Learn German with the Augsburg Saga – B1.5 Interlinear German–English Reader
The Billion Mark Bun

Learn German through a historically grounded story — with clear B1-level language and immediate English support when you need it.

The Billion Mark Bun is the fifth and final book of the B1 level in the Augsburg Saga.

It is written in controlled, carefully graded B1 German and presented in an interlinear German–English format, sentence by sentence.
Each German sentence is followed directly by its English translation.
The English is not word-for-word and not literary prose. It stays close to the German in meaning and structure and serves purely as a reading aid, allowing you to continue reading without constant dictionary use.

🕰️ Everyday life during collapse: Augsburg 1922–1923

This story is set in Augsburg during the years of hyperinflation after the First World War — a time when prices changed daily, money lost value by the hour, and ordinary routines became acts of calculation and restraint.

The war is over, but its consequences shape every moment.
Workshops grow quiet as customers cancel orders.
In the pharmacy, medicines are sold on credit or exchanged for goods.
Families count bread slices, replace ingredients, and speak in numbers: twelve marks, eighty marks, hundreds — then thousands.

The story follows the Hartwig family across workshops, kitchens, markets, pharmacies, and print shops. Former soldiers return weakened. Older generations fall ill. Younger ones search for work, consider emigration, or accept any task that brings food instead of money.

Large events remain in the background.
What takes center stage is daily endurance: sewing old clothes, baking with substitutes, carrying goods for payment in potatoes or bread, and keeping households functioning while the economy dissolves.

This is not a dramatic story of crisis — it is a quiet account of how collapse feels when it arrives gradually.

📖 What this B1.5 reader includes

• One complete B1.5 story (self-contained)
• Interlinear German–English format (sentence by sentence)
• English historical and cultural introduction (hyperinflation, postwar Germany)
• Clear chapter structure
• Chapter summaries
• Questions and answers for comprehension
• Carefully controlled B1 vocabulary and syntax

👥 Who this book is for

• Learners completing the B1 level of German
• Readers interested in economic history through everyday experience
• Self-study learners building reading stamina and independence
• Teachers looking for historically serious, non-sensational material
• Readers who value realism, restraint, and ordinary perspectives over dramatic plots

📚 Part of a larger series

This book can be read independently.
It also completes the B1 level of the Augsburg Saga, a long historical reading series that follows the same family from A1 through C1, across many centuries.

For longer reading sessions and better value, Omnibus editions are available:
• German–English interlinear Omnibus
• German-only Omnibus

These combine all books of a level in one volume and are more affordable than purchasing the single books individually.

Continue with the Augsburg Saga — and experience how German grows more precise as history becomes heavier.

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