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131-480: On 15 April 1924, Bank Polski SA succeeded the Polska Krajowa Kasa Pożyczkowa ( lit.   ' Polish National Loan Bank ' , German : Polnische Landes-Darlehnskasse ) that had been created in late 1916 for the puppet Kingdom of Poland and kept serving as Poland's bank of issue in 1918-1924. It operated until the invasion of Poland in 1939, after which it relocated to London together with

262-644: A Supreme Economic Council to manage the postwar economic emergencies, but that was soon undermined by a growing division of views between France and Italy on one side, advocating a continuation of the wartime joint action, and the UK and U.S. on the other side, preferring a rapid return to market-oriented business as usual. In late 1919, Dutch financial community leaders Gerard Vissering and Carel E. ter Meulen organized two conferences in Amsterdam whose participants included economists Gustav Cassel and John Maynard Keynes . On

393-460: A de facto official language of Namibia after the end of German colonial rule alongside English and Afrikaans , and had de jure co-official status from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. However, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols of apartheid and colonialism, and decided English would be the sole official language upon independence, stating that it

524-402: A second language , and 75–100   million as a foreign language . This would imply the existence of approximately 175–220   million German speakers worldwide. German sociolinguist Ulrich Ammon estimated a number of 289 million German foreign language speakers without clarifying the criteria by which he classified a speaker. As of 2012 , about 90   million people, or 16% of

655-587: A "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. Cameroon was also a colony of the German Empire from the same period (1884 to 1916). However, German was replaced by French and English, the languages of the two successor colonial powers, after its loss in World War I . Nevertheless, since the 21st century, German has become

786-449: A Financial Committee focused on monetary and fiscal issues with a greater participation of central and private bankers. The two committees' setup was flexible and inclusive enough that American delegates participated in them from 1927 despite the fact that the U.S. was not a member of the League. Similarly, Japanese delegate remained on the two Committees for some time after Japan withdrew from

917-432: A conference that would have been unlikely to achieve unanimous agreement; eighty such conventions were subsequently signed between 1929 and 1938. The EFO also had partial success with a number of countries in its advocacy of dismantling foreign exchange controls and restrictive bilateral clearing agreements in the mid-1930s. It also worked on securities fraud , the standardization of loan contracts, and restrictions on

1048-462: A cooperative plan, and had it conceived during a lakeside gathering with Salter and Basil Blackett . As he put it, "that real danger of foreign intervention could be literally flipped and transformed into a positive endeavor of joint action. It was about channelling the very forces that could have been tempted to take advantage of the crisis into contributing to the preservation of Austrian independence." A special committee on Austria, formed to prepare

1179-534: A desire to do business" as Loveday put it in a 1938 address. For that reason, EFO staff was wary about the organization of the London Economic Conference , which had been decided outside of the League framework at the Lausanne Conference of 1932 and indeed ended in comprehensive failure. The EFO made renewed advocacy efforts in 1935 and 1936 for a reduction of trade restrictions on the basis of

1310-571: A foreign official would control two key accounts on the League's behalf (this was a specifically appointed Commissioner-General in Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria; the League's High Commissioner in Danzig; and the pre-existing International Financial Commission in Greece ). First, the external loan account held money provided by the foreign creditors for use by the borrowing government to cover fiscal deficits during

1441-556: A greater need for regularity in written conventions. While the major changes of the MHG period were socio-cultural, High German was still undergoing significant linguistic changes in syntax, phonetics, and morphology as well (e.g. diphthongization of certain vowel sounds: hus (OHG & MHG "house") → haus (regionally in later MHG)→ Haus (NHG), and weakening of unstressed short vowels to schwa [ə]: taga (OHG "days")→ tage (MHG)). A great wealth of texts survives from

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1572-453: A native tongue today, mostly descendants of German colonial settlers . The period of German colonialism in Namibia also led to the evolution of a Standard German-based pidgin language called " Namibian Black German ", which became a second language for parts of the indigenous population. Although it is nearly extinct today, some older Namibians still have some knowledge of it. German remained

1703-679: A popular foreign language among pupils and students, with 300,000 people learning or speaking German in Cameroon in 2010 and over 230,000 in 2020. Today Cameroon is one of the African countries outside Namibia with the highest number of people learning German. In the United States, German is the fifth most spoken language in terms of native and second language speakers after English, Spanish , French , and Chinese (with figures for Cantonese and Mandarin combined), with over 1 million total speakers. In

1834-486: A purely bilateral basis. Its first endeavor, albeit of limited impact, came in early 1922 with support to a loan to Czechoslovakia led by Baring Brothers . The EFO's first real action came later in 1922 with the financial distress of Austria , which was considered desperate enough that the allied powers did not want to take responsibility for it themselves. Austria was buffeted between the competing interests of Britain (which had high credit exposure to it), France (which

1965-776: A recognized national language in Namibia . There are also notable German-speaking communities in France ( Alsace ), the Czech Republic ( North Bohemia ), Poland ( Upper Silesia ), Slovakia ( Košice Region , Spiš , and Hauerland ), Denmark ( North Schleswig ), Romania and Hungary ( Sopron ). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in Brazil ( Blumenau and Pomerode ), South Africa ( Kroondal ), Namibia , among others, some communities have decidedly Austrian German or Swiss German characters (e.g. Pozuzo , Peru). German

2096-475: A result, the surviving texts are written in highly disparate regional dialects and exhibit significant Latin influence, particularly in vocabulary. At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing. While there is no complete agreement over the dates of the Middle High German (MHG) period, it

2227-522: A similar agreement in 1928 but eventually balked at the onerous conditions, as Albania had done earlier in the decade. In Hungary, Danzig, and Greece, as in Austria, the loans entailed the creation of a new independent central bank, respectively the Hungarian National Bank , Bank of Danzig , and Bank of Greece . In Bulgaria and Estonia, the existing national bank was restructured and made more independent. In all of these loans except Estonia,

2358-476: A wide supervisory role over the management and operations of the central bank, sometimes including a veto on the bank's Board decisions. Finally, the program would designate Trustees to administer the security revenues in case of default, except in Greece where it relied on the International Financial Commission. Countries that had recourse to similar borrowing schemes without appealing to

2489-580: Is a recognized minority language in the following countries: In France, the High German varieties of Alsatian and Moselle Franconian are identified as " regional languages ", but the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1998 has not yet been ratified by the government. Namibia also was a colony of the German Empire, from 1884 to 1915. About 30,000 people still speak German as

2620-596: Is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects , with many varieties existing in Europe and other parts of the world. Some of these non-standard varieties have become recognized and protected by regional or national governments. Since 2004, heads of state of the German-speaking countries have met every year, and the Council for German Orthography has been the main international body regulating German orthography . German

2751-546: Is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic , East Germanic , and West Germanic . The first of these branches survives in modern Danish , Swedish , Norwegian , Faroese , and Icelandic , all of which are descended from Old Norse . The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic

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2882-472: Is called the "German Sprachraum ". German is the official language of the following countries: German is a co-official language of the following countries: Although expulsions and (forced) assimilation after the two World wars greatly diminished them, minority communities of mostly bilingual German native speakers exist in areas both adjacent to and detached from the Sprachraum. Within Europe, German

3013-430: Is complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic and Low German . With the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language , 10–25   million speak it as

3144-520: Is generally seen as ending when the 1346–53 Black Death decimated Europe's population. Modern High German begins with the Early New High German (ENHG) period, which Wilhelm Scherer dates 1350–1650, terminating with the end of the Thirty Years' War . This period saw the further displacement of Latin by German as the primary language of courtly proceedings and, increasingly, of literature in

3275-595: Is generally seen as lasting from 1050 to 1350. This was a period of significant expansion of the geographical territory occupied by Germanic tribes, and consequently of the number of German speakers. Whereas during the Old High German period the Germanic tribes extended only as far east as the Elbe and Saale rivers, the MHG period saw a number of these tribes expanding beyond this eastern boundary into Slavic territory (known as

3406-559: Is less closely related to languages based on Low Franconian dialects (e.g., Dutch and Afrikaans), Low German or Low Saxon dialects (spoken in northern Germany and southern Denmark ), neither of which underwent the High German consonant shift. As has been noted, the former of these dialect types is Istvaeonic and the latter Ingvaeonic, whereas the High German dialects are all Irminonic; the differences between these languages and standard German are therefore considerable. Also related to German are

3537-435: Is one of the major languages of the world . German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language , after English, both as a first and as a second language . German is also widely taught as a foreign language , especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French), and in the United States. Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language, and

3668-587: Is one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg . The South African constitution identifies German as

3799-401: Is partly derived from Latin and Greek , along with fewer words borrowed from French and Modern English . English, however, is the main source of more recent loanwords . German is a pluricentric language ; the three standardized variants are German , Austrian , and Swiss Standard German . Standard German is sometimes called High German , which refers to its regional origin. German

3930-510: Is the Sachsenspiegel , the first book of laws written in Middle Low German ( c.  1220 ). The abundance and especially the secular character of the literature of the MHG period demonstrate the beginnings of a standardized written form of German, as well as the desire of poets and authors to be understood by individuals on supra-dialectal terms. The Middle High German period

4061-566: Is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch , Yiddish , Afrikaans , and others. Within the West Germanic language dialect continuum, the Benrath and Uerdingen lines (running through Düsseldorf - Benrath and Krefeld - Uerdingen , respectively) serve to distinguish

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4192-481: Is understood in all areas where German is spoken. Approximate distribution of native German speakers (assuming a rounded total of 95 million) worldwide: As a result of the German diaspora , as well as the popularity of German taught as a foreign language , the geographical distribution of German speakers (or "Germanophones") spans all inhabited continents. However, an exact, global number of native German speakers

4323-673: The Ostsiedlung ). With the increasing wealth and geographic spread of the Germanic groups came greater use of German in the courts of nobles as the standard language of official proceedings and literature. A clear example of this is the mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache employed in the Hohenstaufen court in Swabia as a standardized supra-dialectal written language. While these efforts were still regionally bound, German began to be used in place of Latin for certain official purposes, leading to

4454-627: The Alamanni , Bavarian, and Thuringian groups, all belonging to the Elbe Germanic group ( Irminones ), which had settled in what is now southern-central Germany and Austria between the second and sixth centuries, during the great migration. In general, the surviving texts of Old High German (OHG) show a wide range of dialectal diversity with very little written uniformity. The early written tradition of OHG survived mostly through monasteries and scriptoria as local translations of Latin originals; as

4585-592: The Bank of England in London. After Austria in 1922, similar features were applied to the League-coordinated loans to Hungary (1924), Danzig (1925 and 1927), Bulgaria (1926 and 1928), Estonia (1927), and Greece (1924 and 1928). There were thus nine "League loans" in total, in six countries, for an aggregate amount of £81 million. Of that, nearly half was provided by British investors and nearly one-fifth by American ones,

4716-546: The Cold War period by the incentives to emphasize the League's institutional limitations in contrast with the more robust western postwar order, including by Salter himself in his memoirs published in 1961. In his 1996 study, Pauly notes the parallels between the successes and limitations of the EFO and those of the IMF, noting that both had to adapt to major financial disruptions, respectively

4847-522: The Early Middle Ages . German is an inflected language , with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular, plural). It has strong and weak verbs . The majority of its vocabulary derives from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, while a smaller share

4978-473: The European Union 's population, spoke German as their mother tongue, making it the second most widely spoken language on the continent after Russian and the second biggest language in terms of overall speakers (after English), as well as the most spoken native language. The area in central Europe where the majority of the population speaks German as a first language and has German as a (co-)official language

5109-584: The Geneva Conference of 1927 , and the London Conference of 1933 , even though only the latter two were formally organized under the League's aegis. In the first three, the EFO was broadly successful at cementing an international policy consensus on the underpinnings of financial stability , including sound fiscal management and independent central banks , even though it made less headway towards restrictions on cartels and trade protection . One flaw of

5240-514: The German states . While these states were still part of the Holy Roman Empire , and far from any form of unification, the desire for a cohesive written language that would be understandable across the many German-speaking principalities and kingdoms was stronger than ever. As a spoken language German remained highly fractured throughout this period, with a vast number of often mutually incomprehensible regional dialects being spoken throughout

5371-724: The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I , and the other being Meißner Deutsch , used in the Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg . Alongside these courtly written standards, the invention of the printing press led to the development of a number of printers' languages ( Druckersprachen ) aimed at making printed material readable and understandable across as many diverse dialects of German as possible. The greater ease of production and increased availability of written texts brought about increased standardisation in

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5502-668: The Indo-European language family , mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe . It is the most spoken native language within the European Union . It is the most widely spoken and official (or co-official) language in Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Liechtenstein , and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol . It is also an official language of Luxembourg , Belgium and the Italian autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia , as well as

5633-685: The Oesterreichische Nationalbank , which was promptly established in January 1923. This conflict delayed the loan's issuance until a compromise was found in the spring of 1923, under which the League would appoint an "adviser" with extensive oversight powers over the central bank's decisions. The £2 million loan was guaranteed by European governments and successfully raised in private markets in May 1923, underwritten by J.P. Morgan & Co. in New York and

5764-644: The Old High German language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions from as early as the sixth century AD (such as the Pforzen buckle ), the Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c.  765–775 ), a Latin-German glossary supplying over 3,000 Old High German words with their Latin equivalents. After the Abrogans , the first coherent works written in Old High German appear in

5895-745: The Polish Government in Exile . In liberated Poland, it was replaced in 1945 by the National Bank of Poland , and was eventually liquidated in 1952. It is sometimes referred to as the "Second Bank of Poland" to distinguish it from its 19th-century namesake . The Polska Krajowa Kasa Pożyczkowa  [ pl ] (PKKP) was established in December 1916 by Germany and Austria-Hungary to serve their puppet Kingdom of Poland . When Poland emerged as an independent country in 1918, it combined territories formerly under

6026-640: The Sprachraum in Europe. German is used in a wide variety of spheres throughout the country, especially in business, tourism, and public signage, as well as in education, churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK) ), other cultural spheres such as music, and media (such as German language radio programs by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation ). The Allgemeine Zeitung

6157-536: The Standard German language in its written form, and the Duden Handbook was declared its standard definition. Punctuation and compound spelling (joined or isolated compounds) were not standardized in the process. The Deutsche Bühnensprache ( lit.   ' German stage language ' ) by Theodor Siebs had established conventions for German pronunciation in theatres , three years earlier; however, this

6288-651: The State Bank of the Russian Empire , erected in 1908–1911 on a design by architect Leon Benois on the site of the former Polish mint . During Nazi occupation, it was used by the Bank of Issue. It was not reconstructed following the destructions of World War II. In the 2010s, the Senator office complex was built on the footprint of the former Bank of Poland building and incorporated some of its surviving architectonic elements. It hosts

6419-503: The Upper German dialects spoken in the southern German-speaking countries , such as Swiss German ( Alemannic dialects ) and the various Germanic dialects spoken in the French region of Grand Est , such as Alsatian (mainly Alemannic, but also Central–and   Upper Franconian dialects) and Lorraine Franconian (Central Franconian). After these High German dialects, standard German

6550-508: The most favoured nation principle, but that was rejected primarily by Britain, to the frustration of the United States which under Secretary of State Cordell Hull has swung back towards freer trade. Even so, the League's advocacy, which included a plea for devaluation of the gold bloc currencies, played a key role in the Tripartite Agreement of 1936 . The agreement’s text repeated much of prior EFO reports' language, and facilitated

6681-462: The pagan Germanic tradition. Of particular interest to scholars, however, has been the Hildebrandslied , a secular epic poem telling the tale of an estranged father and son unknowingly meeting each other in battle. Linguistically, this text is highly interesting due to the mixed use of Old Saxon and Old High German dialects in its composition. The written works of this period stem mainly from

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6812-505: The 1931 crisis and Great Depression , and the Nixon shock of 1971. He argues that both institutions pivoted towards analytical work following the respective setbacks, but also that the memory of the ultimate failure of the League helped the IMF find a new mandate in the 1980s when it played a central role in addressing the Latin American debt crisis . He also notes that neither the League nor

6943-513: The Bank of Poland evacuated all of its gold reserves (105,000 kg) from Poland to the Bank of France in Paris, through Romania , Turkey and Syria, and then most of it to Canada and the Bank of England in London . Following the invasion, the Bank of Poland relocated, first in Paris from 19 September 1939 to 1 July 1940, then in London together with the Polish Government in Exile , and financed most of

7074-407: The British government made it known that it would favor the convening of an international conference by the League of Nations, which had just been formally established in January 1920. The League Council endorsed that proposal during a meeting in London on 13 February 1920, setting the scene for the Brussels Conference that would be held in September–October 1920. In 1919, a prefiguration team of

7205-508: The Brussels and Genoa Conferences, It foresaw the appointment of a powerful Commissioner-General who would be resident in Austria at the program's inception and control the disbursement of the funds, subject to the execution of the reform commitments. The appointment of the Commissioner-General by the League itself, as opposed to a business person representing the private creditors, was a major innovation which Monnet defended as key to ensure political acceptance. Furthermore and also in line with

7336-469: The Brussels and Genoa consensus, the program included the creation of an independent national central bank along the lines advocated by Montagu Norman . During the program's negotiation in 1922, Norman initially fought for the head of that institution to be a foreigner, but this met considerable political pushback in Vienna. In December 1922, the Austrian government unilaterally decided to appoint local banker Richard Reisch  [ de ] as governor of

7467-409: The EFO doctrine, however, was insufficient insistence on banking supervision , in part a reflection of the fact that the United States, which had the most advanced supervisory practices of the time, was not a member of the League. Partly for that reason, the European banking crisis of 1931 shattered the 1920s orthodoxy, leading to the complete failure of the London Conference in June 1933 after which

7598-424: The EFO in 1930, and would stay until 1939. James Meade served as specialist adviser on behalf of the British government. Jacques J. Polak was on the staff from 1938 to 1943. In the late 1930s, the EFO hired Oskar Morgenstern , Bertil Ohlin , and Jacques Rueff as outside experts for its influential work on economic depressions . Other economists who worked at the EFO and would attain later fame, often at

7729-440: The EFO's work agenda was determined by the Second Committee of the League's Assembly , which dealt with all so-called technical issues (under the formal authority of the League's Council) and met once every year in September. In 1923, the Provisional Committee was made permanent and divided into an Economic Committee, dealing primarily with matters of trade and industry organization and composed mostly of government officials, and

7860-614: The Empire. Its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Prague (German: Prag ) and Budapest ( Buda , German: Ofen ), to name two examples, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain; others, like Pressburg ( Pozsony , now Bratislava), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and cities like Zagreb (German: Agram ) or Ljubljana (German: Laibach ), contained significant German minorities. In

7991-414: The Frisian languages— North Frisian (spoken in Nordfriesland ), Saterland Frisian (spoken in Saterland ), and West Frisian (spoken in Friesland )—as well as the Anglic languages of English and Scots. These Anglo-Frisian dialects did not take part in the High German consonant shift, and the Anglic languages also adopted much vocabulary from both Old Norse and the Norman language . The history of

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8122-417: The German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration Period , which separated Old High German dialects from Old Saxon . This sound shift involved a drastic change in the pronunciation of both voiced and voiceless stop consonants ( b , d , g , and p , t , k , respectively). The primary effects of the shift were the following below. While there is written evidence of

8253-399: The German states; the invention of the printing press c.  1440 and the publication of Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible in 1534, however, had an immense effect on standardizing German as a supra-dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being gemeine tiutsch , used in the court of

8384-623: The Germanic dialects that were affected by the High German consonant shift (south of Benrath) from those that were not (north of Uerdingen). The various regional dialects spoken south of these lines are grouped as High German dialects, while those spoken to the north comprise the Low German and Low Franconian dialects. As members of the West Germanic language family, High German, Low German, and Low Franconian have been proposed to be further distinguished historically as Irminonic , Ingvaeonic , and Istvaeonic , respectively. This classification indicates their historical descent from dialects spoken by

8515-438: The IMF were allowed to intervene directly in situations deemed too critically sensitive by their most powerful stakeholders, such as the German reparations which were (mis)handled in a separate series of international conferences in which the EFO had little or no influence. More recent scholarship, not least by historian Patricia Clavin , has emphasized the EFO's pioneering initiatives, its policy achievements including during

8646-460: The IMF, included Marcus Fleming , Alvin Hansen , Folke Hilgerdt, and Tjalling Koopmans . Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, similarly as the Bank for International Settlements which had started operations in 1930, the EFO also produced major statistical and analytical works, both ad-hoc investigations and periodical series of its specialized arm the Economic Intelligence Service (EIS, French : Service d'études économiques ). It pioneered

8777-547: The Irminones (also known as the Elbe group), Ingvaeones (or North Sea Germanic group), and Istvaeones (or Weser–Rhine group). Standard German is based on a combination of Thuringian - Upper Saxon and Upper Franconian dialects, which are Central German and Upper German dialects belonging to the High German dialect group. German is therefore closely related to the other languages based on High German dialects, such as Luxembourgish (based on Central Franconian dialects ) and Yiddish . Also closely related to Standard German are

8908-414: The League Secretariat in 1931, the negotiation on the appointment of its successor led to the division of the EFO Secretariat into an Economic Section, headed by Stoppani, and a Financial section headed by Britain's Alexander Loveday , who had joined the fledgling League staff at inception in 1919 and had led its statistical endeavors since then. The two sections were eventually reunited in 1939 together with

9039-400: The League in 1933. The Economic Committee was granted permanent formal status within the League in 1927, initially with a membership of 15 that grew over subsequent years, and the Financial Committee in 1937. In the meantime the Financial Committee kept a smaller size of 10 members, who typically came from central banks and finance ministries of member states and the U.S.; Belgium, France and

9170-508: The League made no further similar attempts. The League also sponsored a less ambitious International Conference for the Simplification of Customs Formalities, which was held in Geneva from October 15 to November 3, 1923. Unlike the postwar IMF, which has significant resources of its own, the EFO itself had no financial firepower but could resolve collective action problems among private investors and governments that desired to foster financial stability but were unable or unwilling to do so on

9301-431: The League's assistance, primarily Poland in 1927 and Romania in 1929, struggled to secure financing conditions as good as those under the League's framework, despite the fact that both were advised by Monnet who was by then in private practice. The governance innovations pioneered by the League inspired other loan packages, including the 1924 Dawes Plan for Germany and those of Belgium and Italy in 1926. Overall and from

9432-515: The League, located at 117 Piccadilly in London, had started to collect and publish economic statistics, which remained the initial focus of the Economic and Financial Section that was soon established within the League Secretariat, and spent much of 1920 preparing the conference. Walter Layton led that fledgling team and moved with it to Geneva in the course of 1920. Per Jacobsson joined

9563-507: The MHG period. Significantly, these texts include a number of impressive secular works, such as the Nibelungenlied , an epic poem telling the story of the dragon -slayer Siegfried ( c.  thirteenth century ), and the Iwein , an Arthurian verse poem by Hartmann von Aue ( c.  1203 ), lyric poems , and courtly romances such as Parzival and Tristan . Also noteworthy

9694-499: The Netherlands. In the assessment of Louis Pauly , "The final economic studies of the League contributed to a new consensus that ultimately found its authoritative expression in the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement and in the 1947 Havana Charter". That included, in particular, Nurske's landmark study on the macroeconomic history of the interwar period. The assessment of the EFO and its impact has ebbed and flowed since its absorption by

9825-685: The Polish government, upon establishment of the NBP, had deprived the Bank Polski of its note-issuance privilege. Meanwhile, the stock of gold that backed those banknotes was distributed by the communist authorities for budget expenditure in the years 1946–1958, and was partially allocated to compensation for citizens of foreign countries expropriated as a result of the Polish Act on the Nationalization of Industry. This

9956-406: The UK were represented in it by finance ministry officials, while Switzerland and the Netherlands delegated private-sector and central bankers. There were also a number of sub-committees of fixed duration, frequently including leading economists of the time, and standing committees on fiscal and statistical matters. The organisational setup of the EFO, like that of the League of Nations in general,

10087-517: The United Nations. The EFO's World Economic Survey , prepared by Condliffe in the early 1930s and then Meade in 1938-1940, has been labeled the ancestor of the IMF's flagship publication World Economic Outlook . In May 1940, Switzerland was increasingly at risk of being encircled by the Axis powers. Loveday decided to move together with around two-thirds of the EFO staff, , and eventually relocated

10218-604: The Warsaw office of Polish petrochemical company Orlen , which is headquartered in nearby Płock . In Kraków , the PKKP in 1921 commissioned a new building  [ pl ] from architect Kazimierz Wyczyński, who died in 1923 and was replaced by Teodor Hoffmann  [ pl ] . That building, completed in 1925, was used in 1940–1945 as head office of the Bank of Issue in Poland . The branch building  [ pl ] In Siedlce

10349-533: The assistance program jointly with the Financial Committee of the League, brought together Seipel with Britain's Arthur Balfour , Czechoslovakia's Edvard Beneš , France's Gabriel Hanotaux , and Italy's Guglielmo Imperiali . The plan, finalized in three protocols signed in Geneva on 4 October 1922, entailed a fiscal and structural adjustment program in line with the principles which League staff had fostered at

10480-483: The bank's board of trustees, and the Finance Minister had a veto on appointments to the bank's Council. The 1924 reforms were largely but not entirely successful, as the government kept increasing the money supply by minting coins , triggering so-called "coinage inflation" in 1925-1926. On 30 July 1925, the Bank Polski was forced to suspend the free convertibility of złotys into US dollars . Convertibility into gold

10611-646: The basis of their conclusions that a collective intergovernmental effort was needed to remedy the postwar disruptions, a petition circulated in January 1920 by the Times in the UK and the New York Times in the U.S. collected 150 signatures of luminaries such as Gustave Ador , Robert Cecil , Arthur Twining Hadley , Herbert Hoover , J. P. Morgan Jr. , Fridtjof Nansen , Richard Vassar Vassar-Smith , Paul Warburg , and others including from Denmark and France, an early example of cross-national advocacy. In early February,

10742-477: The central banking jurisdiction of the State Bank of the Russian Empire , Austro-Hungarian Bank , and German Reichsbank as well as the PKKP. The latter took over the role of issuing currency for the new country, but was unable to avert hyperinflation . It opened a branch in Danzig with the intent to establish a currency union with the city-state that would complement its customs union with Poland, but that project

10873-601: The circumstances. These included the Wheat Executive established in late 1916, and the Allied Maritime Transport Council established in late 1917. They had brought together enterprising civil servants such as Italy's Bernardo Attolico , France's Jean Monnet , and Britain's Arthur Salter , who would play key roles in the war's aftermath. In February 1919, the Paris Peace Conference established

11004-486: The contemporaneous theoretical work of John Maynard Keynes and the Stockholm School of Economics . Following the shock of the banking crisis of 1931 , the EFO managed to mitigate some of the consequences in its program countries of the 1920s, e.g. Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria. The EFO persuaded existing lenders to apply forbearance and enlisting new ones to refinance the loans, while directly supervising some of

11135-502: The debt-servicing operations. In general policy matters, as the scope for wide international consensus had shrunk dramatically, the EFO adapted by experimenting with new forms of policy influence. For example, in a work stream on double taxation already started in the late 1920s and sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation , it prepared model bilateral conventions and sent them to individual governments, rather than convening

11266-558: The design of the Bank Polski, and in 1927 it appointed a foreign advisor to be a member of the bank's Council, taking inspiration from the League's stabilization programs. The first such foreign adviser, appointed in November 1927, was Charles S. Dewey , previously United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Fiscal Affairs. Prior to the invasion of Poland in 1939 , at the initiative of Ignacy Matuszewski and Henryk Floyar-Rajchman ,

11397-527: The development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. With Luther's rendering of the Bible in the vernacular, German asserted itself against the dominance of Latin as a legitimate language for courtly, literary, and now ecclesiastical subject-matter. His Bible was ubiquitous in the German states: nearly every household possessed a copy. Nevertheless, even with

11528-452: The dialect so as to make the work as natural and accessible to German speakers as possible. Copies of Luther's Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region, translating words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Luther said the following concerning his translation method: One who would talk German does not ask the Latin how he shall do it; he must ask the mother in

11659-507: The eastern provinces of Banat , Bukovina , and Transylvania (German: Banat, Buchenland, Siebenbürgen ), German was the predominant language not only in the larger towns—like Temeschburg ( Timișoara ), Hermannstadt ( Sibiu ), and Kronstadt ( Brașov )—but also in many smaller localities in the surrounding areas. In 1901, the Second Orthographic Conference ended with a (nearly) complete standardization of

11790-467: The establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community . Salter and Italy's Pietro Stoppani, who had joined the EFO staff in 1923, reflected on the parallel between Europe and the United States and the case for a large integrated market delivering beneficial economies of scale; Salter used the expression " United States of Europe " in his own writing. In their view, the realistic way to promote that aim

11921-536: The expansion of the scope into an organization that would be able to formulate policy recommendations to member (and non-member) states, despite initial misgivings from the United Kingdom. On that basis, the League established a Joint Provisional Economic and Financial Committee ( French : Commission économique et financière provisoire ) composed of experts nominated by the League's Council, and thus not officially representing their respective governments. After that,

12052-435: The home, the children on the streets, the common man in the market-place and note carefully how they talk, then translate accordingly. They will then understand what is said to them because it is German. When Christ says ' ex abundantia cordis os loquitur ,' I would translate, if I followed the papists, aus dem Überflusz des Herzens redet der Mund . But tell me is this talking German? What German understands such stuff? No,

12183-474: The influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, a widely accepted standard for written German did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century. German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire , which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe . Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of

12314-408: The initial phase of transition. Second, the security revenues account held money collected in the borrowing country as so-called security revenues that served as collateral for the foreign loans, typically from customs and/or from state monopolies. In addition to controlling both accounts, the League's Commissioner usually had a veto right over government decisions deemed adverse to the good execution of

12445-468: The largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed), Santa Catarina , and Espírito Santo . Economic and Financial Organization of the League of Nations The Economic and Financial Organization (EFO, French : Organisation économique et financière ) was the largest of the technical arms of the League of Nations , and

12576-608: The latter's military effort. Meanwhile, in occupied Poland , the Third Reich in 1940 created the Bank of Issue in Poland for its General Government , issuing the so-called German "Kraków-złoty". In other parts of the former Polish territory, central banking was taken over respectively by the Nazi German Reichsbank and Soviet Gosbank . Similarly to other Allied Military Currency bank notes, American "Liberation banknotes" for Poland were printed in 1944. On 15 January 1945,

12707-402: The mother in the home and the plain man would say, Wesz das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund über . Luther's translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to modern Standard German. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany , and promoted

12838-476: The nascent United Nations in 1945. In a monograph published shortly afterwards, William Martin Hill, who had joined the EFO staff in 1927, noted that "Consultation between officials engaged in framing and executing economic and social policies in different countries was rare before 1914; through the League it became an established practice". The memory of the EFO and its partial successes was then somewhat obscured during

12969-698: The nascent field of open-economy macroeconomics . From 1933, its research on business cycles was further supported by annual grants from the Rockefeller Foundation. Regular EIS publications included the Statistical Yearbook of the League of Nations , the Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, Money and Banking , the Review of World Trade , and from 1936 on, an annual report on the general economic situation. Many of these series were subsequently continued by

13100-554: The new communist authorities of Poland founded the National Bank of Poland (NBP). In 1946, the bank's governor Bohdan Winiarski led the decision to move the institution back to Warsaw. A stock of gold from the bank's deposits in British, French and American banks was returned to Poland, as well as banknotes printed in Great Britain and intended for circulation in the country. However, they notes were not released into circulation because

13231-630: The ninth century, chief among them being the Muspilli , Merseburg charms , and Hildebrandslied , and other religious texts (the Georgslied , Ludwigslied , Evangelienbuch , and translated hymns and prayers). The Muspilli is a Christian poem written in a Bavarian dialect offering an account of the soul after the Last Judgment , and the Merseburg charms are transcriptions of spells and charms from

13362-502: The organization at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey . The Institute's director Frank Aydelotte persuaded the U.S. Department of State about the move, deftly invoking the memory of Woodrow Wilson and his associations with both Princeton and the League, and secured funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. At Princeton, the exiled EFO played a central role in shaping

13493-582: The outset, all resigned in 1937, together with Młynarski. The other individuals who sat on the Provisional Economic and Financial Committee between 1920 and 1923 and/or on the Financial Committee between 1923 and 1931 were The EFO was the linchpin of the four interwar international financial and economic conferences , namely the Brussels Conference of 1920 , the Genoa Conference of 1922 ,

13624-525: The profit was between 8 and 12 percent, half went to the State Treasury and the other half to shareholders as a superdividend. Above 12 percent, the state collected two thirds. Unlike in Austria , Hungary , and Danzig, which had similarly experienced postwar hyperinflation, Poland's stabilization was achieved without assistance from the League of Nations through its Economic and Financial Organization . This

13755-403: The program. Separately and complementarily, the program entailed the appointment of a League Adviser to the (generally newly created) national central bank, formally an employee of the central bank but in effect a representative of the League. The Adviser's position was defined in the statutes of the central bank, which were typically drafted directly by the EFO's Financial Committee. It granted him

13886-462: The pronunciation of the ending -ig as [ɪk] instead of [ɪç]. In Northern Germany, High German was a foreign language to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German. It was usually encountered only in writing or formal speech; in fact, most of High German was a written language, not identical to any spoken dialect, throughout the German-speaking area until well into the 19th century. However, wider standardization of pronunciation

14017-541: The rest coming from Continental Europe. The Hungarian loan was requested in August 1923 after the Reparation Commission had agreed on the amounts Hungary had to pay. Hungary was perceived to be in a less desperate position than Austria a year earlier, which allowed for issuance without any government guarantee. The League's buildup of credibility made it possible to gradually lower the loans' costs. Portugal explored

14148-399: The sale of raw materials . Stoppani and Loveday agreed that matters of international trade and protectionism should be at the forefront of the EFO's agenda. Building upon Salter's shift in 1929 towards acknowledgement of the validity of regionalism, they posited that genuine progress would not involve all member states at the same time but rather occur "between those States where there is

14279-518: The secretariat of the League's Communications and Transit Organization, under Loveday's leadership as Stoppani retired. Meanwhile, the staff had developed a genuine supranational ethos, as illustrated by the fact that Stoppani ignored Mussolini's instructions to resign after Italy withdrew from the League in 1934. Throughout the 1930s, the EFO displayed intellectual honesty and flexibility by abandoning some of its prior gold standard orthodoxy and advocating policies directed at full employment , echoing

14410-743: The simultaneous French policy pivot towards a more liberal trade stance. From 1937, after the Tripartite Agreement had only produced disappointing results, the EFO endeavored to secure more autonomy for itself within the League that would transform it into an autonomous agency along similar lines as the International Labour Organization , but to no avail in the League's fast-deteriorating environment. The EFO kept employing numerous talented economists in its staff, such as Gottfried Haberler , Jan Tinbergen , John B. Condliffe , and Ragnar Nurkse . Canada's Louis Rasminsky had joined

14541-517: The staff in April 1920. In 1922, Salter took over from Layton's acting successor Frank H. Nixon, and led the EFO until 1931, expanding its staff from seventeen to sixty during that period. By then, it was significantly larger than any other section of the League Secretariat. Following a recommendation of the Brussels Conference, the League's inaugural Assembly meeting in November 1920 endorsed

14672-491: The standpoint of their aims of financial stabilization and economic recovery by means of fundamental change in the fiscal and monetary regimes, the loans were impressively successful. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, partly in response to the surge of U.S. protectionism followed by tariff escalation between the United Kingdom and its European neighbors, the EFO developed tentative ideas about European integration, foreshadowing developments two decades later that would lead to

14803-541: The states of North Dakota and South Dakota , German is the most common language spoken at home after English. As a legacy of significant German immigration to the country , German geographical names can be found throughout the Midwest region , such as New Ulm and Bismarck (North Dakota's state capital), plus many other regions. A number of German varieties have developed in the country and are still spoken today, such as Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German . In Brazil,

14934-496: The third most commonly learned second language in the United States in K-12 education. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites . The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in

15065-700: The work of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration , established in 1943, and had influence in the preparation of the Bretton Woods Conference and, beyond its own absorption into the United Nations in 1945, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947. Loveday attended Bretton Woods as an external observer, and several former EFO staff were among the national negotiators, including Rasminsky for Canada and Polak for

15196-543: The world being published in German. German is most closely related to other West Germanic languages, namely Afrikaans , Dutch , English , the Frisian languages , and Scots . It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group , such as Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish . Modern German gradually developed from Old High German , which in turn developed from Proto-Germanic during

15327-646: The world's first international organization dedicated to promoting economic and monetary co-operation. It took shape in the early 1920s and was in activity until the creation of the United Nations in 1945. It has been described as having had seminal influence on postwar economic institutions, notably the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The establishment of the EFO took place in the aftermath of unprecedented transnational cooperation initiatives among allied powers during World War I , which were also pioneering experiments in planned economy imposed by

15458-579: The written form of German. One of the central events in the development of ENHG was the publication of Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534). Luther based his translation primarily on the Meißner Deutsch of Saxony , spending much time among the population of Saxony researching

15589-429: Was a "neutral" language as there were virtually no English native speakers in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans, and several indigenous languages thus became "national languages" by law, identifying them as elements of the cultural heritage of the nation and ensuring that the state acknowledged and supported their presence in the country. Today, Namibia is considered to be the only German-speaking country outside of

15720-576: Was abandoned in September 1923. Following the State Treasury Repair Act of 11 January 1924, Prime minister Władysław Grabski undertook monetary reform  [ pl ] , a key part of which was the establishment of the Bank of Poland, re-using the name of the 19th-century Bank Polski . Simultaneously, the new Polish złoty was introduced at a rate of one złoty for 1.8 million of the PKKP's markas . The new institution, whose establishment

15851-530: Was an artificial standard that did not correspond to any traditional spoken dialect. Rather, it was based on the pronunciation of German in Northern Germany, although it was subsequently regarded often as a general prescriptive norm, despite differing pronunciation traditions especially in the Upper-German-speaking regions that still characterise the dialect of the area today – especially

15982-410: Was announced on 3 December 1923 and completed on 15 April 1924, was created as a joint stock company whose shares were offered to the Polish public. Its stock was soon raised from the initial 100,000,000 złotych to 150 million, split onto 1.5 million shares , of which the Treasury would hold only one percent. The President of Poland had the right to name the chairman and deputy chairman of

16113-672: Was chaired by Briand but soon met stalemate in 1931, contributing to Briand's downfall as French foreign minister in January 1932. The EFO's legitimation of European regionalism played a role in stimulating two stillborn projects, the Austro-German Customs Union publicized in March 1931 and the Ouchy Convention of June 1932 between the Belgium–Luxembourg Economic Union and the Netherlands. After Salter left

16244-467: Was deliberately obscure as the related opacity of decision-forming was viewed as helpful to manage the sensitive matters of economic and financial diplomacy. As of late 1923, the Financial Committee's members included A decade later, the Committee still included Janssen (as Chair), Niemeyer, Strakosch, and ter Meulen, as well as Niemeyer, Strakosh and ter Meulen, who had been core committee members from

16375-521: Was done by transferring appropriate deposits to the governments of the US, UK and France through clearing agreements, whereby these governments took over liabilities towards their citizens in respect of property expropriated in Poland. Eventually, the Bank Polski SA was liquidated, starting in 1951 and ending on 7 January 1952. The PKKP and Bank Polski SA both operated in Warsaw from the former branch building of

16506-485: Was established on the basis of public speaking in theatres and the media during the 20th century and documented in pronouncing dictionaries. Official revisions of some of the rules from 1901 were not issued until the controversial German orthography reform of 1996 was made the official standard by governments of all German-speaking countries. Media and written works are now almost all produced in Standard German which

16637-489: Was obsessed with the prospect of German-Austrian unification), Czechoslovakia and Italy (which had competing designs on Austria as its respective neighbours on the north and south). Jean Monnet, by then the League's deputy secretary-general, convinced the Council to take on the challenge, in conjunction with eloquent pleas by Austrian Chancellor Ignaz Seipel . Monnet had the intuition that the respective British, French, Czechoslovak and Italian interests could be leveraged into

16768-538: Was partly linked to the lingering territorial disputes between Poland and Germany , and to the fact that Polish authorities feared that the United Kingdom would exercise its leverage at the League of Nations to favor German interests. Indeed, a loan proposal was secretly made by the League to Poland in February 1925, and rejected. Nevertheless, the government took advice from a foreign advisor, Briton E. Hilton Young , for

16899-457: Was re-established on 15 October 1927, more than a year after the May 1926 Coup which had brought back Józef Piłsudski to executive power. At least 30 percent of the bank’s money issuance was to be backed by gold (and a smaller amount by silver) and foreign currencies. After the reform of 1927, this threshold was increased to 40 percent. The dividend paid to shareholders could not exceed 8 percent. When

17030-568: Was similarly commissioned by the PKKP and completed in 1924. In other localities, the PKKP and Bank of Poland repurposed former branches of the Reichsbank , as in Bydgoszcz , Katowice or Toruń , or of the Russian State Bank , as in Łódź or Lublin . German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language in

17161-534: Was to agree on exceptions to the most favoured nation principle among some or all European countries, a form of trade regionalism , also stimulated by the landmark call for a "European Union" submitted by France's Aristide Briand to 27 European member states of the League in September 1929, and the responses it elicited. In September 1930, the League's Assembly decided to set up a Commission of Inquiry for European Union ( French : Commission d'Études pour l'Union Européenne ) to elaborate on Briand's proposal, which

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