Gold gab ich für Eisen.
I gave gold for iron.
The year was 1813, and Prussia was at war for its liberation from Napoleon. War asks for the ultimate sacrifice from its soldiers, and many pay that price for their cause.
In 1813, soldiers were almost exclusively men, which left women at home to hope for the best. Some took up tools to craft weapons or uniforms. But many women of wealth couldn’t help with the war effort that way, because people like them don’t do things like that.
However, it turns out that crafting weapons and uniforms requires raw materials, and those materials cost money. Lots of liquid capital was already being donated to the war effort, but these women had something else up their sleeves. And around their necks. And on their fingers.
Elegant gold jewelry was a sign of status for Prussian women of wealth, so it was no easy task to motivate them to part with theirs. They needed to replace the status they would lose with something better.
Amazingly, Prussia did it simply by offering to trade iron for gold.
Iron was a common material for jewelry in Germany, and wasn’t terribly expensive or highly-regarded. Gold jewelry granted the status of being wealthy and more, whereas iron merely granted the status of being fashion-minded.
So they made the iron jewelry better: they gave it the power to grant the status of being patriotic. The government’s jewelers took a piece of gold jewelry, made a mold, forged a single iron replica, and before returning it they stamped it with the ultimate symbol of status: Gold gab ich für Eisen.
I gave gold for iron. It simultaneously represents wealth (“I gave gold”) and sacrifice in the name of patriotism (“gold for iron”). The iron version even retained most of the feeling of heritage by being a one-of-a-kind replica of their original jewelry. And now, it even had a new story attached, which was made even more valuable by the eventual victory over Napoleon. “Berlin Iron,” even without the stamp, became hugely popular in the decades that followed, based mainly on its ties to this sacrifice.
This tactic of gaining status through sacrifice has been attempted throughout society to varying degrees of success. More recently, the ultra-rich like Jeffrey Epstein or Mark Zuckerberg try to buy the status of being charitable to offset or distract from their violations of the expected social contract. While it works somewhat, they are starting to find diminishing returns.
That’s partially because the wealthy are choosing the opportunities to try to gain the status of being charitable based on what is deemed safe among people like them. Any member of the ultra-rich could buy all the status they can afford by making a massive donation to RAICES, but there’s a problem: people like them don’t do things like that.
The other problem is that the “gold” they are donating means so little to them, so it no longer represents true sacrifice. The ultra-rich are too wealthy, and we all know it. That money wasn’t doing anything for them in their own hands, except appreciating into even more money.
But for the Prussian wealthy, whose husbands and sons were sent to war alongside most liquid capital, their gold represented nearly everything else they could afford to give. It was actual sacrifice in the face of world-conquering tyranny, even if it may compare poorly to the labor and struggles of the lower class at that time.
Berlin Iron jewelry is cherished by collectors these days. But it is the Gold gab ich für Eisen pieces that we display most proudly in museums, reflecting how we can best use status to bring out the best in humanity.
[Entry #3 in the Status is the True Currency blog series.]
