Making Money: Notgeld and the Material Experience of Inflation in Weimar Germany.

This essay addresses Notgeld, the emergency currency produced throughout Germany during the inflationary decade (1914–1924), as a material artefact and as a significant element of the complex print culture of the early Weimar period. Although Notgeld issues number in the tens of thousands, almost no historical or art-historical research has focused on this provisional fiat currency as a visual and material phenomenon that permeated everyday life during these years. Diverse in its material, its appearance, and in its intended audiences, Notgeld nevertheless traces a shared national experience of the inflation that charts increasing material deprivation and the depreciation of national wealth as well as the rise of an improvised and provisional Ersatzkultur. Artists contributed to and engaged with Notgeld throughout the inflationary decade, literally making money as designers of select issues, but making meaning, and art, out of it as well [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]