The Economic Crisis of 1619 To 1623

Economic History Association
The Economic Crisis of 1619 to 1623

Author(s): Charles P. Kindleberger
Source: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Mar., 1991), pp. 149-175
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association
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CHARLES
P. KINDLEBERGER
Variousstates in the Holy RomanEmpirepreparedfor the ThirtyYears' Warby

creating new mints and debasing the subsidiary coinage. The process spread
through Gresham's Law: bad money was taken by debasing states to their
neighbors and exchanged for good. The neighbor typically defended itself by
debasing its own coin. The resultinghyperinflationwas terminatedearly in the
war by an agreementto returnto the ImperialAugsburgOrdinanceof 1559.The
Kipper-und Wipperzeit,as the periodis called, illuminatesthe geographicspread
of financialcrises, Germanhyperinflationsof this century, and currentproposals
for "free banking."
INTRODUCTION
The
first quarterof the seventeenth century, up to and through the

beginnings of the Thirty Years' War with the defenestration at
Prague in 1618, has been widely described as a period of crisis. The
crisis was particularlyacute between 1619and 1623;sometimes and in
particularlocalities it was described as a "commercial crisis," sometimes as a "joint crisis in commerce and industry," but usually as a
"currencycrisis" and in one instance as a ''monetarycrisis and panic"
and even "a monetary corner."' Moreover, it was set within a deeper
structuralcrisis covering 100to 150years of transitionfrom medieval to
moderntimes. The period has been variously described as a movement
from feudalism to capitalism; from a feudal to a nation-state society;
from the political and economic ascendency of the South (Italy and
Spain) to that of the North (the United Provinces of Holland and
England); from a "natural economy" based on the self-sufficient
household and barter to the use of markets and money; from separate
deals to continuous trade on bourses; and from the polynuclearsystem
The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Mar. 1991). C The Economic History
Association. All rightsreserved. ISSN 0022-0507.
The author is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge,MA 02139.
Severalscholarshave been helpfulin referringme to and sendingme copies of papersnot readily
accessible in Cambridge.Thanks are due to Rondo Cameron, WolframFischer, Christopher
Friedrichs,GeoffreyParker,and MarkSteele. ProfessorsFischerand Friedrichsalso commented
on an early draft,as did the membersof the WashingtonArea Economic History seminar.I have
also benefitedfrom the revision suggestionsof two anonymousreferees and Peter Lindert.
A bewilderingnumberof coins of varyingworth is mentionedin this article, but in generalthe
subsidiarycoins of the Holy RomanEmpirecomprisedthe silver gulden(or florin)of 60 kreuzer,
the groschenof 3 kreuzer,and variousother duodecimaldenominationssuch as the 6, 12, and 24
kreuzer, the batzen of 4 kreuzer, and the penny, four to a batzen. The 1559standardfor higher
denominationsincludedthe silverReichstaler(in Dutchthe rixdaler)of 1 florin,4 kreutzer,and the
gold ducat of 3 florins.
' Supple, "Thomas Mun"; Supple, Commercial Crisis; Spooner, Monetary Movements in
France, p. 32; Romano, "Italy," p. 193;and Shaw, History of Currency,p. 102.
149
150
Kindleberger
of Europeancities to a mononuclearone with its core in Amsterdam.2

Otherdisruptivefactors were the Eighty Years' Warfrom 1582to 1652,
between Spain and the Netherlands, and the Thirty Years' War from
1618 to 1648. Many accounts assign a major role to the falling off of
silver importsto Europefrom SpanishAmericaafterabout 1600or 1620,
inadequatelycompensatedfor by the gradualrise of credit-but the data
on which this judgment is based have lately been questioned.3Jan de
Vries indicated that, while no single event between 1600 and 1750
ushered in the new phase in European economic history, a good
candidate for such a role would have been the trade crisis of 1619 to
1622.4
My interest in that crisis does not concern its potential role as a
catalyst of moderneconomies, but ratherits function in the mechanism
for the spread of primarilyfinancialcrisis from one part of Europe to
another. This is an interest I have explored elsewhere under very
differentinstitutionalconditions in the crises of 1720, 1873, 1890, and
1929.5My focus here is on the Holy Roman Empire (largelyGermany)
and Poland and the period of gradual debasement of the currency
between 1600and 1618,followed by a rapidphase from 1619or 1620to
1622and 1623,when the currencywas more or less stabilized. I propose
to discuss the idiosyncraticphrase by which the episode is known, the
Kipper- und Wipperzeit, relate it to the particularmonetary conditions
of the period, and suggest one or two broad comparisons with the
inflationsin Germanyin 1923and 1947.Finally I draw some conclusions
relevant to the concept of unregulatedbanking advocated today in a
numberof economists' quartersin Europe and the United States.
THE KIPPER-UND WIPPERZEIT
The term Kipper und Wipper was seventeenth-century slang. The

economic historian Friedrich-WilhelmHenning identified the Kipper
part with "clipping," easily perpetratedon coins before the introduction of milled edges in Britain later in the century; the practice was
discussed at length by Thomas Macaulay in his History of England.
Geoffrey Parker,leaning heavily on the word Wippe, offered "seesaw"
for the second half.6
Fritz Redlich explained the combinationas derivingfrom the actions
of money exchangers who kept their scales moving to befuddle the
2 Hobsbawm, "Crisis"; Trevor-Roper, "General Crisis"; Rapp, Industry and Economic
Decline; Heckscher, Economic History of Sweden, chap. 4; Parker, "Emergence of Modern
Finance"; and van der Wee, "IndustrialDynamics."
3Attman, AmericanBullion.
4 de Vries, Age of Crisis, p. 115.
5 Kindleberger,
Manias;Kindleberger,"InternationalPropagation";and Kindleberger,"Panic
of 1873."
6 Henning,Das vorindustrielle
Deutschland;Macauley,Historyof England,vol. 4, pp. 181-201;
and Parker,ThirtyYears'War,p. 90.
151
innocent onlookers whose good money was being exchanged for bad.7
Kippen is "to tilt," and while Wippeis in fact a seesaw, wippen, the
verb, is "to wag." Kipper-und Wipperzeitwas analogous to Cockney
rhyming slang such as hurley-burley.The words even generated offspring in such expressions as Kipperei (the act of debasement), Kippergeld (Geld meaning money), and Kippermunze(Munze being coins
and also mints). Auswippenmeant to select out good coins to hoard or
export. Redlich explains that Kippergeldwas not clipped so much as
debased by alteringits denomination,weight, metal, or fineness. Most
of the trouble arose not from "crying up" existing coins with higher
denominationsbut from hoardingand remintinggood coins and minting
new ones of lighter weight, baser metal, or both.
SUPPLIESOF PRECIOUSMETALS
Even withoutthe extended wars and the malversationof mint masters

and their higher authorities, getting the currency right in this period
posed difficultiesbecause of rapidlychangingrelative supplies of gold,
silver, and copper and the opportunitiesthis gave to exercise Gresham's
Law. It would have been impossible to have a monometallic money.
Gold was needed for large internationaltransactions, after clearing as
many payments as possible throughbills of exchange. Silver was used
for purchases in the Baltic, the Far and Middle East, and for large
payments in domestic trade. There was virtually no problem with the
largergold and silver coins at this time. The troublelay in the subsidiary
coinage, startingout as silver-gulden, groschen, kreuzer, batzen, and
even pennies-and ending up as vellon or billon, silver with varying
amounts of copper up to 99 percent, and pure copper, sometimes
weakly whitened. Germany has been said to have been on a de facto
copper standardfrom about 1621 to 1623.8
Supplies of these precious and semipreciousmetals varied. Upon the
discovery of the New Worldin 1492, there was an initial flow of looted
gold. In about 1540the silver mountainPotosi in Peru was discovered;
it was rendered highly productive after about 1570. Much, perhaps
most, of the silver arrivingin Spain left Europe afterward-some to the
Baltic and throughRussia and Poland farthereast, some to the eastern
Mediterranean,but most to Indiaand Chinadirectly aroundthe Cape of
Good Hope.9 In 1613, King Gustav Adolphus began to increase production of and export copper from the Stora Kopperbergin Sweden to
ransomthe fortress at Alvsborg from Denmark.The Swedes raised the
ransom by borrowing in Amsterdam against the collateral of copper,
marketingnew supplies throughHamburgand Amsterdamratherthan
7 Redlich, Die deutsche Inflation, pp. 17-21.
8 Ibid., p. 11.
9 Kindleberger,"Spendersand Hoarders."
152
Kindleberger
Lubeck. Other copper came to Europe from Japan, and the price fell
almost by one-half. In Germany, nevertheless, copper came to be in
short supply as German mints used more and more: musical instruments, kettles, pipes, gutters, and even church bells and baptismal
fonts, some of them stolen, were dumpedinto the melting pot.'0
These surges in the supply of first one metal then another changed
their relative prices and, as mentioned, created severe Gresham's
Law-type problems in Europe. The drying up of New World gold
supplies and the spurtof silver importsruinedthe silver mines in central
Europe that had producedfor mints such as that of the Slick family in
Joachimstal (from whence came thaler, later transmogrifiedinto "dollar"). The bulge in the supply of copper led Spain, exhaustedfinancially
by war and drained of silver, seriously to debase its currency. From
1599to 1606, the Spanish monarchycoined 22 million ducats in vellon,
a copper alloy. The bankruptcyof the Spanish treasury in 1607, which
destroyed its credit and led to the failure of the Fuggers and a number
of Genoan bankers, elicited a royal promise to the Cortes to coin no
more copper-a promise kept for ten years. In 1617 to 1619, the
monarchyobtained permissionof the Cortes to resume and coined five
millionducats in copper. Two years later another 14 millionwere added.
Spain experienced financialcrises at the level of the monarchyin 1557,
1575, 1596, 1607, 1627, and 1647-though not, on this showing, in 1619
to 1623. That it avoided the latter crisis may have been a benefit of the
truce with Hollandthat lasted from 1607to 1621,easing the strainon the
budget. In the private sector, however, a continuous squeeze was felt.
In the mid-sixteenth century there were 50 or 60 operators importing
silver in ingots. By 1615, only eight were left, four of which went
bankrupt shortly thereafter; by 1620, only three remained. Redlich
mentions that the Spanish monarchy'scrisis of 1627was an echo of the
Kipper- und Wipperzeit."
THE MONETARYPOROSITYOF SMALL STATES
Metallic standards, of course, have an inherent potential for divergence between the nominalvalue of a coin and its actual value as metal.
Moreover, coin passed readily over the borders of states and through
the gates of cities despite attemptsof kings, princes, dukes, counts, and
the like to control it. The result was, in most jurisdictions, a mishmash
of coins of variedorigins. A centuryand a half after the time in question,
in his digression on banks of deposit and especially the Bank of
10
Heckscher, Economic History of Sweden, pp. 79, 85, 105; Spooner, Monetary Movements in
France, p. 46; and Langer, Kulturgeschichte, p. 30.
" Spooner, Monetary Movements in France, p. 38; Ehrenberg, Fuggers, p. 334; Parker, Thirty
Years' War, p. 77; Vilar, Gold and Money, p. 141; and Redlich, Die deutsche Inflation, p. 12.
153
Amsterdam, Adam Smith drew a distinction between large and small

states.
The currency of a great state, such as France or England, generally consists
almost entirely of its own coin. Should this currency therefore be at any time,
worn, clipt or otherwise degraded below its standard value, the state by a
reformationof its coin can effectively re-establishits currency. But the currency
of a small state, such as Genoa or Hamburgh,can seldom consist altogetherin its
own coin, but must be made up, in great measure, of the coins of all the
neighboringstates with which its inhabitantshave a continualintercourse.Such a
state, therefore, by reformingits coin will not always be able to reform its
currency.12
A modernGermanhistorianof the ThirtyYears' Warmade the same

point, expressing the view that the Austrian hereditary lands and
perhaps Bavaria and Brandenburgwere "big and compact enough" to
use independentmintingfor their own domestic purposes. Similarly, a
nineteenth-centurywriterreferredto small states at "monetarilypathological border states" (mfinzkrankeGrenzlande).But if Smith's remark
was meant to apply to the early seventeenth century, he was too
optimistic about France's ability to make its own coin dominate its
monetary circulation-and perhaps about Britain's as well. Spooner
makes clear that France had no single monetaryunit but was instead a
series of economic zones, dominatedin the west by silver reales from
Spain and in Burgundyand Champagneby billon, anothercopper alloy,
from Germany.'3 In England, a sharp distinction was made between
foreign coin and coin of domestic minting. For example, it was
recommendedthat the East India Company be allowed to export only
foreign, not domestic coin (nor silver bullion). Foreign currencies had
circulated freely in Sweden ever since money had come into general
use. A century later there were as many as 50 different,mainlyforeign,
coins, 22 gold and 29 silver, circulatingin Milan. Still later, in 1816, at
least 70 coins-from Holland, France, Belgium, and various German
states-circulated in the Rhineland,and Prussiancoins were rarelyseen
despite the efforts of Prussianofficialsto enforce rules againstthe use of
older and foreign coins.14
Transactionsin various types of coin requireda unit of account into
which the various monies could be translatedand compared. This was
often an "imaginarymoney," in the sense that it need not be coined and
circulated:the pound and shillingin Englandwere long imaginaryunits
of account, as were the livre tournois in France, and the livre or lira in
Milan. Imaginarymoney that served as a unit of account was a public
12
Smith, Wealth of Nations, p. 446.
'3
Schdttle, "Mfinz- und Geldgeschichte," p. 82; Opel, Deutsche Finanznoth, p. 216; and
Spooner, Monetary Movements in France, pp. 4, 9.

14 Thirskand Cooper, EconomicDocuments, pp.
11, 211, 214; Einaudi,"ImaginaryMoney,"
pp. 242-43; and Tilly, Financial Institutions in the Rhineland, chap. 2, esp. pp. 20-21.
154
Kindleberger
good: in Einaudi'swords, "a splendidinstrumentfor performingcertain

tasks of public policy." 15 While Reichstalerswere widely coined in the
"mosaic Germany"made up of many states, they were mostly hoarded
duringthe period in question so that they became an imaginarymoney
for calculating the debasement of the subsidiary coinage (in German,
Scheidemunze).
The largercoins of gold and silver, used for internationaltrade where
bills of exchange had not yet penetratedor to settle balances where they
had not cleared evenly, were frequentlyweighed and tested, thoughnot
always with complete honesty, as the word Wipper- "to wag (the
scales)"-indicates. Subsidiarycoins, used for retail trade and wages
and by the ordinaryperson in paymentof rents, dues, and taxes, more
frequently were reckoned at their nominal value, whether from ignorance or to save transactionscosts. This lends some slight support to
Georg Knapp's monetary theory, which said that the value of money
was determinedby the state. 16 Wheneverthere exist, side by side, coins
of the same nominalworth but of differentweight and fineness, profitis
to be made by exchangingdebased for good coin and meltingdown the
latter or exporting the metal. Base money was imported and good
money exported as early as the thirteenthcentury, well before the time
of Sir Thomas Gresham, Queen Elizabeth l's exchanger. It has been
suggested that Aristotle was aware of the tendency; it was clearly
enunciatedby Nicholas Oreme, Bishop of Lisieux, in his De Moneta of
about 1360, and it was well known to Copernicusin 1525.17 The theory
continues to be known as Gresham'sLaw, however, because it, like so
many false historical terms, has proven impossible to change once
adopted.
CONTROLLING GRESHAM'S LAW
None of the methods that have attemptedto combat the workingsand

effects of Gresham's Law has met with great success. Forbiddingthe
import of bad coin and/or the export of good has failed even when
accompanied by dire penalties such as death by burning, mutilation,
confiscation of all goods, and banishment.Smugglingcoin throughcity
gates in bundles of produce was virtuallyimpossible to stop, especially
on marketdays.'8
Another method has been to adjust the denominations of existing
coins by "crying up" good coins, or raising their denomination to
reduce the metal content of a stated value, or "crying down" the bad.
This adjustmentcan be made by separatestates or by a numberof states
Is de Roover, Gresham, p. 32; Spooner,Monetary Movements in France, p. 20; and Einaudi,pp.
244, 260.
16
17
Ellis, German Monetary Theory.

Feaveryear, The Pound Sterling, p. 11; and Wolowski, La question monetaire, pp. 15, 90-91.
18
Schottle, "Die grosse deutsche Geldkrise,"p. 50.
155
via treaties. As early as March 1609,a mint treaty among Mecklenburg,

Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, and Lubeck was concluded-in anticipation, Shaw says, of approachingdisorder.'9
Alternatively, the entire coinage may be called in and remintedat the
old standardweight and fineness, thus imposinga loss on the sovereign,
or at lower weights, reducedfineness, or higherprices, thus shiftingthe
burden to the holders of money.
A more sophisticated method is to establish banks of deposit requiring wealthholders,and especially merchants,to deposit theirholdingsof
currency above certain minimumsin a bank where the coin would be
assayed, weighed, and recorded on the books at its metal content.
Merchants may then be required to deposit receipts in international
trade above a certain minimum and make similar payments against
those accounts. This last function, relatedto bills of exchange (wechsel
in German, wissel in Dutch), stabilizes the metallic value of bills of
exchange, which in turn reduces transactionscosts. Adam Smith noted
that the exchange rate on the Bank of Amsterdamgenerally stood at a
premiumof about 5 percent over the specie rate because of the greater
certainty about the value of the money.20Deliberations leading to the
establishmentof the Bank of Amsterdamstartedabout 1606in the early
days of the Kipper- und Wipperzeit,before depreciationhad gone far;
the Bank was created in 1609. Its success in achieving its goal is
reflected in the statementthat "Ten years later, Hamburgled to a fixed
exchange rate against the fluctuatingmoney of other states."21 Similar
banks were established in Middelburg(Holland) in 1616, in Hamburg
and Venice in 1619, and in Delft and Nurembergin 1621-these last at
the height of the debasement. With the stabilization of 1623 began a
falloff in the establishment of deposit banks, lasting until 1634. The
Swabian Circle proposed the establishmentof a bank of deposit in the
fall of 1619, but the project was converted into a bank to buy silver for
the local mint in such centers as Genoa, to overcome the shortage in
southern Germany. It was quickly closed down.22
A further method of control is to decree and enforce minting
standardsby means of official coin-testing days and the administration
of oaths to mint masters and selected assayers. As with most of the
other methods, success in holdingto standardsover a wide territorywas
limited. In the sixteenth century, the Holy Roman Empire sought to
standardizethe coinage of the Empirein decrees issued in 1524,againin
1551, and at Augsburg in 1559. The rules were laid down with little
comprehension of the difficulty of maintaining a fixed relationship
between the stated values of gold, silver coins, and copper at a time of
'9 Shaw, History of Currency, p. 104.
20
21
22
Smith, Wealth of Nations, p. 451.

Kellenbenz, Sephardim an der Unteren Elbe, p. 254.
Schottle, "Munz- und Geldgeschichte,"p. 85.
156
Kindleberger
significant shifts in the supplies of these precious metals, or of the

difficulty of providing an adequate supply of subsidiary coins, which,
accordingto the AugsburgOrdinance,were to be of silver. The Empire
administeredoaths to all mint masters, and there was one proposal to
extend them to mint workers. Redlich calls this 1615 proposal "senseless," saying it should have been extended to the diemakers. Cointesting trials, too, were hardly efficacious: one General Assayer
Rentzsch, describingthe debasementof the coinage in the Lower Saxon
Circle and particularlyin Pomerania,the Saxon dukedom, and the Harz
dynasty, claimed that the mints kept a supply of good groschen on hand
to show the General Assayer on his visits.23
The primarydifficulty,however, was the absence of effective central
authority.The Holy Roman Empireconsisted of a variegatedcollection
of Electoral states, principalities,duchies, other states, cities, bishoprics, and the like, organized into circles (Kreise), one of the tasks of
which was to implementdecisions underthe ImperialMint Ordinances.
Circles formed something of a crazy-quiltpattern, stretchingobliquely
from southwest to northeast in a number of cases, though many were
called "Upper" and "Lower" or "Northern" and "Southern." The
Swabian, Frankish,and Westphaliancircles were formed along ancient
tribal boundaries.24Bohemia and Moravia lay within the Empire but
were outside the system of circles, as were Savoy and most of
Switzerland. The Empire, moreover, included parts of what are now
France, Belgium, Italy, and of course Austria, as shown on the map in
Figure 1.
Most German literatureon the Kipper- und Wipperzeitdeals with a
single circle, especially with Upper and Electoral Saxony and with
Swabia.25 Maria Bogucka has at least one article in English on the
experience in Poland.26Writing on Bohemia, Arnost Klima asserts,
contrary to my hypothesis, that the inflation in Bohemia in the early
seventeenth century (1621to 1623)was unconnected(his emphasis)with
the general European economic situation of the time but had special
featuresevoked by the uprisingof the Czech Estates of 1616to 1620and
their defeat.27Shaw has twice dealt with the questiongenerally,without
givingmuchattentionto eitherthe propagationmechanismor the 1622-to1623 stabilization.28Writingon French currencyproblemsof the period,
Spoonerlooks over his shoulderat the German(and Spanish)inflationary
23
Wuttke, "Zur Kipper-und Wipperzeitin Kursachsen," pp. 120-21, 136; and Redlich, Die
deutsche Inflation, p. 51.

24
25
Wuttke, "Zur Kipper-und Wipperzeitin Kursachsen,"p. 123.

Ibid.; Redlich, Die deutsche Inflation; Gaettens, Geschichte des Inflationen; Schottle, "Die
grosse deutsche Geldkrise";and Schottle, "Munz-und Geldgeschichte."

26
Bogucka, "The MonetaryCrisis."
27 Klfma, "Inflationin Bohemia," pp. 375-86.
28 Shaw, History of Currency;and Shaw, "The MonetaryMovementsof 1600-21."
157

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Source: dtv, Atlas, vol. 1, p. 218.
disorders.29The considerableliteratureon the commercialcrisis in Britain

at the time debatesthe extent to which it resultedfromthe debasementof
Germansubsidiarycoinage.30
CURRENCYDEBASEMENTAND THE THIRTYYEARS' WAR
As is true of so many financialcrises transmittedfrom place to place,

it is virtually impossible to pin down a unique geographic origin. The
mechanism is clear enough and has been described in a chapter
appendixon coin debasementby Jacob van Klavaren.3'A prince (duke,
bishop, abbot, city) with the right to coin money foresees troubles
arisingfrom the Reformationand the Counterreformationthat led to the
Thirty Years' War. A war chest is needed and, after war breaks out,
29
Spooner, Monetary Movements in France.
Gould, "The TradeDepressionof the Early 1620s";Feaveryear,ThePound Sterling;Supple,

"Thomas Mun"; Supple, "Currency and Commerce"; Supple, Commercial Crisis; and for
documents,Thirskand Cooper, EconomicDocuments.
31 Van Klavaren,General Economic History, appendixto chap. 13.
30
158
Kindleberger
soldiers (who are increasingly mercenaries)have to be mobilized and

strong points fortified.Adam Smith holds forth on this subject, too, but
in connection with debt ratherthan debasement.32
Apart perhaps from Spanish Flanders (Antwerp), Holland (Amsterdam), and Spain, the last of which continually overborrowed,governmental capacity to borrow in the first half of the seventeenth century in
Europe was limited by the absence of efficient capital markets and
competent officials. France raised money throughthe sale of offices, a
means not open to the many small states of the Empire. Taxation of
commodities would have had to be uniformto prevent arbitragefrom
state to state, an integrative step for which the Empire was far from
ready. One way to prepare financiallyfor war was for the separate
principalities,duchies, cities, and the like to seek greaterseignorageby
coining more money. Many states were interested in raisingseignorage
within their own boundaries, but it was soon discovered that debased
money could be taken abroad and exchanged for good money, which
could in turn be brought back and recoined with greater seignorage.
Those engaged in exchangingdebased money for good included northern Italiansand Jews, but people from all walks of life and even women
participated. Glib dealers went abroad to set up exchange booths,
exploiting as best they could pastors, millers, and peasants.33
And so the neighboringprincipalityfinds itself flooded with bad coin
and losing good. To retainthe latter, it raises the price of the metal in its
coins, thus crying them up. With the higher prices it begins to attract
good coin and export bad. The process builds up. Some princes lease
mints to entrepreneurs,who need to add their profitto the seignorageof
the prince specified in the leasing contract. At the old prices mints find
that the higher price of silver and rising wages make it unprofitableto
produce standard subsidiary coins.34 Thus honorable mints stop producing subsidiarycoins altogether.
The price of the good Reichstaler kept rising in terms of debased
groschen (see Table 1) at an increasingrate until 1619, and especially
rapidly in 1621 and the first months of 1622, a period characterizedby
Shaw as the peak of monetarypanic and crisis.35These figures seem to
be averaged across many states, though some higher ones in 1622 are
pinpointedfor Nuremberg,Augsburg, and Vienna. In general, according to Opel, northern German states such as Westphalia, Luneberg,
Pomerania, Mecklenberg, and the Hanseatic cities experienced less
depreciationof their subsidiarycoinage than did those in the south. In
July 1622the Reichstalerwent to 15 guldenin Nuremberg;with the help
Smith, Wealth of Nations, pp. 861-62.
Langer,Kulturgeschichte,p. 29; and Opel, "Deutsche Finanznoth,"p. 222.
34 Wuttke, "Zur Kipper- und Wipperzeit in Kursachsen," pp. 126, 132; and Gaettens,
32
33
Geschichte des Inflationen, p. 74.

31
Shaw, Historyof Currency,p. 102.

TABLE
159
QUOTATIONSOF THE REICHSTALERON SPECIFICDATES, IN FLORINSAND

KREUTZERS
Date
Florins
Kreutzers
1582
1587
1590
1594
1
1
1
1
8
9
10
11
1596
1603
1604
1605
1607
1608
1609
1
1
1
1
1
1
24
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
24
26
28
28
24
30
30
30
32
48
4
8
20
1610
1613
1614
1615
1616
1617
1618
1619
1620
a
b
June 15
July 7
Dec. 19
Sept.
Aug.
March
Nov. 1
Nov. 17
Oct.
Dec.
June
Nov. 9
Date
1621
Florins
Kreutzers
Jan.
Feb.
March
April
2
2
2
2
20
24
30
36
12
May 25
48
14
14
15
16
20
22
May 31
June
July
Aug.
Aug. 10
Sept.
Oct.
Nov.
Dec.
Dec. 20
Jan. 18
Jan. 27
Feb. 10
March
March 12
June 16
Oct.
Nov.
April
1622
1623
3
3
3
4
3
4
5
5
6
3
7
4
10
10
6
3
5
6
1
15
6
15
0
15a
30a
oa
30a
30a
15
30b
30
Oc
Oc
0
15
0
0
30d
Nuremberg
Augsburg
c Vienna
d
Value was fixed at this last figureuntil 1669.

Note: 60 kreutzersequals 1 florin.
Source: Shaw, History of Currency,p. 103. Shaw observedthat similarquotationsof the gulden,
thaler, and the gold guldenfor the empireat largeare available.They are set out in Shaw, "The
MonetaryMovementsof 1600-1621,"p. 209.
of the death penalty, the city council got it down to 10 gulden. But the
various sources fail to agree narrowlyon rates, not unexpectedly given
a country with a primitivetransportand communicationnetwork.36
A historian of the Swabian experience and its central city, Ulm,
suggests that the first invasion of debased money came from Italy and
especially Switzerlandas early as 1580.The entry point for the northern
Italian noble counterfeiters and those of Graubundenin Switzerland,
especially the Bishop of Chur, was at Lindau on the Bodensee (Lake
Constance). The same account, however, records that three upper
circles-Swabia, Franconia, and Bavaria-found the counterfeitingof
36
Opel, "Deutsche Finanznoth,"pp. 229-31.
160
Kindleberger
the Upper Rhine Circle that included Strassburg to be particularly

insolent. 7
As the agio on the Reichstaler rose slowly during the seventeenth
century, more and more mints were establishedor leased by princes and
nobles, both secular and ecclesiastical, as well as by cities. Some were
even rented by the week. An early attempthad been made in 1603and
1604 to limit the number of mints to no more than three or four to a
circle, except for those having silver mines. The move was opposed by
six cities with mint privileges, all located in the lower Saxon Circle:
Lubeck, Hamburg,Rostock, Bremen, Brunswick,and Magdeburg.This
successful opposition allowed other towns with minting privileges to
establish more mints; even those without the privilegebegan minting.38
Mints sprang up "like mushrooms after a warm rain'39 and debased
coinage "poured from them in avalanche proportions."40Brunswick
had 17 mints in .1620;by 1623there were 40, includinga convent that in
the course of a few monthsconverteditself into a mintemploying300 to
400 workers.41
One widely noted operationwas the lease by the EmperorFerdinand
II himself to a consortiumof which only five names are known. These
included Prince Carl von Liechtenstein and Albert Wallenstein, a
general, later Duke of Friedland and then of Mecklenberg, who was
murderedin 1634.Wallensteinhad marriedan elderly widow in 1609and
inherited her fortune when she died in 1614. This he enlargedwith the
mint lease covering Bohemia, Moravia,and Lower Austria. With these
monies he bought close to 60 estates in Bohemia belonging to Protestants after the Catholics had won the battle of the White Mountainin
November 1620 and either confiscated the estates or bought them at
imposed prices with debased coinage. These fortunes enabled Wallenstein to finance his own army in Thirty Years' War battles at a time
when other armies had to rely on booty just to feed their troops.42The
consortium's final contract in January 1622 specified a payment of 6
milliongulden of 60 kreuzersto the Emperor,with substantialprofitsto
its members. The terms of the lease are known but not the names of
most of the leaseholders, who may have chosen to be anonymous. The
cartel later took over a lease of the mint of the Bishop of Breslau in
Silesia.43
Because most of the literaturedescribes single circles, or at most two
37
Schottle, "Munz-und Geldgeschichte,"pp. 78-80.
38
Gaettens, Geschichte des Inflationen, p. 75.
Langer,Kulturgeschichte,p. 30.
Schottle, "Munz- und Geldgeschichte,"p. 84.
41 Langer, Kulturgeschichte,p. 80. Furthermint numbersare given by, among others, Opel,
"Deutsche Finanznoth,"pp. 226-27.
39
40
42
Redlich, De Praeda Militari.
Gaettens, Geschichtedes Inflationen,pp. 86-87, 97-98; and Klfma, "Inflationin Bohemia,"

pp. 378-79.
43
161
or three, little speaks to the geographical spread of the debasement.

Indeed, Opel says that it is impossible to give a full account of the
territorialspread of the Kipperund Wipper.Of particularinterest is its
spread from the German states to Poland, possibly through Danzig at
the instance of the Dutch who were said to have dominatedthat port and
dictated its prices and exchange rates. Alternatively,it may have moved
along the coast from Pomerania,one of the worst debasers in the Lower
Saxon Circle, or via Cracow, which was the center for the export of
Polish coins to Silesia and the Czech lands. Another route was via
Leipzig, which paid the highest prices for silver in all of Germany, so
that silver pouredinto it. Leipzig was also a centralcity for coins, its fair
specializing in trade with the east, including Poland, a country with
minting troubles of its own at that time. The larger coins depreciated
more slowly in Danzig than elsewhere because of the Polish export
surplus, mostly rye and timber, which the Dutch paid in silver. But
Polandalso had importsurpluses, not only with central Europe but also
with the Near and Far East, and considerableamounts of coin left the
country eastwardby way of Lvov. It is difficultto reconcile the various
statements about Polish money: Bogucka claims Poland was flooded
with foreign coin, whereas one earlier source on Germany notes that
good Reich coins left the country and light Polish, Dutch, Spanish, and
Hungariancoins flowed in. The same account elsewhere notes that all
groups in Brandenberg-merchants, hand laborers, peasants, retailers,
daily workers, and serving people-sold to Poland, along with Mecklenburgand Pomerania,in order to acquire precious metals.44
THE BRITISH COMMERCIAL CRISIS OF 1621
Britain's economic crisis, in contrast, was more commercial than

financialand did not involve currency debasement at domestic mints.
Much of it was ascribed to the loss of wool exports to the Continent
resultingfrom the undervaluationof the Germanand Polish currencies:
prices rose less than the metal value of coin-at least subsidiary
coin-declined. But contemporary documents present long lists of
reasons for the decline in income and rise in unemploymentin Britain:
(1) the shortageof money in the country as a result of the export of coin
and bullion, partly throughthe East India Company to pay for pepper
and calico but also to the Baltic for timber and naval stores; (2) the
abortiveAldermanCockayne projectof 1615to hold back woolens from
the Continentfor finishingin England;(3) the clumsy adjustmentof the
prices of gold and silver relative to the ratioin Amsterdam:first in 1606,
4' Opel, "Deutsche Finanznoth,"p. 228; Braudel,The Wheelsof Commerce,p. 255; Wuttke,
"ZurKipper-undWipperzeitin Kursachsen,"pp. 133, 136;Bogucka,"The MonetaryCrisis," pp.
141-43; Gaettens, Geschichte des Inflationen, p. 83; Redlich, Die deutsche Inflation, p. 14; and
Opel, "Deutsche Finanznoth,"pp. 216-37.
162
Kindleberger
when the silver content of coins was lowered more than gold, and again
in 1611, when the price of all gold coins was raised45to bring a large
volumeof silverto the mintfrom 1601to 1611,andnone from 1611to 1630;
(4) the trialin the StarChamberin 1617and 1618of 18 foreignmerchants
for smugglingcoin out of Englandto the fantasticextent of ?7 million,
which may have been a blunderingattemptto stop the flow of interest
paymentsto Hollandbut also possibly led to a halt in Dutch lendingto
London and contributedto the financialcrisis there in 1621.46
The loss in exports of woolen cloth gets special stress in the
contemporarydocuments, as exports fell from 127,000pieces in 1614to
45,000 in 1640 after having risen from 100,000pieces in 1600. Further
causes of the "spectacular British crisis of the 1620s" have been
adduced:bad harvests, plague, and the disastrousloss of 11 ships, some
filled with silver, in the Far EasternDutch-Britishwar of 1618and 1619.
The many causes (and remedies) cited suggest that the crisis was
overdeterminedin the minds of contemporaries,so it is difficultat this
remove and in the absence of sufficientfinancialdata to form a solid
judgment. Feaveryearsuggests that the Gresham's-Lawundervaluation
of silver was more importantthan the decline in cloth exports, because
the continued inflow of gold to the mint implies that the balance of
paymentscannot be blamed.47The exchange of an equal value of silver
for gold was a blow to the "effective monetarycirculation"because of
the far greater use of silver than gold in ordinarytransactions.48
I have some difficultyin acceptingthe analysis that the debasementof
German and Polish coins led to the English commercial difficulties,
because the debasement affected primarilythe subsidiarycoinage and
not those of larger denominationsuch as the silver Reichstaler or the
gold ducat normallyused to settle balances in internationaltrade. These
coins may have been so widely hoarded, however, that the effective
exchange rate ran to the gulden(or florin)ratherthan to the higherunits
of account. As I have alreadynoted, and as has been recently analyzed
for later inflations,inflationcan be accompaniedby export surpluses at
a stage frequentlyencounteredwhen the external depreciationexceeds
the rise of domestic prices.49Evidence from the Swabian Circle, at a
considerable distance from the seacoast, indicates concern over local
export surpluses. Ulm, Biberach, and Uberlingenrestrictedthe export
Feaveryear,The Pound Sterling, pp. 88-89.
Barbour,CapitalismandAmsterdam,pp. 122-23.Amongthose convictedandfinedwas Philip
Burlamachi,a royal exchangerof Italianstock, who was born in France, began his career in the
Netherlands,and arrivedin Englandin 1605.See Judge, "PhilipBurlamachi."
47 Thirskand Cooper,Economic Documents, chaps. 1, 5, 6; Wilson, Transformation of Europe,
45
46
p. 53; Chauduri, English East India Company, pp. 60-61; and Feaveryear, The Pound Sterling, p.
89.
Supple, CommercialCrisis, p. 173, italics in the original.
Hoszowski, Les prix a Lwow, p. 64. For a modern statement, see Bernholz, "Currency
Competition."
48
49
163
of foodstuffs, hay, cattle, and yarn and confined sales to local markets
following a "policy of supply," the rationalefor which was developed
in Italy in the eighteenth century.50Closer to the time I am concerned
with, Biberachclad its civil servantsin uniformsof Meissen cloth rather
than the English cloth that "had become too dear, and must be paid for
in ducats, doubloons, Rose Nobles and other hard talers, all of which
requireda large agio."51 Shortages in Swabia became so acute that the
authoritieson one occasion commandeereda shipmentpassing through
on its way to Switzerlandand sold the goods on the local market.
THE INCIDENCEOF DEBASEMENTAND INFLATION
Many people in this period became very rich: often throughminting,

as was partly the case of Wallenstein, and sometimes throughcorruption. The Duke of Lerma, who managedSpain for 20 years until 1618,
when he was attackedfor malfeasance, amassed a fortune of 44 million
thalers, equivalent to the entire income of Phillip III of Spain for five
years. Earlier the Duke of Alva, a Spanish general in the Netherlands
war with no reputationas a rich man, had died in 1582 with 600 dozen
silver plates and 800 silver platters. In Poland magnates, nobles, and
well-to-do burghershoardedjewelry, luxury plate, and coin by the ton,
accordingto Bogucka, who notes that Duke Januz of Ostrog left a sum
of 600,000 ducats, 290,000differentcoins, 400,000 crowns (gulden),and
30 barrels of broken silver. Similar treasures are recorded in the
inventories of other decedents. The membersof the Pragueconsortium
made their profitsby selling silver to the mint at exorbitantprices and in
largevolume. Hans de Witte, who operatedthe mint, sold silver at a low
price but in such volume that he received 31,240,000gulden. Klima also
mentions the case of Albrecht Jan Smiriky',who at the time of the
uprisingof the ProtestantEstates in 1618deposited 300,000gold ducats
and three tons of gold jewelry in Frankfurtam Main.52There is less
anecdotal evidence of huge fortunes in the German circles, perhaps
because many of them were dissipated in the Thirty Years' War.
If the rich in some cases benefitedfrom the currency debasement of
the Kipper- und Wipperzeit, the poor suffered, especially salaried
workers in cities without a plot of land or animalsfor meat. That prices
of basic foodstuffs rose on the order of five to eight times during the
inflationis indicated by data gatheredfrom (ratherunreliable)hospital
records; those for Augsburgare shown in Table 2, and inflationfor rye
is shown in Figure 2. The latter also indicates daily wages for journeyman masons and for farm laborers engaged in the harvest.
50
51
Schottle, "Die grosse deutsche Geldkrise,"p. 41; and Stuart,Free Tradein Tuscany.
Schottle, "Die grosse deutsche Geldkrise,"p. 41.
52
Parker, Thirty Years' War, p. 49; Braudel, Structure of Everyday Life, p. 463; and Klima,
"Inflationin Bohemia," pp. 376, 381.
164
Kindleberger
TABLE 2
PRICESOF SELECTEDFOODSTUFFS,AUGSBURG, 1618-1624
Pennies per Bushel

Year
Rye
1618
1619
1620
1621
1622
1623
1624
787
952
1153
2636
6516
2357
1938
Barley Oats Peas Rice Pepper Cheese

756
892
1036
1771
4755
2065
1370
473
544
552
1337
3729
1271
1054
Pennies per
Quart
Pennies per Pound
1006
n.a.
1428
1720
6065
2895
1568
21.0
21.0
19.0
20.0
n.a.
26.2
21.0
196
189
203
420
560
140
157
35.0
35.0
38.5
84.0
224.0
52.3
52.5
Carp Grease Honey Milk

24.5
24.5
25.0
70.0
126.0
52.5
42.0
21.0
n.a.
24.5
70.0
n.a.
52.5
42.0
84.0
96.7
100.6
129.5
369.2
121.0
108.0
3.50
3.50
3.50
3.50
2.65
2.67
3.01
Note: n.a. indicatesnot available.

Source: Elsas, Geschichte der Preise, vol. 1, pp. 595, 602, 623.
Although we lack cost-of-living indices for that portion of the population using market rather than natural or barter economies, a crude
estimate of real income is possible using journeyman masons' daily
wages and the price of rye in Augsburg.The rough correlationof food
prices in Table 2 provides some limitedjustificationfor takingthe price
of rye as a proxy for the cost of living; it is likely, too, that bread
1C1 *
5000
50000
1000
10000
500
5000
I 00
1 000
'|
'U
'
C&D
D
'
500
100
-Ir
1550
50
1600
50
FIGURE
1700
I0
I0
50
PRICESAND WAGESIN AUGSBURG, 1550-1750

Notes: A equals price of rye in pennies per bushel;B equals price of wheat in pennies per bushel;
C equals daily wage of journeymanmasons(summertime)in penniesper day; D equals daily wage
of farmlaborers(reapers)in pennies per day. All series are on semilog scales.
Source: Elsas, Geschichteder Preise, vol. 1, p. 784. The data are taken from hospitalrecords.

TABLE
165
RELATIVES OF REAL WAGES IN AUGSBURG AND SOUTHERN ENGLAND FOR

SPECIFIED YEARS 1611-1627
(1601-1610=
100)
Year
Augsburg
Southern England
1611
1612
1613
1615
1617
1619
1621
1622
1625
1627
77
82
105
78
129
118
52
34
55
68
100
90
85
85
88
95
102
90
80
95
Source: For Augsburg, calculated from daily summer wages of journeyman masons and the price
of rye by Elsas, Geschichte der Preise, vol. 1, pp. 731-32, 395; for southern England, calculated
from Phelps Brown and Hopkins, "Seven Centuries of Prices," pp. 312-13.
constituted approximately50 percent of the cost of living. The data of

Table 3 suggest that real wages of marketparticipantsin Augsburgfell
by more than half from 1619 to 1621 and perhaps to a third in 1622.
Recovery after stabilizationwas of course impededby the ThirtyYears'
War.The table provides a comparisonwith real wages for buildinglabor
in Southern Englandas calculated by Phelps Brown and Hopkins, and
makes clear the far greater loss in Germanythan in Britain.
Perhaps more damagingthan the gap between wages and prices was
the widespread breakdownof trade between town and country. Peasants refused to deliver produceto the town or city unless they were paid
in Reichstalers or received outrageousprices in coin. Everywhere was
evidence of what is called today "private compensation" (organized
barter) and the trading of town dwellers' household possessions for
country dwellers' food. Craftsmen such as shoemakers, potters, saddlers, and rope makers kept their goods at home, and the baker,
butcher, and fishmongerstopped bringinggoods to the market.53The
available literature does not discuss the impact of the debasement/
inflationon merchantsin the Hanseatic ports or the majortradingcities,
but judging by the pressures in the former for stabilization and for
deposit banking, the adverse impact on merchantsthere was probably
substantial.
In the first stages of the debasement there was a boom, felt all over
Europe.54Bit by bit the pace of debasementand inflationacceleratedin
1620and especially in the summerof 1621and the first quarterof 1622,
when it became manic.
53 Wuttke,"ZurKipper-und Wipperzeitin Kursachsen,"p. 148;Schottle, "Die grosse deutsche
Geldkrise,"p. 41; and Langer,Kulturgeschichte,p. 31.
54 Glamann,"EuropeanTrade," p. 481; and Gaettens, Geschichtedes Inflationen,p. 88.
166
Kindleberger
As soon as one receives a penny or a groschenthat is a bit betterthan another,he

becomes a profiteer.
. .
. It follows that doctors leave the sick, and think more of
profits than of Hippocrates and Galenus, judges forget the law, hang their
practices on the wall and let him who will read Bartholusand Baldus. The same
is true of other learnedfolk, studyingarithmeticmore than rhetoricand philosophy; merchants, retailers and other trades-people push their businesses with
short goods, which are then markedwith a mint stamp.55
Even nobles danced aroundthe golden calf.56

The 1622 quotation is perhaps evocative of the 1980s' interest in
financial manipulation,but especially echoes a 1650 quotation from a
Spanish source: "Agriculturelaid down the plow . .. the arts disdained
mechanicaltools. . . . Goods became proud."57
At first the uneducated masses could not tell the differencebetween
good and bad money, so authoritiesin Ulm forbadeexchanges of money
against money-but to no avail. In some cases, as understanding
spread, peasants were forced to take bad coin and pay in good. This
slowness to understandwas echoed later, when it took months for the
masses to realize that good money had come back. The literature
stresses that the exchangers "enticed" the general run of people,
provoking "giddiness." One particularlydebased coin was called a
"snare" (Schlinger). In time, as domestic trade broke down, the
differencesbecame all too apparent.In Hameln, the glitteringnew coins
were called "tinsel" money, the white coating of which wore away after
a few weeks in circulation. Childrenplayed with it in the street.58
As inflation proceeded and the distribution of income and wealth
became more and more skewed, riots broke out. The houses of
exchange dealers were stormedin Brandenburgand Halberstadt,and in
February 1622 a riot in Magdeburginvolved several hundred people,
leaving 16 dead and 200 wounded. In Cracow crowds clashed with the
municipalcouncil in 1622and 1623, largely over money matters. Some
cities in Saxony forbade gatherings for fear of demonstrations after
crowds stormed houses in various places in 1621.59 Most of the
historians commenting on these demonstrations observe that the
crowds blamed the exchangers and minters rather than the nobles,
princes, and cities that established scores of new mints and leased still
more.
The impact of the Kipper- und Wipperzeiton mosaic Germany is a
matter of some debate. In one view, so much of the population was
s Quoted in Ibid., p. 89.
Redlich, Die deutsche Inflationen, p. 89.
" Vilar, Gold and Money, pp. 168-69.
58 Redlich, Die deutsche Inflationen, p. 14; Schottle, "Miinz- und Geldgeschichte," p. 86;
56
Bogucka, "MonetaryCrisis," p. 146;Schottle, "Die grosse deutsche Geldkrise,"pp. 47, 52; and
Langer, Kulturgeschichte, p. 30.
" Redlich,Die deutscheInflation,p. 36; Langer,Kulturgeschichte,p. 119;Bogucka,

"Monetary
Crisis," p. 146;and Wuttke, "Zur Kipper-und Wipperzeitin Kursachsen,"p. 150.
167
engaged in the naturaleconomy, living with little need to earn or spend

money, and so few had fixed incomes, despite some mention of
''widows and orphans," that the debasementand inflationdid not hurt
many people. Officials,it is claimed, were able to keep pace by graftand
corruption.60A similar view is that the economic and demographic
catastrophe of the Thirty Years' War is, if not a myth, at least
exaggerated.6' An economist who does not work with primarysources
is in no position to judge the devastationof either the debasementor the
war, but can call attention to one view that the former was far worse
than the latter-in fact comparablewith the devastation of the Black
Death.62 Support for this view comes from Macaulay's History of
England, in a passage dealing with the wave of clipping that led to the
recoinage of 1696.
Yet it may well be doubtedwhetherall the miserywhich has been inflictedon the
English nation in a quarter of a century by bad Kings, bad Ministers, bad
Parliamentsand bad Judges, was equal to the misery caused in a single year by
bad crowns and bad shillings.63
Or, as one Guibert de Nogent (1053-1124) remarkedon the medieval

debasement of Bishop Gaudri II of Laon, France: "No hostility, no
plunderings, no burnings have done worse damage to this province. . . ." 64
THE PATH TOWARD STABILIZATION
The breakdown in both trade and the acceptance of Kippergeld

became so complete that various steps were taken, albeit slowly and
ineffectuallyat first, to bringthe currencycrisis undercontrol. The first
attempt was in Lower Saxony in 1619;despite the spread of the Thirty
Years' War, there was talk of stabilizationbut no action. In February
1620the Wurtembergauthoritiessought to join Electoral Pfalz, Baden,
Ulm, Augsburg, Strassburg, and other units in a minting union. But
because the majorityof the cities and states involved were geographically separated by intervening governments that did not join, the
attemptfailed. Then in March 1620the treaty of Ulm among Augsburg,
Nuremberg, Frankfurt,Strassburg, and Ulm sought to establish new
minting rules and to produce a 31-batzen piece equal to 2 florins, 4
kreuzer as the equivalent of a Reichstaler. Ulm used the occasion to
60 Van Klaveren,General Economic History, p. 165;and Wuttke,"Zur Kipper-und Wipperzeit
in Kursachsen,"pp. 97-98.
61
Parker,ThirtyYears'War,chap. 7, part2, esp. p. 214; and Steinberg,"ThirtyYears' War,"
p. 1060.
62
63
64

Macaulay,History of England, vol. 4, p. 186.
Quoted in Bisson, Conservation of Coinage, p. 3.
168
Kindleberger
accelerate its minting.65The same five cities tried to join with northern
Germancities in the endeavor, but without result.
Action, when it came, began in the north with the Hanseatic cities.
Hamburgand Lubeck concludeda minttreatyin 1618.They werejoined
in January1620by the Duke of Mecklenbergin the Lower Saxon Circle
and by the city of Bremen in agreementwith Wismar. The Reichstaler
was set at 42 schillings(equalto groschen), but raisedin Aprilto 48. The
Kreistag at Lunebergin April 1621set up a commission on the minting
question. It reportedback belatedlyin 1623with recommendationsthat,
once adopted, constituted the decisive act in ending the Kipperzeitin
the Lower Saxon Circle.66
The Upper Saxon Circle came along only in 1623, but in one fell
swoop ratherthan step by step. The gradualmodel, which was followed
by the Swabian, Franconian,and Bavariancircles, was termed on one
occasion by Schottle a "gigantic error" and later "unwise."67 Many
mints in Upper Saxony had stopped producingKippergeldin 1622 and
1623because its passers could no longerget people to accept it. In June
1623, the Elector of Saxony broughttogetherthe various officialboards
and asked them five questions about currency policy. The commission
reportedthe next day in a memorandumof 26 pages that recommended
returningto the ImperialOrdinanceof 1559and setting the Reichstaler
at 24 groschen. In the following days the Elector ordereda recoinageon
that basis and the reinstitutionof the minttrials, which had been allowed
to lapse for five years.68
Shaw states that a great imperialdeputationof all the circles was
convenedin 1623to establishthe finalreturnto the AugsburgOrdinanceof
1559,but this is not treatedin the GermanliteratureI have consulted.The
valueof 1 florin,30 kreuzerto the Reichstalerlastedwith minorexceptions
as the standarduntil the Zinnaische standardof 1 florin, 45 kreuzer,
establishedin 1669in an attemptto stabilizethe currencyonce more, well
afterthe end of the war. Therewas then a still furtherdepreciationin the
Leipzig standardof 1690to 2 florins,or 120kreuzer.69
It is of some interest that Ulm producednew copper coins while the
stabilization was being worked out on a silver basis, and that in the
Upper Saxon Circle a limitedamountof credit money began to circulate
after Kippergeldcould no longer be placed-an importantstep, Wuttke
claimed, in the development of German monetary relations.70These
steps toward providing some sort of circulating medium after all
65
Schottle, "Munz-und Geldgeschichte,"pp. 84-85.
66
67
Schottle, "Die grosse deutsche Geldkrise," p. 53; and Schottle, "Munz- und Geldgeschichte," p. 92.
68
69
70
Gaettens, Geschichte des Inflationen, pp. 92-93.

Shaw, History of Currency, pp. 106, 199, 200.
Schottle, "Mfinz-und Geldgeschichte,"p. 93; and Wuttke, "Zur Kipper-und Wipperzeitin

Kursachsen,"p. 153.
169
subsidiary coins had vanished and high-denominationcoins were

hoardedare evocative of the Rentenmarkestablished in the fall of 1923
before the creation of the Reichsmarkunder the Dawes Plan the next
year.
A COMPARISONWITHTHE GERMANINFLATIONSOF THE TWENTIETHCENTURY
The debasement/inflationof 1619to 1623 came in for renewed study

in Germany after the inflationsof 1919 to 1923 and 1939 to 1948. One
telling difference noted by Gaettens is that the inflation of three
centuries earlier got under way before the outbreak and especially
before the spreadof the Thirty Years' War, and stabilizationtook place
early in the war ratherthan well after it.7' Although the institutions of
1618and 1918were vastly different,central authoritywas weak in both
cases: in the former because of the organizationof the Holy Roman
Empire, in the latter because of the strengthof warring"distributional
coalitions," to use Olson's phrase-Junkers, peasants, industrialists,
laborers, and civil servants-all pulling in separate directions and
determined to fend off some appropriate share of the burden of
reconstructionand reparations.72The path to monetaryreformafter the
more damagingWorldWar II was smoothed both by the destructionof
those vested interests in the Nazi period and duringthe war and by the
existence of the authority of the occupying powers, which ultimately
produced the stabilizationof the monetaryreformof 1948-despite the
widespread myth that this was the work of Ludwig Erhard.
One more comparison is worth making between the Kipper- und
Wipperzeit and the positions taken after World Wars I and II: it
concerns the question of debt. This is widely discussed in the literature
on the earlier inflationary episode; it is generally agreed that the
muddling-throughthat ensued was not satisfactory.Princes, nobles, and
ecclesiastics who had been paid rents or interest in debased money lost,
as did all manner of states that similarlyreceived money in taxes and
dues. Ordinarypeople who turnedin their debased money for recoinage
and got back in new coin only its metallicvalue also lost heavily. So did
those whose debts had been repaid in debased money. New debts
contracted during the inflationprovoked the difficultquestion of what
money was required for the payment of interest and repayment of
principal. An earlier rule of 1572-a period of far milder inflationstated that debts should be repaid in the currency in which they had
been contracted, and there was a wave of pressurefor reinstitutingsuch
a rule. The issue animated churchmenand jurists as well as business
people, lenders, and borrowers. Redlich charges that the Elector of
Saxony, who insisted on new money for his Kippergeld loans, was
7'
72
Olson, "Some Questionsabout the WeimarRepublic."
170
Kindleberger
either feathering his own nest or drunk. In any case, the invasion of
ElectoralSaxony in the ThirtyYears' Warmade any paymentof debt by
the impoverished populace impossible.73In general, different circles
and the states and cities within them workedout differentsolutions over
a period of years stretchingwell beyond the 1648Treaty of Westphalia.
The Swabian Circle laid down a rule as early as March 1622calling for
creditorsto get back when they invested-good money for good, bad for
bad-following not the letter of the law but the dictates of Christian
love. There were many exceptions to the 1622 rule, especially where
official fiscal interests were affected, and the authorities were still
strugglingwith the issue three decades later when it was decreed that all
debts remainingfrom the period were to be cut in half. Kassel in Hesse
promulgated an effective and equitable solution set out in detail by
Redlich over three pages.74One distinction was drawn between debts
contracted in money and in goods. Authorities and courts were overwhelmed for years. The comparisonholds, of course, not only with the
period after the inflationof 1919to 1923, when holders of propertyand
those who had repaid debt gained substantiallywhereas wealth in the
form of money and governmentdebt was wiped out, but also with the
Lastenausgleich associated with the Monetary Reform of 1948 after
World War II, which together reduced all fixed claims to wealth by 90
percent and imposed a mortgageof 50 percent on real property.
CONCLUSION
Let me try to draw some conclusions from the foregoing.

To the five known methods of propagatinginternational financial
crises-(1) gold and short-termcapitalmovements (or money flows); (2)
price changes in internationallytradedgoods and assets; (3) tradeflows;
(4) long-term capital movements, including their sudden halt; and (5)
pure psychology-we can add currency debasement that spreads
abroadfollowing Gresham'sLaw, thoughthis may perhapsbe regarded
as a special case of money flows.75
There is also considerablesupportfor the view that 1619to 1623was
a watershedin the economic developmentof Germany,as the entire first
half of the century was for Europe as a whole. It is strikinghow many
economic series are broken then-stopping short of 1620, startingonly
in 1624, or showing wide gaps in the data for those years (for example,
in the exchange rate of Piacenza on Nuremberg, but not Frankfurt).
Note also the numberof missing observationsin Elsas's price series for
Redlich, Die deutsche Inflation,p. 57.
Schottle, "Munz-und Geldgeschichte,"pp. 98-100; and Redlich,Die deutscheInflation,pp.
58-61.
75 Kindleberger,"InternationalAspects of FinancialCrises."
73
74
171
Germany.76Bookkeepingin the imperialcity of Nordlingenbroke down

during the hyperinflation and took years to recover.77 Of greater
importance was the shift from old banks such as the Welsers of
Nuremberg,which went bankruptin 1614, and the Neapolitan Bank of
the Holy Spirit, which stopped growing in 1622 after a brilliantexpansion from 1600,78to new deposit banks, which hastened the development of the bills-of-exchangenetwork.
Another issue, which has a bearingon a bankingquestion of today, is
the stabilityof free competitionin the creationof money. RolandVaubel
and FriedrichHayek in Europeand George Selgin, RichardTimberlake,
Lawrence White, and Leland Yeager in the United States advocate
abandoning monetary controls and opening the business of issuing
money to anyone who chooses to enter it. This policy assumes an
inverse of Gresham's Law: that the public will perceive which firms
issue good money and bank with them alone. This surely happensat the
peak of a debasement or overissue, when money becomes so bad as to
be worthless and substitutes are found. But free minting, which occurred when the controls of the Holy Roman Empire-coin-testing
days, oaths of mint masters and theirjourneymen, oaths of the official
assayers, agreementsof the separatecircles and the monetarycontrols
within them-all broke down, suggests that some control is necessary.
The fallacy of compositionworked againsta simultaneousand universal
movement toward restraint, each circle free-riding in a fashion that
prevents production of the public good of monetary stability in the
absence of effective centralgovernment.Various appeals to the Elector
of Saxony were made for help in the currency disorder, but he did not
see what he could do. No single Standcould produce order. The only
possible means was a general Imperial Assembly, but the Elector's
proposal for such a meeting would not work. The weakness of the
Empire lay exposed to all eyes. And the Elector realized that he could
not produce order by himself.79
Centralized effective control might not be necessary in a world
populated by economic men-rational, intelligent, and with access to
cheap information-but history reveals that the world is not like that.
By revealed historical preference, some controls are needed to protect
the vulnerable underclasses, and in a world in which some people at
various levels of authorityare greedy and perhapsunprincipled,strong,
honest, central control is necessary. The breakdownof wildcat banking
in Michigan in the 1830s, I understand,is blamed by the advocates of
free bankingon government:they claim that if the bankershad been left
76
Hoskins, "Harvest Fluctuations"; Posthumus, Nederlandische Prijsgeschiedenis; Silva,
Banque et credit en Italie, vol. 2, pp. 149-52, 187; and Elsas, Geschichte der Preise.
77 Friedrichs,Urban Society in an Age of War, p. 148.
78 Spooner, Monetary Movements in France, p. 65.
79
Wuttke, "Zur Kipper-und Wipperzeitin Kursachsen,"pp. 137, 154.
172
Kindleberger
alone free bankingwould have worked. This counterfactualstrikes me

as absurd. In addition to the millions of vulnerable in the world are
perhapshundredsof thousandsof the guileful-persons ready to exploit
the unwary-and includingeven those assigned to protect the unsophisticated. The Kipper- und Wipperzeitwas blamed at the time on the
minterswho violated their oaths or on the exchangersand smugglersof
good coin out and bad coin in. Source after source, however, recognizes
that the real responsibility lay with the nobles, princes, city officials,
high church officials, and even the Emperor.
Monetary regulation, as the press has constantly remindedus in the
1980s and early 1990s, can never be completely effective; nor can it be
safely abandoned. The tension between regulatorsand regulated, and
between regulatorsand their watchdogs, is inevitably continuous.
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The Economic Crisis of 1619 to 1623

The Economic Crisis of 1619 to 1623

Variousstates in the Holy RomanEmpirepreparedfor the ThirtyYears' Warby

first quarterof the seventeenth century, up to and through the

France, p. 32; Romano, "Italy," p. 193;and Shaw, History of Currency,p. 102.

of Europeancities to a mononuclearone with its core in Amsterdam.2

The term Kipper und Wipper was seventeenth-century slang. The

The Economic Crisis of 1619 to 1623

Even withoutthe extended wars and the malversationof mint masters

The Economic Crisis of 1619 to 1623

Amsterdam, Adam Smith drew a distinction between large and small

A modernGermanhistorianof the ThirtyYears' Warmade the same

Smith, Wealth of Nations, p. 446.

Spooner, Monetary Movements in France, pp. 4, 9.

11, 211, 214; Einaudi,"ImaginaryMoney,"

good: in Einaudi'swords, "a splendidinstrumentfor performingcertain

None of the methods that have attemptedto combat the workingsand

Ellis, German Monetary Theory.

Schottle, "Die grosse deutsche Geldkrise,"p. 50.

The Economic Crisis of 1619 to 1623

via treaties. As early as March 1609,a mint treaty among Mecklenburg,

Smith, Wealth of Nations, p. 451.

Schottle, "Munz- und Geldgeschichte,"p. 85.

significant shifts in the supplies of these precious metals, or of the

deutsche Inflation, p. 51.

Wuttke, "Zur Kipper-und Wipperzeitin Kursachsen,"p. 123.

grosse deutsche Geldkrise";and Schottle, "Munz-und Geldgeschichte."

The Economic Crisis of 1619 to 1623

Upper Saxony Circle

DIVISIONOF THE HOLY ROMANEMPIREINTO CIRCLES, 1512

disorders.29The considerableliteratureon the commercialcrisis in Britain

As is true of so many financialcrises transmittedfrom place to place,

Spooner, Monetary Movements in France.

Gould, "The TradeDepressionof the Early 1620s";Feaveryear,ThePound Sterling;Supple,

soldiers (who are increasingly mercenaries)have to be mobilized and

Geschichte des Inflationen, p. 74.

Shaw, Historyof Currency,p. 102.

The Economic Crisis of 1619 to 1623

QUOTATIONSOF THE REICHSTALERON SPECIFICDATES, IN FLORINSAND

Value was fixed at this last figureuntil 1669.

Opel, "Deutsche Finanznoth,"pp. 229-31.

the Upper Rhine Circle that included Strassburg to be particularly

Schottle, "Munz-und Geldgeschichte,"pp. 78-80.

Gaettens, Geschichte des Inflationen, p. 75.

Redlich, De Praeda Militari.

Gaettens, Geschichtedes Inflationen,pp. 86-87, 97-98; and Klfma, "Inflationin Bohemia,"

The Economic Crisis of 1619 to 1623

or three, little speaks to the geographical spread of the debasement.

Britain's economic crisis, in contrast, was more commercial than

Opel, "Deutsche Finanznoth,"pp. 216-37.

The Economic Crisis of 1619 to 1623

Many people in this period became very rich: often throughminting,

"Inflationin Bohemia," pp. 376, 381.

Pennies per Bushel

Barley Oats Peas Rice Pepper Cheese

Pennies per Pound

Carp Grease Honey Milk

Note: n.a. indicatesnot available.