A commercial I saw recently shows a German immigrant arriving in New Orleans c. 1857 and making his way to St. Louis. Though the commercial implies that he arrived penniless, he was actually a son of a wealthy German merchant family. He probably brought enough money to get by for a while, if not more.
How would he have brought his money over? Could he have exchanged paper Deutschmarks (or whatever they used at the time) for US Dollars at a bank at a major port city such as New Orleans? Or would he have had to bring his money in gold & silver coins? Were bank transfers (by mail, of course) a thing in those days?
He probably could have brought them over as paper money and exchanged them because in those days both the German mark and the US dollar were linked to gold at fixed rates so there would have been a fixed exchange rate (though probably some cost).
More likely though, he’d have brought a letter of credit from a German bank. The letter of credit essentially guaranteed the issuing bank would pay if he defaulted.
This was before the Empire formed in '71 ( as opposed to the HRE later Austrian Empire ), and different states issued their Thaler, Gulden or Marks ( and maybe more ).
In practice, in those easy days, people would use whatever coins and notes they had from any recognised reputable country at home and abroad. Even better if they were gold coins, with an intrinsic value: Francs, Louis, Napoleons etc. from their western neighbour; Scandinavian Riksdaler, Tsarist Roubles, all were acceptable for trade and commerce. British gold Sovereigns and Maria-Theresa Thalers were especially acceptable. And still are.
I’m not finding any evidence in a quick search that the various German states ever issued any paper currency until the unification. (A better search might find some, and if any experts are out there, please correct me.) The mark itself did not exist until 1873 and that was in a gold form. Gold or a letter of credit are far more likely.
The Reich Mark was indeed gold ( different from the later Reichsmark ), but marks were current in the German states, and issued by various of them separately, ranging from coins to accounting units for banking * ( as was the English mediaeval Mark, while the Scottish Merk was a coin ) from the High Middle Ages up to the Second Reich.
Related question: I often hear of immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s, where the father/husband came to America, and regularly sent money back to the family in Europe. How did that work? Did he put cash or jewels in the mail? How extensive was Western Union’s “send money” business in 1890? Some other procedure?
Many German States did issue banknotes from 1837-1871 but were mostly denominated in thalers and gulden rather than marks.
When you had unification of the States in 1871, not only were marks issued in gold but silver also–2 marks and 5 marks silver coins, the 5 mark being similar to the US silver dollars of the period.
Evan gave pretty good factual information.
And, the letter of credit idea is almost certainly correct, especially seeing that Busch came from an existing wealthy merchant family.
I seem to recall that the Australian and NZ Pounds were interchangeable with the UK ones until around World War I or so - so it would simply be a matter of either bringing banknotes/gold sovereigns with you, or having a proper letter of credit from a bank in the UK (or “back home”, as people then would have seen it.)
By the time postal services got established solidly, a post order or similar (such as, yes, Western Union). The money itself didn’t have to travel; the document saying “I’ve paid the Post this much (and some more as fees); Post, please pay my relative the base amount” did.
Pre-1871 German states each coined their own currencies, but there was some standardisation going on. There were various coinage conventions, which were treaties of the various German states setting standards for the weights and fineness of their coins. This made the coins mutually recognisable and acceptable, even though they were still produced under the authority of the individual governments. One of them was the Dresden Convention, followed by the more comprehensive Vienna Convention, coincidentally of 1857. It established the Vereinsthaler, which was the dominant coin in Germany until unification.
These conventions defined their coins in terms of silver, not gold, thus setting a monometallic silver standard. The American monetary system at the time was more complicated; it was bimetallic because both silver and gold were coined and set in a legally fixed relation to each other.
As for exchangeability, one must not underestimate the sophistication of 19th century banking. Silver was a commonly used monetary metal at the time. In a major commercial port, you would have no trouble finding a bank that would exchange a foreign European coin, or silver-convertible banknote from a European bank (as long as the bank was not too obscure and tiny), into dollars.