In 1923 the coins in Weimar Germany had lost their purchasing power completely. A loaf of bread cost 580 billion marks, and all savings, all investments – and all wage demands – dissolved into thin air. On October 13, 1923, the German chancellor Gustav Stresemann put an end to the nightmare: he introduced the rentenmark, literally an "annuity mark," as a stabilising interim currency. The introduction of the rentenmark and the simultaneous stabilization of the value of the old mark put an end to hyperinflation. The way was clear for the introduction of the reichsmark, which took place in 1924.