Inflation 1923. War, money, trauma

wrote the Swiss student Lilly Staudenmann-Stettler, who lived in Frankfurt, in August 1922. Little did she know that at the end of 1923 one dollar would cost 4.2 trillion marks. The crisis year of hyperinflation is now being looked at 100 years later by the Frankfurt Historical Museum with a special exhibition.

As early as 1914, the money supply had increased significantly as a result of the war-related financial policy of the German Reich and the Reichsbank. However, inflation only became noticeable after the war defeat, when investors and companies lost their capital invested in war bonds. This was also accompanied by a loss of trust in the state, which was a heavy burden for the young Weimar Republic. The strain of peace conditions and demobilization, as well as the care of war victims and survivors, exacerbated the situation. Political murders and the occupation of the Ruhr area by French troops as a result of non-payment of German reparations ultimately led to complete economic collapse. An eventful time for Frankfurt too, which in 1919 was on the border with the French-occupied areas, which also included Höchst, Nied and Griesheim. The increasing food and housing shortages in the following years, the black market and the looting, strikes and riots left a deep impression on the collective memory of the people in Frankfurt.

The exhibition frames the experience of inflation around 1923 with a depiction of historical inflation, the subsequent rise of Hitler and a second inflation, and then leads us into the present via the currency reforms of 1948, 1990 and 2001: What does inflation look like today?

The Bundesbank is a cooperation partner and financial supporter of the exhibition , together with the Metzler Bank and the Frankfurter Sparkasse.

For more information, or to order, see:
Inflation 1923. War, money, trauma(https://www.historisches-museum-frankfurt.de/de/ausstellung/inflation)
Inflation 1923 - war, money, trauma(https://www.geldscheine-online.com/post/inflation-1923-krieg-geld-trauma)