How Were the Lives of Germans Affected by the Hyper-Inflation of 1923?

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Kate Bystrova

How Were the Lives of Germans Affected by the Hyper-Inflation of 1923?

        After the war there had been a period of stability, but this was much akin to the calm before a storm; inflation soon resumed and by 1923 was raging as the "wildest inflation in history". Prices would double in a matter of hours. A wild stampede erupted as people rushed to buy food and get rid of money. The government, however, continued to print paper money in an attempt to appease the people, despite not having sufficeint resources to support the currency; this led to constantly rising inflation.

        Germany's hyper-inflation hit its worst point ever in 1923. By this time prices had become ridiculous, with the cost off a loaf of bread rising to as much as 200 billion marks. In 1923, a German housewife burned mark notes in her kitchen stove, since it was cheaper to burn marks than to use them to buy firewood. Faculties such as hospitals, literary and art societies, and religious institutions closed down as their funds evaporated. As a result or the hyper-inflation crisis money was practically worthless and many people found that they could no longer sustain their standard of living. The middle class were possibly the hardest hit as they were the most likely to have had savings - which were wiped out, and they tended to be proffessionals who depended on cash payments but whose services were in less demand during this crisis; doctors, teachers and lawyers amongst these, they sold furniture, clothing, works of art to buy food. Little shops became cluttered with these items as millions of hard-working people suddenly found that their life's savings would not buy a postage stamp. They were penniless. However, people who had taken out loans before the inflation, mostly industrialists, benefitted from the change that made it so simple to pay their debts. Also, German goods became cheap for other countries to buy, thus stimulating her trade and employment.

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        All hope of checking the collapse of the mark vanished when Germany could not make the reparations payment due in January 1923, France and Belgium invaded the Ruhr, Germany's key industrial district; the econimic situation plumetted further still. New programmes and laws passed by the government, such as the expensive 'passive resistance', worsened the situation still. New billions of marks were printed to finance these heavy costs and by late 1923, 300 paper mills and 150 printing companies had 2000 presses going day and night, top speed, turning out currency.

        As usual under such ...

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