Berlin

By the winter of 1916/17 potatoes, too, were in short supply, so they were replaced by turnips, which Berliners had always regarded as animal fodder. The ubiquity of this bitter-tasting lumpen-vegetable prompted a new title for the national anthem: “Dotschland, Dotschland über Alles” (Turnip-land, Turnip-land Over All). As butter became increasingly scarce, the authorities urged people to spread their K-Bread with jam. But there was no jam to be had either. When an emergency shipment of plum jam failed to arrive in the capital, Berliners suspected that officials of the Ministry of Interior had colluded with speculators to send it elsewhere to make a profit for themselves. They also blamed the government for the proliferation of Ersatz (substitute) products, which were designed to mimic the physical appearance, but certainly not the taste, of the goods they replaced. Thus Berlin was inundated with ash masquerading as pepper, extract of fruit pips claiming to be oil, and a mixture of soda and starch pretending to be butter. With the proliferation of ersatz foods, anything natural was prized, including stray cats and even rats. People joked that there would soon be no rats in Berlin, only rat substitute. If a horse died in harness it was unlikely to make it to the knacker. Asta Nielsen recalled seeing a horde of

Hausfrauen butcher an old nag as soon as it dropped in the street: “They fought each other for the best pieces, their faces and clothing covered in blood. Other emaciated figures rushed over and scooped up the warm blood with cups and napkins. Only when the horse was reduced to a skeleton did the scavengers disperse, anxiously clutching bits of flesh to their hollow breasts.” Rumor had it that some Berliners were stuffing the bodies of departed relatives into closets to evade registering the death and losing the deceased’s ration card. By the end of 1916 even some of the better-off elements were becoming un-fashionably thin. “We are all gaunt and bony now,” noted Princess Blücher, “and have dark shadows around our eyes, and our thoughts are chiefly taken up with wondering what our next meal will be.”

Hungry Berliners carve up a horse cadaver, 1918

In their bitterness over the lack of decent food, Berliners often asserted that other parts of Germany, such as Bavaria, had it better. They also complained that refugees were “picking them clean.” Not surprisingly, the rest of the nation rejected such complaints as typical Berliner whining. Pointing to a fifty-gram increase in the meat ration for Berlin’s industrial workers, Bavarians claimed that it was the capital that was unjustly privileged.

Although Germans might argue over which part of the country suffered the worst shortages, none could dispute the fact that the poor in every major city, including Berlin, suffered the most. Starting in late fall 1914, long lines formed outside bakeries in the capital’s proletarian districts; often there was nothing left when people finally got to the counters. Berlin’s first serious food riots occurred in the working-class districts of Lichtenberg and Wedding in October 1915. Proletarian women, who bore the responsibility of finding food for their families, led the demonstrations. In one instance a group of them descended on a butter store whose owner had jacked up his prices. When he responded to their complaints by telling them that they’d soon be paying six marks for a pound of butter and “eating shit for dessert,” they beat him up and smashed his windows. A little later a mob of women stormed a meeting of the Social Democratic leadership to protest the party’s inaction in the food crisis. As the Socialist politician Otto Braun recalled, they threw stink bombs, cursed their leaders as feige Lumpen

(cowardly rogues), and suggested that they be sent to the trenches. “The comrades from other parts of the Reich got a very graphic demonstration of the unspeakably low level of political discourse in Berlin,” commented Braun in his diary.

It was not just food that was in short supply. By 1916/17 Berlin had inadequate stocks of coal, largely because there were too few trains available to transport coal from the mines to the capital. There was also a lack of horses to pull the coal-carts around the city. As a colorful, but ineffective, replacement, elephants from the Berlin Zoo were pressed into service. To conserve coal for home use, the authorities imposed some restrictions on illuminated advertisements and street lighting, but no efforts were made to curb industrial use or to regulate distribution. The major coal dealers in the capital were more or less free to dispose of their supplies as they saw fit. Here as elsewhere “total mobilization” really meant total freedom to exploit the crisis for private gain.

Elephants from the Berlin Zoo pressed into service during World War I