1934 Deutsches Reich 5 Reichsmark Value

[Fleur Francour]

Thediscrepancy with the eh.net table on the right is because the left-hand table has first trade date of the year values, while the right-hand table has annual averages. If a year's value in the right-hand table is higher, then the year average dollar rate was stronger than at the start of the year (said another way: the DM got weaker that year).

Lawrence H. Officer, Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, on his InfoEurope page:

"From 1913 onward, all the European series are annual averages of daily exchange rates in the New York market."

Prof. Officer also gives the following details about German currency names:

"On October 11, 1924 the monetary unit of Germany was changed from the mark to the reichsmark, where 1 reichsmark = 1,000,000,000,000 mark. Federal Reserve quotations switched from the mark to the reichsmark on October 29, 1924. In June 1948 the monetary unit was changed to the deutsche mark, where 1 deutsche mark = 10 reichsmark."

Lex, I only have British catalogues for the 1930s. In 1933 the British price was over 33 for that combination, but by 1936 it had increased to nearly 40. This would have worked out at between 400 and 500 reichsmarks in the mid 1930s. You would need to source a 1930s German catalogue to get an exact price.

Thanks, it must have been a costly affair. In an older contribution Uliwer quoted a price list from 1937, when a IIIa with Summar could be bought for 387 Reichsmark. Perhaps someone comes up with a German pricelist of 1934-35.

That means that the combination was somewhat cheaper in Germany than in Britain using historic currency conversion figures. The British price also showed a big jump between 1933 and 1936. This was not as big, however, as the price jump which occurred after WWII when British prices approximately doubled compared to pre-war prices.

Thanks for this British price list.

Some of the listed lenses I've never noticed in black.

Real in production or only available on special demand?

Or do these lenses have a nickel exterior to match black Leicas?

William, I'd be interested to know how you do the historic currency conversion. Is there a program to do that? I Would like to know what the 387 Reichmark would be in Dutch guilders of 1934/35 and also in Euro of 2021.

And continued for a long time. Even in the 1980s some people flew to the USA to buy a Nikonos RS and bring it back. If duty was 'avoided' this was still rather cheaper than buying one in the UK (I couldn't afford one either way!). When Rank were the Nikon importers the prices were higher than elsewhere and this shifted when Nikon UK took over again around 1980. It would be interesting to see Leica prices in the UK and Germany then too.

Thanks Lex and a Happy New Year to you. Here is an historical currency converter for 'any to any' currency for any year. It is marked as a test version but I have crossed checked it with other historical converters and it is pretty accurate;

Keith, you are correct and supply was also an issue. Permission to import was often required with proof of professional use etc. A glance at the Wallace Heaton magazines around that time ( late 1940s/early 1950s) shows the emergence of a considerable number of British manufacturers who attempted to fill the market supply gaps, but none of them survive today. In fact a lot of them were gone by the end of the 1950s. Here is the marked up copy of a UK September 1938 catalogue with 1949 prices entered. This was done by Pollocks of Dublin who obtained their supply through Leitz UK of 20 Mortimer Street in London. I have a 1932 Leica II model D engraved with their Grafton Street Dublin address which according to the Leica Archives was sent through Leitz in London. I'm not sure how the British/Irish tax situations were handled but I suspect that prices were the same and our pound was still tied to Sterling back then. You will also note substitution of per-war items by post-war items such as a IIIc for a IIIb and a Summarit for a Xenon.

Paul, Shannon Airport had the one of the first duty free zones in the world and I have seen reports of US photographers who could fly across the Atlantic and buy a couple of M4s in Shannon and then fly back to the US with spare change in their pockets. What happened at the other end on entry to the US was a matter for the purchaser, but I would imagine that a US customs official would have charged the full amount and possibly thrown in a penalty as well if the cameras were not declared.

And the same would/should have happened on arrival in the UK with equipment bought in the USA. However, even paying the duties on such cameras made them cheap (in the case of a Nikonos RS you could have a diving holiday in Florida thrown in) and if nobody asked any questions it was most likely seen as a bonus! I have my suspicions that many will soon be back doing similar things again .......

If you want to participate in the catalog and create your own coin and banknotes collections, you can log in as a user. This will give you access to add, modify coin data and create your public and private collections.

The following list of collectors shows the availability of the 2 reichsmark coin of Germany-III Reich in their collections. Visit the numismatic collector's page to see his coins and banknotes, then you can propose an exchange or purchase of the coin. The colors of the prices are indicative, when it is red it means that it is above the value calculated by Foronum, while green is when it is below.

It is well known that the Nazi conspirators rearmed Germany on a vast scale. The purpose of that rearmament is revealed in the secret records of the plans and deliberations of the inner councils of the Nazis. These records show that the reorganization of the German government, the financial wizardry of Hjalmar Schacht, and the total mobilization of the German economy largely under Haljmar Schacht, Hermann Goering, and Walter Funk, were directed at a single goal: aggressive war.

The significance of the economic measures adopted and applied by the conspirators can be properly appraised only if they are placed in the larger social and political context of Nazi Germany. These economic measures were adopted while the conspirators were directing their vast propaganda apparatus to the glorification of war. They were adopted while the conspirators were perverting physical training into training for war. They were adopted while these conspirators were threatening to use force and were planning to use force to achieve their material and political objects. In short, these measures constitute in the field of economics and government administration the same preparation for aggressive war which dominated every aspect of the Nazi state.

In 1939 and 1940, after the Nazi aggression upon Poland, Holland, Belgium, and France, it became clear to the world that the Nazi conspirators had created probably the greatest instrument of aggression in history. That machine was built up almost in its entirety in a period of less than one decade. In May of 1939 Major General George Thomas, former Chief of the Military Economic Staff in the Reich War Ministry, reported that the German Army had grown from seven Infantry divisions in 1933 to thirty-nine Infantry divisions, among them four fully motorized and three mountain divisions; eighteen Corps Headquarters; five Panzer divisions; twenty-two machine gun battalions. Moreover, General Thomas stated that the German Navy had greatly expanded by the launching, among other vessels, of two battleships of thirty-five thousand tons, four heavy cruisers of ten thousand tons, and other warships; further, that the Luftwaffe had grown to a point where it had a strength of two hundred sixty thousand men, twenty-one squadrons, consisting of two hundred forty echelons, and thirty-three Anti-Aircraft Batteries. (EC-28)

"The mightiest armament industry now existing in the world. It has attained the performances which in part equal the German wartime performances and in part even surpasses them. Germany's crude steel production is today the largest in the world after the Americans. The aluminum production exceeds that of America and of the other countries of the world very considerably. The output of our rifle, machine gun, and artillery factories is at present larger than that of any other state." (EC-28)

These results-about which General Thomas spoke in his book entitled Basic Facts for a History of German War and Armaments Economy-were achieved only by making preparation for war the dominating objective of German economy. As General Thomas stated on page 479 of his book:

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