Inflation

Workers usually get paid once a week, but in Germany in the 1920s they got paid twice daily. Besides that, they had an extra half-hour every morning to go shopping for food, If that sounds like a worker’s paradise, let’s see what a normal day in 1923 was really like.

            At 11:30 A.M. work stopped at the factory, and Karl Hoffman lined up with the other workers. The boss gave him two huge bags, “Here’s your morning’s salary.” he said. Fifty million German marks in cash, Karl was in a hurry. He loaded his salary into a wheelbarrow and started to run in the direction of a big produce store. Inside, he joined a long line of people, all with huge bags of money. “How much are the onions?” he asked the sales clerk. “Twenty-five million marks for one,” she answered. Karl bought two onions and handed her the contents of his wheelbarrow.

            When Karl arrived home after the after-noon’s work, his wife was cooking dinner. “I worked all morning to buy two onions,” he told her. “I passed the produce store after work and goods have doubled in price. Onions now cost 50 million marks each. My afternoon’s salary is almost worthless. It will only buy one onion. I’m going to use the bills for firewood.” He threw the paper money in the fire.

            That incident was typical for millions of Germans in the 1920s. People used money for firewood. They had to work for three days to buy a pound of butter, and twenty weeks to buy a suit. In the chart below, you can see how the value of the German mark dropped in just nine years. In 1914, four trillion (4,000,000,000) mark equaled one dollar.