berlin's outward ap­pearance were the masses of beggars in the streets. . . The hard core of the street markets were the petty black-marketeers ... In the summer of that inflation year my grandmother found herself unable to cope. So she asked one of her sons to sell her house. He did so for I don't know how many thousands of millions of marks, The old woman decided to keep the money under her mattress and buy food with it as the need arose - with the result that nothing was left except a pile of worthless paper when she died a few months later. As soon as the factory gates opened and the workers streamed out, pay packets (often in old cigar boxes) in their hands, a kind of relay race began: the wives grabbed the money, rushed to the nearest shops, and bought food before prices went up again. Salaries always lagged behind, the employees on monthly pay were worse off than workers on weekly. People living on fixed incomes sank into deeper and deeper poverty. A familiar sight in the streets were handcarts and laundry baskets full of paper money, being pushed or carried to or from the banks. It sometimes happened that thieves stole the baskets but tipped out the money and left it on the spot. There was dry joke that spread through Germany: papering one's WC with banknotes. Some people made kites for their kids out them. Egon Larsen, a German journalist, remembering in 1976

Source 2
Two women were carrying a laundry basket filled to the brim with banknotes. Seeing a crowd standing round a shop window, they put down the basket, for a moment to see if there was anything they could buy. When they turned round a few moments later, they found the money there untouched. But the basket was gone. The memories of a German writer

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Source 3
<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">When I was a student in Freiburg only some 30 miles from the Swiss border there was a regular influx of visitors from nearby Basle. They were quite ordinary people who came for a day's shopping and enjoyment. They filled the best cafes and restaurants, bought luxury goods. Most of us had very little money and could never afford to see the inside of all those glamorous places into which the foreigners crowded. Of course we were envious. . . Contempt for such visitors combined with envy to produce in most of us a great deal of anti-foreigner and nationalist feeling. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Memories of William Guttman

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Source 4
<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">I vividly remember pay days at that time. I used to have to accompany the manager to the bank in an open six-seater Benz which we filled to the brim with bundles and bundles of million and milliard mark notes. We then drove back through the narrow streets quite unmolested. And when they got their wages, the workmen did not even bother to count the number of notes in each bundle. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">A worker in a transport firm in Berlin

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Source 5
<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">At eleven in the morning a siren sounded. Everybody gathered in the factory yard where a five-ton lorry was drawn up, loaded with paper money. The chief cashier and his assistants climbed up on top. They read out names and just threw out bundles of notes. As soon as you caught one you made a dash for the nearest shop and bought anything that was going.... <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">You very often bought things you did not need. But with those things you could start to barter. You went round and exchanged a pair of shoes for a shirt, or a pair of socks for a sack of potatoes; some cutlery or crockery, for instance, for tea or coffee or butter. And this process was repeated until you eventually ended up with the thing you actually wanted. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Willy Derkow, who was a student at the time, remembering in 1975.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Source 6
<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Countless children, even the youngest, never get a drop of milk and come to school without a warm breakfast ... The children frequently come to school without a shirt or warm clothing or they are prevented from attending school by a lack of proper clothing. Deprivation gradually stifles any sense of cleanliness and morality and leaves room only for thoughts of the struggle against the hunger and cold. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Report by the Mayor of Berlin, 1923

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Source 7
<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">A German landowner bought, on credit, a whole herd of valuable cattle. After a certain time he sold one cow from the herd. Because of the depreciation of the mark, the price he got for it was enough to pay off the whole cost of the herd <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">The memories of a German writer

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Source 8
<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Billion mark notes were quickly handed on as though they burned one's fingers, for tomorrow one would no longer pay in notes but in bundles of notes... One afternoon I rang Aunt Louise's bell. The door was opened merely a crack. From the dark came an oddbroken voice: 'I've used 60 billion marks' worth of gas. My milk bill is 1 million. But all I have left is 2000 marks. l don't understand any more'. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">E Dobert, Convert to Freedom (1941)

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Source 9
<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">We were deceived, too. We used to say, "All of Germany is suffering from inflation." It was not true. There is no game in the whole world in which everyone loses. Someone has to be the winner. The winners in our inflation were big business men in the cities and the "Green Front", -from peasants to the Junkers, in the country. The great losers were the working class and above all the middle class, who had most to lose. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> How did big business win? Well, from the very beginning they figured their prices in gold value, selling their goods at gold value prices and paying their workers in inflated marks. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> You could go to the baker in the morning and buy two rolls for 20 marks; but go there in the afternoon, and the same rolls were 25 marks. The baker didn't know how it happened that the rolls were more expensive in the afternoon. His customers didn't know how it happened. It had somehow to do with the dollar, somehow to do with the stock exchange - and somehow, maybe to do with the Jews. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> Erna von Pustau remembering life in Hamburg at the time

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">Source 10
<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">We were out playing football and one of my firends said: 'I'm going to the shop to buy a couple of bread rolls.' he had a 500,000 mark note... But he only came back with one, because a roll now cost 400,000 marks. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">The memories of a Karl Nagerl, who was a school boy in 1923