Last updated: September 2026

What was Germany's 1948 currency reform?

It was the replacement of the Reichsmark by the Deutsche Mark in the three western occupation zones, in force from 20 June 1948. From 21 June the Deutsche Mark was the only means of payment there. The Reichsmark and the Rentenmark were exchanged compulsorily, and most balances were written down in the process.

The chronicle kept by the Haus der Geschichte records the sequence in four lines: 20 June, currency reform through the introduction of the D-Mark in the western occupation zones; 23 June, currency reform in the Soviet occupation zone; 24 June, the start of the Soviet blockade of the western sectors of Berlin; 26 June, the first Anglo-American airlift flights (LeMO, Haus der Geschichte, chronicle for 1948). Six days separate a monetary measure from an eleven-month siege.

The reform was an Allied act carried out by a new German institution. Independent state central banks had been set up in the individual Laender, and on 1 March 1948 the Bank deutscher Laender was established above them as the central bank for the western zones. It issued the new notes under Allied authority. The Bundesbank would not exist for another nine years.

Why did the Reichsmark have to be replaced?

Because the Reichsmark had been drained of purchasing power by war finance and then frozen in place by price controls. Wartime deficits had flooded the economy with money while goods disappeared, and a rigid price and wage stop kept the official numbers still while real trade moved to barter and the black market.

The Stadtarchiv in Peine, which collected eyewitness accounts of the reform in its own town, describes the position bluntly: acute shortage marked the supply situation of the German population in the early postwar years, and it was the currency reform in the western zones on 20 June 1948, made necessary by the collapse of the Reichsmark, that set the gradual economic recovery in motion (Stadtarchiv Peine, Waehrungsreform und Schwarzmarkt 1948). The same account records cigarettes trading on the black market at the railway station for up to eight marks each in the days before the reform, when they were available at all.

This is a different kind of monetary failure from the one Germany had suffered 25 years earlier. In 1923 prices ran away in public and the printing presses chased them. In 1948 the official price of everything was stable and meaningless, because the money had quietly stopped clearing markets. Our pages on Germany's 1923 hyperinflation and hyperinflation versus inflation set out the earlier collapse, and Notgeld emergency money covers what communities printed when the national currency failed them.

What did each person receive on 20 June 1948?

Forty Deutsche Mark in cash, paid out from early on Sunday morning, 20 June 1948, with a further 20 DM in August. The payment was known as Kopfgeld, literally head money. Both instalments were later offset against whatever each household received when its Reichsmark balances were converted.

The Peine archive records the terms precisely: the issue of the head money of 40 DM per citizen, exchanged at par, with a further 20 DM in August, and it notes that the distribution went smoothly, with two thirds of the town's payments completed by the lunch break (Stadtarchiv Peine). Payment points were whatever local offices could be pressed into service, from town halls to food ration offices. Businesses and the self-employed could apply to their settlement bank for a trading allowance of 60 DM per employee as an advance against their later claims.

How was Reichsmark converted into Deutsche Mark?

At different ratios depending on what was being converted. Continuing obligations such as wages, salaries and rents carried across at par, so a worker's pay packet kept its number. Balances, by contrast, were cut to a tenth: the Deutsche Mark replaced the Reichsmark at ten to one.

The Haus der Geschichte summarizes the household side in one sentence: with the introduction of the D-Mark, wages, salaries and rents were revalued at a ratio of one to one, while savings deposits lost value (LeMO, Marshall Plan and currency reform). That one sentence contains the whole social bargain of the reform, and the table below sets out the ratios it turned on.

The Haus der Geschichte records the replacement ratio directly on its catalogue entry for a 1948 twenty mark note: the Deutsche Mark replaced the Reichsmark at one to ten (LeMO, Zwanzig Deutsche Mark, Serie 1948), while its chapter on the reform records that wages, salaries and rents were revalued one to one and savings deposits lost value. The finer machinery of the conversion, including the treatment of blocked accounts and the later revisions to savers' claims, is not set out in the sources cited here and is therefore left out rather than guessed at. The pattern is the one that recurs in every redenomination we track in our list of currency redenominations: incomes are protected, accumulated balances are not.

What did the 1948 banknotes look like?

They were American-made and American-looking. The first Deutsche Mark notes were printed in the United States from October 1947, eight months before anyone in Germany knew the reform's date, and the design of both the first and the second series was modeled on the US dollar (LeMO, Zwanzig Deutsche Mark, Serie 1948). That is the visual tell collectors use: a 1948 note looks less like Weimar paper than like a greenback.

The timing matters for collectors as much as the look. Notes printed in 1947 for a reform announced in June 1948 had to be shipped and stored in secret, which is what the crates marked Bird Dog were carrying, and it is why the issue arrived complete rather than denomination by denomination.

Denominations per the Haus der Geschichte catalogue entry for the 1948 twenty mark note, which lists the issue as 5 and 10 Pfennig plus ½, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 DM, names the Bank deutscher Laender as issuer, and records that money issued in West Berlin is marked with a B (LeMO, Zwanzig Deutsche Mark, Serie 1948). Sheet sizes, designer attributions and the split between the first and second series for individual denominations are not given in the sources cited here, so this table does not state them.

The Baerenmark overprints

On 24 June 1948 the Deutsche Mark was extended to the three western sectors of Berlin. Notes intended for the city were marked with a stamp, a punched B, or both, which is why Berliners called them Baerenmark after the bear on the city's arms. A B-marked 1948 note is a physical record of the day the blockade began.

How did the Soviet zone respond, and what did Berlin have to do with it?

With its own currency reform three days later and a blockade the day after that. On 23 June 1948 the Soviet zone introduced the Deutsche Mark der Deutschen Notenbank, and on 24 June the Soviet military administration began the large-scale blockade of the western sectors of Berlin by land and water.

Because new eastern notes could not be printed in time, the first step in the Soviet zone was to attach coupons to existing Reichsmark notes, which is how the stamped and couponed transitional issues came about (Haus der Geschichte). The Soviet Military Administration had announced the creation of the Deutsche Notenbank as a central bank for its zone on 28 May 1948, a month before the western reform took effect.

The American account of the same week is direct about cause and effect. In June, without informing the Soviets, US and British policymakers introduced the new Deutschmark to Bizonia and West Berlin, with the aim of taking economic control of the city out of Soviet hands, enabling Marshall Plan aid and curbing the black market. Soviet authorities responded with similar moves in their own zone and blocked all major road, rail and canal links to West Berlin. The crisis started on 24 June 1948 and ended on 12 May 1949 (US Department of State, Office of the Historian; LeMO, Berlin blockade 1948).

What changed after the reform?

Shop windows filled almost overnight, because goods that had been held back for a currency worth holding suddenly had one. The reform is remembered in Germany as the start of the postwar recovery, and it arrived alongside the Marshall Plan rather than instead of it.

Between 1948 and 1952 the Marshall Plan provided roughly 12.4 billion dollars in total, of which 1.5 billion went to West Germany (Haus der Geschichte). New money and external aid together did what neither would have done alone, and the political division of Germany hardened in the same months.

The Deutsche Mark itself lasted until the euro. The Bundesbank states that from 1 January 2002 euro banknotes and coins became legal tender in all participating member states, which nullified the legal tender status of all payment media denominated in Deutsche Mark. It also says that it is generally possible to exchange an unlimited amount of Deutsche Mark banknotes and coins indefinitely and free of charge at all Bundesbank branches, or by post via its Mainz branch (Deutsche Bundesbank). Very few retired currencies keep that door open.

How do collectors buy 1948 Bank deutscher Laender notes?

By grade and by issue, because the 1948 notes were handled hard. They were spent immediately by a population that had just been given them, and the second-series notes in particular were printed on paper that did not wear well, so genuinely crisp examples are far scarcer than the survival numbers alone suggest.

Three things separate one 1948 note from another. First, the series: a first-series note reading Banknote is a different object from a second-series note reading Bank deutscher Laender, even in the same denomination. Second, the Berlin B marking, stamped or punched, which ties a note to the blockade city. Third, condition, which on a circulated 1948 issue is usually the whole story. We do not publish fixed values for these notes, because prices move with denomination, issue, marking and grade, and a single quoted figure would mislead more than it helps. Read what determines banknote value before you buy, then use our banknote grading guide to read a seller's description properly.

If you want the whole German arc rather than one year of it, the Germany banknotes hub runs from imperial issues through the 100 trillion mark note of 1923 to the Deutsche Mark, and our current stock sits on the German banknotes page. New collectors should start with how to collect world banknotes.

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