During the Weimar Republic Hyperinflation era between 1921 to 1923 did the public use silver and gold coins as a substitute for the paper currency
Anything of value would have been hoarded. Sometimes, however, such as in the Weimar, that works in reverse. Pretty cool topic. Read up on Gresham's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_law
I think World War I reparations against Germany depleted a lot of the gold and silver money out of the economy. And the nation was still pretty impoverished after the War. So people were pushed to find other substitutes to precious metals for purchases in everyday life.
Not coin related, but an interesting book if want to read more about the German Hyperinflation. Carrying money in baskets Going shopping
Some older silver coins, ie 2,3 and 5 marks were counterstamped with new values. Some were officially done by local governments but some were also fraudulently done. If you had connections and foreign trade, you dealt in US$ GB£. There are some notgeld notes denominated in US$. At the same time in Russia it was not uncommon for some enterprises to be trading in GB£. Back about 25 years ago someone pulled up some floorboards of an older house in Saint Petersburg and found a box containing several dozen British pound notes from the late teens and early 1920s. The speculation was that someone acquired them in trade and then the Soviet government cracked down on trading with capitalists and whoever owned the notes hid them.
The maternal side of my wife's family is German, paternal is Norwegian. When hyper-inflation was at ridiculous levels, her Great Grandfather was issued these. They are 20 MILLION Mark notgeld and they would have been lucky to exchange one for a few basic essentials. Just after the outbreak of war he managed to have his coinage and jewellery smuggled out of Germany by a friend. After the end of the war he couldn't bring it back for fear of falling under suspicion by the authorities. When he died a little later, the secret of where they were taken died with him.
Westphalia tried a series with a high denomination coin in silver and some gold plated version portraying von Stein and Annette von Huelshoff.
I know the nation was required to pay a huge amount in bullion to the victorious countries under the Treaty of Versailles, so the official bullion supply would have been exhausted. I'm not sure about private citizens.
Because of all the money they spent in WWI Italy also had to tighten their belt. In the 1920's Italy dropped the silver content of their coins by a large amount. The 5 Lire crowns that had been 25 Grams of silver were dropped to a small coin of 5 Grams of silver. The 2 Lire coins that had been 10 Grams of silver were reduced to a no silver nickel coin.
One effect of WWI was that most countries monetary systems suffered - the only exceptions are the United States, Australia and Switzerland. The LMU - Latin Monetary Unit - standard that France, Italy, Romania, Belgium and Switzerland were a part of disintegrated. Of the LMU countries only Switzerland's franc retained it's link to gold. Curiously the Swiss franc is the only currency to have appreciated over the last 100 years vs. the US $.
