On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb student and member of Young Bosnia, assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, in Sarajevo, Bosnia. This began a month of diplomatic manoeuvring between Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France, and Britain called the July Crisis. Wanting to finally end Serbian interference in Bosnia – the Black Hand had provided Princip and his group with their bombs and pistols, trained them, and helped them across the border, and the Austrians were correct to believe that Serbian officers and officials were involved – Austria-Hungary delivered the July Ultimatum to Serbia, a series of ten demands intentionally made unacceptable, intending to provoke a war with Serbia. When Serbia agreed to only eight of the ten demands, Austria-Hungary declared war on 28 July 1914. Strachan argues, "Whether an equivocal and early response by Serbia would have made any difference to Austria-Hungary's behaviour must be doubtful. Franz Ferdinand was not the sort of personality who commanded popularity, and his demise did not cast the empire into deepest mourning".

The Russian Empire, unwilling to allow Austria-Hungary to eliminate its influence in the Balkans, and in support of its longtime Serb protégés, ordered a partial mobilisation one day later. The German Empire mobilised on 30 July 1914, ready to apply the "Schlieffen Plan", which planned a quick, massive invasion of France to eliminate the French army, then to turn east against Russia. The French cabinet resisted military pressure to commence immediate mobilisation, and ordered its troops to withdraw 10 km from the border to avoid any incident. France only mobilised on the evening of 2 August, when Germany invaded Belgium and attacked French troops. Germany declared war on Russia on the same day. Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, following an "unsatisfactory reply" to the British ultimatum that Belgium must be kept neutral.
 
In order to pay the large costs of World War I, Germany suspended the convertibility of its currency into gold when that war broke out. Unlike France, which imposed its first income tax to pay for the war, the German Kaiser and Parliament decided without opposition to fund the war entirely by borrowing, a decision criticised by financial experts like Hjalmar Schacht even before hyperinflation broke out. The result was that the exchange rate of the Mark against the US dollar fell steadily throughout the war from 4.2 to 8.91 Marks per dollar. The Treaty of Versailles, however, accelerated the decline in the value of the Mark, so that by the end of 1919 more than 6.7 paper Marks were required to buy one US dollar.

The German currency was relatively stable at about 60 Marks per US Dollar during the first half of 1921. Because the Western theatre of World War I was mostly in France and Belgium, Germany had come out of the war with most of its industrial power intact, a healthy economy, and arguably in a better position to once again become a dominant force in the European continent than its neighbours. But the "London ultimatum" in May 1921 demanded reparations in gold or foreign currency to be paid in annual installments of 2,000,000,000 (2 billion) goldmarks plus 26 percent of the value of Germany's exports.

The first payment was paid when due in June 1921. That was the beginning of an increasingly rapid devaluation of the Mark which fell to less than one third of a cent by November 1921 (approx. 330 Marks per US Dollar). The total reparations demanded was 132,000,000,000 (132 billion) gold marks, of which Germany only had to pay 50 billion marks (a sum less than what they had offered to pay).

Because war reparations were required to be repaid in hard currency and not the rapidly depreciating Papiermark, one strategy Germany employed was the mass printing of bank notes to buy foreign currency which was in turn used to pay reparations. This greatly exacerbated the inflation rates of the paper mark.

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Düren is a Kreis (district) in the west of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Neighboring districts are Heinsberg, Neuss, Rhein-Erft-Kreis, Euskirchen and Aachen.

Düren is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, capital of Düren district in Germany. It is located between Aachen and Cologne on the river Rur.

20th century
By 1900, Düren was among Germany's richest cities (with 42 millionaires and 93 factories) and had a population of 27,168. By comparison, less than 5000 people had lived in Düren a century earlier.

The city of Düren was located on the main fighting front during the Allied invasion of Germany in World War II. During 1944 and 1945, the protracted and bloody Battle for Hürtgenwald was fought on Düren's district area, and on November 16, 1944, Düren was completely destroyed by Allied air bombings. Approximately 22,000 people lived in Düren at that time, and 3,000 of them died during the bombing. Those who survived were evacuated to central Germany. Destroyed buildings included the Stadttheater Düren (1907), designed in Jugenstil by Carl Moritz.

On February 25, 1945, U.S. troops crossed the Rur at Düren. After the war was over in the summer that year, many evacuated people came back to the destroyed city and started to rebuild their homes against the advice of the American troops. By June 1945, the population had risen to 3806. Most of the architecture in Düren therefore dates from the 1950s.

Main sights[edit source]
Schloß Burgau (Burgau Castle). Its oldest section dates to the mid-16th century.
Dicke Turm ("Fat Tower"), a remain of the old city's fortifications
Annakirche (St. Anne Church)
Marienkirche (St. Mary Magdalene Church)
Monument to Bismarck
Leopold Hoesch Museum

Emblem
The emblem of the city of Düren is divided. It shows on the top a red castle, below that, a black eagle and in the lower half a black lion with a red tongue. The black eagle refers to the old history of Düren as a royal city and Reichsstadt. In 1242–46 Düren was bonded to the dukes of Jülich (later, Napoleon was also Duke of Jülich). Their emblem was a lion passant, with open mouth and a red tongue.