Germany 50 Millionen Mark 1923 emergency note info?

I have this German 50 Millionen Mark that was released September 1923, and was only good until April 1924. Anyone know anything about this? Value

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Düren is the name of both a city and a district in extreme western Germany. Yours is a typical notgeld note of which thousands of types exist. I guess there is a catalog but I've never seen a copy. "Typical" value for a note like yours would be $2 or $3 at most.

A $50 million face value indicates it was not quite issued at the time of peak inflation, when notes were denominated in the billions.

 

@doug5353 thanks for the cool information!

 

I hope by 2023 we in America are not issuing notes such as this. I hope people understand the history behind these notes, and what came afterwards. Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

 

If we do issue notes like this, it means we the people have learned nothing, the Congress has learned nothing, and the Fed has learned nothing. It's our children and grandchildren who will suffer.

 

Unfortunately it seems like we are not learning. Actually for those who know financial history of civilizations, there have been problems throughout recorded time with societies messing up their monetary system. The few years in post WW1 Germany with hyper inflation wasn't something new.

Don't even get me started with clad coinage. And those who want to eliminate the cent, if they succeed in doing so, in my opinion it would mean that we are basically giving up on correcting the problem of rampantly printing money.

Sorry to perhaps take the thread off the path a bit. But the "Anyone know anything about this?"...I thought the story behind the note might bring some perspective to understanding it. The lesson the note serves is quite valuable, if we heed it.

 

"...And those who want to eliminate the cent, if they succeed in doing so, in my opinion it would mean that we are basically giving up on correcting the problem of rampantly printing money."

Sorry, that's totally ridiculous. There's ZERO connection. The vast majority of money CREATED is done with a keystroke, not a printing press. But here's a few stats on small-denomination coins:

US Mint Annual Coin Production (2014 vs 2013)
........... Year 2013.................. Year 2014
Cents... 7,070,000,000.............. 8,146,400,000

Cent production was $81 million face value; total U.S. government spending was $3.504 trillion dollars, or $9.60 billion dollars per day, or $400 million dollars per hour, so the total output of "cents" would run the government for about 12 minutes, give or take.

The COST of producing $81 million in cents was roughly $150 million. Who received the $150 million? Sellers of zinc and copper, Mint employees, manufacturers of coin presses, truckers, railroads, coin-bag makers, etc., right down the line.

What happens if you eliminate pennies? Do some of the costs accrue to nickel production? Depending on rounding prices up or down, the cost of everyday goods to Americans goes up or down. However...

Net loss or net gain? From the Washington Post, March 10, 2014:

"In 2013, the cost of making pennies and nickels exceeded their face value for the eighth year in a row. The cost of minting a penny stood at 1.8 cents, nearly twice its face value." Minting 5 pennies costs 9 cents; minting 1 nickel costs 9.4 cents. You can't win.

Nickels cost twice as much as dimes – 9.4 cents vs. 4.6 cents – despite being worth only half as much..."

 

Sorry to interrupt the discussion about the economy and the future of the US but the note shown in the initial post was issued by the city of Düren (which was and still is the county/Kreis seat, but the county did not issue this). And Doug is right, shortly before the end of the hyperinflation period, notgeld like this was issued by Düren and other places. "Zwanzig Billionen", that's 20 trillion ...

Christian

 

The key word is "stadt," meaning city (not state).

You have reminded me how much fun we GI's had in Germany, piling into a cab on a Friday night and belting out "Stadtmitte, bitte" to the stoic cab driver, who's seen it all, that phrase (the sum total of our German) meaning, more or less, "Downtown, please..."

 

A $50 million face value indicates it was not quite issued at the time of peak inflation, when notes were denominated in the billions.

It is usually forgotten by Americans (and probably most others nowadays) that at the time, what Americans call a billion was a milliard, 1 thousand million and a European billion was 1000 milliards.(one million million)

When the inflation hit the buffers, 1 European billion marks translated to 1 new mark, so notes with a denomination of 1 Billion (European) and up were almost all changed for the new currency and are thus quite rare.

You'd need 20,000 of these notes the OP illustrated to equal a note or coin worth about 20c. US. Clearly they would be better value burnt for warmth than redeemed for new money.

There are Notgeld catalogues, I have one somewhere I think.

The German hyperinflation seems insignificant compared with that suffered by Hungary after WWII.

"How bad was the inflation? Something that cost 379 Pengö in September 1945, cost 72,330 Pengö by January 1946, 453,886 Pengö by February, 1,872,910 by March, 35,790,276 Pengö by April, 11.267 billion Pengö by May 31, 862 billion Pengö by June 15, 954 trillion Pengö by June 30, 3 billion billion Pengö by July 7, 11 trillion billion Pengö by July 15 and 1 trillion trillion Pengö by July 22, 1946. Obviously, the inflation was devastating to the mathematically challenged."

https://www.globalfinancialdata.com/gfdblog/?p=2382

for more.

 

By mid-1944, Greece also had a horrific inflation, printing a 5 million drachma stamp for packages; only 3 years before, 5 drachma was the going rate.

 

I know that most are $2, but all my others don't have that red stamp in the bottom left corner, that's why I was wondering

 

The word "umlauffähig" means unfit or unredeemable, and was part of this handstamp to indicate that the bill would not be accepted in the nearby (large) cities of Aachen and Köln (Cologne), who no doubt had plenty of their own funny money in daily circulation. That surcharge is specific to Düren.

Whether it affects the value, I don't know.

 

In this case it's the other way round - umlauffähig indicates the note could circulate in the "Regierungsbezirke" Aachen and Köln (Umlauf = circulation; fähig = able). Today the two are one, see the orange part of this map. You can also see the Kreis/county of Düren; the city is somewhere in there.

Christian

 

Sorry, German is not my native language. Nor French, but I try. Someday I'll tell you the story about buying olives in Menton, near Monaco.

 

Go ahead, we can still split that off the topic. There is also the story about my sister buying meringues at a French patisserie. She knew the German word for these (baisers, French pronunciation), so she asked for trois baisers s'il vous plaît. The lady behind the counter was somewhat bewildered ... a litte later my sister learned that she had asked for three kisses.

Christian

 

So I guess the answer to Charles1997 is $2 to $3 answered by Doug5353's correct ? I got lost with all the other information.

 

Yes, unless that red rubber stamp adds to the valuation - no way to be sure without a catalog. Seems certain it was added after printing.

 

That was my actual question, if the stamp did much

 

Your original question said nothing about the red stamping, other than pointing out the good-until-August-1924. Bottom line, the translation was unknown to both of us until Christian explained. Most notgeld had an expiration date, so I didn't think much about that factor.