DP18845 Edward A. Tenenbaum and the Creation of the Deutsche Mark: Who’s the Money Doctor?
On Sunday 20 June 1948, the Deutsche Mark was swapped against the Reichsmark and became immediately used in all transactions and evicted all others means of payment. This success was associated with a massive upsurge of consumption and productivity, all things that were predicted by the money doctor. This chapter describes the West-German monetary reform and revisits the literature on who the money doctors of this reform were. This issue is somewhat controversial, as some claimed that it was the to-be German economic minister Ludwig Ehrard, while others suggested that it has to be attributed to the U.S. military government, and notably to the advisor of the finance director, Edward Tenenbaum. This chapter shows that it took more money doctors than Tenenbaum to have engineered this reform.
