The Winter
of German Discontent

Maximilian Harden (1861 – 1927) was a major-league journalist and editor in Germany at the time of the First World War. Between 1914-18 he was all-in for a German victory. After the defeat he believed in the democracy that came with the Weimar Republic – but he hated the economic state that his country was forced to endure – and that is what he addresses in this column.

“The dollar, which before the war was worth four marks and twenty pfennigs, will buy at this writing four thousand marks… Even more difficult is the plight of the students whose impoverished relatives cannot afford to send them large sums monthly. The famous physicist, Albert Einstein, has said that justice, ‘The great majority of students are so dependent on their earnings that study can only be a secondary occupation'”

“An old married couple, or a widow, who in 1914 were assured of an untroubled existence on an income 6,000 marks a year, cannot buy with that amount today a pair of shoes, or any new sheets, and can get nine or ten pounds of butter at the most…If anyone has looked upon all this destitution, which is borne by many in silence and true dignity, if anyone has seen this decay of a whole nation, which is like the crumbling of some venerable cathedral, and if in spite of this he puts it all down as camouflage, then that person has a heart of stone in his breast.”

More about German inflation can be read here.