At the middle-class theaters the same rarely musical and never comic inanities that hamper the advancement of histrionic art in other countries still held sway, with perhaps an increasing tendency toward the risqué. The crowd roared as of yore, munched its black-bread sandwiches between the acts, and seemed for the moment highly satisfied with life. In contrast there were always seats to be had at the performances of literary merit and at the opera, though the war does not seem to have subjected them to any special hardships. The investment of a ticket at the house of song brought high interest—particularly to the foreigner, for the best orchestra seats were still eight marks at matinées and twelve in the evening, a mere sixty cents or a dollar at the armistice rate of exchange. I remember with especial pleasure excellent performances of “Eurydice” and of “Martha.” The audience was a plain, bourgeois gathering, with evening dress as lacking as “roughnecks.” In the foyer buffet, in contrast to Paris, prices were exceedingly reasonable, but the most popular offerings, next to the watery beer, were plates of potatoes, bologna, pickled fish, and hard-boiled eggs, for, though I should not mention it here, the German theater-goer of these days is as constantly munching as an Arab. In the gorgeous Kaiser’s box sat one lone lieutenant and his wife, while a cold-eyed old retainer in livery kept guard outside the locked door as if he were still holding the place for his beloved emperor.
Though ostensibly the same, German prices were vastly lower for visitors than for the native residents. For the first time I had something of the sensation of being a millionaire—cost was of slight importance. The marks I spent in Germany I bought at an average of two for fifteen cents; had I delayed longer in exchanging I might have had them still cheaper. In some lines, notably in that we are for the moment avoiding, prices, of course, had increased accordingly, sometimes outdistancing the advantages of the low rate of exchange. But the rank and file still clung to the old standards; it was a hopeless task to try to make the man in the street understand that the mark was no longer a mark. He went so far as to accuse the American government of profiteering, because the bacon it was indirectly furnishing him cost 7.50 marks a pound, which to him represented, not fifty-seven cents, but nearly two dollars. The net result of this drop in mark value was that the populace was several degrees nearer indigence. Those who could spend money freely were of three classes—foreigners, war profiteers, and those who derived their nourishment, directly or indirectly, at the public teat. Not, of course, that even those spent real money. There was not a penny of real money in circulation in all Germany. Gold, silver, and copper had all long since gone the way of other genuine articles in war-time Germany, and in their place had come Ersatz money. Pewter coins did service in the smallest denominations; from a half-mark upward there were only “shin-plasters” of varying degrees of raggedness, the smaller bills a constant annoyance because, like most of the pewter coins, they were of value only in the vicinity of the municipality or chamber of commerce that issued them. Even the larger notes of the Reichsbank were precarious holdings that required the constant vigilance of the owner, lest he wake up some morning to find that they had been decreed into worthless paper.
But I am getting far ahead of my story. Long before I began to peer beneath the surface of Berlin I had to face the problem of legalizing even my superficial existence there. On the very morning after my arrival I hastened to grim-sounding Wilhelmstrasse, uncertain whether my next move would be toward some dank underground dungeon or merely a swift return to the Dutch border. The awe-inspiring Foreign Office consisted of several adult school-boys and the bureaucrat-minded underlings of the old régime. A Rhodes scholar, who spoke English somewhat better than I, greeted my entrance with a formal heartiness, thanked me for adding my services to the growing band that was attempting to tell a long-deceived world the truth about Germany, and dictated an Ausweis which, in the name of the Foreign Office backed by all the authority of the new national government, gave me permission to go when and where I chose within the Empire, and forbade any one, large or small, to put any difficulties whatever in my way. Like a sea monster killed at the body, but with its tentacles still full of their poisoning black fluid, Wilhelmstrasse seemed to have become innocuous at home long before its antennæ, such as the dreadful Herr Maltzen at The Hague, had lost their sting.
If it had been a great relief to see the eyes of passers-by fade inattentively away at sight of me in my civilian garb, after two years of being stared at in uniform, it was doubly pleasant to know that not even the minions of the law could now question my most erratic wandering to and fro within the Fatherland. With my blanket Ausweis I was not even required to report to the police upon my arrival in a new community, the Polizeiliche Anmeldung that is one of the banes of German existence. I was, of course, still expected to fill out the regulation blank at each hotel or lodging-house I occupied, but this was a far less troublesome formality than the almost daily quest for, and standing in line at, police stations would have been. These hotel forms were virtually uniform throughout the Empire. They demanded the following information of each prospective guest: Day of arrival; given and family name; single, married, or widowed; profession; day, month, year, town, county, and land of birth; legal residence, with street and number; citizenship (in German the word is Staatsangehörigkeit, which sounds much more like “Property of what government?”); place of last stay, with full address; proposed length of present stay; whether or not the registering guest had ever been in that particular city or locality before; if so, when, why, and how long, and residence while there. But under the new democracy hotelkeepers had grown somewhat more easy-going than in years gone by, and their exactions in this respect never became burdensome.
It was soon evident that the man in the street commonly took me for a German. In Berlin I was frequently appealed to for directions or local information, not to mention the requests for financial assistance. To my surprise, my hearers seldom showed evidence of detecting a foreign accent, particularly when I spoke with deliberate care. Even then I was usually considered a German from another province, sometimes a Dane, a Hollander, or a Scandinavian. Now and again I assumed a pose out of mere curiosity, and often “got away with it.” “You are from ——” (the next town)? was a frequent query, with a tinge of doubt in the tone. “No, I am from Mechlenburg”—or some other distant corner of Germany, I sometimes answered; to which the response was most likely to be, “Ah yes, I noticed that in your speech.” Now and again I let a self-complacent inquirer answer for me, as was the case with a know-it-all waiter in a Berlin dining-room, who proved his infallible ability to “size up” guests with the following cocksure assumptions, which he solemnly set down in his food-ticket register: “Sie sind Holländer, nicht?” “Jawohl.” “Kaufmann?” “Jawohl.” “Aus Amsterdam?” “Jawohl.” “Unverheiratet?” “Jawohl,” and so on to the end of the list. It is never good policy to peeve a man by showing him up in public. During my first few days in unoccupied Germany I fancied it the part of wisdom to at least passively disguise my nationality, but the notion soon proved ridiculous, and from then on, with only exceptions enough to test certain impressions, I went out of my way to announce my real citizenship among all classes and under all circumstances.
You can learn much of a country by reading its “Want Ads.” Thus the discovery that the most respectable newspaper of Rio de Janeiro runs scores of notices of “Female Companion Wanted,” or “Young Lady Desires Protector,” quickly orientates the moral viewpoint in Brazil. In Berlin under the armistice the last pages of the daily journals gave a more exact cross-section of local conditions than the more intentional news columns. There were, of course, countless pleas for labor of any description, the majority by ex-soldiers. Then came offers to sell or exchange all manner of wearing apparel, “A real silk hat, still in good condition”; “A black suit of real peace-time cloth”; “A second-hand pair of boots or shoes, such a size, of REAL LEATHER!” “Four dress shirts, NO WAR WARES, will be exchanged for a working-man’s blouse and jumper,” was followed by the enticement (here, no doubt, was the trail of the war profiteer), “A pair of COWHIDE boots will be swapped for a Dachshund of established pedigree.” Farther down were extraordinary opportunities to buy Leberwurst, Blutwurst, Jagdwurst, Brühwürstchen, and a host of other appetizing garbage, without meat-tickets. But the most persistent advertisers were those bent on recouping their fortunes by marrying money. It is strange if any new war millionaire in Germany has not had his opportunity to link his family with that of some impoverished one of noble lineage. In a single page of the Berliner Tageblatt, which carries about one-tenth the type of the same space in our own metropolitan dailies, there were eighty-seven offers of marriage, some of them double or more, bringing the total up to at least one hundred. Many of them were efforts, often more pathetic than amusing, by small merchants or tradesmen, just returned from five years in uniform, to find mates who would be of real assistance in re-establishing their business. But a considerable number aroused amazement that the wares offered had not been snapped up long ago. I translate a few taken at random:
MERCHANT, 38 years, Christian, bachelor, idealist, lover of nature and sports, fortune of 300,000 marks, wishes to meet a like-minded, agreeable young lady with corresponding wealth which is safely invested. Purpose: MARRIAGE.
FACTORY OWNER, Ph.D., Evangelical, 31, 1 meter 75, fine appearance, reserve officer, sound, lover of sports, humorous and musical, 400,000 marks property, seeks a LIFE COMPANION of like gifts and property in safe investments.
Intelligent GENTLEMAN, handsome, splendid appearance, blond, diligent and successful merchant, winning personality, Jewish, etc....
Will a BEAUTIFUL, prominent, artistic, musical, and property-loving woman in her best years make happy an old man (Mosaic) of wealth?