Weimar Life Hacks
A series of quotes and lessons on life during hyperinflation.
As a side project to our regular posts on Fingod’s Server, we’ll post on this page some quick tales of those who survived, thrived, suffered, and died during periods of hyperinflation and other grueling times. From primary or secondary sources, we’ll hear their stories in their own brief words. It’s up to us to decide whether or not we want to learn anything from them.
“I went to Holland that spring, looking for anything that would earn hard currency, and I found a job at the Queen Anna coal mines in the province of Limburg. We worked far down, at the bottom of the mine, hacking away with pickaxes. It was tremendously hot, usually one hundred degrees or so, and full of dust, but by the end of the spring vacation I’d saved fifty guilders,1 which was about twenty-five dollars. Then I figured out how to beat the inflation. I used the guilders as security for a short-term bank loan, and then I’d repay the bank loan with the deflated marks and take out another loan.2 I paid for a whole semester at Heidelberg that way, and at the end I still had the same fifty guilders.”
— a Harvard professor
From Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s by Otto Friedrich3
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Estimates vary, but it’s probably something like $500 to $600 in 2025 purchasing power terms.
Emphasis added
https://www.amazon.com/Before-Deluge-Portrait-Berlin-1920s/dp/0060926791