Richard Kerschagl, Die Mitteleuropäischen Währungen u. Notenbanken (1929)

Richard Kerschagl’s work is a single-author, policy-technical survey in the Mitteleuropa-Institut series. It covers Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Germany from the end of the First World War to April 1929, then appends parity tables, Vienna exchange-rate series, translated redemption and cover provisions, central-bank balance sheets, a discount-rate chronicle, bibliography, and book notices. Its thesis is comparative and institutional: Central Europe’s monetary reconstruction meant turning war-inflation paper systems and the broken Austro-Hungarian currency area into national currencies disciplined by autonomous issuing banks, reserve rules, legal gold parities, and managed access to foreign exchange.

Austria provides the model. Kerschagl reads the republic’s inflation as the monetary expression of fiscal deficit and institutional dislocation; reconstruction begins when the note press is separated from state finance and embodied in a new central bank.

Der erste Schritt des sogenannten Sanierungswerkes für Österreich war die Stabilisierung der österreichischen Währung und die Gründung eines neuen, selbständigen Noteninstituts.

English translation: The first step of the so-called work of reconstruction for Austria was the stabilization of the Austrian currency and the founding of a new, independent note-issuing institute.

That formulation also governs Hungary and Poland: both move from stamped or provisional notes through inflation to a new unit—the Pengö and the Zloty—and a central bank charged with reserve accumulation and exchange control. Kerschagl is less interested in moralizing inflation than in showing the sequence by which sovereignty becomes monetary: stamping, conversion ratios, forced loans or blocked balances, consolidation of state debt, reserve accumulation, and finally a factual or legal parity.

Czechoslovakia is treated as the most deliberate successor-state case. The Rašín experiment combines note stamping with forced contraction; the Bank Office and later National Bank receive the task of preserving the crown’s value. Kerschagl singles out the prohibition of state credit as the decisive institutional line between currency and treasury.

Die wichtigste Bestimmung war die, daß jede weitere direkte oder indirekte Kreditgewährung an den Staat unzulässig sei.

English translation: The most important provision was that any further direct or indirect extension of credit to the state was inadmissible.

This sentence captures the book’s core concept: stabilization is not merely an exchange rate, but a constitutional settlement between state budget, bank balance sheet, and public money. Italy illustrates the same logic under different conditions, because it already possessed older note-issuing institutions. Its reform begins not with currency separation but with monopoly of issue.

Der erste Teil der italienischen Währungsreform bestand in der Unifikation des Notenumlaufes durch das Dekretgesetz vom 5. Mai 1926.

English translation: The first part of the Italian monetary reform consisted in the unification of the note circulation by the decree-law of 5 May 1926.

The Germany chapter gives the most dramatic account of monetary collapse and reconstruction. The Mark’s failure forces emergency instruments—the Rentenmark and Golddiskontbank—before the Reichsbank and currency laws of 1924 provide a more durable structure.

Die Schaffung der Rentenmark (Verordnung vom 15. Oktober 1923, RGBI. I, S 963) brachte in der zweiten Hälfte des Monats November endlich eine Beruhigung der Verhältnisse und eine Stabilisierung der Währung.

English translation: The creation of the Rentenmark (decree of 15 October 1923, RGBl. I, p. 963) finally brought, in the second half of November, a calming of conditions and a stabilization of the currency.

Yet Kerschagl stresses that emergency stabilization is not the same as final reform.

Die Frage einer gänzlichen Neugründung der deutschen Währung verschwand jedoch nicht mehr aus der Diskussion, da auch die Rentenmark nur als ein Notbehelf betrachtet werden konnte.

English translation: The question of an entirely new founding of the German currency did not, however, disappear from the discussion, since the Rentenmark too could only be regarded as a stopgap.

The less complete cases sharpen the comparison. Yugoslavia has a stable enough Dinar rate but remains burdened by state liabilities to the bank; hence Kerschagl refuses to mistake factual calm for definitive reform.

Die weiteren Bestrebungen Jugoslawiens, zu einer endgültigen Regelung des Währungswesens zu gelangen, sind bisher noch nicht zu einem definitiven Abschluß gekommen.

English translation: Yugoslavia's further efforts to arrive at a definitive settlement of monetary affairs have not yet reached any final conclusion.

Romania, by contrast, enters a new phase in 1928–29 through foreign loans, cooperation among central banks, a technical adviser, and a new gold-exchange statute. The legal extracts show how interwar “gold” often meant managed convertibility, minimum presentation amounts, and reserves partly in gold-valued devises.

Die Bank garantiert die Einlösbarkeit der Noten ohne Begrenzung des Betrages, jedoch darf niemand weniger als 100.000 Lei auf einmal zur Zahlung präsentieren.

English translation: The bank guarantees the redeemability of the notes without limitation of amount; however, no one may present less than 100,000 lei at one time for payment.

The work’s relevance lies in its concrete apparatus. Parity tables translate currencies into gold weights and cross-rates; Vienna quotations make stabilization visible as market history; statutory excerpts define “cover” and “redemption”; March 1929 balance sheets test those rules against institutional facts. Kerschagl thus offers a near-contemporary map of the restored Central European gold-exchange order just before the world crisis, showing monetary stabilization as a legal-administrative technique as much as an economic event.