GERMANY 4 pfennig 1932 D

Description

The 4 pfennig coin was supposed to guide “the people” into a new way of thinking about money that was supposed to result in moderation of prices and, therefore, wages, by promoting prices that would be multiples of 2, rather than multiples of 5, as in 5 pfennigs and 10 pfennigs. Ordinary consumers of the time didn’t think much of the plan, and it was abandoned after two years.

At the end of World War I a revolt broke out in the ranks of the navy, which spread throughout the country. A republic was declared, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated. A national assembly was formed, a constitution promulgated. Then came some civil war, then hyperinflation as the government was unable to pay its debts. The situation stabilized in the late 1920s, then came the Depression, which was bad for the Weimar government, but good, politically speaking, for the Nazis.

The political arrangements that resulted in the nations of modern Europe began to emerge out of local autonomy starting in the 7th century AD or so. Europe, for our purposes, stretches from Greenland to somewhere in Russia. Collectors of Europe would likely include Russia. Collectors of Asia, even though about 2/3 of Russia is in Asia, probably not.

By “Modern World Coins” we mean here, generally, the round, flat, shiny metal objects that people have used for money and still do. “Modern,” though, varies by location. There was some other way they were doing their economies, and then they switched over to “modern coins,” then they went toward paper money, now we’re all going toward digital, a future in which kids look at a coin and say “What’s that?” We’ll say: “We used to use those to buy things.” Kids will ask “How?” The main catalog reference is the Standard Catalog of World Coins, to which the KM numbers refer.