Kerschagl, Das österreichische Schillingsgesetz (1925)

Kerschagl presents the 1924 Schilling law not merely as a technical change in bookkeeping, but as the juridical completion of Austria’s post-inflation stabilization. His central claim is announced at once: the title understates the measure’s monetary significance.

Das Bundesgesetz vom 20. Dezember 1924 führt eigentlich bis zu einem gewissen Grade mit Unrecht den Namen Schillingrechnungsgesetz.

English translation: The federal law of 20 December 1924 actually bears the name Schilling Accounting Law with, to a certain extent, some injustice.

For him, the law is in substance a “Schillingwährungsgesetz”: it legally fixes the gold value of the monetary unit while preserving continuity with existing crown-denominated assets and obligations. The conversion is therefore deliberately non-revolutionary. It neither raises nor lowers claims, but translates them into a new unit at the rate of 10,000 crowns to one schilling.

10 000 K gleich 1 Schilling zu rechnen sind.

English translation: 10,000 crowns are to be reckoned as equal to 1 schilling.

This equivalence is Kerschagl’s key conceptual move. The Schilling is not introduced as a confiscatory reform, a valorization statute, or a devaluation device. It is a legal and administrative consolidation of zeros after inflation, made possible by the earlier stabilization of the crown through the National Bank and fiscal reconstruction. Hence the work repeatedly insists on value-continuity.

Der Vorgang des Ueberganges zur Schillingrechnung ist eine reine Rechenoperation.

English translation: The process of transition to Schilling accounting is a purely arithmetical operation.

The accompanying Motivenbericht situates the law in the collapse of the old crown currency after 1914, the suspension of note-cover rules, state recourse to the banknote press, and the later recovery through budgetary discipline, foreign loans, and National Bank reserves. The Schilling law makes visible what stabilization had already achieved: the disappearance of the inflationary numerical excess and the restoration of trustworthy monetary expression.

die Ehrlichkeit im Geldausdruck wiederherzustellen.

English translation: to restore honesty in monetary expression.

Kerschagl’s commentary sharpens this point legally. The gold relation gives the Austrian currency a fixed parity; the National Bank’s prior duty had guarded against further depreciation, while the Schilling law fixes the upper side through gold weight, coinage provisions, and the bank’s obligation concerning gold bars. Thus the reform translates economic stabilization into statutory form.

Es ist gewissermaßen die Goldparität unveränderlich geworden

English translation: The gold parity has, so to speak, become immutable.

The Motivenbericht compares Austria with Germany, Hungary, Poland, Britain, Sweden, and others, stressing that postwar Europe had not returned uniformly to the prewar gold standard. Austria remains a small, capital-poor state whose policy must avoid premature experiments.

die bestehende Goldkernwährung kein dauernder Zustand sein kann

English translation: the existing gold-core currency cannot be a permanent condition

The structure of the volume reflects this double character. It begins with Kerschagl’s practical introduction, then prints the federal statute, the government’s explanatory report, and a section-by-section commentary. It concludes with decrees, communiqués, circulars, and postal and banking instructions. This architecture is itself significant: monetary law involves abstract parity together with coordinated changes to budgets, courts, ledgers, checks, postal forms, coins, railway tariffs, and bank accounts.

Although the law made private use of the Schilling formally optional at first, Kerschagl emphasizes that public institutions effectively forced the transition by moving together on 1 March 1925: the state, Post Savings Bank, railways, commercial banks, and the Austrian National Bank all shifted their accounting practice. The “fakultativ” character thus becomes practically compulsory through infrastructure rather than command.

Die Einführung der Schillingrechnung ist nur fakultativ.

English translation: The introduction of Schilling accounting is only optional.

The commentary also protects against misunderstandings. Rounding rules suppress sub-groschen amounts and are intended to prevent opportunistic price increases. Existing valorization rules and special legal exceptions are not abolished; the statute does not simply absolutize the nominalist principle of “Krone ist Krone.” Old notes and coins are treated through long withdrawal and exchange periods, so that the reform should not injure holders through haste or ignorance.

The relevance of the work lies in its unusually precise view of currency reform as legal-administrative engineering. Kerschagl shows that stabilization required more than a new coin name: it required a theory of continuity, a gold anchor, rules for obligations, a hierarchy of public and private adoption, and a vast apparatus of forms and instructions. The Schilling emerges as both symbol and instrument of Austria’s attempt to exit inflation without reopening the social conflicts of revaluation.