Making money out of natural materials – Porcelain emergency money

A glance at the collections of the Deutsches Historisches Museum reveals the immense variety of objects that are related to different epochs and topics of German history. They tell stories of our past or current lives, of famous or often unknown persons and events. In our new blog series #Umweltsammeln (#Environmentcollecting) we present various objects that have to do with the topic of “environment”. Unexpected questions raised by the heads of the different collection sections open new perspectives on historical objects and often reveal startling parallels to questions that deal with our current world. At times of crisis, natural materials such as clay were used not only in the usual way, such as to make vessels, but they also found imaginative new uses. Examples of this repurposing can be found in the museum’s Financial and Economic History collection, as Dr Lili Reyels, head of the collection, reports.