Money in bags and rolls as issued by the Oesterreichische Nationalbank.
Schilling banknotes and coins
Walt Disney Company stock
The fifth element: money! “Yea, and the fifth element” – thus William Camden, historian and archeologist in England at the turn of the 17th century confirmed what Greek poet Alkaios had proclaimed “Chremata, Chremata Aner” (Money, money is the man).
The apparently universal character of money has preoccupied generations of theoreticians and philosophers and has stimulated people’s imagination in rather controversial ways. The images range from the extreme of rolling in dough like Scrooge McDuck to the moneyless society of Thomas More’s Utopia.
What is it that makes money so attractive and so repulsive at the same time? In the words of George Bernard Shaw, money is “the most important thing in the world: It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness.”
Money marks society by subjecting the trade relations between people to a rational economic logic. At the same time, money as a measure of the value of all things which are traded is itself subject to moral judgment. While money is neutral per se, it serves to indicate social status and provokes passionate reactions. Behind the concept of money soberly expressed in terms of figures, money time and again surfaces as a myth in different guises.