Nathan Deschamps: The Kipper-und Wipper Inflation (1619–23): Conceptualizing the Economy in a time of Crisis

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Abstract: How did early modern Europeans understand inflation before econometrics? Using the so-called Kipper und Wipper period of hyperinflation (1619–23) as my case study, I hope to show how Germans initially understood the causes of inflation to be the moral failures of greedy and usurious individuals. The depth of the crisis, however, prompted many German thinkers in the seventeenth century to re-imagine the economy as a complex network of secular and spiritual activity subject as much to personal conduct as it was to abstract commercial forces and outside influences. Understanding how this change occurred will provide us with useful insights, not only into the history of early modern economic thought, but also into continuities between premodern and contemporary understandings of economic crises and inflation.

Report: Thanks to the generous support of the Europe Center, this summer I was able to travel to Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and to Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library to begin researching the topic of early modern inflation. At both libraries, I consulted a wide range of unpublished material from the Kipper und Wipper period including sermons, political pamphlets, ballads, and broadsheets.

As a testament to the necessity of consulting unpublished materials for historical scholarship, my visit to Yale and Columbia’s collections led me to refine my initial hypothesis about the history of economic thought in the Holy Roman Empire.

I initially believed two things about the period: (1) that economic thought was firmly grounded in theological concerns about the impact of greed and usury on the spiritual and material constitution of a community; (2) that the Kipper und Wipper inflation revealed the inadequacies of theology to manage economic crises, prompting a secular re-imagining of state administration and with it, the rise of political economy. However, at Yale and Columbia I found evidence that pointed me in a different direction.

One of the sources that led me to refine my hypothesis was a pamphlet from 1620 titled “Der Armen Seufftzen Gestellt zu Nutz dem Vaterland” that I found in Columbia’s collections. What I began to understand from this source is that the real story of Kipper und Wipper is not one of secularization but of conceptual expansion: The Kipper und Wipper inflation forced people in the Holy Roman Empire to re-imagine their place and role in a larger commercial-societal system. This was a system that integrated the personal economic conduct of its members at the local level into a structure of interrelated parts that was subject to economic fluctuations that went beyond the control of any single person, community, or nation. From this new perspective, hyperinflation was no longer the exclusive reflection of spiritual decay and sinful acts, but rather the result of a combination of failed secular policies, personal moral failures, and global economic forces which had come together to drive the devaluation of currency. This represented a shift in thinking about the economy and the nature of economic crisis that had important implications for the management of future economic crises in the German world.

Had I have not had the support of the Europe Center, I would not have had the opportunity to see source materials that challenged my thinking. Realizations like the one I had this summer at Yale and Columbia demonstrate that it is crucial that scholars be given opportunities to visit archives and special collections to see unpublished material.

I therefore wish to express my deepest gratitude to the Europe Center for their generous support. I also want to thank the Europe Center for its commitment to advancing scholarship on European topics at Stanford and beyond. I look forward to sharing more of my findings with Stanford’s vibrant scholarly community in the months and years to come.