please help identify. German. found during WW2

My grandfather found this in a box with a bunch of coins at the base of a bombed home near where the Mosel river meets the Rhine river in France. He decided to show it to us just a few years ago. I've scoured the internet for hours and can't find anything. The only things that appear to look similar (at least to my untrained eye) are in the Art of Destruction" section on the ANS website. It is much larger than a coin but it will fit in the palm of my hand. Does anyone have any clues as to what it is? Many thanks!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Seems to be talking about the devaluation of the mark after WWI? Just a guess. I have no idea since I don't speak German. Very cool medal. I hope some others chime in with some info.

 

It is the hyper inflation period and I think mentions the countries that were paid war reparations.
Russia, France, Serbia, England, Australia, USA etc

 

It looks like some notgeld value rates for certain times during the hyperinflation, where it took a wheelbarrow full of notgeld marks and multimarks to buy a loaf of bread.

 

Closest I can find, looks like it's a medal with the prices, there's a similar coin in this article but it's for Feb 1923 (as oppose to Nov)

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Inflation_1914_bis_1923

 

The obverse depicts Hercules fighting the Hydra. This was common iconography to represent Austria (Hercules) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Hydra) during WWI.

Here are a couple pieces in my collection with the same iconography. The first is an Austrian pattern (1914) and the second is a Hungarian medal (also 1914).

 

Question: Are these medals simply pieces of Art that individuals made? There appears to be a mark below the figure that looks like "ST". Does this have any significance regarding other pieces by the same individual? Thank you all again for your input

 

The ST is probably the designer's initials.

Here is a CT thread with a hyperinflation medal (no WWI reference)
https://www.cointalk.com/threads/hyper-inflation-medal-token-1923-germany.247254/

Not much, but maybe it will help

 

Its a protest medallion /token against the war reparations causing inflation.

On the edge it says
IN THE WORLD WAR 1914- 18 AGAINST FRANCE RUSSIA ENGLAND ITALY ROMANIA JAPAN AMERICA AUSTRALIA SERBIA USA.

Germany defaulted on the payments and was driven to bankruptcy leading to the rise of nationalism and Adolf Hitler.

 

Hmm, the Mosel river flows into the Rhine in Koblenz, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Anyway, here is a medal like yours: https://picclick.de/Schwere-Medaille-1-Weltkrieg-Inflation-1923-263531290176.html

Christian

 

Thank you that is awesome. He said it was near there but he claims he was "on the french side." He is 94 years old but he is still very sharp

 

Thank you all again for your help. I am amazed at how quickly you all figured out something that had stumped us for quite some time.

 

When you go to the experts you expect an expert answer.

 

I don't believe the U.S. was paid reparations as it never ratified the Treaty of Versailles. President Wilson correctly understood that if Germany was punished too severely it would just cause more problems in the long run.

 

I thought it was the strain and stress of trying to get the treaty ratified which caused him to collapse and never be capable of making presidential decisions after that.

 

He had a stroke and was never the same again. It was covered up at the time and few people knew about it. Some people say his wife was the real president for the rest of his term.

But as I recall, Wilson showed up at Versailles with his 14 points for how he wanted to fairly end the war and the other allies told him to get lost because they wanted retribution and to make the Germans suffer, especially the French.

 

There was the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan too.
The German people saw reparations as a national humiliation.

Despite many defaults Germany actually paid off the debt on 3rd October 2010 92 years after the war ended.

Signatories
Principal Allied and Associated Powers

• British Empire
• France
• Italy
• United States
• Japan

 

I had heard that also, but I had also heard that Colonel House was the real controller.

 

Back then it was somewhat common to fight a war, and then expect the loser to come up with the money that the winner had spent before. In WW1 both France and Germany, for example, had that brilliant strategy - and since Germany "lost the armistice", the issue of reparations followed suit. Too bad that the German Empire had financed its war with credits too - so blaming the reparations alone for the hyperinflation was somewhat silly.

As for the "humiliation", keep in mind that the November 1918 revolution in Germany pretty much meant the end of both the monarchy and the war. So those who were against the revolution and the following republic could always claim that WW1 ended this way because of those "traitors" (the famous "stab in the back" myth). Yes, it would have made sense to support the young republic by limiting the reparation payments - but then how had France financed the war?

After WW2 things went a little differently, due to the idea that winning a war is not as difficult as achieving continuous peace afterwards. So for the past 70 years or so, the French-German cooperation has been a core element of European integration ...

Christian

 

Moving slightly off topic from the OPs medal question, but I found the following book useful in helping to understand what happened during that period of history.