What about the Middle Ages? There were coins there. Petrarca should know whether there was money in our sense in his time.

Luck and misfortune are fate. What is important is our attitude. The Italian Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) was convinced of this. This "comfort mirror" was written in 1370. By 1756, the bestseller had gone through 28 editions in its original Latin edition alone and was translated into more than 50 languages. The book was originally written in Latin, but for the 200th anniversary it was translated into German; one of the best Renaissance artists was engaged for the woodcut. Thus, the book presents 250 everyday situations from the life of medieval man, with brief description and Petrarch's advice. You have to leaf through the book slowly and curiously pay attention to what problems these people had: is it health, reputation, activity, partnership, maybe coins, loans and worries with money?

Health is mentioned often, also the fatherland. Coins, on the other hand, are mentioned only five times, and when they are, then as a dowry or in the case of theft. Loans, the need for profit, taxes or even financing do not occur. The most frequent image: "Blessed is he who is well-born"; the hierarchy in the Middle Ages was predetermined. There is no trace of buying and selling, of money in our sense.   

Francesco Petrarca, Comfort mirror in happiness and misfortune, Frankfurt 1572

The big rethink

In the so-called "long 16th century", which extended far into the 17th century, a change in the world view took place. By what did people recognize that money, our modern money, had come into being? We look at the 16th century folk book Fortunatus, the Jesuit school of Salamanca, the statements of the economist Misselden in 1622 and the description of rhythm as a beat rhythm by Descartes in 1618. 

From win-loose to win-win:

Aldo Haesler, a professor of sociology at the University of Caen in France, has spent years studying the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times. What exactly had changed then? In his opinion, it was primarily the change from the win-loose world of thought, in which one person's gain must be another's loss, to the win-win world, in which everyone benefits. From the closed order, which was hierarchically structured, with a finite space, to the open world order. The previous conception shattered because of the impossibility to maintain certain dogmas against calculations and observations. A change of the world view occurred.  Aldo Haesler calls it the transition from the zero-sum game to the positive-sum game.

What is new is that man does the same with success - he owes it to no one, only to himself. This formula of modern emancipation was unthinkable in traditional societies; unthinkable because all relationships among people were mutual debt relationships. At the beginning of the 17th century, the merchant was still spoken of as a parasite; by the middle of the century, he had become an agent of Providence. Money is no longer just a tool, it has become a medium, a language with numbers that is universally available.  

The Jesuits of Salamanca:

The School of Salamanca gained importance through the development of an "international natural law. Against the background of the conquest in South and Central America by the Spanish and Portuguese, humanism and the Reformation, the traditional conceptions of the Roman Catholic Church came under increasing pressure in the 16th century. The School of Salamanca tackled the resulting problems. Its goal was to harmonize the teachings of Thomas Aquinas with the new economic-political order of the time. 

The theories of the Salamanca School heralded the end of the medieval concept of law. In a way unusual for the Europe of that time, they demanded more freedom. The natural rights of man (right to life, right to private property, freedom of expression, human dignity) became the center of interest of the School of Salamanca. According to Diego de Covarrubias y Leiva (1512-1577), people not only have the right to private property, but also the right to benefit exclusively from the advantages of property. 

Winckler, Nicolaus, Bedencken Von Künfftiger verenderung Weltlicher Policey vnd Ende der Welt, Augsburg 1582

"Faust," who questions existing knowledge and strives for wisdom, is not an invention of Goethe, but was a popular book of the 16th century. Nicolaus Winkler, a physician in Augsburg, published it in 1582. The end of the story: Faust dies. Popular sentiment at the time saw questioning the existing order as an outrage, so Faust had to die - in stark contrast to the version 200 years later. Goethe had recognized "the great rethinking" and capitalism and introduced the wager between Faust and Mephisto with the prohibition of lingering. Goethe is a highly respected author today, but most readers do not understand this passage of the capital function; we cling to old ideas, just as people did in the 16th century. Even then, Goethe seems to have anticipated this and only released his work for publication posthumously.

At the beginning of the 16th century, Fortunatus began to be distributed as one of those "folk books”, as the Romantics later christened them, since no author was given. Among these "folk books" are also celebrities such as the Eulenspiegel and the book of Doctor Faustus. Fortunatus is present all over Europe, and for more than 200 years the story of the never-ending purse finds many readers there. First edition was in 1509.

Fortunatus received a sack with never-ending coins in it. This reminds me of lottery millionaires who suddenly have great wealth without a track record. What does Fortunatus do now with his new wealth? Fortunatus doesn't rest on his sack, but sets out to cross the world as a merchant and in this way to become rich. For one could only imagine the merchant's capital. What his coins bring him at home is indeed significant, it makes him a noble lord over land and people, but it remains limited. Inside the commonwealth, Fortunatus gets only limited things to buy for his coins.  

Misselden is the author of "Free Trade, Or the means to make trade flourish," 1622. As a mercantilist, he made an important contribution to the idea of the balance of trade. "Money has now become the price of all things," Misselden wrote in 1622. For the first time this statement is verifiable, money is now ascertainable. His sentence "As to its nature and as to its succession in time, money comes only after commodities, but as it is in use today, it became the main thing," corresponds to the modern conception of money.  

Descartes writes a book about music in 1618, describes the notes, the rhythm. For the first time he uses the term "beat rhythm" to describe rhythm. This is amazing. Something must have changed in the minds of the people of that time, because they felt a different rhythm only 50 years before.

Descartes writes: The time measure of the tones must consist of equal parts, because these are most easily grasped by the sense of hearing ... This division is marked by a beat or the so-called precipitation, which is done to support our imagination ... like the war drum, where nothing but the measure of time is heard ...

Where does this change come from? The answer had to wait for centuries until Eske Bockelmann picked up the thread and meticulously proves exactly where this change, this unconscious reflex in the perception of rhythm comes from. He wrote the work "Im Takt des Geldes” (To the Beat of Money).  

The End of History?

The development so far shows that money has evolved from a tool to an economic and social system. It pushes for the conquest of new markets, which drives innovation, but also for reckless expansion and exploitation of resources and people. Our money is in crisis; not only because global expansion has reached its limits, but because a large part of the population no longer wants to participate. Has the end of this monetary system been reached? 

Karl Marx' Thesis

Karl Marx, Das Kapital, first edition was in 1867 in Hamburg with a starting print run of 1000 copies. Book II followed in 1885, Book III followed in 1894. Our edition: Complete Complete Edition in 3 volumes in slipcase, 2016.  

In 1867, Karl Marx published his work "Das Kapital" after spending several years in London studying the nature of money. The impact of his work was enormous. However, he would never have approved of the idea of communism as it developed over the next 100 years. Marx's thesis was that the development of the capital-oriented market economy, capitalism was in a terminal phase because of the increasing division of society. A few capitalists would have most of the capital, and the population would form the proletariat. Therefore his advice: "Proletarians of all the world, unite".  Why did his theory fail? Although he studied the nature of money for some years, he never dealt with the genesis of modern money. He presupposed money. Thus, he defined "value" as "labor value," that value which is performed by labor. It is the merit of Eske Bockelmann to get to the bottom of this theory of value and to set it right. 

Fukuyama: The End of History, 1992

Fukuyama, an American philosopher and historian, in his 1992 work "The End of History and the Last Man" put forward the thesis that the socio-cultural evolution of humanity had reached an end point; that the final form of government had been found. It was his conviction that after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, humanity had completed ideological evolution and the globalization of the liberal worldview had produced the final form of government. Only a few years after its publication, however, the liberal worldview was questioned from many quarters, including in the West.