Weimar mark peaks at 4.2 trillion to 1 USD
On November 15, 1923, the German Rentenbank issued new currency (the rentenmark) at a conversion rate of 1 rentenmark per 1 trillion (10^12) old marks. The old mark had been trading at roughly 4.2 trillion to the U.S. dollar the previous day — compared to 4.2 marks to the dollar in mid-1914, the start of the war. German prices had risen by a factor of roughly one trillion in nine years. Workers were paid twice a day and rushed to spend wages before they lost value. Photographs of children building stacks with bundles of marks became the iconic images of 20th-century monetary collapse.
The stabilization was almost instant. The rentenmark, backed nominally by German agricultural and industrial land, held its value from November 1923 onward. The key was not the backing (which was largely symbolic) but the credible commitment to stop printing — the Reichsbank was forbidden from issuing more rentenmarks than the original allocation, and that commitment held.
05 · Hyperinflation Century
With gold constraints effectively removed after World War I, the 20th century produced the most spectacular currency collapses in recorded history. Weimar Germany, Hungary, Greece, China, Yugoslavia, and dozens of lesser-known cases all reached true hyperinflation — monthly inflation above 50 percent, continuing for months or years. The Hungarian pengő collapse of 1946 remains the worst on record, with prices doubling every 15 hours at its peak. The era ended with Nixon's closure of the gold window in August 1971, which made every major currency in the world fully fiat for the first time in history.
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