Auf Wiedersehn, Berlin!
I
HE was tall, and of that distressing thinness which we had come to know so well. His carriage was most military, although the painful limp with which he walked interfered with the habitual stiffness of his bearing. The right sleeve of his coat hung empty from the shoulder, and two fingers were missing from the hand thrust through the left. There was a profusion of bluish powder marks clustered about the disfiguring scar of his student days at the side of his jaw. He was a petty officer, who had been disabled in the first terrific rush through Belgium, already ensconced in a niche in the government service. He saluted with military precision, and awkwardly fumbled in the inside pocket of his coat with his poor, maimed hand, and drew forth a sheath of formidable-looking documents.
‘The respected American Frau has a summer villa at Wannsee, not?’ he boomed in a great bass voice, the one thing left to him of his former impressiveness. ‘It is forbidden that she occupy it. The respected American Frau has a sister living in — Strasse, not? It is forbidden that she visit this sister without a permit from the police. The respected American Frau has a number of friends living in — Strasse, not? It is forbidden that she communicate with them, with or without a permit. The American Frau has her foodcard registered, not? The card must be changed for a Bezugschein [buying permit]. The American Frau and her husband must report twice weekly at the police station to sign an Ausweis. Above all, the American Frau and her husband are forbidden to express themselves in any way to friends or neighbors.’
He again salutes with a trace of his former grandeur, and is gone.
It was our first real taste of war. Hitherto we had been living as quietly in Berlin as in any city in America. We had not been molested in any way, although we could not fail to notice the increasing bitterness toward the ‘silent enemy,’ as the people termed America. We had watched with anxious eyes the gathering clouds and had dreaded the breaking of the storm. To the very last moment we had hoped that diplomacy would find some way out of the difficulty.
Contrary to the general expectation in this country, that the authorities would repress President Wilson’s great message or blue pencil it into a harmless scrap of paper, the message was printed in full. For several days after the declaration of war and the publication of the message, the Americans in Berlin were very nervous. Knowing well the temper of the populace, we expected an outbreak. But there was no demonstration of any kind, and in a day or two we walked the streets without fear. It seemed as if the people had become so used to ultimatums and declarations that they took them as a matter of course.
As for the message as a whole, it was resented as an impertinence. Whatever comment it did arouse, its critics could not say that the noble phrases of President Wilson were not received with respect. Bitterly as they have come to hate him, deep in their hearts the German people respect the President. They know him as a teacher and a philosopher, at one time the president of a great university, and as such receive his word with deference. Time and time again in intellectual circles of Berlin we have heard the relative merits as leaders of Lloyd George and Mr. Wilson discussed, with the verdict always in favor of the President.
In his message President Wilson said that America ‘had taken up the gage of battle with the natural foe of liberty . . . to fight for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of the peoples, the German peoples included.’ These phrases were the ones most resented in Berlin. The German people have the same erroneous opinion of their freedom that they have of their democracy. A country in which a Bundesrat represents the government of the individual states of the Empire, and the legislative functions are invested in a body — the Reichstag — elected by universal suffrage, and in which ministers can be changed at will, — they do not say whose will, — the Germans claim is a true democracy and free in every sense of the word.
The consensus of opinion at the time of the receipt of the message was that the Germans were cultured enough to select the form of government which they best liked, and wished no other thrust upon them. They claimed that theirs was the only true democratic spirit, and that if it were not, the country would not have thrived so prodigiously. They alluded with pride to the fame of their universities, and to the respect with which their teachings and doctrines were received. If a truer democracy or a superior form of government could have been devised, it would have emanated from these great institutions. They never could be brought to realize that the whole world has armed itself for protection against the insufferable doctrines preached in these same institutions.
They openly scoff at the charge that the destiny of the universities is directed by the Emperor’s mighty hand, and that no law or philosophy of which he disapproves may be promulgated. By the simple removal of the exponent of the particular principles which are distasteful to him, the Emperor maintains the form of democracy which pleases him. Thus has he reduced his people to mere units, who are content with the doctrines he dictates, and do not recognize the ‘selfish and autocratic power’ that he holds over them.
If there shall be a revolt against this august personage, it will not have its origin in Berlin. Rarely are the harrowing phases of the war revealed to the people of the metropolis. Berlin is coddled, pampered. The burden that is imposed on her is not as heavy as that borne by other municipalities. Her food-supply is greater, and the restrictions are not as tightly drawn. The cities in the extreme North are lifeless. Unable to contribute their share to the great conflict, they are neglected, a greater toll of man-power being exacted from them. Photographs were shown in private circles of the ’longshore women of Cuxhaven being driven like sheep to load the ships with supplies; mere shapeless snags of women — flat-chested and devoid of feminine grace, slouching along with unwomanly disregard of their appearance. And yet, only three years ago these coarse, frowsy creatures were noted for the sturdiness of their carriage and a certain rugged voluptuousness. The government considered these photographs of sufficient importance to make a house-to-house search in the district for copies of them and to arrest the holder of the negative.
The bitter discontent of the Southern cities is not apparent in Berlin. The poverty is more successfully hidden. Fewer bread and fuel riots have been reported in this city than in other places, where the factories have turned blank fronts for the past two years. Now and then there is an attempt by the authorities to force things, ‘whoop her up,’ as one hears at the camp-meetings; to make people forget their troubles. Shortly after Mr. Gerard’s departure a slight military gain, which had been magnified by the government into a great victory, was seized upon as an occasion to enhearten the burghers. Berlin broke into bunting, and there was a great deal of handshaking and a mighty chorus of ‘Hochs’ in the neighborhood of Wilhelmstrasse, with a feebler echo from the people. Restrictions were removed for the day, and an attempt was made to revive the old street-dancing. ‘Berlin wachelt [foxtrots] in the face of her enemies,’ was the way the papers described it next day. Yes, the city was gay; but it was like a re-dyed carpet, brilliant in spots, with the worn and faded portions painfully visible at the seams and edges.
The shops of Berlin, once the most splendid in the world, show a more complete line of goods than is carried in most cities of Germany. In many of the departments the merchandise displayed is very little less than in normal times: but that, perhaps, is due to the government restriction of purchases. One may not buy what one wishes without governmental sanction. In other towns the depleted stock has not been replenished, and the stores have had to close in consequence. Goods for which merchants in other large cities have clamored in vain are freely displayed in Berlin, and in some cases the restriction is publicly winked at. All discontent primarily radiates from a centre of opinion and sentiment. Berlin is the fount from which dissatisfaction would naturally flow. Therefore, the official hand is not as heavily placed on her as on her sister cities.
What really bothered the Germans more than the declaration of war by America was the fear of the embargo on food shipped from the United States to neutral countries, which has since gone into effect. Official Germany, while secretly raging at the English blockade and openly sneering at it as ineffective, had no real fear of it so long as the adjoining neutral states could import American food and ship their own across the borders. The man on the street was keenly aware of this, and eagerly scanned the bulletins for news of the establishment of the American embargo.
The food bought on government cards was of the coarsest, the simple necessities which we had come to regard as great delicacies being shipped or smuggled into the country from Denmark or Holland. Naturally, if the embargo on food shipped to these countries was established, the shipments to Germany would decrease, and both the army and the people would suffer.
When we left Berlin this subject was being widely discussed, as the date set for the proposed embargo was fast approaching. The people had been glutted on the so-called victories, which had never resulted in getting anywhere, and were beginning to recognize the seriousness of the situation. The official hand cannot chuck Berlin under the chin much longer.
II
It is not food only that is lacking in the city. Fuel is very scarce, and the inhabitants await with much dread the coming of the winter. Last winter we practically lived in one room; the children dressing and undressing in it, then scuttling into the cold bedrooms and jumping into bed. Ours was supposed to be a steam-heated apartment; but early in the winter the landlord made a sweeping reduction in rent, providing us with a stove that was more often gray than red. We are very close observers and have a wide experience, and in view of the lack of fuel and the protracted shortage of food, we do not see how the civic population can hold out another winter.
As for ourselves, we had fared better than the majority of the natives, who, despite the food-cards, influence, or social position, were unable to obtain the simple delicacies at our command. In the first year of the war and in face of the growing shortage, no unusual restrictions were placed on the supplies, although the dictatorship was immediately established. Confidence in a short and victorious war was unshaken and undue economy was not thought essential. No one really suffered, and there was no appreciable decrease in supplies; nothing but a rapidly rising wave of indignation at the increasing prices.
It was not until the second year of the war that we felt the taut rein, and then it really did not touch us. Our government card enabled us to buy at the stores, and also we could buy in greater quantities on the side, from dealers who would not sell to most German housewives for fear of being reported for extortion. While our neighbors bemoaned a shortage in everything, very rarely were we refused anything.
The beginning of the third year of the war found the shortage acute. The rigid mathematical lines of people maintained by the police before the stores were very difficult to control, and more than once they broke away and gathered in ominous groups to discuss the situation. Sometimes, after hours of weary waiting, the purchaser departed empty-handed, the supplies in that particular shop having given out. It was bad enough to wait for hours in a line for the privilege of paying 2 marks 40 pfg. for a pound of horsemeat, only to be gruffly told that there was no more; to rush madly to the stores which sold broth made from the same meat at 40 pfg. a quart, and find that it also was all sold.
About this time the much-spoken-of substitutes for food were placed on the market: ill-tasting messes, which contained little or no nourishment and from which one turned away in disgust. They were all very wonderful, these concoctions of German science and efficiency, greatly impressing the commissioners, newspaper correspondents, and investigators sent by other governments. But they did not have to subsist on the messes. They could get out of the country.
The cheapest and most popular of these were the mussel sausage, a terrible concoction of ground mussels and spices which had been subjected to some chemical process, and in which lingered a trace of the combination; fish sausage, slightly different in taste and most unappetizing; and rabbit sausage, about the most palatable of the sausage substitutes, and, consequently, prohibitive in price.
Chunks of dried sea-lion meat were shipped into the country in the manner of jerked beef. Soaked for a number of hours, and cut into small pieces, it was made into a stew with onions. Some people thickened the gravy and served it with Spetzel, a South German dumpling made of flour, but, alas, no eggs as in the past. After one or two attacks of nausea people came to like the concoction. It filled a vacuum, and that is everything when one’s head is light from a still lighter diet. The same meat corned and called Robbin’s Fleisch was sold, and served in slices, at four marks a pound. It was a very good imitation of corned beef, better than stewed, and could be eaten cold on bread. As the potatoes became scarce, the bread which had been doled out on allowance began to deteriorate in quality. As long as it was composed of twenty per cent of potato-flour it was not bad, and served to satisfy the children when spread with malt extract, in place of sugar or syrup, or with the famous Kriegsmarmalad, a marmalade made of saccharine, beets, tomatoes, and turnips, colored red. With the reduction of the potato-flour in the bread, coarser grains were added; but now five per cent sawdust and five per cent flour ground from straw are used. In consequence people are suffering greatly from anemia; stomach-troubles are on the increase, especially ulcers of the stomach, and thread-worms, spitzesckwanzwurm, unusual in adults, are increasing past human endurance.
The famous Süsse, or fresh butter, entirely disappeared from the tables in the second year of the war. A very poor quality of Danish butter, such as is exported from Denmark to the tropics in tins, was smuggled into the country and sold as high as 8 to 10 marks the pound tin. It had the consistency of vaseline, which it resembled, and to our minds tasted very much like it. Spread beneath the sticky and sickeningly sweet preparations, it passed. For frying purposes it was useless, ruining everything that was fried in it; for, no matter how much it was shaken, dried out, or flavored, the rancid flavor clung to it still. A pound tin was very small and did not go very far; but by a judicious adding of a quantity of flour and the yolk of an egg it could be doubled in quantity.
Chickens became very rare and beyond reach of the poor. Crows and seagulls, shown and plainly labeled in the markets, were considered great delicacies and were eagerly purchased by the people who could afford them. No venison had appeared in the markets for months, and when a lone haunch was temptingly displayed, ten to twelve marks a pound was asked. For that matter, all the better cuts of meat brought the same price. The cheaper cuts, sold on government cards at two to three marks a pound, were very coarse and tough, and could be used only for stews and goulash. As it was, these cuts were bought by many of the best families in the city.
The government, once so strict in the regulation of the slaughter-houses, is winking at the use of diseased cattle for food. Rigid inspection is a thing of the past. Slightly tuberculous beef was sold in the poorer districts, and meat that would have been rejected as too dangerous to use in any form was boiled and condensed to a gelatine for broths and soups, and sold to the very poor.
An occasional hog was smuggled into the city and fattened in the cellar. This was the greatest violation of regulations that the authorities had to contend with — cellar-hoarding. Lately they were inclined to wink at it if the government got its share on a fifty-fifty basis. If a hog was kept on the premises, the government meat-card was confiscated, and the owner was required to feed the animal according to government regulation. If the householder was the fortunate possessor of a cow, he was not permitted to buy milk or butter. In the past year a cow has been an honored member of more than one palatial residence, leading a pampered existence in the courtyard. Permits to raise chickens on the balconies were granted; but the eggs had to be handed over to the government.
There has been no coffee in the market for two years, its place being taken by a preparation of browned barley, acorns, and white carrots, called Rote-bega, the aroma of which is very much like coffee, but the taste, oh, so different! The government allowance of sugar was one pound a week for a household. We experienced no difficulty, however, in buying large quantities from the hoarders at four to five marks a pound. Rice too has disappeared from the shelves in the stores; rice which the German Hausfrau loves, and which she served in so many tempting forms: boiled in cream, fruit-puddings, frozen rice-custard, and rice gelatine à la crême. In the early part of the year the head of our house became ill and was ordered on a rice diet. After days of weary hunting and much whispered direction, five pounds of rice were discovered in a distant store and forty marks gladly paid for them.
Throughout the city small laundries have slowly closed up. There was no laundry soap to be had at any price, and the preparations of potash substitutes furnished by the government rusted and rotted the clothes. Soapstone was used for a time, and it was not an unusual sight to see some muscular laundress vigorously soapstoning a dainty piece of linen until it fell into holes in her efforts to get it clean. Toilet soap was almost as rare as the dodo bird, eight to ten marks being asked for a piece of the commonest kind.
The leather-supply also reached a low ebb. The inferior leather used in the shoes did not last very long. A shoecard was issued by the government, allowing one pair of shoes to each family every two months. If the card was presented within the time-limit marked, the dealer, in fear of a heavy fine, referred the purchaser to the police. Last winter we were refused in every instance, and were compelled to rake through the closet for discarded shoes whose uppers would warrant soling. As it was, we could not find a whole pair of soles in Berlin. The shoes were patched with six pieces of leather, held together by rivets manufactured for the purpose, for which the shoemaker charged us twelve marks, more than the original cost of the shoes. The same small pieces are sold in sets of ten, eight for the sole and two for the heel, thereby enabling the women to make the repairs at home.
As has been stated, we had no trouble in procuring supplies, such as they were. Having no fear of being reported by an American family, one dealer sold us at one time one hundred pounds of an American cereal and two hundred and fifty pounds of onions. The latter were a godsend, and although we were compelled to eat them in every form, — boiled, fried, stuffed, and creamed, — we were very grateful. Then a friend, also an American, made frequent trips to Denmark, returning with delicacies which the wealthiest German would have bartered his soul for, and which he smuggled into the country with the greatest ease because of his being an American.
This gentleman’s fondness for news from the outside world more than once came near being his undoing. He bought all papers and traveled any distance to get news. All papers were procurable at the hotels up to May of the present year. People have marveled that, with so rigid a censorship, foreign papers were permitted to be sold. The German people bear a marked resemblance to the ostrich. They do not read the foreign papers, and the few who do would not believe the reports printed therein. On occasions when the German army met with a reverse, the papers were seized and the newsdealer bore the loss.
On a day when supplies were very scarce and the patience of the people was being sorely tried, our neighbor came along the street reading his English paper. Happening to stop in front of a store before which a number of people were lined up, he was approached by the policeman in charge, who asked for the news. His eye lighted on a fullpage advertisement of the Selfridge Department Store in London, and he asked the American to translate it.
‘Ham, one shilling and sixpence a pound,’ he read; ‘not more than ten pounds to a customer.’ ‘ Ach Schinken! ’ exclaimed the policeman, throwing his arms aloft in an ecstasy of despair. ‘When have I tasted Schinken! Hören Sie,’ he called to the waiting people, ‘die Schweine, die Viecher, still sell ten pounds of ham to a person.’
And amid a chorus of incredulous Achs! our neighbor passed on. Looking backward, he saw that the once corpulent policeman was being supported by a couple of men. The thought of ten pounds of ham sold all at once was too much for him.
III
The declaration of war made very little difference in our social life. We had been always freely received, and only occasionally did we run across any person who resented the American attitude in the great conflict. Naturally, there were individuals who felt strongly enough in the matter to take exception to our presence; but none of our family was openly affronted. We attended Red Cross meetings and worked beside women who had been bereft of husbands, sons, and brothers.
At one of these meetings we met an American girl, Dorothy Seiter, whom for the longest time we could not understand. She had come to Berlin in 1915, to study music. She was more German than the Germans, surprising the ladies present by her radical criticism of the land in which she was born.
She declared in very emphatic tones that she was wholly ashamed of America’s performance in the war; that it was nothing more than a mercenary attitude; that it was criminal to ship ammunition; that the politicians were controlled by English capital; and that if she were behind that old President Wilson she’d bet he would put an embargo on the ammunition to the Allies.
We did not understand her attitude, but reserved our decision. Soon after we learned that the girl had fallen in love with a certain Herr Leutnant, who was at home on furlough. She was hopelessly in love with her bronzed soldier, and would have blown up every ordnance plant in America which manufactured the bullets which some day might deprive her of her lover.
Dorothy visited us very frequently, and once came in company with her Herr Leutnant, an exceedingly disagreeable man, who seemed to think that he was committing an act of treason by entering the house of an English-speaking family. Shortly after the visit he returned to the front, and the girl came to us broken-hearted. She was more anti-American than ever, and one or the other of us would have given her a sound shaking if we dared. As it was, she met with a very cold reception, which did not seem to embarrass her. As long as we permitted her to babble of the bravery of her Herr Leutnant, she was oblivious to anything else.
It was the Dorothys in Berlin that gave the German people a most erroneous impression of the true state of affairs. On their vaporings the people built up great hopes of internal intervention, and the assistance of the five hundred thousand reserves supposed to be residing in the United States. The people had come to regard the great German-American municipalities as colonies, which could be relied upon in an emergency. How else could things go in a land where newspapers printed in German daily published criticism of the government? The awakening was very rude and sudden.
About this time the news was printed in the Berlin papers of the arrival of American soldiers in France. The people were disinclined to believe it, having the same respect for our military preparedness which they had for the English, whose miserable first hundred thousand they had speedily wiped out. Very eagerly we studied the papers for news of the disposition of these soldiers, and the ink had not been dried before we read of the terrible slaughter which had occurred. The German soldiers had welcomed with joy the coming of these ‘recruits,’ who had been rushed to the front as soon as the clothes were provided to cover them decently. And this report was published in the face of the first letter we had read in a Berlin paper, from a mother who passionately protested against boys of seventeen and eighteen being sent to the front after only six weeks of training. In a day or so we read reports of the congestion of the field-hospitals with the American soldiers, who had been mowed down as soon as they entered the trenches. We were not very much distressed by these reports, as we had learned to take all great German victories with a grain of salt. On our arrival in this country we learned that similar rumors had been spread here, and, what seemed strange to us, had been credited, an official denial being necessary to put them to rest.
Toward the end of June we were reported to the police as anti-German. At first we suspected Dorothy; but, later, we found that it was our Fräulein, a governess whom we had had in our employ for five years. In a thoughtless moment the head of the house had boasted that as far back as two years ago the Auswärtt gen Amt was afraid that American engineers would be sent to rebuild and reorganize Russia. Also he begged to differ when the Fräulein emphatically said that the U-boats would finish England in six weeks. Therefore, she indignantly rose from the table and stalked from the room. We had no idea that she would report us, as she was so very pleasant next day. We were sure that she loved the children too dearly to jeopardize the liberty of their parents. She is what General Hindenburg called a Miesmacher (trouble-maker), not a peacemaker.
But report us she did, and the police appeared at our door and ordered us to report at once at the station house. Here we were questioned closely and dismissed with a warning. We had been calling twice weekly at the station to have our Ausweis stamped; now we were commanded to appear twice daily, morning and evening, to report. When we reached home we found that some one had been there in our absence, and while the Fräulein had enticed the children into the Frau Portier’s rooms, had thoroughly searched the apartment.
Now that we had been drawn into the meshes of the great German secret service, we felt strangely helpless. The head of the house called the Fräulein in and questioned her; but she denied any knowledge of the presence of the searchers. Indeed, despite indisputable evidence of strangers having been in the apartment, she openly scoffed at the idea, reluctantly admitting that, if searchers had been there, they were, perhaps, hoard-inspectors. Only the week before, she said, glibly, inspectors had made a raid in the apartment of the family above and secured a quantity of flour, sugar, and cereals. But the fact did not reassure us, and after a whispered consultation we decided to pull stakes and, after an absence of fifteen years, return to our native land.
We knew that we were watched; each day we became more aware of it. Not only did we suspect the Fräulein; but certain dark-clothed men had a way of springing unawares out of dark corners of the hall and apologizing profusely after staring suspiciously at us. The children were becoming frightened and we were growing very nervous under the strain.
Judge, then, the joy that we felt when Señor—, an attache of the Spanish Legation in Berlin, called on us and reported that an inquiry had been made by the United States Government at Madrid concerning our welfare and asking for full particulars about us. Oh, the blessings we showered on the strong arm which stretched across the sea in protection of its citizens absent these fifteen years.
We informed Señor — of the true state of affairs and asked his advice. He was non-committal, but said he would return in a day or two and inform us of the intention of the government. He did return within that time and with a copy of a cablegram from the State Department, requesting us to leave Berlin immediately.
The same day the name of Dorothy’s Herr Leutnant appeared in the list of those reported killed, and the girl came to us weeping bitterly. With the cause of her unnatural bitterness against her native land removed, there seemed to awaken in the girl a strange and intense longing to see its shore. After her grief had subsided, we informed her of our intended departure. She immediately announced her intention of returning also, and asked permission to travel with us.
On the first day of July we applied for permission to leave the country. The day after, we were summoned to the police station and went through the same rigorous examination as to our purpose in leaving the country. We had a long and elaborate excuse prepared; but when the question was bluntly put to the head of the house, he forgot all about it and as bluntly replied that the State Department in America had cabled us to come home. This seemed to impress the official and he asked no further questions. He gave us the permission to leave, at the same time forbidding us to remove from the city any of our household belongings. He also informed us that an inspector would call upon us and personally destroy all commercial books and stationery. No papers except those furnished by the police would be permitted to be carried, and all cards, even to ‘At Home’ announcements, must be surrendered. No more than a thousand marks was to be allowed to each person, which, considering the depreciation of the mark, seemed a ridiculously small sum of money to allow a person for a journey of four thousand miles. However, we realized the uselessness of argument and left the station promising to obey all commands.
Luckily for us there was a Red Cross meeting at our house that afternoon. When the members were called to order we announced our intention of leaving Berlin for all time. In the fifteen years we had resided in the city we had made some very charming friends, and there was great regret expressed at our determination to return to America. True to the frugal instincts characteristic of the German people, the ladies seemed as greatly worried about the fate of our furniture as about the perils that might arise on the long voyage.
Up to that time we had not given much thought to our worldly goods; but now we announced that we would take an inventory of the furniture and dispose of it at private sale. We had refurnished just before the war, at great expense. Thanks to the care of the well-trained German servant, the stuff was in splendid condition. In the eagerness of the women present to inspect the furniture, we realized for the first time to what straits the people of the city are reduced to secure necessaries for the household.
Some of the ladies ran into the drawing-room — ours was an eight-room apartment, and we did the Red Cross work in the nursery — to inspect rugs, paintings, piano, and furniture. Here was an opportunity to make purchases without the everlasting card, and they proposed to make them. It was not until a more considerate friend warned us to keep secret all information of the proceeds realized, that the limitation of the amount of money we could take out of the country occurred to us. After that we conducted things very quietly.
There was some very active bidding among the ladies for the furniture, and some little feeling was aroused. Frau Komerseinrat Spengler implored us to reserve the dining-room set for her. Frau Geheimrat Asch begged us to save it for her, informing us in an impressive whisper that her husband had made a great fortune in governmental Lichtspiel, — moving-pictures advantageously representing the government cause, — and was able to pay any price we asked. She was about to buy a new dining-room set when war was declared; but upon advice she decided to wait. Now there was not a decent set of furniture of any kind in the stores, nothing but veneer and lacquer.
Frau Sanitätsrat Wiederholt, the wife of one of the leading physicians in the city, who was suspected of fattening geese in her cellar and selling them at an exorbitant price, offered to buy all the rugs on the spot. As in all wars, the rich have grown richer and the poor, poorer; but the great middle class of Berlin had discovered ways to equalize their incomes. One of them is fattening creatures of any food-value in the cellars of their homes. Like Frau Sanitätsrat Wiederholt, another of our friends, the widow of a member of the Bourse, who fell in the first year of the war, has made a tidy little fortune from fattening pigeons and raising rabbits.
In the early stages of the war, when the government demanded all household copper, in company with others we had surrendered ours, although as foreigners we were not called upon to do so. In its place we had bought aluminum — an ordinary set such as you see displayed in any department store. A couple of months before, the government had issued an order forbidding the use of metals in kitchen utensils and confiscating all on sale. Never shall we forget the almost wistful eagerness of these women to possess our one little set of aluminum pots. We have left some very good friends behind; but none who will think of us more kindly than the half dozen women to each of whom we gave one aluminum pot, and who smuggled them out of the house as carefully and secretly as if they had been the crown jewels.
We received fabulous prices for our goods. An oriental rug that had cost us one thousand marks brought five thousand; another, which we had picked up in Florence for fifteen hundred marks, we parted with reluctantly at eight thousand. The dining-room set, which had originally cost four thousand marks, sold for just double that sum. The wall tapestries in our living-room, which were most unpretentious for a Berlin home of its class and had been acquired at various times, at a cost to us of eight thousand marks, were considered a bargain at fifteen thousand.
It seemed a shame to take such excessive profit; but when you think of the great depreciation of the mark and the length of time it may take to recover anything like its real value, the sale of household goods will not seem quite so much like the betrayal of our friends. The mark has fallen into disfavor throughout Europe. In Denmark they still accept it at fifty per cent of its face-value; but in Norway and Sweden, the countries which have profited most by Germany’s misfortune, they positively refuse to accept it at all. It was well for us that we were able to get some American gold in exchange at the Spanish Embassy, or we should have fared badly.
It was our last day in Berlin. Our numerous friends had called and bidden us a tearful farewell. Our meagre little stock of wearing apparel was packed, and we were waiting for Dorothy, who proposed to return to America with us. But the authorities would not permit the girl to leave the country. They were suspicious of her excessive pro-Germanism, her great zeal in behalf of their own cause, her continual disparagement and condemnation of her native land. They thought that it masked a deeper and more subtle motive. Therefore, Dorothy must live within a proscribed area in Berlin, report twice daily at the station house to sign her Ausweis, and is forbidden to communicate with her friends. But she had obtained a special permit to accompany us to the railroad station, where we left her standing, weeping bitterly, as we said, ‘Auf wiedersehn, Berlin.’