Vagabonding Through Changing Germany

by Harry Alverson Franck

The resultant gnawings of perpetual hunger had brought to light a myriad of Ersatz foods that were in reality no food at all. It was frequently asserted that this consumption of unwholesome imitations of food was responsible for the erratic conduct of many a present-day German, manifesting itself now in morose, now in talkative moods, often in more serious deviations from his moral character. Certainly it had made him less pugnacious. Indirectly it had made him more of a liar—at least on his bills of fare. The best hotel in Berlin made no bones of shredding turnips or beet-roots and serving them as mashed potatoes. Once in a while an honest waiter warned the unsuspecting client, as was the case with one who shattered my fond hopes of an appetizing dish announced on the menu-card he had handed me. “Venison your grandmother!” he whispered, hoarsely. “It is horse-meat soaked in vinegar. Take the beef, for at least that is genuine, poor as it is.” Milk, butter, and all such “trimmings” as olives, pickles, sauces, preserves, and the like were wholly unknown in public eating-places. Pepper I saw but once in all Germany—as a special luxury in a private household. Coffee might now and then be had, but an imitation of burnt corn and similar ingredients took its place in an overwhelming majority of cases, and cost several times what real coffee did before the war. Beechnut oil, supplied only to those holding tickets, did the duty of butter and lard in cooking processes. The richest and most influential could not get more than their scanty share of the atrocious, indigestible stuff miscalled bread. Bakers, naturally, were mighty independent. But those who could get bread often got cake, for there was always more or less “underground” traffic in forbidden delicacies. One of the most difficult tasks of all was to lay in a lunch for a journey. Before my first trip out of the capital I tramped the streets for more than an hour in quest of something edible to carry along with me, and finally paid six marks for an egg-and-sausage sandwich that went easily into a vest pocket.

Good linen had almost wholly disappeared—at least from sight. It was never seen on dining-tables, having long since been commandeered by the government for the making of bandages—or successfully hidden. Paper napkins and tablecloths were the invariable rule even in the most expensive establishments. Personal linen was said to be in a sad state among rich and poor alike; the Ersatz soap or soap-powders reduced it quickly to the consistency and durability of tissue-paper. Many of the proudest families had laid away their best small-clothes, hoping for the return of less destructive wash-days. As to soap for toilet purposes, among German residents it was little more than a memory; such as still existed had absolutely no fat in it, and was made almost wholly of sand. Foreigners lucky or foresighted enough to have brought a supply with them might win the good will of those with whom they came in contact far more easily than by the distribution of mere money.

But we are getting off the all-absorbing topic of food. If the reader feels he can endure it, I wish to take him to a half-dozen meals in Berlin, where he may see and taste for himself. The first one is in a public soup-kitchen, where it will be wiser just to look on, or at most to pretend to eat. Long lines of pitiful beings, women and children predominating, file by the faintly steaming kettles, each carrying a small receptacle into which the attendants toss a ladleful of colored water, sometimes with a piece of turnip or some still more plebeian root in it. The needy were lucky to get one such “hot meal” a day; the rest of the time they consumed the dregs of the markets or things which were fed only to hogs before the war. The school lunch and often the supper of perhaps the majority of the children of Berlin consisted of a thin but heavy slice of war-bread lightly smeared with a colic-provoking imitation of jam. In contrast, one might stroll into the Adlon in the late afternoon and see plump and prosperous war profiteers—“Jews” the Berliners called them, though they were by no means confined to a single race—taking their plentiful “tea” in the midst of, and often in company with, Allied officers.

My own first German meal—for those in the occupied region were rather meals in Germany—was a “breakfast” in a second-class hotel, of the kind with which almost every one began the day in the Fatherland. There was set before me with great formality a cupful of lukewarm water with something in it which made a faint effort to pretend it was coffee, a very thin slice of war-bread, yielded only after long argument because I had as yet no bread-tickets, and a spoonful of a sickly looking purple mess that masqueraded under the name of “marmalade.” Where the Germans got their comparative abundance of this last stuff I do not know. Its appearance suggested that it was made of bruised flesh; its taste reminded one of rotten apples. The bill on this occasion was three marks, plus 10 per cent. for service. Begin a few days on that and see how much “pep” you have left; by noon you will know the full meaning of the word hungry.

I took lunch that day in a working-man’s restaurant. There I got a filling, though not a very lasting, dinner of beans and potatoes, a “German beefsteak”—resembling our “Hamburger,” but possibly made of horse-meat—a slice of what Europe calls bacon, which is really salt pork, and two mugs of weak beer—total, four mk. forty. No bread was asked or given. The clients ranged from small merchants to hackmen.

For supper I investigated a long-established vegetarian restaurant on Friedrichstrasse. An oat soup was followed by a plate of mashed peas, one storage egg (two marks), a cold potato salad, a pint of “white beer,” and a pudding that would have been tasteless but for its Himbeer sauce, sickly as hair-oil. The check came to seven mk. seventy-five, including the usual tip.

A few blocks farther on along this same chief cross-artery of Berlin is a famous “Tunnel” restaurant below the level of the sidewalk. If you have been in the German capital during this century you have no doubt passed it, though you probably took care not to enter. In 1919 it was one of the chief rendezvous of lost souls. Girls of sixteen, already passées, mingled with women of once refined instincts whom the war had driven to the streets. Their male companions were chiefly “tough characters,” some of them still in uniform, who might give you a half-insolent, half-friendly greeting as you entered, but who displayed little of that rowdyism so characteristic of their class in our own country. Here no attention was paid to meatless days, and, though the date was plainly written on the bill of fare, it offered, even on Tuesdays and Fridays, several species of beef and veal and many kinds of game—wild duck, marsh fowl, rabbit, mountain goat, and so on, all evidently the real article. The servings were more than generous, the potatoes almost too plentiful. The menu asserted that “Meat, bread, and potatoes were served only against tickets,” but for the payment of an extra twenty-five pfennigs the lack of these was overlooked, except in the case of bread. A small glass of some sickly-sweetish stuff called beer cost the same amount; in the more reputable establishments of the capital the average price for a beverage little better was about four times that. Five marks sufficed to settle the bill, after the most nearly satisfying meal I had so far found in Berlin. Here 15 per cent. was reckoned in for service. Evidently the waiters had scorned a mere 10 per cent. in so low-priced a resort.

While I ate, an old woman wandered in, peddling some sort of useless trinkets. She was chalky in color and emaciated to the last degree, staggering along under her basket as if it had been an iron chest. Several of the habitués got rid of her with a pewter coin. I happened to have no change and gave her instead a few bread-tickets. The result was not exactly what I had expected. So great was her gratitude for so extraordinary a gift, beside which mere money seemed of little or no interest, that she huddled over my table all the rest of the evening. Before the war she had been the wife of a shopkeeper in Charlottenburg. Her husband and both her sons had died in France. Business had dwindled away for lack of both demand and supply until she had been dispossessed, and for nearly two years she had been wandering the night streets of Berlin with her basket. Her story was that of thousands in the larger cities of Germany.

“No, I am not exactly sick,” she explained, after all but toppling over upon me, “but my heart is so weak that it gives way when I try to work. I faint in the street every few hours and know nothing about it until I find myself in some shop door or alleyway where passers-by have carried me. The back of my head and my neck have ached for more than a year now, all the time, from the chin clear around. It is lack of food. I know where I could get plenty of meat, if I could pay for it and spend six or seven marks for a coach to get there.”

“But you get American bacon now, don’t you?” I put in, more out of curiosity to know how she would answer than to get information.