Wheelbarrows of Marks

Lyrics

January nineteen-twenty-three.
The air smells of coal smoke and leather.
And the rumble ain't thunder... it's the Ruhr.
Frau Schmidt pushes her husband's wheelbarrow down the cobblestones.
Not for bricks, not for garden soil.
She's going to the bakery.
The chalkboard in the window... prices change by the hour.
Yesterday's life savings, wrapped in twine.
Might buy a crust by noon.
Might not.
The paper's thin, the ink is cheap.
It weighs more than it's worth.
Wheelbarrows of marks... just to get by.
Four trillion for a dollar, under a gray German sky.
You count the zeroes 'til you can't see straight.
Just paper faith, sealed by a cruel fate.
Wheelbarrows of marks.
Her children, Anna and Emil, they don't see the numbers.
They don't see the worry in her eyes.
They see building blocks.
A castle of a hundred-billion-mark notes in the dusty yard.
Higher and higher it goes.
Taller than the fence.
They laugh when the wind knocks it down.
It's just paper, after all.
Worth less than the wooden soldiers it can't buy.
Wheelbarrows of marks... just to get by.
Four trillion for a dollar, under a gray German sky.
You count the zeroes 'til you can't see straight.
Just paper faith, sealed by a cruel fate.
Wheelbarrows of marks.
A woman leaves her barrow outside the butcher's shop.
Comes back out... they stole the wheelbarrow, left the cash.
Friedrich Hesse wrote it down... four-hundred billion for a loaf.
Some folks burned the money... said it gave more heat than coal.
Stamps printed over stamps, a postage stamp for a king's ransom.
Just trying to keep warm.
Just trying to eat.
Then came November.
The Rentenmark.
And a kind of quiet.
But you can't un-see a child's castle made of worthless money.
You can't forget the sound...
of a wheelbarrow on the stones.