Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Reichsmark
Summary
The Reichsmark (ˈʁaɪçsˌmaʁk; sign: R︁M︁; abbreviation: RM) was the currency of Germany from 1924 until 20 June 1948 in Trizone, where it was replaced by the Deutsche Mark, and until 23 June 1948 in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany , where it was replaced by the East German mark. The Reichsmark was subdivided into 100 Reichspfennigs (Rpf or R︁₰). The Mark is an ancient Germanic weight measure, traditionally a half pound, later used for several coins; Reich (realm in English) comes from the official name for the German state from 1871 to 1945, Deutsches Reich.
The Reichsmark was introduced in 1924 as a permanent replacement for the Papiermark. This was necessary due to the 1920s German inflation which had reached its peak in 1923. The exchange rate between the old Papiermark and the Reichsmark was = 1012 M︁ (one trillion in American English and French, one billion in German and other European languages and British English of the time; see long and short scale). To stabilize the economy and to smooth the transition, the Papiermark was not directly replaced by the Reichsmark, but by the Rentenmark, an interim currency backed by the Deutsche Rentenbank, owning industrial and agricultural real estate assets. The Reichsmark was put on the gold standard at the rate previously used by the German mark, with the U.S. dollar worth .
Öffa bills and Mefo bills
During this period a number of shell companies were created and authorized to issue bonds outside the Reichsmark in order to finance state projects. Nominally exchangeable at a 1:1 rate for Reichsmarks but then discounted by the Reichsbank this created secret monetary expansion without formally renouncing the gold standard of the Reichsmark.
With the annexation of the Federal State of Austria by Germany in 1938, the Reichsmark replaced the Austrian schilling. During the Second World War, Germany established fixed exchange rates between the Reichsmark and the currencies of the occupied and allied countries, often set so as to give economic benefits to German soldiers and civilian contractors, who were paid their wages in local currency.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.