One-mark silver coin
1915 ・ silver ・ 20th century ・ German Empire
The face value '1 MARK' inside oak leaves, and the crowned eagle of the empire. It is the silver that carried the daily reckoning of the gold-standard mark born in 1871. But the date on this piece is 1915. Convertibility into gold had already been suspended when war broke out the year before; the costs of war ran into public debt and note issue, and behind price controls a suppressed inflation was quietly building. The silver coin in the hand keeps the same face, but under it the ground of the currency has begun to tilt — a piece marking the eve of the mark's death.