100 years ago today, Weimar Germany abolished the Papiermark, marking the end of Germany's hyperinflation.
In that same year Josef Wild, a master gold smith from Nurenberg, started minting his own coins to advocate for a return to a gold standard with private gold coins.
Wild's coins were popular among the public and the German government hated this form of private competition with its own money—which it used to levy a continuous inflation tax.
Gold broker Kuenken notes: "His coins were a matter of conviction. He didn’t make any money off them, on the contrary. Coin dealer Carl-Friedrich Gebert had to provide financial aid to Josef Wild time and again, mostly by buying his gold coins off him whenever he was in financial distress."
"Some time in the year of 1928, Josef Wild must have started to copy old gold coins from the German Empire. Based on this, in 1929, the goldsmith from Nuremberg was convicted of forgery (!) and sentenced to several years in prison, even though his own coins actually had a much higher intrinsic value than all the money given out by the German government."
"Nonetheless, at the age of 57, he had to go to prison, and he would never leave there. Josef Wild, who had produced money of more stable value than the German state, passed away on 31 March, 1932."
Six decades later, in the United States, a man named Bernard von NotHaus became Josef Wild's intellectual successor. In 1998 he started issuing notes backed by gold and silver under the name Liberty Dollar.
After some years of being seemingly tolerated by the authorities, von NotHaus's offices were raided by the FBI in late 2007 at the beginning of the Financial Crisis. This was followed by an indictment in 2009. After years of trial procedures, on December 2, 2014, despite prosecutor demands that he serve as much as 23 years in Federal prison, von NotHaus was sentenced to 6 months house arrest, with 3 years probation.
Earlier in 2014, Bernard von NotHaus attended one of the first Miami Bitcoin conferences, where he shared his story with the audience. I had the pleasure of meeting him there, and asked if I could be in the photo with him:
I feel so blessed that bitcoin exists, and is stronger than ever today: a censorship resistant, scarce, independently verifiable money without centralized issuer—which means it can not be shut down by governments!
Bitcoin's general adoption will go a long way in curbing unsustainable government spending, as well as in helping working families protect their savings from the currency debasement that ultimately leads to hyperinflationary tragedies such as that of Weimar Germany.

Sources:
hardmoneyhistory.com
kuenker.de
profil.bayern
dhm.de
Interview with Von NotHaus, likely done at the Miami conference: youtube.com
Reddit thread about Von NotHaus' appearance in Miami: reddit.com

This portrait gives an idea of what the brave Nurenberger goldsmith looked like. Some stunning coin designs, not hard to see why people enjoyed them. There's very little to be found online about Josef Wild, so I added a snippet for Germans looking to research him.