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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.
115:, 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
190:'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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49:(1921–24). The disorder was primarily characterized by the desire of patients to write endless rows of
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107:. At the beginning of 1921, the German currency was relatively stable at about 60
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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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366:Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
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180:would describe the condition in his 1975 book
335:Economics and Politics in the Weimar Republic
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358:. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co.
352:Karsten Laursen; Jorgen Pedersen (1964).
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87:Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic
47:hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic
305:Money, whence it came, where it went
183:Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went
395:Obsolete terms for mental disorders
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307:. Houghton Mifflin. p. 157.
173:or had forty trillion children.
53:, which are also referred to as
400:Economy of the Weimar Republic
337:. Cambridge University Press.
207:Laursen and Pedersen, page 134
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280:Public Ledger (Philadelphia)
247:. 1923-12-17. Archived from
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333:Balderston, Theo (2002).
363:Ahamed, Liaquat (2009).
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19:Not to be confused with
282:. 1923-12-08. p. 4
95:, which formally ended
16:Alleged mental disorder
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178:John Kenneth Galbraith
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355:The German Inflation
251:on December 22, 2008
93:Treaty of Versailles
119:) was introduced.
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376:978-1-59420-182-0
369:. Penguin Group.
275:The Reading Eagle
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270:"Zero Stroke"
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284:. Retrieved
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253:. Retrieved
249:the original
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241:"Cipheritis"
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159:logarithms."
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21:slashed zero
228:Ahamed 2009
136:Description
129:zero stroke
97:World War I
45:during the
27:Zero stroke
389:Categories
326:References
286:2010-01-07
255:2010-01-07
117:Rentenmark
91:After the
61:Background
39:physicians
405:Inflation
113:US Dollar
79:wallpaper
303:(1975).
156:neuritis
103:to the
55:ciphers
43:Germany
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176:Later
168:money.
105:Allies
195:Notes
123:Cause
109:Marks
51:zeros
371:ISBN
339:ISBN
309:ISBN
146:Time
143:One
127:The
111:per
41:in
29:or
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