Reichsmark

Hitler also received a slice of the royalties, which he reinvested in cultural programs in the Reich, but Hoffmann largely received the rest.

The amount of Reichsmarks involved was substantial in the 1930s, and made him a multi-millionaire in modern terms by the end of the decade.

Yes, even this was eclipsed by the eye-watering sums which accrued after the Second World War broke out.

People all over the continent used stamps bearing Hitler's image, and whenever they did, a small royalty was paid to Heinrich Hoffmann.

And controversy flared again when Simpson attempted to publish a book called If I Did It in 2006, another twist in the long and tawdry drama surrounding the murders at South Bundy Drive.

In 1936, Germany's Reich Air Ministry paid the town of Volgast 750,000 Reichsmarks for the exclusive use of a large area of land near the mouth of the Pina River on the Baltic coast.

Two years later, it had nearly completed a facility, which included an army research center and a Luftwaffe test site.

The Heverswerksstelle Pinamunde, abbreviated as HVP, became one of five military proving grounds and the site for the development of several World War II guided missiles.

They tuned it for acceleration.

And here is, uh, DKW putting zillions of Reichsmarks into this really quite advanced-looking motorcycle.

There's cooling fins everywhere.

One cylinder is horizontal and two of them are up, and it's quite futuristic.

The conversion rate was something extraordinary, which was that the savings of the average German people were wiped out by the emergence of the Deutsche Mark.

it was one Deutschmark to every 15 old Reichsmarks was the conversion rate.

So if you had 15 Reichsmarks, you only got one Deutschmark.

That meant that your savings were wiped out.

That was for people.

Look, I think it's also, some people call it the everything bubble.

If you look at even Germany in the fall of the Weimar Republic, the currency that replaced it in 1925 was the Reichsmark backed by real estate.

It's the tangible assets that make that transition happen.

So you've got a house worth, you know, $100,000.

and that a guarantor had been found by the Jewish Refugees Committee to cover the cost of the two Rath sisters' potential re-immigration to Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Palestine, Cuba, or Shanghai, a requirement that was a sop to those politicians with protectionist tendencies.

Like the other refugee children, she would have waited at the Köln Hauptbahnhof for the D-67 from Vienna, with one piece of hand baggage, a suitcase, ten Reichsmarks, a packed lunch, and a German passport stamped with a J.

At the time, the railway station was draped in Nazi flags, and the signs hanging from the train carriages read London, Huck v. Holland.

She and the other Jewish children would have been bundled into segregated carriages at the rear of the train, with their parents staring up at the windows, until some walked, jogged, and then ran along the platform as the D-67 left Cologne at 3.42 p.m. on April

It was only thanks to the mayor of Kempen and a lawyer, both of whom were appalled by what had happened to Germany, that Sally was able to liquidate anything.

Several of the people who had leased his pastures refused to pay their rent, and bidders for the acreage entered lowball offers.

The mayor of Kempen offered almost double the sum that a government agency and the leaders of the local farmers' association had made, and it was he who had advanced 10,000 Reichsmarks so that Sally could pay the so-called Judensteuern.

Jew taxes, the Judenvermogensabgabe, Jewish property tax, the Reichsflüchtsteuer, Reich flight tax, and the Golddiskountbank, gold discount fee that Nazis slapped on any Jew who wanted to emigrate.

That's right.

Even if you were a German investor and you had a globally diversified portfolio, you did okay during the run on the Reichsmark.

Oh, boy.

And understanding that trade-off.

I mean, even the art market in Berlin is quite questionable.

There's some correspondence where we know he was paid 2,000 Reichsmark for a painting in 1929.

But then, you know, like, that was the crash.

A month later, I think it would have been 200 million Reichsmark for a loaf of bread.

London ended up being the pit stop before going to the U.S., out of Berlin, through London, and into the U.S.

I think that the fact is he was a sponge.