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Is it true that it cost 200 billion German marks to buy a loaf of bread in Germany in 1923?

Question #92288. Asked by wwiivarn.
Last updated May 26 2021.

Related Trivia Topics: History  
queproblema
Answer has 17 votes
Currently Best Answer
queproblema
19 year member
2119 replies

Answer has 17 votes.

Currently voted the best answer.
Figures vary, but yes, a loaf of bread cost an astronomical amount of money.

"By June 1923 when the hyperinflation was in full flow, a loaf of bread in Germany cost 430,000,000,000 marks."
link http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Hyper-inflation

I read that as 430 billion. I'm not sure of what a billion meant in Germany or whether they used milliards.

Wiki has a picture of a woman stoking her stove with banknotes since that was more economical than buying firewood.
link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation

I find text references all over the net to the famous wheelbarrows full of deutchmarks, but can't find a picture. Some say those were just propaganda pictures.

Feb 12 2008, 11:14 PM
queproblema
Answer has 15 votes
queproblema
19 year member
2119 replies

Answer has 15 votes.
I will also mention the Weimar Republic, a name often used to describe the Deutsches Reich at that time.

I also failed to explain WHY figures vary: the inflation was so galloping that prices rose fearfully fast. Here's a cut-and-paste that I've altered very slightly:

"Following is the historic slide:

July 1914 4.2 marks to the dollar
January 1919 8.9
July 1919 14.0
January 1920 64.8
July 1920 39.5
January 1921 64.9
July 1921 76.7
January 1922 1919.8
July 1922 493.2
January 1923 17,972
July 1923 353,412
August 1923?4 620,455
September 1923 98,860,000
October 1923 25,260,208,000
November 15, 1923 4,200,000,000,000

[Source: Gordon Craig, "Germany 1866-1945"]
By late 1923, the German government required 1,783 printing presses, running around the clock, to print money. Germans wheeled shopping carts filled with literally trillions of marks to pay for a single loaf of bread. Employees asked to be paid their wages each morning so that they could shop at noon before merchants posted the afternoon price rises.
link https://www.stocksandnews.com/wall-street-history.php?aid=MTMwM19XUw==


Response last updated by gtho4 on May 26 2021.
Feb 13 2008, 12:35 AM
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