It’s 1923 Germany and WWI ended just over 4 years ago. On February 20, 1923 Germany print these 5000 mark notes. Only one side is printed in order to save on printing costs. So remember your history. Germany was defeated, they had to pay other countries reparation money and then, inflation became rampant. So what do you do when this happens? This was Germany’s approach to their money problems. They just overprinted on the 5000 mark note and turned it into a 2 million mark note. I don’t do German but at the very top of the bill the translation is: Valid for the Hundredfold Amount. The costs to do so were extremely low. The notes are dated 20 Feb 1923. A wonderful piece of history.
Wonderful piece of history or a sad reminder of economic turmoil? I say it is both. Thanks for sharing. A lot of people collect these, but I've never come across one myself.
Cool, I have a couple of US $100s that I would like to do that to now so I can afford groceries for the week.
Seems like it would have been more efficient to just print one note equal to the amount owed to each country, give it to them, them immediately print rescaled currency with a nation-wide "swap-out" program. That's effectively what they did anyway (pay reparations with worthless money), but it would have avoided all of the inflation headaches!
Yes it is and then look at what Hitler did to get Germany back on its feet. But then he started WWII as part of making Germany strong again. In less than 20 years Germany went from total ruin to massive dominance.
Thought everyone would get a little kick out of these two pieces of post WW1 German inflationary currency that I have. Got them from a German friend while I was stationed there in the 70's. You know times are tough when they are printing notes this large. 100 Million and 50 million Marks.
