EFFECTS OF INFLATION ON PRIVATE CONTRACTS: GERMANY, 1914-1924

The German experience with inflation is unique not only in the magnitude of the ultimate disaster but in the wealth and variety of the record which it left behind. From that experience we may still learn much. The problems presented at successive stages of the German inflation differ in degree but not in kind from those which appear in any major shift in the general level of prices. The devices, legal and economic, for restoring an equilibrium thus destroyed must be essentially the same in any great country organized, as Germany was, for specialized, large-scale production.

From a study of the German inflation we can expect to ascertain the point at which economic dislocation will lead to intolerable injustice and force courts of law to intervene. And by the success or failure of the methods used by German courts to meet unforeseen changes in money values we may measure our faith in legal safeguards against the hazards of uncontrolled inflation.