Reichsmarks (1924)

Lyrics

Nineteen twenty-three is over.
The printing presses are quiet now.
The number zero has gone to sleep.
The children stopped building castles from the bundles.
The stove is cold, no more kindling from the bank.
A loaf of bread is just a loaf of bread again,
not a wheelbarrow's worth of frantic paper.
The ink on the Papiermark has dried into a ghost.
One trillion to one. A number so vast it means nothing,
and then, suddenly, everything.
And here comes the Rentenmark, November's child.
A mortgage on the soil, on the factories, on the promise.
Herr Schacht called it a miracle of psychology.
A collective dream of solid ground.
Then August, twenty-four. The Reichsmark arrives.
Crisp and official. Backed by gold you cannot see.
A new name for trust.
A clean page in the ledger.
The first coins feel heavy in the palm.
Unfamiliar weight.
The notes don't smell of desperation.
They smell of linen and the state.
In the shops, a sudden quiet.
A hesitation before the purchase.
Fingers tracing the eagle, the oak leaves.
Is this real? Will it be real tomorrow?
Willpower, he said. The belief of the people.
As if a nation could will a number to have meaning.
But you cannot un-teach a body that kind of fear.
You cannot erase the memory of the wheelbarrow.
Its shadow stretches all the way from twenty-three.
It falls across the new coin, dulling the shine.
This isn't a fresh start.
It's a pause.
It's a promise written over a scar.
The wound is closed, but the nerve still remembers the blow.
August thirtieth, nineteen twenty-four.
A stable currency.
A temporary peace.
But the ghost of the zero is awake now.
And it is watching.
And it is waiting.