Alfred Amonn’s journal article examines monetary fragmentation in the successor states of Austria-Hungary, particularly Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. It moves from criticism of proposed currency alignments to a programme for a common gold-based standard compatible with national sovereignty. Its central distinction is between sharing a currency and securing stable monetary relations: economic integration requires the latter without necessarily requiring the former.
Amonn opens with proposals associated with Roland von Hegedüs and objections from the former Czechoslovak finance minister Engliš. Hegedüs advocated monetary cooperation and alignment with the franc; Engliš questioned the restrictions on sovereignty that a common currency would involve. The article reports his distinction between monetary diversity and exchange instability:
Nicht die Verschiedenheit der Währungen sei es, welche den Handelsverkehr erschwere und behindere, sondern die fortgesetzten Schwankungen ihres Wertverhältnisses.
English translation: It is not the diversity of currencies, it is said, that makes commerce more difficult and hinders it, but the continual fluctuations of their value relation.
Amonn accepts this distinction. Separate currencies need not impede commerce when their relative values remain stable. A common paper currency, however, would require coordination of banking, trade, and fiscal policies that the newly independent states would resist. The problem is therefore to stabilize exchange without imposing extensive political commitments.
Hegedüs’s proposed franc alignment also conflates contemporary French money with the metallic standard of the Latin Monetary Union. Amonn insists that these are different alternatives:
Nun ist, wenn überhaupt etwas, nur entweder das eine oder das andere möglich, denn die Währung des siegreichen Frankreich ist eine ganz andere als die Währung der lateinischen Münzunion.
English translation: Now, if anything at all, only either the one or the other is possible, for the currency of victorious France is quite a different thing from the currency of the Latin Monetary Union.
The distinction concerns monetary substance, not terminology. France’s paper franc no longer embodies the former union’s metallic basis. Amonn clarifies this through an analogy with the post-Habsburg currencies:
Die heutige französische Frankwährung unterscheidet sich von der Währung der lateinischen Münzunion genau so, wie sich die verschiedenen Kronenwährungen der verschiedenen Nachfolgestaaten von der alten österreichisch-ungarischen Währung unterscheiden.
English translation: Today's French franc currency differs from the currency of the Latin Monetary Union exactly as the various crown currencies of the various successor states differ from the old Austro-Hungarian currency.
A shared name or surviving treaty cannot sustain monetary unity once common metallic circulation has disappeared. Attachment to the French franc or German mark would also expose the successor states to uncertainties surrounding German reparations. Amonn instead makes stabilization of money’s value the governing criterion of reform, with cessation of monetary expansion as its prerequisite.
His alternative is a gold-based monetary community drawing on the former Austro-Hungarian crown. He separates the monetary standard from imperial political identity: states could retain distinct currency names while defining their units through the same gold content. The proposal seeks to recover an economic mechanism, not the monarchy. A common metallic standard would stabilize monetary relations without the degree of joint policymaking required by a common paper currency.
Implementation would be gradual. Amonn argues that wartime measures displaced gold from both circulation and accounting. He attributes this not merely to paper expansion but also to interventions such as prohibiting a gold premium, which treated unequal monetary units as if they retained equal value. Restoring gold accounting would clarify inflation’s distributive effects. Nominal increases in wages and dividends could otherwise conceal declining purchasing power and altered relative incomes. A stable measure could therefore illuminate social conflicts as well as commercial calculations.
The transition would begin with free circulation of old gold crowns within and between participating states, at market rates against paper currencies. Public accounts, budgets, taxes, and salaries would then be expressed in gold crowns, with paper payments converted accordingly. Governments would stabilize the resulting exchange relationships; national note banks would subsequently issue redeemable, gold-backed notes and support stability through foreign-exchange policy. Complete replacement of paper crowns would come last, since acquiring sufficient gold might take years.
Amonn thus distinguishes full currency conversion from an effective monetary community. Limited gold circulation, stable conversion rates, and restricted paper issuance could establish the latter before completing the former. He regards such stability as more productive than trade agreements alone: tariffs are relatively calculable obstacles, whereas exchange fluctuations continually unsettle economic calculation.
The article’s two editorial notes qualify this programme. An opening reservation distances the editors from its conclusions; a later update cites Czechoslovak budget difficulties and renewed Hungarian note issuance. These qualifications highlight the uncertain fiscal discipline underlying Amonn’s attempt to reconcile sovereign statehood with regional monetary integration.
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