Berlin

The contrast between the foreigners’ opulence and the natives’ destitution naturally sparked resentment. Die Weltbühne, a cosmopolitan journal published in Berlin, could not disguise its unease over the fact that foreign diplomats—even those from “exotic lands” like the “Nigger Republic of Liberia”—could live much better than their hosts. In his book

Hinterland, the writer Alfred Polgar took bitter note of American culinary extravagance at a local hotel:

In the small side room of the hotel there is a table not like other tables. A little flag with the stars and stripes stands in a vase amidst the flowers. A plate overflows with the whitest, wheatiest, sliced bread. Under a glass bell shimmers real butter, golden-yellow. There are unfamiliar boxes and cans, round and square, containing God knows what delicacies. From bowls and bottles waft delicate scents of spices and spirits. The natives at neighboring tables regard this culinary still-life with awe. Here dine the victors, the Americans! Hail to them! It is to their intervention in the war that we owe this peace with its Fourteen Points, these packets of dollars, this democracy, this being-eaten-out-of-house-and-home. We are loving America!

Not just the finest food was going to the visiting victors with their fists full of dollars. Berlin was now crawling with so-called “Valuta Frauen” or “Devisen Damen”—ladies whose motto was: “The man doesn’t have to be hard, but the currency does!” Apparently the currency in question need not be in large denominations. In one instance, reported by Hans Ostwald, an American began throwing small change on the floor in a seedy bar, shouting that only naked women were allowed to pick it up. A few girls smirked, but when a fat lady took off her clothes and dropped to her knees, all the others stripped and joined her on the floor in a mad scramble for the Yank’s spare change. One of the German men watching this scene was indignant, while another simply shrugged. “What’s wrong?” he said. “These women have to work a whole day for one American penny.”

“Berlin has become a much rawer place,” reported the police in July 1923. As we have seen, the German capital had never been a model of refinement, but the inflation era further roughened its edges. Crime rates rose as the mark fell, and the nature of the criminality tended to match the strange times. A band of thieves swept through the cemeteries and carted away bronze grave markers. Pickpockets working the streetcars eschewed coins and bills in favor of watches and money clips. A new kind of thief called a Fassadenkletterer (cat burglar) scaled the sides of apartment buildings and broke into elegant dwellings to steal jewels, furs, and silverware. Professional arsonists were much in demand to torch failing business for their insurance value. Like many branches of criminality, arson-for-hire was controlled by the Berlin Ringvereine

, which took a percentage of the insurance payments. Another crime of the times was the hoarding of foreign currency, which by law had to be exchanged for German money at the official rate. Of course, no one in his right mind gave up his foreign currency except to buy goods, so the police conducted periodic Devisenrazzien (foreign exchange raids) in places where hoarders were known to congregate. A raid in several Berlin coffeehouses in September 1923 netted 3,120 dollars, 36 English pounds, 373 Dutch guilders, and 475 Swiss francs. In addition to foreign currency and precious metals, much of the inflation-era criminality focused on food. Grocery stores and bakeries were robbed so often that owners posted twenty-four-hour guards and fitted their windows with iron bars. When some of Berlin’s finest racehorses went missing, it turned out they had been taken to a local slaughter house, where they fetched a fine price. Meanwhile, thousands of Berliners returned to their wartime practice of plundering outlying orchards and farms, but now they carried pistols and hand grenades to deploy against the farmers and their armed guards.