In 1944, Hungary sent its gold reserves, banknotes and financial records west aboard a train to keep them out of the hands of advancing armies. Less than two years later, the pengő had collapsed into historic hyperinflation, banknotes were carrying twenty zeros, and a completely new currency was needed. This is the story of the Gold Train, the death of the pengő and the birth of the Hungarian forint.
Hungary’s Gold Train and hyperinflation: quick facts
In the final months of the Second World War, Hungary put part of its financial future on a train and sent it west: gold bars, coins, foreign currency, banknote reserves and other valuables, guarded by central-bank employees and their families.
The convoy became known as the Gold Train. It carried roughly 33 tonnes of monetary assets and eventually reached Spital am Pyhrn in Austria, where Hungary’s reserves were hidden as Nazi Germany collapsed and the fighting closed in.
On 1 August 1946, Hungary introduced the forint. Five days later, the Gold Train returned to Budapest carrying 2,696 gold bars, 40 sacks of coins and other valuables returned by the United States. Not a gram of the central bank’s gold reserve was reported missing.
Eighty years later, Hungary’s Money Museum has reopened this extraordinary chapter with a new exhibition, The Legacy of the Gold Train – Rebirth of the Hungarian Currency. Its story connects war, gold, banknotes and the destruction of the pengő in a way few monetary histories can match.
Hungary did not simply replace the pengő. Hyperinflation had already destroyed it.
By 1946, the Hungarian pengő had ceased to function as ordinary money. Prices were rising so rapidly that denominations which looked absurd only weeks earlier became insufficient almost immediately.
The government responded by issuing increasingly enormous banknotes, including values expressed in millions, billions and eventually b.-pengő, an abbreviation for one trillion pengő. The numbers became so large that the currency itself was effectively reduced to a temporary accounting device.
This was not a normal redenomination. It was a monetary reset after the collapse of public confidence, wartime destruction, shortages, huge fiscal deficits and an explosive expansion of the money supply.
For banknote collectors, the result is one of the strangest families of paper money ever created: notes whose face values document inflation accelerating almost in real time, until the numbers printed on them became practically meaningless.
The Gold Train carried far more than gold
By late 1944, Hungary was becoming a battlefield. The Magyar Nemzeti Bank had already prepared evacuation plans, but the advance of the war transformed those plans into an emergency operation.
The central bank began moving its most valuable assets west. According to the Hungarian Money Museum, the evacuation eventually involved around 33 tonnes of gold, foreign currency, banknote reserves and documents, together with valuables entrusted to the bank for safekeeping.
The operation also involved extraordinary cultural treasures. Among the assets temporarily placed under the bank’s protection were the Corvina manuscripts, the Hungarian Post’s stamp collection, platinum metre standards and, for a short period, even the Holy Crown and coronation regalia.
On 10 December 1944, the first train left Veszprém carrying valuables, bank employees, their families and a 50-man gendarme guard. After weeks of delay near Hungary’s western border, two trains eventually departed for Spital am Pyhrn in Upper Austria in January 1945.
At Spital am Pyhrn, the most valuable cargo was stored inside the former Benedictine abbey. Gold was placed in the crypt, while boxes filled with banknotes were stacked in front of it. The entrance was locked and the keys were held separately by two bank officials, preserving normal security procedures in circumstances that were anything but normal.
The danger did not disappear once the train stopped. The Money Museum records attempted efforts to seize the reserves, fears of both German and Soviet intervention and even flooding inside the crypt during the spring thaw. Some of the paper money became soaked and had to be removed, dried and repacked.
On 7 May 1945, American troops arrived in Spital am Pyhrn. A few days later the assets were formally transferred into American custody and transported to Frankfurt. After negotiations between Hungary and the United States, the reserves were finally released for repatriation.
On 6 August 1946, the Gold Train’s treasure returned to Budapest: 2,696 gold bars, 40 sacks of coins and other valuables. The timing was extraordinary. Hungary had introduced the new forint only five days earlier, on 1 August.
The train had left a country whose monetary system was collapsing. It returned to one attempting to build a new currency from the wreckage.
The banknotes became obsolete almost as soon as they were printed
Hungary’s hyperinflation did something extraordinary to its banknotes: it turned denomination design into a race against time. As prices accelerated, the Magyar Nemzeti Bank kept adding zeros, but even the newest notes could lose practical usefulness within weeks.
Millions of pengő became milpengő, meaning one million pengő. Then came B.-pengő, where the “B” represented the Hungarian billió, or one trillion. Instead of printing forests of zeros, the currency effectively created new numerical languages just to keep functioning.
Speed began to matter more than elegance. Earlier designs were reused, some of the highest denominations were produced by offset printing without serial numbers, and additional Budapest printing houses had to be brought into production because the main banknote printer could no longer keep pace.
The numbers were becoming difficult even for ordinary people to interpret. According to the Money Museum, buyers and shopkeepers increasingly distinguished the highest denominations by colour rather than by reading their face values.
And Hungary still had one more absurd denomination waiting in the wings: the 1 billion B.-pengő, equal to 10²¹ pengő. It was printed, but the introduction of the forint arrived before it could enter circulation.
Hungary printed an even larger banknote, but the forint arrived before anyone could spend it
The 100 million B.-pengő was not supposed to be the end of the sequence. Hungary had already prepared another denomination above it: the extraordinary 1 billion B.-pengő.
It was a real banknote, not an abandoned sketch. The note was designed, printed and dated 3 June 1946. Yet it never entered normal circulation.
Visually, it was surprisingly restrained. The note was printed predominantly in green and featured a young woman, Lendvay Lúcia, on the right side. Large “B” letters identified the billió series.
Its simplicity was partly a consequence of the emergency. The printing works were producing new denominations at extraordinary speed. The highest values were made using offset printing and without serial numbers, while additional Budapest printing houses had to be brought in because the main banknote printer could no longer keep up.
But the 1 billion B.-pengő lost its race against inflation before it could reach a wallet. On 1 August 1946, Hungary introduced the forint and effectively terminated the pengő system.
That makes this note particularly fascinating for collectors. It represents the final stage of an inflationary currency taken to its logical extreme: a banknote whose denomination became obsolete before the banknote itself could become money.
The forint succeeded because Hungary did more than remove zeros
Introducing a new banknote is easy. Convincing people that tomorrow it will still buy something is considerably harder.
Hungary therefore needed more than a new name for its currency. The forint formed part of a broader stabilization programme intended to restore a functioning monetary system after the pengő had been destroyed by hyperinflation.
The Magyar Nemzeti Bank formally defined a nominal gold content of 0.07575 grams for one forint. That did not mean Hungarians could simply walk into a bank and exchange every note for a tiny shaving of gold, but it gave the new monetary system a defined reference point at precisely the moment when the previous currency had lost virtually every reference point it possessed.
Then came an extraordinarily well-timed event.
On 6 August 1946, only five days after the introduction of the forint, the United States returned the precious-metal reserves of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank. The gold that had travelled west aboard the Gold Train was once again in Hungarian hands.
The gold did not magically end hyperinflation by itself. But its return strengthened the financial reconstruction surrounding the new currency and gave post-war Hungary something the pengő had completely exhausted: a credible story about value.
The contrast could hardly have been greater. In July, Hungary had been printing banknotes with twenty zeros. In August, it was building a monetary system designed so that people would no longer need them.
Eighty years later, the Gold Train is still telling the story of the forint
The forint turned 80 on 1 August 2026, and Hungary chose to celebrate the anniversary not simply by displaying old coins and banknotes, but by returning to the extraordinary circumstances of its birth.
The Hungarian Money Museum opened a temporary exhibition titled The Legacy of the Gold Train – Rebirth of the Hungarian Currency, bringing together the wartime evacuation of the central bank’s reserves, the collapse of the pengő and the creation of the forint in one narrative.
The exhibition runs from 1 August 2026 to 1 November 2027 and contains 80 selected objects connected with the birth and history of the forint.
- a complete sheet of 1 billion B.-pengő banknotes;
- a 100-forint note featuring Lajos Kossuth;
- archival documents connected with the Gold Train;
- a copy of a letter sent from the MNB branch at Spital am Pyhrn to the Americans;
- newsreel footage, interviews and personal recollections;
- a railway interior recreating part of the atmosphere of the evacuation.
The sheet of 1 billion B.-pengő notes is particularly appropriate. These were banknotes created to solve a monetary problem that had already become impossible to solve with banknotes. They were printed, but the forint arrived before they could enter circulation.
There is another remarkable measure of the new currency’s success. According to the Magyar Nemzeti Bank, apart from some early image changes, the first generation of forint banknotes introduced from 1946 remained part of Hungary’s monetary landscape for roughly half a century.
The contrast with the final pengő issues is almost comic. One monetary system was producing denominations that could become inadequate in weeks. Its successor produced banknotes that survived for decades.
Frequently asked questions
What was Hungary’s Gold Train?
The Gold Train was the wartime evacuation operation used by the Magyar Nemzeti Bank to move Hungary’s gold reserves, foreign currency, banknote stocks, documents and other valuables westward as fighting reached Hungary during the final stages of the Second World War.
Why did Hungary experience hyperinflation?
The pengő collapsed after the Second World War amid enormous economic destruction, shortages, fiscal pressures and rapid monetary expansion. Prices increased so quickly that the authorities were forced to issue banknotes with progressively larger denominations.
What was the largest Hungarian banknote ever circulated?
The 100 million B.-pengő was the highest denomination actually released into circulation. Its face value corresponded to 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 pengő, or 10²⁰ pengő.
Was a 1 billion B.-pengő banknote really printed?
Yes. Hungary printed a 1 billion B.-pengő note equal to 10²¹ pengő, but the denomination never entered circulation because the forint replaced the pengő on 1 August 1946.
When was the Hungarian forint introduced?
The forint was introduced on 1 August 1946 as part of Hungary’s post-war monetary stabilization and replaced the hyperinflated pengő.
Did the Gold Train’s gold create the forint?
Not by itself. Monetary stabilization required broader economic and monetary measures. However, the survival and return of Hungary’s central-bank reserves strengthened the financial reconstruction surrounding the new currency.
Can the Gold Train exhibition still be visited?
Yes. The Hungarian Money Museum’s temporary exhibition “The Legacy of the Gold Train – Rebirth of the Hungarian Currency” opened on 1 August 2026 and is scheduled to run until 1 November 2027.
References
- Hungarian Money Museum — The Legacy of the Gold Train – Rebirth of the Hungarian Currency . Official page of the 2026 exhibition marking the 80th anniversary of the forint.
- Hungarian Money Museum — MNB Golden Train . Historical account of the evacuation of Hungary’s gold reserves, banknotes and documents during the Second World War.
- Hungarian Money Museum — 100 Million B.-pengő . Museum collection record for the highest denomination actually placed into circulation.
- Hungarian Money Museum — 1 Billion B.-pengő . Museum collection record for the extraordinary denomination printed but never released into circulation.
- Magyar Nemzeti Bank — Central Bank of Hungary . Official source for the history of the forint, Hungarian banknotes and monetary policy.
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