Largest deutsche marknotes windows#

These experts were totally cut off from any outside contact, mainly to hide the imminent reform in the Western zones of occupation from the Soviets. in proper German terminology in preparation for currency reform. They were kept there until 8 June to hammer out the details of laws, forms, instruction sheets, etc.

Largest deutsche marknotes windows#

An army bus with blinded windows transported them all to a military barracks on an airfield in Rothwesten near Kassel. To their great surprise a group of support people (secretaries, translators, cooks and even a barber) had also showed up at the meeting point. On 20 April 1948 Tenenbaum summoned eleven German financial experts to Bad Homburg, where since 10 October 1947 they had been working in the Sonderstelle Geld und Kredit on plans for the establishment of the Bank deutscher Länder and for currency reform. The higher the conversion percentage, the greater the danger of renewed inflation. The conversion rate was crucial for determining the volume of money in circulation and thus the inflationary potential after currency reform. Instead he insisted initially on a conversion rate of only 5 percent, raised to 6.5 percent during the second half of 1948. But this bold measure would almost certainly have ended in renewed inflation if Tenenbaum had not resisted the demands of his assembled German experts for a conversion rate of old Reichsmarks into new Deutsche Marks of 10 percent or more. It is true that Ludwig Erhard, as director of the economic administration of the combined Western zones of occupation, deserves credit for lifting price controls on quite a number of consumer goods a few days after currency reform. He deserves a monument in German economic history.“ Tenenbaum, very unjustly penetrated little into public awareness of Germans. “One of the masterminds behind German currency reform, the young American Edward A. Military Government who orchestrated the harsh 1948 reform against resistance from German experts: In his memoirs of 1987 Schmidt published the following passage about the key person in Lucius Clay’s U.S. Tenenbaum then, he was very familiar with the subject and later learnt about Tenenbaum’s crucial role. One of his successors, Helmut Schmidt, had himself in 1949 written his diploma thesis in economics at the University of Hamburg on West Germany’s successful currency reform in comparison to the failed Japanese one of 1946. He was a very popular minister of economics of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949-1963 before succeeding Konrad Adenauer as chancellor from 1963-1966. When asked who designed and executed West Germany’s currency reform of 20 June 1948 that introduced the Deutsche Mark, almost every German who isn’t shrugging his or her shoulders will name Ludwig Erhard.