More Notgeld #2

In my posts Is That History Peering Back At Me? and More Notgeld - Installment 1 I have shared some scans of a portion of my Notgeld collection.

Today, instead of new scans I am going to share some more information I have found while researching Notgeld. Richard Holmes has a lot of great information on Notgeld, as well as informative links, on his web-page German Inflationary Notgeld 1922 - 1923.

Richard states on his web-page: After WWI, Germany was plunged into one of the worst inflations ever to hit a western country as the government struggled with the truly massive punitive damages demanded by the Treaty of Versailles. During this brief period of hyper-inflation, people who did not convert their savings into tangible assets lost them completely . Many bank accounts were closed because even large pre-war sums of 100,000 Marks were longer worth even the price of a postage stamp. The middle class was by and large reduced to poverty, theft and petty crime soared, pensions became worthless and many people starved to death.

Below are two examples of "high value" notes that were printed to cope with the runaway inflation of the day. The first note is a Private Company Issue by Phoenix Mining, 5 Billionen Mark (5 Trillion Marks).

This is a Reichsbahn (German Rail) Issue, 10 Billionen Mark (10 Trillion Marks).

I thought that the one below was quite interesting it is a Munster Landesbank Regional Issue, 4.2 Goldmark / 1 Dollar deniminated.

* Note that in German "eine Milliarde" means 1,000,000,000 (an American billion) and "eine Billion" means 1,000,000,000,000 (an American trillion)

These three scans are courtesy of Richard Holmes. Please visit the Richard Holmes's Homepage.

© 2008 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.

Picture Monday, June 9, 2008

My great-grandmother, Elise Horst arrived in America on October 25, 1901 with my grandfather and his brothers Fritz, Otto, and Carl on the Hamburg-American Line Steamship Pennsylvania. Fritz was 9 years old and was born in America. Otto was 7 years old and Carl was 3 years old, both were born in Germany. My grandfather was born in Erfurt, Germany and was 4 years old at the time he came to America.

When My grandfather was old enough he went back to Germany with his wife to study the floral business. While in Germany his wife came back to America. Then came world War I. My grandfather could not come back and his wife divorced him. After the war he met and married my future grandmother. My great grandmother and many of the Horst's settled in the Birmingham, Alabama area where they were in the floral business. There is a road in Birmingham named Horst Hill Road. At one time there was a Fritz Horst Florist and Horst Wholesale Florists in Birmingham. I can't find them now. there is a Horst Wholesale Florists in Charleston, SC and in Savannah, GA. I don't know if they are the same or if they were affiliated with the business in Birmingham. Maybe someone can help me out with that.

The picture below is a picture of my grandmother, Gretel Weinecke Horst. I don't know who the children are. They are probably part of her family in Germany. My grandfather and grandmother arrived in America on November 27, 1923 on the Hamburg-American Line Steamship Thuringia at Ellis Island.

I'm not sure who these pictures are either. They were with the above picture so I am guessing they are other family in Germany.

This is a picture of me with my father a couple of months before he passed away. We were visiting the King Tut exhibit in New Orleans, LA at the time. In this picture we were standing in front of the Place d'Armes Hotel which is where we stayed while in town.

The picture below is a picture of another relative that was in Germany. This is Rudi. Obviously he was on the other side. This is interesting because my father's step-brother, my Uncle Dickie, was in the military (Army, Navy, Marines, I'm not sure which branch) and was stationed in the Pacific Theatre. So our family had was involved in WW II on both sides. Much of our family suffered greatly in Germany. And I know my father had a rough time in school here in the US. He told me stories about boys that would pick on him since he spoke German and spoke English with a German accent.

© 2008 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.

D-Day, June 6, 1944

Today is June 6, 2008. It was 64 years ago on this date that the Allied nations sacrificed so much in order to begin the end of the war in Europe. Below are a few things I have collected from around the web for you to share today. I have also provided links to other sites for you to visit.

Circular written by General Dwight D. Eisenhower explaining the importance of the Normandy invasion on winning the war. These were distributed to every member of the attacking force the night prior to the D-Day landings. Sergeant J. Robert "Bob" Slaughter, a Guard member of Virginia's Company D, 116th Infantry, passed his copy around among the members of Company D to get their signatures (front and back) as they waited to load aboard the landing craft that would take them to Omaha Beach. By nightfall of June 6, about half of these men were dead or wounded. Courtesy John R. Slaughter

The German pillbox sited on Omaha Beach with the National Guard Association Monument atop of it, 1969. National Guard Education Foundation

The above posters are courtesy of the US Army. These and 2 more posters can be viewed at the their poster gallery. You may also go to their D-Day site for much more good information.
Other sites worth looking at are:

The National D-Day Memorial Foundation

The D-Day Fact Sheet from the Kansas Heritage Server

The D-Day Museum

Eisenhower Archives

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

To the many who paid the ultimate price for all of us to live in freedom, I am forever thankful and grateful. Because of them we live in the greatest country on earth. And to those who are currently defending our freedom on foreign shores, THANK YOU so much for your sacrifices. Our prayers are with you and your families.

© 2008 Barry T Horst

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day near the bottom of the left sidebar for free software downloads daily.