Vol. 25: German Empire Hyperinflation 1923 - The Horst Jaster Collection

The inflation in Germany from 1914 to 1923 was the most radical devaluation that an industrialised nation had ever seen up to that time. It concerned the German reichsmark, which from its introduction in 1875 until the beginning of the First World War on 4 August 1914 was a stable currency. One reason for the “stable reichsmark” was its link to the gold standard. This obliged the Reichsbank to offer metallic currency or gold in exchange for the equivalent in paper money at any time. With the beginning of the First World War, the “emergency redemption obligation” of the Reichsbank was lifted. Then many war bonds were issued which were subscribed to by the population. Significantly more money for the financing of the war effort was printed in mid-1916, and was made available to the population. And so it was that consumers had more money to spend, which they required for the purchase and consumption of all the available goods. To obtain these increasingly scarce goods they were willing to pay increasingly high prices - the beginning of inflation. In his collection “German Reich 1923 hyperinflation” Horst Jaster shows by means of a number of postal items of all kinds the dramatic impact of hyperinflation on postal customers, companies and authorities who had relied on the “written letter” for communications even in difficult times. He represents with documentation, but also a warning, the incredible and most terrible chapter of German economic and financial history.

169 pages, of which 145 are full-colour plates showing pages from the collection, hardbound with dust jacket, bilingual in English and German