Abstract

Money is more than just a medium of financial exchange: across time and place, it has performed all sorts of cultural, political, and social functions. This volume traces money in German-speaking Europe from the late Renaissance until the close of the twentieth century, exploring how people have used it and endowed it with multiple meanings. The fascinating studies gathered here collectively demonstrate money’s vast symbolic and practical significance, from its place in debates about religion and the natural world to its central role in statecraft and the formation of national identity.

Mary Lindemann is Professor and Chair of the Department of History at the University of Miami. She is the author of The Merchant Republics: Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Patriots and Paupers: Hamburg, 1712-1830 (Oxford University Press, 1990); Health and Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1999; 2nd edition, 2010) and Liaisons dangereuses: Sex, Law, and Diplomacy in the Age of Frederick the Great (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

“This fascinating collection of essays brings together empirical and theoretical case studies that are clear, accessible, and succinct. It also serves as an excellent primer on some of the most cutting-edge research on German history being undertaken by Anglophone scholars.” · Philipp Roessner, University of Manchester

Jared Poley is Professor of History at Georgia State University. He is the author of the books The Devil’s Riches: A Modern History of Greed (Berghahn, 2016) and Decolonization in Germany: Weimar Narratives of Colonial Loss and Foreign Occupation (Peter Lang, 2005) and a co-editor of the collections Migrations in the German Lands, 1500–2000 (Berghahn, 2016) and Kinship, Community, and Self (Berghahn, 2014).