What Actually Survived Weimar's Hyperinflation

In 1923 Germany's money died, and Hugo Stinnes came out of the hyperinflation owning more than fifteen hundred companies. But when economists rebuilt the record of German wealth from 1913 to 1927, the winners were not where most people expect them. Case Notes (PDF) with sources, charts and glossary: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BPjD... This is the sequel to our most-watched film, How to Win Big When Money Dies, the story of Hugo Stinnes, the man they called the Inflation King. Watch it first here:    • How to Win Big When Money Dies — Learning ...   The first film left one lesson behind: own real things, owe paper. This one asks what the full record says. Start on the eve of the First World War with 100 marks in each kind of asset, and count what was left after the inflation, the revaluation laws and the stabilisation. Savings and bonds kept about fifteen of every hundred. Shares and businesses kept less than half. Property lost too. Only farmland ended with more than it started. Then the film follows the owner the first film missed: the man with a rented house and a melted mortgage. He repaid his loan in paper marks and won by every rule of the inflation. But rent control, built for prices that moved at a walk, held his rent to about one percent of its prewar value. On November 28, 1923, Germany's supreme court broke with "a mark is a mark" and let old mortgages be revalued. On February 14, 1924, an emergency decree let the German states tax house rents. On July 16, 1925, parliament brought old mortgages back at a quarter of their gold value, and settled the state's own war bonds at a fortieth on the same day. What you'll learn: • Why German courts treated a debt of 10,000 marks of 1913 (roughly $80,000 in today's money) as settled by 10,000 worthless paper marks • How the Rentenmark was fixed at one for one trillion paper marks, and what Germany's entire war debt was worth on that day • Why the farmer with a mortgage was the only broad kind of owner to come out ahead • How the house owner won on his debt, lost on his income, and paid part of the gain back in tax • Why the finance ministry judged borrowers' bank-credit gains too hard to measure, while the Reichsbank put the state's own gain at more than ten times what private borrowers made • How the Stinnes heirs were caught in the spring of 1925 by a bill in British pounds that would not melt The lesson: the winners of an inflation are its debtors. The biggest debtor is the state, so it wins first. Then it taxes the others who won. Sources include Costantino Bresciani-Turroni, The Economics of Inflation (1937); Hjalmar Schacht's The Magic of Money (1967); the Reich Finance Ministry's 1925 memorandum on taxing inflation gains; the Reichsgericht judgment of November 28, 1923; and Albers, Bartels and Schularick's reconstruction of German wealth, 1895 to 2018. #EconomicHistory #FinancialHistory #Inflation #MonetaryHistory #SovereignDebt #weimarrepublic #HardAssets #gold #MonetaryDebasement #FinancialRepression Chapters: 0:00 Who really won when money died? 1:29 The paper came first: war loans and 'a mark is a mark' 2:58 One Rentenmark for one trillion 3:48 The biggest debtor: a war debt worth fifteen pfennigs 4:11 Narrow exits: gold, dollars and goods 4:48 Stinnes borrows; shares counted in gold 5:39 The farmer: income that kept pace 6:01 The scorecard: 100 marks in each kind of asset 6:44 The house: a mortgage that melted 7:32 Rent control: the rent stops 8:54 The courts come back: revaluation 10:08 A quarter for the lender, a fortieth from the state 10:40 The rent tax of February 14, 1924 11:41 The turn: politics picks from the winners it can see 12:56 Stable money changes the question 13:59 Then and now: one similarity, one difference 14:44 The Stinnes heirs and the sterling bill 15:19 The verdict: who really won 16:54 The lesson: the state wins first, then it taxes 🔔 Subscribe for more deep dives into financial history and the figures who shaped our world