I explain my main reasons for embarking on my book project. As always in research development, it’s about questioning established contentions, myths, or assertions, in this case that Ludwig Erhard was the father of the West German currency reform. The economist Charles P. Kindleberger, an OSS colleague and friend of Tenenbaum, motivated me in the late 1990s to embark on my research project. As Kindleberger and I were also friends from my year at Harvard University in 1975–76 until his death in 2003, I felt a special obligation to take Tenenbaum’s life and his most successful currency reform as the most important turning point in German economic history into the focus of my research. Tenenbaum was Jewish. The stealing of his merit by Ludwig Erhard was – in my view – an expression of postwar German antisemitism. I also make my readers aware that I not only present my research results, but also the often-adventurous ways I obtained them.