Deutsche Mark in the context of "Reichsmark"

The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche Mark from West Berlin.

The Western Allies organised the Berlin Airlift (German: Berliner Luftbrücke, lit. "Berlin Air Bridge") from 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1949 to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin, a difficult feat given the size of the city and the population. American and British air forces landed in Berlin more than 250,000 times, carrying necessities such as fuel and food. The original plan was to lift 3,475 tons of supplies daily, however by the spring of 1949, that number was regularly met twofold, with the peak daily delivery totalling 12,941 tons. Among these was the work of the later concurrent Operation Little Vittles in which candy-dropping aircraft dubbed "raisin bombers" generated much goodwill among German children.

The Wirtschaftswunder (German: [ˈvɪʁt.ʃaftsˌvʊndɐ] , "economic miracle"), also known as the Miracle on the Rhine, was the rapid reconstruction and development of the economies of West Germany and Austria after World War II. The expression was first used to refer to this phenomenon by The Times in 1950.

Beginning with the replacement of the Reichsmark with the Deutsche Mark in 1948 as legal tender (the Schilling was similarly re-established in Austria), a lasting era of low inflation and rapid industrial growth was overseen by the government led by West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his Minister of Economics, Ludwig Erhard, who went down in history as the "father of the West German economic miracle". In Austria, efficient labor practices led to a similar period of economic growth.

The lev (Bulgarian: лев, plural: лева, левове / leva, levove; ISO 4217 code: BGN; numeric code: 975) is the currency of Bulgaria. In early modern Bulgarian, the word lev meant "lion"; the word "lion" in the modern standard language is lаv (IPA: [ɫɤf]; in Bulgarian: лъв). The lev is subdivided into 100 stotinki (стотинки, singular: stotinka, стотинка). Stotinka in Bulgarian means "a hundredth" and is, in fact, a direct translation of the French term "centime". Grammatically, the word stotinka is derived from the Bulgarian word "sto" (сто; a hundred).

Since 1997, the Bulgarian lev has operated under a currency board arrangement, initially pegged to the Deutsche Mark at a fixed rate of 1,000 BGL = 1 DEM. Following the introduction of the euro and the redenomination of the lev in 1999, the peg was effectively set at 1.95583 BGN = 1 EUR. Since 2020, the lev has been part of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM II). In November 2023, Bulgarian euro coins design was approved by the Bulgarian National Bank.

The Reichsmark (German: [ˈʁaɪçsˌmaʁk] ; sign: ℛ︁ℳ︁; abbreviation: RM) was the currency of Germany from 1924 until the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, and in the American, British and French occupied zones of Germany, until 20 June 1948. The Reichsmark was then replaced by the Deutsche Mark, to become the currency of West Germany and then all of Germany after the 1990 reunification. The Reichsmark was used in the Soviet occupation zone in Germany until 23 June 1948, where it was replaced by the East German mark. The Reichsmark was subdivided into 100 Reichspfennig (Rpf or ℛ︁₰). The Mark is an ancient Germanic weight measure, traditionally a half pound, later used for several coins; Reich (realm in English) comes from the official name for the German state from 1871 to 1945, Deutsches Reich.