A. Introduction
The Hyperinflation from 1923 is a historical event that is very famous among the German population. Almost everyone knows the picture with the black board, where a loaf of bread is being offered for 1 Billion German Mark. There is a fascination for the utopian high amounts of money, but people are scared at the same time that history will repeat itself. You can see this phenomenon especially when the EZB (European Central Bank) announced to unlimitedly deal in credits to bail out the Euro. However, the inflation rate was still far away from the 50% p.a. that would cause a hyperinflation.
Therefore, it is important to deal with the hyperinflation that was caused due to high national debt and the consequences of the First World War.
However, the inflation did not devalue money suddenly, but emerged since the First World War. We have to ask ourselves, whether the German government could have reacted differently, because the coming hyperinflation was recognized by some people already at 1920. Maybe the inflation could have been avoided, but on what terms?
I will answer those questions by analyzing the different causes of inflation. I will shortly address the decisions of the German government in the process, which I will explain at the end.
I shortly outlined the causes in order to judge the correctness of politicians’ decisions.
This paper is mainly arranged chronically, so that the preconditions for a hyperinflation will be explained first and the main part ends with the monetary reform.
I mainly used online resources, which were very easy to understand. There is a lot of literature about this topic, but not in German or not on an understandable level. Therefore, I used texts from the