In 1923 the German Banker Alfred Lansburgh published the book “Das Wesen des Geldes” (eng. The Essence of Money) in his series of “Letters of a Bank Director to his Son” under the pen name “Argentarius” which is Latin and means “Banker”.

The original book, printed by Lansburgh’s own publishing house “Die Bank” (engl. The Bank) contained the Letter collections:
I. Vom Gelde (eng. On Money)
II. Valuta
III. Die Notenbank (eng. The Central Bank)

In later years, Die Notenbank was replaced by the letters “Währungsnot” (eng. Monetary Crisis) in which Argentarius documented the downfall of the Weimar Germany Mark in 1923.

Since the year 2021 feels a lot like a global resurrection of the fatal monetary policies of 1921 Weimar Germany, we thought it important to bring back the original collection and also to make the works of Lansburgh available to an international audience.

We have thus created a version creating the full four letter collections and released it in German under the original title “Das Wesen des Geldes”. Which you can get here.
And also in English under the title “The Essence of Money”. Which you can get here.

We have also started to create an audiobook version on YouTube which we will release in this playlist.

If you want to learn more about Argentarius there is a great website available at http://lansburgh.de