Emergency Money by Tom Wilkinson

Emergency Money by Tom Wilkinson

A landmark art historical study of German Notgeld, the emergency money produced during World War I, and the hyperinflation that followed.

Emergency Money is the first art historical study of Germany's emergency money, Notgeld. Issued during World War I and the tumultuous interwar period, these wildly artful banknotes featured landscapes, folk figures, scenes of violence and humor, and even inflation itself in the form of figures staring into empty purses or animals defecating coins. Until now, art historians have paid Notgeld scant attention, but Wilkinson looks closely at these amusing, often disturbing, artifacts and their grim associations to cast new light on the Weimar Republic's visual culture, as well as the larger relationship between art and money.

As Wilkinson shows, Germany's early twentieth-century economic crisis was also a crisis of culture. Retelling the period's gripping story through thematic investigations into prevalent Notgeld motifs, Wilkinson illuminates how the vexed relationship between aesthetic value and exchange value was an inextricable part of everyday life.

A landmark contribution to our understanding of twentieth-century Germany, Emergency Money brings together art, economics, critical theory, and media theory to create a book for our own inflationary moment, as the world's new materialisms confront the specter of this older, more fundamental materialism.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780262546805
ISBN 10	0262546809
Title	Emergency Money
Author	Tom Wilkinson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	MIT Press Ltd
Year published	2024-01-23
Number of pages	272
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.