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pace of hyperinflation caused people to quickly buy goods when they received their wages. Workers would demand to be paid at the beginning of the day for their work and after they were paid, they would be given half an hour to run off to buy goods before their earnings became worthless. The requirements to calculate and recalculate commercial transactions in the billions and trillions made it practically impossible to do business in paper Marks.
126:, but inflation rapidly increased after August 1921, and the Mark fell to less than one third of a cent by November 1921 (approx. 330 Marks per US Dollar). The Mark stabilized again at the beginning of 1922, but when there was no resolution to the reparations problem the inflation changed to hyperinflation and the Mark fell to 8000 Marks per Dollar by December 1922. The inflation reached its peak by November 1923 when a new currency (the
201:'Zero stroke' or 'cipher stroke' is the name created by German physicians for a prevalent nervous malady brought about by the present fantastic currency figures. Scores of cases of the 'stroke' are reported among men and women of all classes, who have been prostrated by their efforts to figure in thousands of millions. Many of these persons are apparently normal, except for their desire to write endless rows of ciphers.
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Cashiers, bookkeepers, and bankers were reportedly the most prone to this affliction. Besides a compulsion to write endless strings of zeros, individuals that suffered from this condition would reportedly become confused when referring to numbers and would state that they were ten billion years old
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disorder was supposedly caused by the dizzying speed of hyperinflation and the calculations required to conduct commerce under its effect. It has been said that during the worst period of hyperinflation that in the time it took to drink a cup of coffee, the price for the cup could double. The fast
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With the price of bread running into billions a loaf the German people have had to get used to counting in thousands of billions. This, according to some German physicians, brought on a new nervous disease known as "zero stroke," or "cipher stroke," which may, however, be classed with
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Zero stroke is the name of the latest German ailment. It is the nervous affliction of bookkeepers who grow dizzy from the number of ciphers that must be set in a row after the integers before German marks are sufficiently numerous to come within hailing distance of real
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as cipheritis. The persons afflicted with the malady are perfectly normal, except "for a desire to write endless rows of ciphers and engage in computations more involved than the most difficult problems in
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Weimar
Republic hyperinflation from one to one trillion paper Marks per gold Mark. Note the logarithmic scale
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60:(1921–24). The disorder was primarily characterized by the desire of patients to write endless rows of
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Zero stroke has been described in slightly different terms by various authors.
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in 1919, Germany faced a damaged economy and a requirement to pay immense
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Germany, 1923: banknotes had lost so much value that they were used as
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Another newspaper article at the time described the condition as:
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article that reported on the condition described it as follows:
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377:Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
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191:would describe the condition in his 1975 book
346:Economics and Politics in the Weimar Republic
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369:. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co.
363:Karsten Laursen; Jorgen Pedersen (1964).
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98:Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic
58:hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic
316:Money, whence it came, where it went
194:Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went
406:Obsolete terms for mental disorders
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318:. Houghton Mifflin. p. 157.
184:or had forty trillion children.
64:, which are also referred to as
411:Economy of the Weimar Republic
348:. Cambridge University Press.
218:Laursen and Pedersen, page 134
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291:Public Ledger (Philadelphia)
258:. 1923-12-17. Archived from
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344:Balderston, Theo (2002).
374:Ahamed, Liaquat (2009).
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30:Not to be confused with
293:. 1923-12-08. p. 4
106:, which formally ended
27:Alleged mental disorder
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189:John Kenneth Galbraith
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366:The German Inflation
262:on December 22, 2008
104:Treaty of Versailles
130:) was introduced.
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387:978-1-59420-182-0
380:. Penguin Group.
286:The Reading Eagle
241:, pp. 121–22
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281:"Zero Stroke"
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295:. Retrieved
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264:. Retrieved
260:the original
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252:"Cipheritis"
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170:logarithms."
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32:slashed zero
239:Ahamed 2009
147:Description
140:zero stroke
108:World War I
56:during the
38:Zero stroke
18:Zero Stroke
400:Categories
337:References
297:2010-01-07
266:2010-01-07
128:Rentenmark
102:After the
72:Background
50:physicians
416:Inflation
124:US Dollar
90:wallpaper
314:(1975).
167:neuritis
114:to the
66:ciphers
54:Germany
384:
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187:Later
179:money.
116:Allies
206:Notes
134:Cause
120:Marks
62:zeros
382:ISBN
350:ISBN
320:ISBN
157:Time
154:One
138:The
122:per
52:in
40:or
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