Inflation

German postage stamps, 1923. The highest denomination here: 20,000,000,000 marks. (That one must have been for Special Delivery.) The first two rows are overprints of lower-denominated stamps.

Two mountains

I was already finding the repetitive images in these stamps a little disturbing even before I figured out what they were. The topography in the background of the 5 centavo and 10 centavo stamps is symbolic, not real, as it places Mt. Fuji in Japan in juxtaposition with Mt. Mayon on the island of Luzon, roughly 2,000 miles to the south. The stamps were, in fact, issued by the Japanese government for use during the occupation of the Philippines during the Second World War. The original sheets were larger, but as parts of multiple rows have been removed I've cropped the images square for the web.





Like most postage stamps, the ones above were designed to be separated and put to use one or two at a time, but somehow their sinister uniformity when viewed like this speaks volumes about the aspirations of conquerors and empires, in any era.

When the money was gone

Below are some examples of notgeld (emergency money), issued c.1918-1922 by a number of German cities and other public and private entities for use as scrip due to a shortage of metal coinage. Unlike the paper money that was churned out in great quantities during the hyperinflation of a few years later, these serienscheine were issued in small denominations, and many of them are quite appealing. In my opinion all currency should have turnips or cows on it.





I don't know what the three-legged object on the back of the one below might be; it looks like a cross between a jug and a kiwi.



The following notes, issued by an private company, KVG Braunschweig, feature the buses the company operated (and still does).



I don't know what story is being alluded too on the reverse of the note above, but the following one depicts, if I'm not mistaken, the Brocken or Brocksberg in the Harz Mountains, which by legend is the gathering place of witches for their annual Walpurgisnacht convocation. A lot more fun than old George and Abe, though between the satanism and the loose clothing of some of the witches I don't envision anything like this catching on here.



The note below is from Greiffenburg -- now Gryfów Śląski in Polish Silesia -- hence the griffins.



The last one's a ringer: the hyperinflationary notgeld designed by the artists Kahn and Selesnick for their Eisbergfreistadt project.


Iliazd has an extensive online gallery of notegeld.

Not Fade Away

These images -- I believe they're chromolithographs, but don't quote me on it -- are souvenir or advertising cards commemorating the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. They've been enclosed in a scrapbook, probably for well over a century, and thus their paleness is not the result of exposure to the sun but is either due to the natural deterioration of the ink or to the fact that they simply were made to look as they now appear. (None of the other material in the album shows significant fading.) Scanning them hasn't really helped matters; the horizontal stripes, for example, in some of the scans are real but far less noticeable in the originals.


Main Exhibition Building

Machinery Hall

Art Gallery

German Government Building

Arkansa State Building (sic)

New York Tate Building (sic)

Agricultural Hall
I'm afraid the uncanniness of these cards -- especially the first three above -- doesn't quite come across in the scans (the delicate blue skies definitely don't). The aqua color in the windows of the Art Gallery produces an eerie, almost three-dimensional depth, which may have been the intent but also may just be due to the limitations of the process employed. The tiny figures in the foreground, and the vastness and isolation of the buildings, seem all out of scale for a crowded 19th-century metropolis -- in fact they don't seem to belong to our world at all. They're faint echoes of a time no one living now remembers, dwindling ghosts growing every more distant from their corporeal origins.

These pictures must have been endlessly reproduced and copied and either given away or sold cheaply. I've seen barely distinguishable versions online, and in The Illustrated History of the Centennial Exhibition published in the year of the fair there are numerous black-and-white engravings depicting similar or identical scenes. Because the cards are pasted onto the pages of the album I can't tell what if anything may be on the other side.

Truth in Advertising

The remarkable properties of everyday products, from 19th-century advertising cards.