So I'm currently re-reading Weihnacht because I found a paperback in my aunt's bookshelf, and started wondering how much Karl actually won for his poetry/got paid for his composition/gave to poor Elise Wagner. Found the following info in case anyone else is curious:
Karl won 30 Taler, earned 25, and spent 5 on his week-long trip. He gave away 1 Gulden.
According to an old forum entry trying to work out how much someone's ancestors paid for a ship to the US, the following conversion works to 1967 DM:
"Kaufkraft eines Reichstalers bzw. eines preußischen Talers
In der Broschüre "Alte Maße, Münzen und Gewichte aus dem deutschen Sprachgebiet", gesammelt und bearbeitet von Fritz Verdenhalven, sind Angaben über die heutige Kaufkraft alter Münzen enthalten. Hiernach ergibt sich folgende Relation:
Hallo,
ich habe den Preis einer Schiffsüberfahrt für meine Vorfahren mit 120 Thalern erfahren. Was würde das in Euro heute sein.
Wie kann
Then I looked at an inflation calculator to work out 9DM to today's euros, which came out to 21.89€:
Ein Euro-D-Mark-Umrechnung bzw. D-Mark-Euro-Rechner zum Umrechnen von DM in Euro und umgekehrt, der auch die Inflation mit berücksichtigt.
The 14.70DM would be 35.76€.
1.75 Gulden was 1 Thaler:
So he won between 650€ and 1072€ and earned between 547€ and 894€ for a total somewhere between 1200€ and 2000€. Note that the annual wage for a (poor) teacher in Saxony at the time would have been 120 Thaler, or 2500-4200€, so I have my doubts about whether this accounted for actual purchasing power.
Still, to go all the way through, his 5 Thaler for a week-long Christmas hike are somewhere between 100€ and 160€, with him giving away 12-20€ so that Elise Wagner and her family had 72-100€ to make it to the ship.
In the original forum we also had this bit:
"In einer Statistik über den Kreis Warburg ist als Jahresbedarf einer Arbeiterfamilie mit 4 kleinen Kindern folgendes veranschlagt:
80 Taler für Nahrungsmittel
10 Taler für Wohnung
12 Taler für Brennmaterial
24 Taler für Kleidung und Wäsche
4 Taler für Hausrat,
gesamt 130 Taler."
So two adults and four children living off of 130 Thaler for a year. This would be about 2 Thaler/week if we chuck out some of the less necessary items Elise wouldn't be needing while travelling. I would argue the two adults and one child might be able to get by on 1 Thaler/week with poor accommodation and mostly walking. Given they received 6 Gulden, that's 3-4 weeks of travel to cross Germany from the South-West area to the North. If not quite enough to get them all the way there in comfort at least it would get the family a decent chunk of the way.
TL;DR: Our dear narrator had a ton of money, especially for a student. Which you can work out from context anyways, but I was curious.
