In his Christmas message to the German people at the end of 1923, Chancellor Wilhelm Marx, who had been in office for less than a month, had little good news to share: “We are impoverished, so impoverished (…) Never before has there been a number of those who do not earn daily bread could, bigger.” The German middle class has “collapsed”, in “many families of employees, workers and civil servants there will be no pure Christmas joy because they have been hit by layoffs and unemployment.”
Hyperinflation, distress, coup attempts: new books about the year 1923 – culture
