Paper Millionaires

Scattered around almost every German town there were loose Deustche Reichsmark bank notes,
dropped by looters or lost on the wind from the bank’s safes that had been blown or broken open.

Forward to 1976, I’m ten years old. “Look Dad, I’ve nearly forty pounds saved now in my bank book.” “Pass it here!” He would say. Then affectedly writing, “There I’ve added five more noughts on,” returning it back to me, “Now you have, four Million pounds!” Casually emphasizing, “They’re only numbers, just figures in a book.”

This was one of those profound demonstrations of his, to provoke thoughts about values in life. A paradox, but with a warmth of humanity that disarmed doubt, even to a kid with questions of clout, it slid into the heart and psyche with such a happy message: be happy with what you’ve got, no matter what!

Back to Germany, May 1945, the end of World War II. You could have all the money in Germany now, no one would object, because it was worthless. Even if there had been anything worth left to buy, you still couldn’t have paid for it with this money. It was now a non-currency. And after all it was just what it is, paper! Germany had truly lost the war; even its paper was now powerless paper, unless burnt.

If you were willing to wait around half a century, possibly die in the meantime, and then having passed it on to say your son or daughter, a collector would probably pay a few pounds for a postage stamp or bank note with Hitler’s head on it today. Which Jim didn’t do. I just happened to find them in a box, playing one day in my parent’s bedroom as kids do. Added them to my stamp collection, along with brightly coloured Malaysian, outer Mongolian and whatever other stamps from distant Countries that afforded a postal service back in the mid 1970’s and beyond. A collection duly forgotten about and eventually lost over the years.

The three or four various German bank notes that I remember of this little collection are probably still up there in some dark hole in the attic bedroom right now, but just sentimental dust, for 2002, memory dusters.

I also remember something else, a kind of dusty cloth belt or sash with different cloth and tin badges sewn onto it. I’ve a distinct recollection of a cloth eagle shaped badge, sitting atop a swastika, a round tin badge of flags with swastikas on them and areas where badges have been torn off.

“Where did you get this?” I remember asking. “Off a dead German!” Was the standard answer.
I threw it back carefully as children do, with dirty hands. It probably got chucked out in some old jumble with Jim’s red beret.

I’ll have to have a good look round our old house again some day, I might find another old memory.

One day. ~ N.W.
 

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