Mark Dunbar in The Hedgehog Review:
Madness in gigantic proportions. That’s how Austrian writer Stefan Zweig described Germany in the 1920s. Between French re-occupation, communist and fascist putsches, regional separatist movements, mass migration from Eastern Europe, and the popular introduction of television and radio, there was also the main event: hyperinflation. After World War I, the dollar-to-mark currency exchange rate was thirteen and a half. Less than five years later, it would reach into the trillions. When you ordered a half-glass of water, so the joke went, it would cost you a hundred thousand marks. By the time it was poured, it would cost two-hundred thousand. And without a stable financial value, all other values—moral, political, artistic—seemed to lose their footing. Vice became indulgence. Reality took on a dream-like quality. In response, the country became a seance. It begged for a voice from the deep to make sense of what was happening. And eventually that voice spoke.
Germany 1923 by best-selling German historian Volker Ullrich, is about this time period.
More here.