This is actually a fascinating question and to help answer it, I'm going to lean heavily on Adam Ferguson's book, "When Money Dies". It's essentially a chronological account of the great inflation in Germany that followed the first world war.

Now, as an aside before we start, it's worth noting that German hyperinflation didn't spring out of nowhere. There is a lot to be said about things like the occupation of the Rhur and war reparations leading to inflation, and it's true that those events did aggravate the situation. But the reality is that German Hyperinflation is really just the culmination of a trend in the devaluation of the German Mark that began in 1914. At the start of World War One the German Mark was roughly equal to one British Pound. By the end of 1918 it had halved that value as Germany lost the war. It halved again by mid 1919 bounced lower, recovered some over the next year, then went into a terminal decline toward the end of 1921 that culminated in 1923 with a single British pound being worth approximately a trillion paper marks. As with many things money related, German inflation happened slowly and then all at once.

Now onto the real question, how did people survive? The short answer is that a lot of people didn't. Many people were already economically ruined by the war in various ways and died for lack of heating fuel in the winter or simply starved to death. It's frankly difficult to understate just how catastrophic German inflation was for many people. One of the hardest hit groups was pensioners, many were ex-government employees who were to receive a defined pension for life. These payouts did not adjust for inflation and so by the time the domestic cost of living had risen 9-10 times in 1920, many of these people were ruined and found themselves unable to even pay rent. Since most were elderly and unable to work they tended to either beg, or steal to survive. Most sold off what possessions that had early on, mainly to barter for food and there are stories of simple farmers decking out their homes with lavish beds and grand pianos that they had bought from starving people for flour and potatoes.

Toward the end of hyperinflation, food and fuel of course became the most sought after commodities. Those who had them could command any price. They tended to be farmers and as such there was a sharp rift that developed between starving city dwellers and rural farmers who typically had food to spare. On the part of many farmers the situation ran nearly to extortion as they could unilaterally demand things from people and families might find a hundred years worth of heirlooms stripped from then in an afternoon just to buy food for the week.

Now, as for how many city dwellers survived on a day to day basis. Some people did quit their jobs but not as many as you might think. During this period the German stock market rocketed higher with each fresh devaluation of the mark and as such people holding shares in various companies retained at least the veneer of wealth. This is another irony of hyperinflation, it is excellent for the stock market. Since the underlying value of shares in theory isn't changing while the currency they are denominated in is plunging, the net effect is for stock indices to go up. Now the reality is that the underlying value of many companies was deteriorating along with the health of the German economy, however for a time at least, speculation in stocks produced a class of novu-rich in some cities. Additionally, interest rates never kept up with the rate of inflation as the central bank felt that doing so would devastate the economy. This meant that people could speculatively borrow vast sums of money that would in essence, pay themselves off as the mark plunged lower and lower, ie 10 marks of goods today would be worth 20 marks tomorrow so you can sell the goods, pay back the 10 and keep the other 10 for yourself. This was effectively an experiment in negative interest rates, ie where the rate of interest is less than inflation and so the actual value of debt in terms of the goods and services it will buy, declines over time, (I'll avoid any comparisons to our modern situation in light of the twenty year rule). Suffice to say though that hyperinflation created a class of wealthy speculative capitalists who profited off the nominally rising stock market.

Then we get to average people. Many did quit their jobs, but typically either to go work for someone else (ie if you had relatives who owned a farm and you were starving you might go try and work for them) or to be move into a more elicit profession, (prostitution and theft grew more prevalent the lower the Mark fell). Many people remained at their jobs though even as wages fell in real terms. In fact during the first few years German exports soared as factory owners were paying workers virtually nothing and buying supplies in a progressively more worthless currency. For anyone exporting goods, this was an excellent proposition, at least in the short term. Similarly, border cities where foreigners could come over and spend foreign currency for incredibly cheap German good and services provided essential inflows of money from neighboring nations and there were sometimes more jobs to be had there.

But, even in spite of all that, wages generally trended lower in terms of purchasing power. So why didn't people quit their jobs? Well they did so... temporarily, ie they went on strike... a lot. Generally when conditions became intolerable, a breaking point would be reached, people would go on strike, negotiate a wage increase then go back to work and let the creeping inflation begin the cycle over again. This became very common and wages tended to stair-step higher following the inflation curve, although typically falling further and further behind. In general this is true of most inflationary periods, wages tend to gradually fall in real terms.

Then we get to the weird stuff from the history books, the wheelbarrows of money and empty shelves. To us some of the behavior exhibited during German hyperinflation seems frankly bizarre. Why would people just start carting idiotic sums of money to the store to buy everything and anything? Why were stores often closed for much of the day? Why were there stupidly long lines when everyone was flat broke? Well, before you judge, it's important to remember that they were living in a world with progressively more worthless money that was rapidly shifting to a barter economy. For Germans, buying everything in sight was a survival mechanism and a suprisingly sane one at that.

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