Berlin’s

Black Market
1939-1950

Malte Zierenberg
Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950
 Worlds of Consumption
Published in association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC
Series Editors: Hartmut Berghoff and Uwe Spiekermann
Worlds of Consumption is a peer-reviewed venue for the history of consumption and
consumerism in the modern era, especially the twentieth century, with a particular focus on
comparative and transnational studies. It aims to make research available in English from an
increasingly internationalized and inter-disciplinary field. The history of consumption offers
a vital link among diverse fields of history and other social sciences, because modern societies
are consumer societies whose political, cultural, social, and economic structures and practices
are bound up with the history of consumption. Worlds of Consumption highlights and explores
these linkages, which deserve wide attention, since they shape who we are as individuals and
societies.

Published by Palgrave Macmillan:

Decoding Modern Consumer Societies
Edited by Hartmut Berghoff and Uwe Spiekerman
The Development of Consumer Credit in Global Perspective: Business, Regulation,
and Culture
Edited by Jan Logemann
The Rise of Marketing and Market Research
Edited by Hartmut Berghoff, Philip Scranton, and Uwe Spiekermann
The Science of Beauty: Culture and Cosmetics in Modern Germany, 1750–1930
By Annelie Ramsbrock
Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950
By Malte Zierenberg
Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Malte Zierenberg
BERLIN ’ S BLACK MARKET : 1939–1950
Copyright © Malte Zierenberg 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-01774-1
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First published 2015 by
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accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN: 978-1-349-55431-7
E-PDF ISBN: 978–1–137–01775–8
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-137-01775-8
Distribution in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world is by Palgrave
Macmillan®, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England,
company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zierenberg, Malte.
[Stadt der Schieber. English]
Black market Berlin : profiteers, illegal networds, and urban space in the
German capital, 1939–1950 / Malte Zierenberg.
pages cm. — (Worlds of consumption)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary: “This is a social history of Berlin’s black market during World
War II and the post-war period, looking at both its participants and their
practices, the macroeconomic context in which the market operated and the
everyday strategies that were deployed by individuals to navigate the market.
Malte Zierenberg reveals the black market to be a complex structure, which
is on the one hand a geographical space but on the other hand represents
a conceptual category within an economy” — Provided by publisher.
Summary: “This book puts the illegal economy of the German capital during
and after World War II into context and provides a new interpretation of
Germany’s postwar history. The black market, it argues, served as a
reference point for the beginnings of the two new German
states” — Provided by publisher.
1. Black market—Germany—Berlin—History—20th century. I. Title.
HF5482.65.G3Z5413 2015
381—dc23 2015014745
A catalogue record for the book is available from the British Library.
 Contents

List of Figures vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1
1 Prologues 19
2 The Wartime Networks: The Martha Rebbien Case 47
3 Destruction, Disorientation, and New Patterns of Order: Changes
in the Black Market Landscape during the Transition from War to
Postwar 111
4 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform 127
5 Stories of a New Beginning: The Economy of the Streets between
the Currency Reform and the “Economic Miracle” 187
Conclusion: Black Market Trading as a Radical Experience of
a Free Market 209

Notes 215
Bibliography 257
Index 273
 Figures

2.1 The black market network of Martha Rebbien 50

2.2 Cluster 1 of Martha Rebbien’s black market network 53
2.3 Cluster 2 of Martha Rebbien’s black market network 54
2.4 Age of female defendants in cases of war economy crimes 61
2.5 Occupation groups of female defendants in cases of war
economy crimes 62
2.6 Age of male defendants in cases of war economy crimes 62
2.7 Occupation groups of male defendants in cases of war
economy crimes 63
2.8 Defendants’ places of residence in cases of war economy crimes 84
2.9 Goods and services in black market transactions 99
4.1 Black market at the ticket counter of the Schönhauser Allee
train station (Prenzlauer Berg) 132
4.2 Black market in Wedding district (Müllerstrasse) 137
4.3 Women with jewelry in a black market in Zehlendorf, July 10,
1948 138
4.4 Groups of merchants in a black market in Berlin (around
1946) 140
4.5 Schematic representation of the F-formation system 140
4.6 Evaluating goods and negotiating in Berlin’s black market
(around 1946) 141
4.7 Distribution system for Rasno cigarettes 155
4.8 Occupation groups of male black marketeers, Superior Court
of Justice, 1949–1952 171
4.9 Occupation groups of female black marketeers, Superior Court
of Justice, 1949–1952 172
4.10 Dress codes and typical postures in the black market, Berlin
1948 183
4.11 Children selling cigarettes on the black market in Schöneberg,
1948 184
 Acknowledgments

This book may have one author, but it certainly also has many facilitators. I would
like to thank Hartmut Berghoff and Uwe Spiekermann of the German His-
torical Institute, Washington, DC, who kindly accepted this book into their
Worlds of Consumption series. Hans-Peter Ullmann tremendously supported me
as I launched into my research and, together with Margit Szöllösi-Janze, reviewed
the original German manuscript. That manuscript, however, would neither exist
nor have been able to see the light of day without the generous support of the
Fritz Thyssen Foundation. My thanks also go to the German Historical Institute
in London and the Schmoelders Foundation for much needed assistance during
the final writing stage—the most critical for any research project.
I am indebted to Danuta Kneipp, Annelie Ramsbrock, Felizitas Schaub, Molly
Loberg, and Thomas Mergel for their help and steady encouragement. I would
furthermore like to thank Jeffrey Verhey for taking on the challenge of trans-
lating the sometimes awkwardly academic German text into readable English.
Mark Stoneman and Patricia Sutcliffe superbly edited the English text. Barbara
Schaeche of the Landesarchiv Berlin proved to be the most helpful and generous
archivist I had the privilege of working with. Thanks to you all.
 Introduction

The true war is a celebration of markets. Organic markets, carefully styled “black”
by the professionals, spring up everywhere. Scrip, Sterling, Reichsmarks continue
to move, severe as classical ballet, inside their antiseptic marble chambers. But out
here, down here among the people, the truer currencies come into being.
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow1
124356
batrer
A Berlin woman using numbers to correct a mistyped word in her memoir
manuscript2
The opinion of broad circles—and there are indeed many indicators of this—is
that black marketeers should, as a rule, go to hell in the end.
Max Brinkmann, Little Handbook for Black Marketeers3

Y
et another November 9. A less important one perhaps, certainly a differ-
ent one. On November 9, 1944, Martha Rebbien, a black marketeer, was
arrested in her Berlin apartment. For four years, she had participated in
the black market, had found partners with whom to exchange goods, had learned
the rules of the market, and had built up a distribution system. The present study
uses Martha Rebbien’s exchange network as a thread to hold the story together.
Because the history of these networks is embedded in their historical context,
this is more than the history of an illegal trader. It is also the history of a market,
the participants in this market, their practices and methods, the macroeconomic
context, and how individuals adapted to everyday conditions. Finally, this is also
the history of a city and its inhabitants during the transition from war to postwar.
By following our protagonist Martha Rebbien and her companions, as well as the
traders of Berlin’s illegal public marketplaces after 1945, we get a clearer picture
of the black market as a radical market experience. It was this radical experience,
this book argues, that shaped the discourses on postwar economies in both East
and West Germany as key concepts for establishing the legitimacy of the new
states.
This undertaking requires us to broaden our horizons. Up to now, historians
have largely focused on those seemingly anachronistic black market activities that
2 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

took place after the war ended. Yet unlawful trading was already visible in the
middle of the 1930s, and it became a mass phenomenon when the war began,
changing shape in the following years. Until the winter of 1944–45, black market
trading mainly took place indoors with a limited number of participants. Martha
Rebbien’s story evinces this trend. Starting in November 1944 at the very lat-
est, there were black markets in Berlin’s streets and public squares. As a result,
prerequisites for participation in this forbidden form of trade changed. Since it
was no longer necessary to make arrangements to meet and trade, building up
a complex network to exchange goods was also superfluous. Whoever wanted to
trade something on the black market merely had to visit one of the illegal public
markets located throughout the city.
Berlin’s postwar black markets are well known and frequently visited sites of
memory. Pictures of Germans and Allied soldiers exchanging goods in front of
the Brandenburg Gate or the ruins of the Reichstag constitute an essential part
of Germans’ collective memory; they are a recurring theme in the stories and
reports of life among the ruins. Yet historians have generally avoided these sites
and paid little attention to the wartime history of the conditions favorable to
their emergence. It is not that the black markets do not appear in the historiogra-
phy, but they are usually only mentioned in passing, as if they were not worth an
in-depth examination because of their fleeting, ephemeral nature.4 With only a
few exceptions, the markets have remained well known but largely uninvestigated
sites of contemporary history.5 This is due only in part to their peculiar character,
which seems to lie somewhere between the immoral and something worthy of a
Hollywood adventure. For the most part, one must explain this lack of attention
with reference to a general historiographical trend. For a long time, the history of
the immediate postwar years was largely neglected, especially for questions that
lay outside conventional political or economic history. Indeed, macroeconomic
questions long predominated in debates about the founding period of the Federal
Republic. Looking for answers, researchers ended up replicating a central con-
temporary obsession with the paradigm of an economic upswing, thus diverting
attention away from the cultural history of the transition period between Nazi
Germany at war and the establishment of a new (divided) postwar order.6
To be sure, one can apprehend “the wild, reckless conditions” of this mad
“epochal break” in German history by examining economic activity, but the usual
concepts and categories of economic history are not adequate for such an under-
taking. Instead, one must turn to the economics of everyday life, understood as
a comprehensive process of negotiation and reevaluation of relationships among
people, goods, city spaces, and societal norms. Martin Broszat, Klaus-Dietmar
Henke, and Hans Woller emphasize quite rightly that the transition from war to
postwar was not merely an “episode,” even taking into account the exceptional
situation.7 For contemporaries, the experiences of the 1940s were intertwined
with those of the previous years. Above all, World War I and the interwar period
provided a set of experiences that shaped practices, perceptions, and attitudes in
the years that followed. When the West Berlin government asked older citizens
in the 1970s to write down their memories of the postwar years for a contest,
 Introduction ● 3

the response was substantial. Alongside other themes, the black market played a
central role in numerous accounts.8 And in 1989, when “illegal trading” (wilder
Handel) appeared in the form of the so-called Polish markets that occupied the
empty spaces left by the Berlin Wall’s collapse, public authorities and the authors
of letters to the editor discussed the new markets in conceptual terms whose
relationship to the black markets of the 1940s could not be denied.9
Research by Broszat, Henke, Woller, and their collaborators broke new ground
in 1988 by focusing on the myriad changes that the Wehrmacht’s defeat in
Stalingrad and the “total” war that ensued brought about in German society
in 1942–43. The deepening war not only produced massive social changes but
also affected the population’s experiences and expectations. This transformation,
these historians argued, only came to an end in 1948 with the West German
currency reform and the beginning of a normalization on almost every level
of society.10 In recent years, a fresh impetus to study the transitional wartime
and postwar years has come primarily from scholars in the United States. These
authors are interested in a cultural history of the transition period that breaks
open established narratives and lends more weight to individual groups of actors
and their actions and perceptions, while keeping an eye on the economic, legal,
and political structures of this historical process. The present study takes up
this task by focusing on the Berliners’ illegal trading in cultural terms, that is,
by understanding the economic history of the Berlin black market as a cultural
history.11
This book focuses on the Berlin black market between 1939 and 1950. As
early as 1936, the political decision to steer the movement of goods through
extensive regulations according to the needs of the National Socialist war econ-
omy limited consumers’ room to maneuver. Then the rationing system installed
at the beginning of the war radicalized this development.12 The imposed con-
straints had a leveling effect inasmuch as they divided everyone who received
goods into certain groups without regard for reputation or class. In fact, many
experienced this development as a form of social humiliation. They were indig-
nant at being subsumed under the category of “normal consumer.” Furthermore,
the establishment of the rationing system was followed by a phenomenon that
Rainer Gries has called a “comparing mentality.”13 From that point on, people
kept a wary eye on each other, and denunciations became daily occurrences.
Pursuing a prophylactic policy to secure their authority and power, decision mak-
ers in the political and justice systems formulated an extensive catalog of new
criminal offenses. Circumventing rationing regulations became a “war economy
crime,” a “price violation,” or an offense against the Penal Code for Consumer
Regulations. At the same time, those responsible for organizing an adequate sup-
ply of food and goods took into account the experiences of World War I, when
the expectations of “women of lesser means” in particular had presented state offi-
cials with new challenges and made adequate provisioning an essential item on
the political agenda for a long time thereafter.14 This tension between consumer
expectations and efforts to stabilize government authority was reflected in the
definitions and regulations formulated at the beginning of World War II. Having
4 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

established the framework for further discussions about everything that fell under
the generic “black market” heading, these definitions remained in place—in a
slightly modified form—until 1950.15 In tandem, efforts to sustain a broad and
“just” provisioning of goods, on the one hand, and the prosecution of violations,
on the other, were supposed to keep the home front stable and make possible the
return to “normal” economic life after the war.
Considerable numbers of urban dwellers, “foreign workers,” and members of
the Allied armies, however, broke the laws and regulations. They exchanged all
sorts of goods outside of the existing allocation system and thus created a growing
informal economy. No one knows the exact size of the illegal markets, but they
must have been large. Contemporary estimates assumed that there were times
when at least a third of all goods and services in Berlin were traded on the black
market—and as much as half of some kinds of merchandise.16 In terms of the
quantity of merchandise and transactions alone, such numbers illustrated the
profound significance of the black market, yet its importance went beyond such
quantitative parameters.
The newly established market had its own rules. In contrast to life in peace-
time, a system of managing the individual household economy arose that replaced
customary shopping rituals and forced market participants to learn new prac-
tices. Bartering replaced shopping in stores. It became an everyday activity and
at the same time created a new social divide by privileging those who possessed
objects in demand. Consequently, a specific form of bartering culture emerged in
1940s Berlin that came to characterize everyday life there. This book examines
this phenomenon and its location within the context of the general history of the
transitional wartime and postwar years. In so doing, it seeks to cover new ground
in three ways: by offering a perspective on contemporary history inspired by an
“ethnographic gaze”; by focusing on an area of urban consumption and everyday
life during the war and the postwar period; and by bringing both facets together
in a comprehensive “bartering culture” concept, thereby contributing to a cultural
history of household economic management. Here the term “bartering culture”
encompasses the economic, political, and cultural processes of negotiation that
occurred among market participants during their bartering.
Berlin’s bartering culture manifested itself on several different levels and in a
variety of contexts. The practice of bartering changed how Berliners experienced
time and space, it led to alternative consumption practices, it shaped new personal
relationships and networks, and it transformed the relationship between goods
and currencies. Economic practice changed in response to political circumstances
and political developments, it formed a benchmark in the encounters between
losers and victors, and it shaped much of the public sphere that characterized
everyday life during and immediately after the war. In connection with bartering
and its side effects, Berliners also negotiated questions of loyalty and disloyalty,
gender roles, and economic systems. Discussions during this period about the
black market reflected a whole series of discourses about crisis.
The primary goal of this study is to trace Berlin’s everyday bartering culture
in what was the most “unmodern” span of German history in the twentieth
 Introduction ● 5

century. Never before, and never again, were the inhabitants of German cities
so quickly catapulted out of modern civilization into what many contemporaries
termed “a state of nature,” in which people behaved like wolves toward their fel-
low human beings. Against this turbulent background, one interpretation of the
1950s emphasizes contemporaries’ longing for normality, and another sees the
Germany of these years as a site of economic growth that can only adequately be
described with the word “miracle.” Although we have to differentiate, especially
in terms of periodization and the decade’s ambivalences, strong arguments can
be made for both interpretations.17 But we need to know more about the expe-
riences that led to such perceptions. What exactly did this unmodern, insecure,
and abnormal phase of German history look like? Analysis of the black market as
part of the continuum of everyday life in Berlin during the war years and early
postwar period can provide some answers.
In order to examine both the microphenomenon of everyday bartering in
Berlin and the cultural and interpretive framework that Berliners developed
around this activity, the present study interweaves two perspectives. On the one
hand, it offers a “thick description” of everyday black marketeering in that city
during the war and the early postwar period, albeit with gaps determined by the
availability of sources. The activities of Martha Rebbien and the circle of traders
around her form the starting point for a close analysis of black marketeering
during the entire period under consideration, both the initially more clandes-
tine dealmaking and the later trading in public squares. On the other hand, the
study draws on these findings to reflect systematically on the political, economic,
and cultural contexts of Berlin’s black marketeering. At the microlevel, this book
concentrates on the lives of small-time and big-time black marketeers alike, that
is, on their business practices, self-images, everyday circumstances, and coping
strategies. At the macrolevel, the book’s attention to ethnographic details helps
tease out the unfamiliar in Berlin’s bartering society, that is, its utter strangeness
to observers otherwise at home in a modern consumer society. The anachronistic
circumstances of bartering—under the open sky at Alexanderplatz, for instance,
or in bars, apartments, or the workplace—become clear when one contrasts this
practice with fin-de-siècle department store palaces or the conditions of urban
shopping in the age of the retail store.18 This apparent disjunction forms the
starting point for analysis of the bartering society. It helps us to approach this
part of German history “not as intimate prior history . . . but instead . . . as some-
thing alien.”19 A primary concern of this study thus entails a historical turn to the
culturally foreign.
Details can say a great deal about the whole. Likewise, this work discusses
what the everyday world of the Berlin black market tells us about German soci-
ety during and after World War II. In so doing, it takes up the approaches of
urban histories of World War I and the inflationary period that ensued as well
as of regional studies of Germany in the 1940s. At the same time, the present
study attends to developments after 1945 that were specific to Berlin, such as the
city’s special legal situation, the postwar trade between its different sectors, the
blockade, and the experience of a currency reform in a divided city.20
6 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Describing bartering between two or more trading partners initially reveals a

process, including, for example, establishing contacts, agreeing to meet again, and
making an initial offer that might still be misunderstood. The resulting trans-
action turns out to be a praxis that is always embedded in economic, social,
political, and cultural contexts. Analyzing these contexts entails apprehending
conditions and events at both the meso- and microlevels, which expands the
boundaries of the description. The motives of those participating in the black
market become the focus of attention—along with their socioeconomic position;
their occupation, which perhaps gave them access to sought-after goods or inter-
ested buyers; and political discussions about the boundaries between legal and
illegal activities, boundaries reflected in discursively negotiated descriptions of
the black market.
Markets illustrate how different facets of reality overlap because, in their con-
crete form, they are not only spaces in which people trade but also sites of
complex interactions and social communication. Next to the market as an eco-
nomic phenomenon, there is the market as a social and cultural event; next to
the site of business transactions is the site of politically or religiously “imposed
order.”21 Not only economic and social anthropology but also more recent eco-
nomic theories—especially new institutional economics (NIE)—comprehend
economic processes in terms of stakeholder actions that are embedded in other
social processes.22 In the empirical analysis of concrete (historical) markets, the
“pure” economic paradigm—with its premise that a subject will maximize his
or her utility and an equilibrium will be achieved—has proven deficient. More
important is to account for what Jens Beckert calls “nonmarket coordination
mechanisms,” that is, “embeddedness,” to borrow Mark Granovetter’s influential
concept.23 Harrison White has summed up this perspective in his characteriza-
tion of “market activity” as a praxis that can be “as social as kinship.”24 These
assumptions are useful for analyzing the illegal Berlin markets because they make
it possible to account for factors beyond mere utility maximization, including
the “moral costs” of participating in the black markets, the political implications
of the illicit public markets’ presence, and the bartering customs that obtained
in them. Such an approach enhances our economic perspective by incorporating
relevant cultural conditions during and after the war.
Here we can see a reflection of what Marcel Mauss called a “total social fact.”
Mauss used the concept in connection with his analysis of the gift-giving cultures
of tribal societies, but it applies to the Berlin black market insofar as participants
there not only bartered with other people but also negotiated legal, political, and
cultural issues.25 The very fact that bartering existed amounted to a break with
the legal and ideological consensus propagated by the National Socialist concept
of the Volksgemeinschaft or “people’s community” (with “people” defined racially
as the collectivity of “Aryan” Germans). Bartering negated the claim of the pri-
macy of politics in shaping society and furthermore established the foundation
for a culture of individual household economic management that responded to
everyday situations. This experience shaped mentalities and contributed to eco-
nomic cultures during the birth of the two postwar German states. Therefore,
 Introduction ● 7

the black market traders, the authorities who fought their activities, and even
those who merely observed such goings-on are understood in this book not as
mere objects being carried down a river of “external circumstances” but rather as
historical actors.
Against a specific background of processes and events, Berliners not only
traded goods for goods but also participated—while bartering—in political, eco-
nomic, and cultural exchanges. Consequently, their bartering was accompanied
by changes in social relationships; by support, disregard, or rejection of political
interconnections; and by discursive shifts in the assignment of meaning.
Bartering transactions thus occurred in connection with a more general phe-
nomenon that has recently become a focus of research: trust or mistrust vis-à-vis
persons, institutions, and systems.26 This scholarship regards trust as a strategy
for overcoming insecurity or complexity.27 This idea also holds at the level of
individual and collective worldviews, for through a “concept of the world,” com-
plexity is transformed into “structured possibilities of one’s own experiences and
behavior.”28 The Berlin black markets of the 1940s can aptly be described as sites
of constant insecurity that lacked mature and institutionalized mechanisms for
building and securing trust—for example, state supervision, contractual security,
and quality and measurement standards.
The relationship between “exchange” and “trust” turns out to be circular.
A successful bartering transaction between people or the acceptance of (implicit)
long-term bartering relationships between individuals and institutions both
requires trust and simultaneously functions as a trust-building measure for future
transactions. In contrast, mistrust can lead to the dissolution of trading relation-
ships. This interplay fosters social cohesion that reaches beyond individuals acting
on the basis of utility maximization.29 By examining the nexus of trading and
trust, the present study contributes to a cultural history of everyday household
economic management.30
* * *
The concept of trading employed in this book encompasses two broad levels of
analysis that require some explanation. The first perspective comprises the bar-
tering practices of individual market participants aiming to achieve economic
advantages. Central to the bartering culture investigated here, the micro-bartering
level comprises Berliners’ trading activities in the narrower sense of the word,
namely, transactions in which goods, money, or services made an exchange
possible. Following Max Weber, “exchange” in this context means “a formally
voluntary agreement involving the offer of any sort of current, ongoing, or future
utility in exchange for a utility . . . offered in return.”31 During World War II,
against the background of a comprehensive state system of rationing and allo-
cation, black market trading amounted to an illegal attempt to improve one’s
livelihood and signified an expansion of consumer sovereignty as well. Illegal trad-
ing undermined the logic of the allocation system, thus placing traders outside
National Socialist conceptualizations of a “just” distribution of goods in wartime,
which were beholden to the notion of the Volksgemeinschaft. Then after the war
8 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

ended, illegal trading was tantamount to questioning the Allies’ rationing systems
and their establishment of functioning economic orders in the East and West.
Behind this trading lay the experience of genuine shortages and scarcity, as well as
a growing mistrust—reinforced by the experiences of World War I—in the abil-
ity of public authorities to ensure an adequate supply of goods. National Socialist
leaders reacted to black marketeering with considerable concern. They expressed
their anxiety in part via ad-hoc policies offering special rations in response to
losses and shortages caused by heavy air raids. The formation of an informal
economy, however, could no longer be stopped. Old-fashioned bartering, making
special arrangements to pay for services with alternative forms of compensation,
and illegally selling rationed goods existed side by side from the beginning. Mar-
ket conditions—so much changed since the prewar period—affected above all the
market participants’ practices. Establishing contact with potential customers or
bartering partners, evaluating products not subject to state-sanctioned standards,
negotiating prices, and many more tasks presented participants with challenges,
some completely new, that they met with varying levels of adeptness. In order to
create the important foundation of trust, Berlin black marketeers adopted various
strategies that enabled what Clifford Geertz has called a “personal confrontation
between intimate antagonists.” The forms of market organization and the partic-
ipant strategies gradually established included compensating techniques such as
the formation of networks primarily with people one knew, the establishment of
spatial and temporal market routines, and the employment of certain marketplace
conventions.32
At the same time, attitudes to individual goods changed, especially if these
were not “anonymous” objects that one could buy today and sell again tomorrow
but rather things one had possessed for a long time and become quite fond of,
such as heirlooms or keepsakes.33 Bartering frequently promoted its own “econ-
omy” for such objects, especially if the trading was motivated by hardship or an
emergency. Going beyond the market value determined by supply and demand,
this economy reflected the biographies of its participants. What should one, or
could one, part with first or last?
This overlap of economic and personal values points to a complex process of
reevaluating the familiar. The seemingly haphazard juxtaposition of objects and
circumstances no longer where or how “they were supposed to be” was one of the
most powerful experiences of the war and the early postwar period. It became
necessary for Berliners to reassess—for themselves and others—what a neces-
sity or a luxury was. The concept of luxury changed rapidly as a consequence.
Corresponding to the supply situation, Berlin’s bartering society formed its own
hierarchy of goods, which reflected not only the general effects of supply and
demand in the market but also individual privation and desire.34 Further, in the
same way that objects previously seen as “possessions” now became “goods,” that
is, a means of exchange, a new good appeared: information. For in contrast to
the well-developed information infrastructure of legal markets, the Berlin black
markets appeared to many of their participants as amorphous and confusing. The
acquisition of information about the supply of goods, current prices, and reliable
 Introduction ● 9

exchange partners could therefore become an important factor in determining

success or failure.
These changes in Berlin’s consumer goods landscape were related to the crisis
of the official currency, which had two primary causes. First, the introduction
of ration cards reduced the significance of the Reichsmark. Increasingly, ration
cards for food and clothes took the Reichsmark’s place, albeit without being able
to render the same services as the currency because the cards were only valid for
a certain period of time, for a certain location, and for a certain person. Further-
more, there was counterfeiting, embezzlement, and fraud. Second, in the interest
of financing the coming war “silently,” price and wage freezes had the desired
effect of keeping inflationary tendencies in check, at least until the war began.
Many contemporaries also measured economic developments against the crisis
years of the early 1930s, which were still quite fresh in people’s minds.35 Nonethe-
less, these favorable circumstances could not prevent Berliners—especially toward
the end of the war—from increasingly mistrusting the Reichsmark and its future
value. Only after the currency reform would this lack of trust begin to ebb,
and even then, the wartime and early postwar economic insecurity left a lasting
impression. In response to this crisis of confidence, a whole series of substi-
tute currencies existed alongside the official currency, among which the various
cigarette currencies are only the best known. Additionally, because of the large
number of international currencies in circulation during the occupation and
the special situation of postwar Berlin as a divided city, foreign exchange trad-
ing developed into a continuous segment of the black market that outlived the
currency reforms.
Up to now, works on the black market period seldom note that black markets
could have many different segments. These varied according to the assortment
of goods, the trading practices, and the sites where the trading took place.36
Alongside everyday markets for food, clothing, and small goods offered by casual
traders, semiprofessional and professional markets appeared for every imaginable
kind of good. On top of this, transregional and even transnational distribution
networks developed, for example, in jewelry and art, which allowed Berlin to
become a center of international black markets that belonged to the world of
organized crime.37 Of course, the segments of the market were not distinct; there
was a good deal of overlap between them.
The Berlin bartering culture led to changes in social relationships. Supervi-
sors, bowling partners, teachers, and chance acquaintances—to name only a few
examples—could become black market partners. New networks and network
practices arose that could transform relationships between trading partners or
lead to new relationships,38 because bartering partnerships did not always build
on familiar buyer-seller configurations, as happened, for example, when a busi-
ness’s regular customers and its owner traded with each other. Bartering could
also profoundly change the character of existing relationships, creating depen-
dencies or violent conflicts or transforming partnerships into friendships or love.
Bartering culture led to the renegotiation of the relationship between the sexes
during and after the war, especially. The gender of the bartering partners could
10 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

play a decisive role in trading, whether men and women chose their bartering
partners on the basis of gender, developed different strategies for establishing and
maintaining contacts, or traded in romantic relationships and sex. Sexual ser-
vices were indeed available for trade on the Berlin black markets. At the same
time, sex became an important component of contemporary discourses, espe-
cially those on morality that thematized the behavior of the sexes in the markets.
A widespread opinion held that bartering women not only traded in household
goods but also offered themselves as prostitutes, forgetting their roles as loyal
mothers and housewives.39
The appearance of “foreigners” in the markets also played an important role.
In fact, the behavior of foreign laborers, forced laborers, and members of the
Allied forces in the markets became a political issue for Berlin’s black market
society. In evaluating the roles of these “outsiders,” we can see that people com-
bined their general attitudes toward foreigners with anti-Semitic interpretations,
xenophobia, and accusations against Germans who traded with them. This topic
points beyond the level of contemporary Berliners’ experiences and helps shed
light on the role of the Allies, that is, on the distinctive relationships between the
occupiers and the occupied. In times when things could simply be taken away,
bartering—and gift-giving—yielded an additional gain for those who had lost the
war: at least some limited, temporary freedom of action. This did not mean, how-
ever, that unequal entry requirements such as economic or physical power were
completely eliminated from the bartering situation. Berliners responded quite
differently to the various gestures of the victors, whether aggressive or reserved,
when trading on the black market.
Trading as an everyday practice occurred between two poles. At one end,
there was the act of “giving,” which found paradigmatic expression, among the
American occupiers, for example, in the candy given to children and in care
packages. As a rule, these gifts aimed at getting something in return: sympa-
thy and a friendly reception. At the other end, there was taking things, namely,
the self-service practices of soldiers, the rapes, and the reparations. Most every-
day trading oscillated between these two extremes. For example, because of the
need to part with expensive jewelry for food “actually” worth a lot less, many
Berliners saw bartering—even if only years later—as veiled theft. Moreover, the
experience that threatening physical violence could cut short what up until then
had been a “regular” bartering deal demonstrated that this situation could not
be understood inherently as a “partnership.” On the other hand, bartering also
led to genuine partnerships between the vanquished and the victors. A number of
Germans developed closer ties to their occupiers and sometimes used these bonds
for social advancement.
Differences in dealing with the occupying powers and in perceptions of the
occupiers’ roles can be shown in an exemplary fashion by comparing German
encounters with Americans and with members of the Red Army. Here one can
see the effects of a clear difference in the degree of trust Germans held. The
primary origin of this gap lay in ideologically charged stereotypes, some of which
had developed relatively recently and others that were more deeply rooted, but
 Introduction ● 11

all were very difficult for the Soviet “brothers” to correct, despite their efforts to
appear to be partners.
Sexual relationships between Berlin women and members of the US and Soviet
armies played a particularly important role in how the public evaluated relations
between the victors and the vanquished, and these entanglements were debated in
connection with the topic of bartering. Accusations of prostitution accompanied
the individual predicaments of women who had sexual relationships with “the
enemy.” Moreover, such claims failed to acknowledge the whole range of differ-
ent motivations these women had, ranging from genuine love to the need to earn
a living. And although the power relationships that underlay these associations
appeared quite clear on the surface, they could take on other forms in individual
cases. Some Berlin women, for example, “kept” a series of partners or at least told
themselves that they did. Nevertheless, various contemporary observers employed
a variety of revealing phrases to describe relationships between German women
and members of the occupying armies, revealing the dominance of stereotyping
in their perceptions, including “Veronika Thank-You” (as a first and last name),
“traitorous casual prostitutes,” and “brutal members of the victorious powers
who were taking advantage of their position.” These stereotypes, which still have
power today, did not do justice to the complexity of the bartering situations
between Berlin women and the victors. Instead, they reproduced resentments
and varying degrees of bitterness, insecurity, fear, and mistrust.40
Mistrust of “foreigners” was one of the characteristics of Berlin’s bartering cul-
ture. Georg Simmel once described the modern urban lifeworld as a collection of
encounters in which “strangers” depended on “certain outward appearances” in
order to form an opinion of people unfamiliar to them.41 For many in the Berlin
black markets, this problem arose in a more acute form. The desire or need to
barter led to an encounter between interested traders who could not “blindly”
trust each other from the outset because they were not acquainted. Yet familiarity
and the trust based on it formed a basic pillar of the Berlin bartering community
as only those who trusted each other would trade with each other. This bartering
culture required trust-building strategies that were essential to the practices of
small-time and big-time black marketeers alike. These strategies were also impor-
tant for the social fabric of this urban bartering society that comprised trading
networks of varying size, complexity, and stability. One promising strategy for
risky black market deals involved using existing networks among family mem-
bers, friends, or acquaintances. What economic sociology has demonstrated with
empirical analysis was certainly true in this context: an awareness of risk and inse-
curity encouraged traders to take advantage of “pre-existing noncommercial ties
between buyers and sellers.”42
Berliners who trusted their bartering partners—even if only after protracted
scrutiny—opened up an extended sphere of action and prospects for the future.
Admittedly, these prospects often failed to meet expectations in the prewar
period, but they went beyond the lethargy that afflicted so many Berliners. This
circumstance brings up another important aspect of Berlin’s bartering culture:
the reorganization of timeframes. Niklas Luhmann has pointed out that trust
12 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

exhibits “a problematic relationship to time.” “Whoever shows trust anticipates

the future” and “acts as if he were confident about the future.”43 The way that
casual black marketeers, in particular, handled their own relationship to time can
be described as an ongoing but always dangerous attempt to attain a better, more
secure future. In peacetime and in state-sanctioned markets, contracts provided
long-term security. The permanence and stability of the state as a guarantor of
the market meant that prospects were reliable for those who participated in it.
In the Berlin black markets, however, the temporal constants of the prewar period
had disintegrated. What remained were the remembered experiences of extreme
inflation, currency decline, price gouging, and scarcity. These points of reference
shaped the perceptions both of the black market traders and of the authorities
who fought against their activities. Both expectations about certain levels of pro-
visioning and assessments of future developments—of the war’s course and of
one’s own economic and social situation—can only be understood against the
background of previous patterns of experience.
As an economic and social phenomenon, trading on the black market func-
tioned within its own temporal boundaries, which reflected local economic
conditions and price expectations as well as the temporal confines of “everyday
life in a state of emergency.”44 Time took on a new significance for many market
participants inasmuch as they oriented their bartering practices toward chang-
ing price levels, thus attempting to integrate a different temporal aspect into
their everyday lives. Initially, however, official allocation periods had provided
the rhythm of everyday consumption. The rationing system that had been set
up to limit consumption unintentionally ended up establishing its own economy
for the thrifty or wasteful use of rationing cards within their specified periods of
validity. Consequently, consumer sovereignty was subject not only to the dictates
of limited supplies but also to the difficulties inherent in planning within limited
periods of time.
The shortages required Berliners to reorganize their customary relationship to
time in another regard. In this new context, one had to trade something “more
valuable”—something that had only lost value in this exceptional situation of
scarcity—for something ordinary that “normally” had no special value. Thus, one
traded a piece of one’s former and perhaps future prosperity for survival today.
In addition to these processes of temporal negotiation, spatial adaptations also
played a decisive role. Trading in closed rooms followed different rules than trad-
ing on the streets; bartering between neighbors occurred within a more limited
setting than did trading between commuters and city dwellers or the foraging of
city dwellers in the countryside. Even with all the confusion and instability that
accompanied these new extended market relationships, the markets as a form of
public assembly had a remarkable level of organization similar to that of the legal
(weekly) markets and the bazaars described by Clifford Geertz.45 To be sure, it was
almost impossible to create trust through what Anthony Giddens calls “facework
commitments” because the impermanent character of the markets did not permit
the ongoing establishment of stable and reliable relationships on the basis of rou-
tinized face-to-face interactions.46 Nonetheless, the durability and dependability
 Introduction ● 13

necessary for promoting trust and establishing positive conditions for conducting
business could be established through compensating techniques such as building
up networks and clients, operating at certain times and in certain places, and
employing special market codes of behavior. Furthermore, these practices led to
new, segmented market structures, which themselves helped to make the illegal
business transactions more reliable and safe.
The chaos caused by the Nazi regime’s “final battle” led to further changes
in Berlin’s economic geography. Near the end of the war and in the beginning
of the postwar period, everyday life became increasingly local in its organization,
reminding urban observers of a bunch of villages.47 This patchwork corresponded
to a tendency that had already developed during the war. Local bartering net-
works were formed and goods traded within limited spaces, turning upside down
the modern transregional and transnational pattern of moving goods. On the
other hand, black market trading in the large public squares of the city cen-
ter, for example, around the Brandenburg Gate or Alexanderplatz, increased the
catchment area for goods and—together with cultural events—gave rise to new
forms of public sociability. The war had damaged or invalidated the old peace-
time patterns of spatial orientation. Because of their very nature as places where
people came together, the markets served as important reference points for a spa-
tial as well as a moral redefinition of urban life in Berlin. The reconfiguration
of Berliners’ everyday spatial orientation vis-à-vis the controversial bartering sites
promoted the reestablishment of a certain public order, however politically unde-
sired, in the chaotic postwar years. At the same time, spatial adjustments moved
the illicit markets to the center of public life and public discussions about these
practices.
* * *
Besides exchanging goods, market participants exchanged meanings. Hence, the
concept of exchange employed in this book comprises not only individuals’ bar-
tering practices per se but also the discursive elements of Berlin’s bartering culture.
Semantic changes indicated participants’ attempts to reduce the complexity of
Berlin’s society as they observed and constructed phenomena like the black mar-
ket and the other people who traded their wares in it.48 The common German
term used to describe the black market trader was Schieber. Literally “pusher” in
English, the term not only meant “black marketeer” but also conveyed the more
critical senses of “profiteer” (for the big fish) and “hustler” (for the smaller fry).
The term “spiv,” used frequently in wartime and postwar Britain, also comes to
mind, although it referred only to men. Given the insecurity inherent in illegal
trading, stereotypical labels and seemingly clear oppositional categories created
perceptional and interpretive patterns that sought to delineate a morally and
politically volatile phenomenon with stable assessment concepts, thus illustrat-
ing the crisis in trust. Labeling the market participants “stealthy traders,” “black
marketeers,” “profiteers,” “hustlers,” or even “Volksschädlinge” (literally “pests”
that attacked “the people” like insects devouring crops) drew a line between
undesirable or antisocial behavior, on the one hand, and “small-time” trading
14 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

or “private trading for one’s own needs,” on the other. Thus, it became pos-
sible to condemn a widespread illegal practice that could barely be controlled
and simultaneously tolerate aspects of it—without ever having to establish a clear
boundary. The flood of regulations and explanatory comments seemed to develop
some relevant definitions, but they also led to confusion because they left room
for interpretation. What exactly did “for one’s own needs” mean? How were “war
economy crimes” different from offenses against the Penal Code for Consumer
Regulations?49 Black marketeers and government authorities both made use of
this room for interpretation. As attempts to reduce complexity, discourses on the
black market and its workforce also represented negotiations over those precari-
ous definitions that claimed to differentiate between the legal and illegal, moral
and immoral, and loyal and disloyal. Within political-legal discourses and vari-
ous discourses about everyday life, different black market concepts emerged that
reflected participants’ interests.
The black marketeer as a discursive figure embodied many levels of meaning
that could be evaluated quite differently, depending on the context and the indi-
viduals or groups involved. If in the language of National Socialist propaganda,
the black marketeer was asocial, Jewish, or foreign, if he or she was opposed
to the Volksgemeinschaft in some way, and if he or she reminded people of the
social misery of the inflation period, then this black marketeer could look like the
“true” criminal in the eyes of the “small-time casual trader,” whose own actions
seemed like trifles in comparison. Instead of accepting the prosecuting authori-
ties’ terminology as the only valid definition of the black market, it is necessary
to recognize the constructed nature of popular topoi in contemporary discourses
and to try to reconstruct the complex exchanges in meaning that occurred. The
politically explosive topic of illegal trading reproduced discursive conflicts over
sovereignty in matters of interpretation, and these discourses expressed power
relationships.50 In talk about the black market and its traders, one could thus see
who among the various participants, observers, and authorities had the power
to define key terms of the relevant debates. On the other hand, each addi-
tional statement represented a new contribution that updated or rewrote the
discursive fields in which these events transpired. Thus, planners in the Justice
Ministry initially used the terms “war economy criminal” and “Volksschädling”
to describe black marketeers, albeit without taking a public stance on the more
common, well-known colloquialism “Schieber.” This discursive strategy aimed
to emphasize the transitional and temporary character of both the new regu-
lations and the rationing system by linking individual criminal offenses to the
war. Special circumstances called for special measures, according to this reading.
As soon as the war was over, such expedients could be rescinded. In the final
analysis, talk of “war economy crimes” was based on the regime’s promise that
the war and the rationing would remain a mere episode. Moreover, recourse to
the terms “profiteer” and “spiv” brought the experiences of the inflation period
immediately to mind. The National Socialist leadership wanted to avoid any-
thing that depicted the coming war as a similarly chaotic period or new “Great
Disorder.”
 Introduction ● 15

This strategy did not pay off. On the contrary, the figure of the profiteer—to
settle for the moment on just one translation of “Schieber”—came to dominate
the discourse. Made popular in the 1920s in numerous cabarets, novels, and satir-
ical how-to books, the profiteer had achieved the status of a colorful cult figure.
By referencing it, one could articulate different meanings and connotations—
from moral outrage and distance to admiration for this special kind of survival
artist. Reference to this common figure, to vocabulary the masses understood,
became ever more widespread when (politically controlled) newspaper articles
on proceedings against “war economy criminals” popularized the topic. Authors
tried to meet the widely shared and relevant expectations of their readers. Com-
pelled to accept associations from the “upside-down world” of the inflation
period, propagandistic usages of the profiteer figure emphasized its “subversive,”
“Jewish,” or “foreign” connotations, contrasting the “harmful” behavior of the
black marketeers with the ideal of the Volksgemeinschaft. To be sure, the con-
cept had a basic meaning that captured certain actual practices of the traders and
their outward appearance; however, its application to individual cases remained
relatively open and dependent on context. Even statements from high-level party
functionaries emphasizing the difference between occasional bartering of “little
importance” in contrast to “commercial trading” supported an understanding of
the black market that distinguished between the legal and the illegal, depending
on the situation. Of course, this interpretation contradicted the rigid sentencing
practices of the courts even in “smaller” cases, but it corresponded to the opinions
of the many Berliners who engaged in bartering for “their own needs” and saw
nothing wrong in that.
This unstable consensus functioned as long as ordinary Berliners had the feel-
ing that the punishments for offenses against the regulations were just. In this
context, any social imbalances or privileging of party functionaries and govern-
ment officials became a political issue.51 At the same time, such a consensus was
only possible because law enforcement agencies uncovered no more than a small
part of the offenses committed. The policy of fighting black markets was to a large
degree symbolic policy that attempted to honor the National Socialist promise to
ensure a just and sufficient distribution of goods. “Deviants,” who through their
behavior placed the system in question and who undermined trust in just dis-
tribution, were supposed to be publicly pilloried. Spectacular cases such as those
involving embezzlement or large quantities of goods were particularly suitable, as
were cases in which stigmatized classes of participants—including Jews, “foreign-
ers,” or prostitutes—traded among themselves or with other Berliners. Such cases,
whose protagonists could easily be labeled “profiteers” from the outset, made it
possible for both the state and the broad majority of consumers to believe in
a boundary between acceptable trading “for one’s own needs” and “large-scale
profiteering,” a boundary that ignored the gray areas.
This discursive constellation experienced a crisis with the appearance of regular
public black markets toward the end of 1944.52 The use of the capital’s streets and
public squares for illegal trading became an important component of a general
discourse of crisis on the city’s downfall. References to the previous war and its
16 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

ensuing inflation as well as questions about who was responsible for the present
breakdown all came together in voluminous talk about the black market and its
protagonists. The leading characters in these discourses were foreigners, the Berlin
women who traded with them and who were thus accused of prostitution, and the
Berlin men who also participated in the illegal trade and who were consequently
unable to live up to their normative masculine role as guardians of the public
order. Accordingly, the image of the black market changed. Now trading was
seen as a symptom of a comprehensive process of disintegration. One spoke of
the markets primarily as phenomena in the cityscape that illustrated the decline
of the moral order.
In the early postwar period, a new element supplemented the perception of
chaos. It contradicted the observations of the newly established state offices. In
place of the heaps of people in the streets being characterized as “contamina-
tions of the streetscape” and disruptions in the “normalization of conditions,”
there emerged talk of “flourishing” markets. The operative metaphor was about
being alive in this landscape of urban ruins. There was “new life,” that is, socia-
bility in an environment characterized by destruction. All the same, the image
remained ambivalent. The gloomy moral and political discourse on the Berlin
black markets continued to exist alongside these new, positive interpretations.
Two interpretive strands came to predominate. The first focused on the social
distortions, the “high living” of the “big-time profiteers,” and the misery of the
destitute, mostly older city inhabitants. The second dealt with differing economic
concepts in the East and West. Against the background of the founding of two
postwar German states, economic concepts played an important role, and not
only for specialists. Debates on the market economy, the planned economy, and
their variations took up a lot of space in the newly established Berlin newspa-
pers. According to the official Soviet and East Berlin view, the black market
was the product of war and fascism. Moreover, it offered a propagandistically
deterrent example of social imbalance because of the light it supposedly cast on
unregulated market economies. Free market interpretations of Western prove-
nance proved no less controversial. Especially the controversy following some
remarks of the minister of justice Thomas Dehler brought to light the close rela-
tionship between policy ideas for a new economic order and the general black
market discourse of this transition period. The homo oeconomicus behavior of
the black marketeers, subsequently approved by Dehler, contradicted morally
based defensive postures that contrasted the impoverishment of what was already
called the “black market era” with the immoral lifestyle of the “big profiteers.”
Debates over the bartering culture’s “moral economy” became especially heated
in Berlin because of the competition between the capitalist and communist
systems.53
Indeed, we need to examine the illegal bartering culture’s significance for the
new socioeconomic orders that emerged in East and West Germany after the war,
and Berlin offers a suitable entrance point for such analysis because of its special
situation as a divided city. A dominant, semi-official narrative of economic history
served as an integrating myth in both German states. Each narrative told a success
 Introduction ● 17

story that offered a sort of national legitimation. The thesis put forward here is
that a good deal of this dialogue about economic facts was determined by the
experiences of the chaotic bartering era, which served as a foil to these economic
discourses.
* * *
Berlin’s special nature makes it uniquely suited for a study of German bartering
culture that reaches back to World War I and includes the history of everyday
experiences relative to the developments in the East and West after the city’s
division. Here the illegal market as a predecessor of both the West German social
market economy and the East German planned economy becomes the book’s
focus. These two aspects—the Berlin bartering culture’s earlier history and its
consequences—bookend the present study.
Chapter 1 deals with historic backdrops or “prologues.” Specifically, it exam-
ines bartering experiences and semantics in Berlin related to World War I and
subsequent inflation, and it looks at the sites and conditions in which bartering
occurred. The experiences and the radicalized political language from this period
formed the background against which Berlin’s bartering culture developed during
and after World War II. Chapter 2 then turns to the protagonists of the illegal
trading networks. Using the history of Martha Rebbien’s bartering network, this
chapter investigates the social profiles of those who participated in the black mar-
ket as well as the striking changes in social relationships that occurred under the
conditions of the bartering culture. Individual black market practices are exam-
ined, as are the development of a degree of professionalization, changes in how
people used space, and a specific kind of city making, as Berliners redefined their
city in the course of their confrontations with the authorities. Already during the
war, morally laden judgments of illegal trading revolved around the profiteer, a
discursive element that contributed to discrediting above all the “usual suspects,”
that is, the fringe groups of National Socialist society.
Chapter 3 investigates the conditions that encouraged the Berlin black mar-
ket scene to move outdoors into public spaces. The diverse crises of everyday
life during the state of emergency that characterized the final months of the war
and the initial months of peace promoted the development of a network of mar-
ketplaces throughout the city. Chapter 4 examines these sites, the logic of their
locations, and their microstructures. Besides considering new practices and par-
ticipant groups, including members of the occupying forces, this chapter focuses
on the strategies of the German and occupying authorities to contain the black
market. Finally, it looks at the goods that were traded and their significance for
Berlin’s bartering culture.
Chapter 5 integrates the development of the illegal trading into the “histories
of a new beginning” under the auspices of the currency reforms in the East and
West. It describes these reforms as the culmination of a process in which everyday
life and high politics intertwined, and it asks what role the black market played
in the birth of the new economic cultures on both sides of the German-German
border.
18 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

The conclusion takes up these ideas and shows how they relate to the overall
thesis that the black market was a radical market experience. If the Berlin barter-
ing culture can be described as a space in which Berliners encountered confusing
and often incomprehensible developments while also experiencing and articu-
lating changes in their levels of trust or mistrust, then this space served as an
important reference point for that yearning for stability and security that became
so palpable in the 1950s.
 CHAPTER 1

Prologues

T
he history of Berlin’s wartime and postwar black marketeering formed a
relatively distinct period with its own characteristics, but it did not rep-
resent a break with the prewar period. A line of tradition reached back to
World War I and included the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and Nazi
Germany’s rearmament economy. In the face of recurring chaotic economic con-
ditions, a sustained discussion about correct moral behavior in the marketplace
occurred that mattered to black marketeers and government officials alike. Like-
wise, the subsequent histories of traders such as Martha Rebbien did not merely
repeat a well-known plot from World War I, when Berlin women used all avail-
able means to organize their everyday lives around obtaining enough food and
fuel to keep their “home fires burning.”1 Rather, the histories of black marketeers
like Rebbien presented sequels that referred back to such experiences and the
political discussions accompanying them while at the same time manifesting new
situations, new experiences, and discourses. One can understand these sequels
only if one knows what came before.

The Semantics of Bartering and the Realms of Experience

in Berlin after 1918
Black marketeering during World War II was dangerous. An indictment of
March 31, 1945, charged Martha Rebbien, an unemployed waitress, with vio-
lating the War Economy Regulation, and the prosecutor Steinriede asked the
court to convict her.2 If the approaching end of the war had not intervened and
her case had come to trial, Rebbien would most likely have received a jail term.
To be sure, the judges of the Berlin Special Court who heard cases entailing war
economy offenses did not always hand down the maximum sentences possible,
but sometimes they imposed considerable prison terms, occasionally even the
death penalty.3 This rigorous approach toward those active in the illegal mar-
kets enjoyed broad public support for at least four reasons. First, in the eyes of
many, such punishment merely put into practice the promise of equality and
20 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

justice that the rationing program formulated, a promise that everyone in the
Volksgemeinschaft would be treated equally and not according to class or milieu.
To be sure, over time distrust and suspicion shifted to cases of real or alleged
unequal treatment in criminal prosecutions. Initially, however, the sentences for
convicted black marketeers could be understood as the judicial counterpart to
the rationing system’s distributive rationale. Second, broad support for tough
punishments comported with a widespread perception that one’s own barter-
ing was about doing small “favors,” not actual black marketeering. In this way,
Germans established a clear boundary between themselves and real “profiteer-
ing,” for which they could still indignantly demand harsher penalties without
seeing any contradiction or hypocrisy in light of their own black market activi-
ties. Third, law enforcement agencies were soon swamped by a massive increase in
the number of cases, and prosecutions could not be pursued in every direction.4
In part, this circumstance resulted in indignation because illegal trading could
apparently run rampant. On the other hand, the situation made it easier for
one to classify one’s own bartering as not worth prosecuting, even while still
condemning the profiteering cases being publicly tried. Fourth, the practice of
prosecuting black market activities had its own history going back to World War
I. When National Socialist planners started to formulate regulations to prohibit
the black market dealings they feared would come with the next war, the German
public had already been discussing the black market in various social contexts for
almost 20 years. The anti-black market policy between 1939 und 1945, in part
symbolic but nevertheless enforced with a great deal of energy, could count on
public support because of attitudes that had developed during and directly after
World War I. Various groups rejected the “profiteers” and their practices. At the
same time, the boundary between economics and politics blurred in discussions
about illegal trading as inappropriate economic behavior became one of the most
important discursive patterns of the interwar years.
On the surface of Nazi ideology, the black market does not appear to have
been all that important. The basic elements of Hitler’s worldview as propounded
in Mein Kampf, in countless party publications, and by Nazi government offi-
cials called for revising the Treaty of Versailles, asserting Germany’s leadership
in the world, promoting the idea that Germans were a “people without space,”
rejecting the Weimar “system,” and fostering hatred for Jews, communists, and
other “alien elements” (Volksfremde). These interconnected elements formed an
aggressive racist ideology that became the foundation for state action. Although
pragmatic considerations often prevented, moderated, or sometimes radicalized
the implementation of pure doctrine, the Nazi ideological edifice provided a gen-
eral set of directions that could be interpreted and applied by various groups
within the regime as party functionaries and civil servants worked toward what
they believed the Führer wanted.5
Below the most visible level of the Nazi worldview, however, black marketeer-
ing was indeed important to National Socialists. The issue had already become
controversial in the Weimar period. Moreover, it was well suited to exploitation
by Nazi propaganda for establishing and reinforcing a whole series of stereotypes
 Prologues ● 21

of enemies of the people. Referring to Weimar as a “republic of profiteers,”

National Socialist politicians characterized economic bartering transactions as
a partnership of the few at the expense of the many, that is, as the “greedy
transactions” of a “Jewish,” “eastern-backward” or “western-capitalistic” minor-
ity at the expense of the German Volksgemeinschaft. Between 1939 and 1950,
the Berlin bartering culture took shape not in a vacuum but against the back-
ground of individual and collective experiences—especially of the politicians
themselves.
In the eyes of the National Socialist rulers, illegal black market trading had
already undermined the morale of the home front during World War I because
it had severely affected the system of rationing. It was also an emotionally
charged and political topic. National Socialist propaganda sought to discredit
the Weimar Republic by pointing to the supposedly corrupt cliques of the old
“system.” In caricatures, the republic was lambasted for “profiteering” and shady
arrangements between business and politics. In fact, these symbols had formed an
important element in Nazi rhetoric during the party’s struggle for power. Already
in 1920, taking action against “criminals who harm the public good” was in the
party program of the National Socialist Workers’ Association, which called “for
the ruthless fight against those who through their actions harm the common
good . . . extortionists, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, without
consideration of their confession or race.”6 This disregard for “racial” gradations
in the punishment of black marketeers might seem surprising in light of the
unequal treatment meted out later.7 In 1920, however, Nazi priorities were dif-
ferent. Expressing a genuine disgust with black marketeering, party propaganda
also captured a sentiment shared far beyond their own circles.
The term Volksschädling (a human “pest” who feeds on the nation) was taken
up in the title and text of a 1939 regulation, whose draft title was “Profiteers
and Extortioners” (Schieber und Wucherer).8 In 1920, the main Nazi press organ,
the Völkischer Beobachter, had published a complaint about the “failure” of public
agencies’ efforts “against the nasty Volkschädlinge, the hustlers and extortioners.”9
At the same time, the term was used in political debates and discussions to
defame and slander opponents. For example, the police headquarters in Munich
included in its “political news” a remark about Hitler’s speech in the Hofbräuhaus
that denigrated Volksschädlinge: “[Hitler] [spoke] about ‘Erzberger and his com-
rades.’ This topic, relevant because . . . the case against Erzberger for tax evasion
has once again been taken up, gave the speaker a welcome opportunity . . . to
settle scores with these ‘criminals and national pests.’ ”10 Derogatory talk about
illegal business practices in the Weimar Republic was supposed to make the
political culture of National Socialism appear in a positive light—even though,
from 1933 on, the upper levels of the hierarchy of the Nazi Party and the
German public administration provided a refuge for black marketeering of all
kinds.11 Finally, the negative image of the “profiteer” developed between 1939
and 1945 had an inclusive function. Illegal trading was used to identify “aliens
to the community” (Gemeinschaftsfremde) and thus strengthen the bonds of the
Volksgemeinschaft.
22 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Ultimately, the National Socialist “movement” succeeded because its adher-

ents’ ideological patterns of interpretation resembled those of the national-
conservative mainstream and because National Socialists took up the reservations
and fears of other socio-cultural milieus. Many decision makers and supporters
of right-wing parties viewed the agony of the Weimar Republic through the lens
of their revisionist, anti-communist, or anti-Semitic preconceptions about the
importance of the “Fatherland” and the (re)establishment of a strong state; from
their perspective, this promised to address the country’s most pressing problems.
These positions were popular above all in those circles for whom the very exis-
tence of the Weimar Republic was a scandal. The change of the political system in
1918 was overshadowed from the very beginning by many crises produced both
by the war and by long-term processes of social change and ambivalent modern-
ization in the nineteenth century.12 As a result, the Weimar Republic comprised
an amalgamation of social divisions that expressed themselves in particularly
fierce political and social debates.13
In the public sphere, political discourse often seemed to be less a debate on
issues and more an attack either directly or indirectly on parliamentary democracy
itself, on its principal ideas and representatives.14 The “battle against extortion
and profiteering” was one major theme, employing “a central buzz phrase used in
the revolutionary strategy of the communists,” a synonym for capitalist exploita-
tion. Criticism of the “profiteer,” a discourse at once hostile to the republic, was
more than just a platform for political agitation by the radical parties, how-
ever. It “permeated the language of all political groups regardless of stripe,” as
Martin Geyer noted.15 The republic lacked a fundamental consensus. Not only
did the parties opposed to the system question the legitimacy of the new state;
the majority of the population and the elites began contributing to the erosion
of the republic’s stability soon after it was founded. Talking about the Weimar
“republic of profiteers” accelerated this process.16
The rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), the Nazi
Party, was possible, at least in part, because it seemed to promise an end to
political disappointments by picking up on widespread worry and fear among dif-
ferent social and political milieus. The republic’s crisis of representation reflected
the frustrated expectations of many Germans who had transferred the modes of
representation they had grown accustomed to in World War I, such as virtu-
alization and dramatization, to everyday political life. The result was excessive
demands made on everyday politics, which itself had become much more pro-
tracted, ambiguous, and complex. The typical Weimar-era rejection of efforts to
reach complicated compromises that required patience was not compatible with
the existing desire for clarity and community. Expectations of what politics could
achieve thus generated an unresolvable paradox. On the one hand, there was
the demand for a comprehensive national community, or Volksgemeinschaft, in
which the “spirit of 1914” still resounded and in which improvements could be
achieved ad hoc, and, on the other hand, discontent grew and political half mea-
sures came to be openly rejected. Indeed, Weimar politics quickly obtained the
aura of not being able to uphold the moral standards of “good politics,” while at
 Prologues ● 23

the same time, this critique neglected the need for politics that would seek con-
sensus in small steps and be able to transcend political partisanship for the sake
of the public good.17
The scandals in which individual politicians and businessmen were accused
of economic crimes, whether justly or unjustly, played an important role in
public debates.18 Beyond the discussion of concrete individual cases regarding
corruption, venality, and illegal agreements, hateful polemic against the sup-
posedly deplorable conditions of the Weimar Republic emerged in which some
sought to discredit the entire state as a republic of hustlers. In the so-called
Barmat Scandal, for example, right-wing politicians accused Social Democrats
and entrepreneurs, especially Jewish ones, of fraud and bribery. This scandal
became shorthand for opposition to the republic, enabling one to question the
morality of the Weimar Republic and the politicians who loyally served it.19
Already before National Socialists successfully jumped on this bandwagon and
criticized the Weimar system under the mantle of a discourse about racketeering,
talk of a “Weimar republic of profiteers” had established itself as a topos. Indi-
vidual cases of economic crime were portrayed as typical of the entire war, as well
as the revolutionary and inflation era, thereby turning the topos into a destabi-
lizing discursive element.20 In the resulting thought-world, the new state was no
good. “All of Germany,” wrote a journalist in 1925 in Montag, had become “a bar
where profiteers meet, a clip joint, a crazy, ludicrous movie, a wild amusement
park,” all thanks to the revolution.21 Such accusations, which came primarily
from the Right, did not go unanswered. The Berliner Tageblatt and Vorwärts
attempted to counterattack by taking up two scandals that were supposed to
show that those on the Right were involved in inappropriate economic behavior
as well. Some publications emphasized either the so-called Aryan or aristocratic
background of those involved in speculative transactions to counteract the racist
and social stereotypes of the right-wing discourse on profiteering.22 On both the
Right and the Left, therefore, the tension between general and particular inter-
ests was thematized, with both sides claiming to represent the general “public
good.”
These controversies held particular power because of people’s experiences with
rationing and black markets during and immediately after World War I. In the
period of hyperinflation, what Martin Geyer calls the “disorganization of the
market” had become clear for all to see. The collapse of the currency, reflected in
the new banknotes and in the statistics published in the newspapers, had sweep-
ing consequences for everyday life. Numbers and figures created an almost surreal
atmosphere one new price record after another was broken, but this almost virtual
omnipresence of crisis directly affected the real living standard of large sections
of the population.23
Theretofore stable models of order were plainly breaking down. Such impor-
tant guarantees of the bourgeois order as contracts and stable relationships among
people, goods, and money no longer seemed self-evident.24 That money “succes-
sively lost its function as an apparently neutral measure, a means to determine
differences” was something many citizens found difficult to grasp. Ultimately,
24 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

this development shook the foundations of society’s moral categories and, as a

consequence, strengthened anti-Semitic currents.25
In the debates concerning the illegal Berlin black market of the 1920s, the
topic of shortages and the “perception [of ] inequality brought about by state
measures and subject to moral criteria” moved to the top of the political agenda.26
Above all, unemployed persons and senior citizens living on either the dole or a
small pension sank into poverty during Berlin’s inflationary years. This necessi-
tated a strategic reorganization of social and welfare services.27 Initial measures
such as public relief works could not stem the tide, however. The unemploy-
ment trend in the capital was worse than in the rest of the country. Long-term
unemployed people had flocked there. At times as many as 40 percent of all those
receiving unemployment assistance in Germany lived in Berlin. Two factors in
particular lay behind this development. First, Greater Berlin, created just after the
war, had suffered badly from the economic transition from war to peace because
a large section of the armaments industry had settled in the area before and dur-
ing the war. Second, the city became a place for refugees from the territories that
Germany had lost as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. Both led to a worsening
of the city’s economic position.28 The social dynamite exploded in the chaotic
months of the hyperinflation. There were hunger and inflation riots in October
1923. These riots expressed anger, at least in part, against scapegoats, including
Jews from Eastern Europe, many of whom lived in the Scheunenviertel. There
were further riots in November in the Scheunenviertel, and businesses in the city
center were plundered.29
Against this backdrop, the familiar wartime figure of the “profiteer” (Schieber)
gained importance. Together with related concepts such as “speculator” and “war
profiteer” (Kriegsgewinnler), it quickly entered people’s ordinary vocabularies.
As these concepts were closely tied up with experiences from both during and
after the war and could be applied to a variety of different situations, the “profi-
teer” as a popular cipher came to characterize not only certain individuals but also
the chaotic economic conditions themselves. Martin Geyer’s observation about
the speculator applies to the profiteer too. The “speculator [became] nothing
more than shorthand with which the ‘upside-down world’ of the postwar period
could be both explained and condemned.”30 At the same time, the image of the
profiteer offered a suitable vehicle for stereotyping the enemy in ways important
to National Socialism because it brought together anti-Semitism, anti-Marxism,
anti-liberalism, and anti-capitalism.31
The figure of the profiteer was successfully instrumentalized because it rep-
resented the alternative to an imagined community that was “virtuous and
German” but was facing the collapse of both its material and immaterial val-
ues because of runaway inflation. From this perspective, the black marketeer
had seized the moment to make a profit in a period of general moral and eco-
nomic decline, unscrupulously promoting his or her own interests at the cost
of the community’s. Especially scandalous was the profiteer’s allegedly luxurious
lifestyle characterized by conspicuous consumption.32 This impression outraged
many in all political camps, albeit with different accents. Whereas anti-republican
 Prologues ● 25

commentators on the Right saw individual cases as typical of the whole Weimar
system, Social Democratic voices charged that members of the mercantile middle
class in Germany who had grown rich during the inflation were the ones behind
the profiteering.33 Newspapers on the Right, in particular, validated, created, and
mobilized emotions and resentments vis-à-vis the republic and its representatives.
The public’s willingness to vilify perceived wrongdoers was correspondingly high.
Focusing on the black marketeer—the wheeling and dealing profiteer—brought
large sections of the fragmented Weimar society together in a community of
outrage.
By venting their outrage, people processed their experiences, rehearsing a piece
from the repertoire of the “culture of defeat.”34 Together with the experiences
and interpretations of deprivation in the postwar years, talk of the “ignominious”
or “shameful defeat” of Versailles pointed to the close psychological relationship
between feelings of humiliation and a widespread desire to renounce political
practices seen as dishonest bartering typical of the republic. Defeat, “loss of trust
in the rules” during the inflation crisis, and discussions about reparations formed
the focal points of a process of accommodation in which talk made with apodic-
tic certainty was often only the other side of a widespread feeling of uncertainty.35
A widely shared interpretation of Germany’s defeat saw the republic’s “compliance
policy” as a symbolic reenactment of the military capitulation. “One not only
wants to kill us economically, one also wants to take away our honor,” explained
the representative of the right-wing German National People’s Party (DNVP),
Count Posadowsky, in a meeting of the National Assembly on May 12, 1919, in
the auditorium of the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Berlin.36 The linking of
“war guilt” and reparations in Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles opened the
door for an interpretation that was only too plausible to many contemporaries.
Ultimately, this interpretation resulted, as Gottfried Niedhardt put it, from “dif-
ferent forms and stages of reality denial” and from an “introverted defensiveness”
that was unable to see anything positive in the treaty.37 Contemporary critics saw
the treaty conditions as a “defamation of honor” and wanted either to limit or
even reject payments to the victors. What sociologist Adolf Weber has called the
“tragedy of the reparations” was unfolding.38
The “compliance policy” of the government under Chancellor Gustav Wirth
became a central topic, especially for those on the political Right, who responded
to it with open hatred. In their view, whoever wished to negotiate the sum of repa-
rations and therefore a debt pay-off with the victors conflated moral and financial
debt; worse, such negotiations could not avoid acknowledging moral debt and so
could only increase Germany’s humiliation. Financial payments could not com-
pensate for this loss of face. Rather, one could only eliminate the debt of honor
by rendering it null and void. This perspective used a friend-or-foe topos based
on a specific understanding of Germany in relation to England; it employed the
dichotomy Werner Sombart had pointed to with the phrase “German heroes
and English merchants.” This polarity reveals the peculiar semantic mixture of
economics, politics, and morality that typified these overheated Weimar debates.
The supposedly clear distinction between the calculating Englishman and the
26 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

morally impeccable German gave expression to a desire for clarity, for perceiving
defamation. This desire comported with insistence on a clear division between
different political styles. Negotiating (which also had a business connotation)
was “not German” and suggested that gains here were achieved in back rooms
instead of “in open battle.” From this perspective, Germany’s defeat was the result
of a traitorous deal negotiated by a few people behind closed doors. These few
became the “internal enemy” and were placed alongside the external enemy, the
victorious powers because whoever partook in the “foreign” terrain of negotia-
tions, consultations, and “backroom deals” committed “treason” in two ways. The
“compliance politicians” not only accepted and acknowledged Germany’s defeat
and war guilt but, by engaging in negotiations, they also committed performative
treason, so to speak: they participated in a mode of politics that corresponded to
the political modus operandi of the enemy, and they sat down with this enemy at
a table.39 Such reservations were already apparent when the government stated in
early 1919 that the Versailles demands were unacceptable. In the Prussian Assem-
bly on May 13, DNVP Representative Hergt explained, “This unacceptability
has to be without any reservations; there can be no partial successes; there can be
no horse trading about the one or other point.”40 In other words, the assembly
demanded maximum rigor, which doomed to failure any policy that took the
actual political situation into account and accepted compromise.41
Strident opponents of the republic considered the Treaty of Versailles and the
ongoing reparations negotiations—which perpetuated the experience of defeat—
a great sin, even if they did not always explicitly say so. At the same time, talk
of profiteers in public debates at the beginning of the 1920s evinced an inter-
pretive framework closely enmeshed in the ongoing experience of defeat, thereby
linking profiteering to the feeling of humiliation engendered by the reparations
negotiations. The feelings of powerlessness among those who believed Germany
had remained “undefeated in the field” converged on the profiteer. After all,
this figure represented a group of people who had profited from the defeat.
The ubiquitous black marketeer embodied a pattern of action. He or she was
the “internal enemy” whose egotistical behavior—connoted as “commercial” and
“Jewish”—corresponded to the “external enemy.”42
Berlin was at the center of this discourse. Many elements of a comprehensive
criticism of modernity—illiberal, anti-Western, anti-Semitic, and anti-Marxist—
came together in an aggressive rejection of the metropolis as a symbol of the
new age. Of course, the National Socialists’ contributions were particularly vehe-
ment, but there were others too. In the nineteenth century already—for example,
in Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings—a persistent theme had been contrasting the
“unnatural” life in the big city with an idealized provincial world as the site of real
Germanness. The “pleasure, wrapped up in fear, of the man from the province”
as he entered the world of urban spectacle, as Hanne Bergius has described it,
was reflected in a whole series of contemporary representations of the city that
centered around a concept of the masses, around what were assumed to be typi-
cal figures of the criminal milieu, and around the “unhealthy excesses” of a hectic
city existence.43 Berlin was considered the perfect example of such squalor.44 For
 Prologues ● 27

conservative cultural critics, avant-garde artists, and large sections of the pop-
ulation, the city represented the “whore Babylon,” a remarkably vivid synthesis,
both terrifying and fascinating, of everything in the new era that was wonderfully
tempting and disgusting. The ostensibly omnipresent “Berlin cocottes” (prosti-
tutes) formed a central motif of this male view of the city as they “embodied
the eroticism of consumption.” Hanne Bergius noted that contemporary written
and visual representations of these Berlin prostitutes were strikingly analogous to
other commodities for quick, anonymous mass consumption.45 Various desires
to satisfy one’s own baser instincts were recast as urban consumer behavior and
found expression in an almost obsessive fixation on a “new form of urban per-
formance” that combined the archaic and the modern.46 The temptations of
the Berlin world of consumer goods encompassed both women’s bodies and the
products in the city’s shop windows.
In this situation, the roles available to urban men faced threatening and fas-
cinating challenges, and the alternatives were dubious, ranging from the violent
and criminal to respectable in a “normal” way. These roles included outlaws of
various stripes who appeared to have distanced themselves from bourgeois moral-
ity and adapted to the chaotic conditions of crisis-ridden postwar Berlin. And like
the common descriptions of Berlin that combined the repulsive with the appeal-
ing and the adventurous, descriptions of contemporary criminals mixed moral
reproach with admiration and the desire “to be a little bit like” them.47 The
profiteer or hustler was one of the most prominent criminal figures in postwar
Berlin, appearing in the city’s newspapers, motion pictures, and novels.48 The
two characteristics that made him so alluring clearly corresponded to those of
that other metropolitan commodity, the “Berlin cocottes.” After all, the profiteers
had the money to afford these women and the chutzpah to deal with their chal-
lenging, even dominating, ways. The poem “Berlin Christmas 1918” by the
German writer known as Klabund (Alfred Henschke) provides an example of
this interpretive pattern:

Nowadays the people sit together

on the Kurfürstendamm with much hullabaloo.
Diamonds and dames, a tailcoat with something in it,
A mink coat, a heart of stone, a double chin.
Pearls sparkle, the champagne sparkles.
Cocottes mock: Whoever wants to can, of course,
count out five fifty-mark notes for me on the tablecloth.
Hey profiteer, my dear?—No, we can’t be fooled.
And while millions starve to death:
We’ll join another party instead.49

The only ones up to dealing, economically and attitudinally, with the sarcasm of
the prostitutes were their masculine counterparts, namely, those “ruthless upstarts
who used the anonymity of the big city to put on various high-powered masks
for carrying on their hustling activities.”50 Only these two complementary figures
28 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

knew how to make their way to their own advantage in this metropolis, which
had become a dubious sort of “department store.” The powerlessness experienced
by many small-time and big-time losers of the war and the new postwar order
were reflected in this conceptualization of the profiteer and the prostitute. The
(male) gaze at these unwholesome men and commodified women was not simply
passively powerless and jealous, however. It was active in that it aimed to trans-
fer an unsettling experience of contingency into manageable moral categories.
“How is the cocotte culture being paid for, this culture that has spread in this
period of great hardship, when many small livelihoods in Germany are going
bankrupt?,” a reader of Vorwärts asked rhetorically, followed by the answer: “with
the money that heavy industrialists and alongside them the profiteers have taken
from the pockets of the savers, the creditors, the mortgage holders, and the under-
paid working class.”51 National Socialists polemically took up this anti-profiteer
and anti-metropolis sentiment, stating loudly that they would do everything
they could to work against urbanization and that with them there would be a
“turning away from (the) previous false paths of development: . . . urbanization,
industrialization, Western ideas, [and] a global economy.”52
On the political level, the mistrust in the arrangements of innumerable govern-
ing coalitions, which were perceived as seeking compromises rather than leading,
reflected precisely this sense, formulated in the example of the profiteer, that one’s
weaknesses were constantly being exploited by the tricks of the powerful. Thus,
war and defeat in tandem with power and powerlessness formed core motifs of the
Weimar Republic’s political culture, and these themes found practical, everyday
support among the people, above all because of their experiences with ruinous
inflation.
Accordingly, the topic of (political and economic) bargaining played a key role
in the political debates of the 1920s. Talk of the “Weimar system,” synonymous
with “profiteering” and “corruption,” brought together deep-seated feelings of
hatred against “the politicians,” “the Jews,” and “the inflation profiteers.” Rather
heterogeneous groups shared this hatred. The various bogeymen they despised
could all be associated with the reportedly dirty bartering transactions of black
marketeers. The strong desire for leadership and a leader, for decisions, identifica-
tion, and greatness, was a pipe dream that vehemently rejected the cumbersome,
frequently incomprehensible political arrangements of the Weimar period as vari-
ations of shady bartering agreements.53 Not by chance did those on the Right
attempt to exploit the continuing negotiations on reparations for their own pur-
poses. For example, they generated political agitation to oppose the Young Plan,
in which Germany’s reparation payments were to be renegotiated. By referring to
these negotiations, right-wing opponents could easily demonstrate how they were
different from the other parties by refusing not only specific reparation models
but the process of negotiating on the whole. Regarding the new payment plan,
a pamphlet from DNVP circles, for example, stated, “We are supposed to sell
our children and grandchildren into slavery. Our fulfillment propaganda claims
that the reduction of the annuities achieved by extending the length of time
they are to be paid is progress, success, even a ‘gift.’ Whoever agrees with that
 Prologues ● 29

deserves to be a slave.”54 The word “gift” expressed—in an ironic form—outrage

over deal-making that right-wing circles considered unacceptable. The NSDAP
took up this defensive posture when, in the Völkischer Beobachter, it accused the
“establishment parties” of being responsible for the “enslavement of the German
people” and added that the “Weimar Republic” was only “another expression for
the tributary peace (Tributfrieden) of Versailles.”55 With this and other positions,
the NSDAP generally put forward nothing but a “conglomeration of resentments
and ideas that was widespread among the German Right and by no means orig-
inal.” What was new was the “passion,” the “rigor,” and the “dynamism” of the
National Socialist movement.56
Disengagement from horizontal public negotiating, contracting, and trading
relationships, which at the very least seemed to be based on partnerships, entailed
more than just rhetoric. It was also reflected in the system of personality-based
fealty that the National Socialists pushed through on the state level after 1933.
National Socialism was founded on a “type of rule in which neo-feudal, personal
loyalties had preference over bureaucratic structures of governing” and “formal
status had been replaced by personal ranking within the Führer’s entourage.”57
This process of replacing bureaucratic or elected relationships with personal
ties corresponded to a massive semantic shift away from explicit bartering sit-
uations toward voluntary “gifts” and “sacrifices.” Individual national comrades
(Volksgenossen) made “presents” and “contributions” to the greater whole. If one
understands exchange as an interrelation between at least two people whose aim
is to cooperate in the form of some sort of compromise of goods, which is
the result of negotiations, then the new political culture of National Socialism
marked a radical shift away from exchange as mode of communication. The shift
away from exchange relations, which were threatened by a loss of trust, toward
demanding the greatest possible “unconditional loyalty” marked an important
transformation in Germany’s political culture during the transition to National
Socialist rule.58 This development did not mean that politicians and citizens no
longer viewed their relationship, which was based on trust-building achievement,
as an exchange.59 The National Socialist leadership was especially keen to secure
people’s loyalty by making concessions, for example, in the question of secur-
ing adequate provisions. Even so, a massive propagandistic evocation of “victim,”
“loyalty,” and “national unity” was required in order to offer large sections of the
population truly attractive chimeras that promised to end the inner strife of the
Weimar years.60
Thus, it was the renunciation of a political culture that had placed great
value on complex rules and on the possession of knowledge about these rules
that secured the willingness of a majority of Germans to participate in National
Socialism. Of special importance in this regard was the “Führer myth.”61 The
crisis of the Weimar Republic derived in part from its failure to develop a sys-
tem of communication based on mutual trust that could have stabilized it. The
Führer myth combined the hope and longing for “better times” with the possibil-
ity of attaching this hope to a single individual with a sort of raw, unadulterated
trust. A personal tie to the Führer, orchestrated by propaganda and transmitted
30 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

via mass media, took the place of a raw trust formed in face-to-face situations.
This blurred border between unadulterated trust and the hope that someone
would be able to bring about change converged in the hope for salvation with the
Führer as “savior.” Just how successfully this hope displaced democratic election
and control procedures was revealed in Germans’ willingness to criticize political
abuses and individual state agencies while retaining a high level of trust in Hitler
himself.62
At the same time, the “Führer principle” made it possible to eliminate
some anonymous hierarchies in politics and the administration. This principle
appeared to be the logical implementation of a personal and “organic” social
structure in which people entrusted with tasks replaced checks and balances. In
this way, National Socialist political culture represented something completely
different, an alternative that ran counter to democracy with its procedures,
patience, and compromises.
In this political culture, there was a semantic displacement of the concept of
“loyalty,” which took the place of democratic conceptions in which a citizen’s
trust in politicians was limited to a certain time.63 This displacement could only
succeed against the background of a political culture in which democratic proce-
dure was perceived as deficient and under the conditions of a comprehensive crisis
of modern “languages of trust” (including money), to borrow Harald Wenzel’s
phrase.64 Against this backdrop, the new imagery was able under the mantle of
“charismatic rule” to transcend disappointments with Weimar by offering hope
for a better future. The crisis of the republic was in part caused by the inabil-
ity of the political system’s representatives to communicate credibility. Modern
societies have to rely on abstract systems to provide mediation services at their
“access points.” Hitler’s “charismatic rule” addressed precisely this gap; it was able
to establish personal “raw” trust through “face-work” in the media. Alongside the
National Socialist rejection of formulations taken explicitly from bartering, this
charismatic rule proved to be attractive.65
The National Socialists set themselves apart from political competitors by
means of consistent and sustained shifts in political semantics. Wherever pos-
sible, National Socialists described their policies with language that distanced
them from the vocabulary of bartering and trading, which they discredited as an
unacceptable mixing of business and politics. In place of negotiations and agree-
ments, there were events. Not the political process but rather the result dominated
the discourse. New organizations replaced those of the so-called Weimar system.
“They have no system; they have an organization. They do not try to organize
things rationally; they listen to what is organic in order to discover its secrets,”
noted Viktor Klemperer.66 The concepts that best expressed this “organic” trans-
formation were those like “Führer” and “trustee.”67 These terms suggested that
a person had a definite role, that a person knew his or her place and was work-
ing for the good of the whole. Instead of political power, conveyed for a limited
period, there was now personal power. “Loyalty” to the “Führer” was thus both
the precondition for and a description of official and mandated functions.68
Thus, at the level of public social relationships, National Socialism offered an
 Prologues ● 31

integrating structure—“intense inclusivity in a society that had been scarred by

deep divisions.”69
As successful as this policy of disengaging from horizontal exchange relation-
ships was, these propagandistic incantations could scarcely be reconciled with the
new burdens of the war for large sections of the population. At the very latest
in 1939, when a comprehensive system of rationing was instituted, the issue of
trading was once again on the agenda, albeit under new circumstances.

Consumption Spaces between the Wars, Conditions of Interaction,

and New Market Boundaries
Berlin’s wartime black market was a new space for consumption that functioned
according to its own rules. Illegal and lacking infrastructure, the black market
forced participants to learn new bartering practices in place of what had been rou-
tine shopping rituals and procedures. Bartering took place in apartments, in cafés
and pubs, in stores, or in the workplace. In many cases, these sites were where
introductions were made and where potential traders could size one another
up, as none of these sites was actually suitable for trading goods. Danger, secu-
rity measures, and improvisation characterized the scene. Buying things illegally
brought important changes to managing one’s household resources compared to
regular shopping. I look at consumer spaces in Berlin before the war and the
trading methods as components of a consumption history that focuses on the
interactions of the participants.70
The context of shopping and the scripts followed by buyers and sellers had
changed in the legal market before 1939 since some small rationing measures
had already been introduced in 1934 as an effect of Nazi consumption policies
prioritizing at least to some extent rearmament over consumer goods supplies.
Nonetheless, the wartime rationing measures marked a clear break. The regula-
tions drafted to secure these measures set forth a relatively clearly defined space in
which consumption could legally take place and thereby defined ex negativo the
areas for black market trading. Three things will be looked at here: the sites where
Berlin consumers conducted business in the prewar period, the new boundaries
between the legal and illegal markets as drawn up in the relevant wartime reg-
ulations, and the goals National Socialist leaders pursued in formulating these
boundaries.
When Karl Deutmann, who lived in Karlshorst, recorded his impressions of
his “journey to the city” on June 24, 1945, the hustle and bustle of the market-
places in the ruins figured prominently. Deutmann employed a telling formula.
Although the activities in the Berlin streets seemed anachronistic—butter was
sold out of kegs and there was a good deal of haggling over prices—Deutmann
compared the illegal trading with a “street department store.” There was a good
deal of irony here because the difference between the “wild black market trad-
ing” and the “temples of consumption” that had once been so admired in the city
was only too clear. Where a couple of years earlier elegant businesses had invited
one to stroll and shop, now one could buy “outside, freely traded beets of some
32 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

kind” on every street corner.71 Descriptions of such contrast indirectly took up

a discourse that had been popular since the nineteenth century, in which Berlin
was described as a modern city of consumption. But how far had consumption
really fallen? What did the Berlin consumption landscape look like before the war
economy and the conditions of this “society in a state of disintegration” prepared
the way for the illegal markets? What sort of consumption spaces and practices
characterized the period just before the black markets?
In Berlin, largely because of the chaotic economic situation between the
wars, there were heated, politically charged discussions about consumption.
In quick succession, World War I, hyperinflation, and the Great Depression had
determined living conditions. At the same time, the contexts for consumption
practices were undergoing a long-term transformation that heralded the birth
of a new consumer society. This development, which had begun in the nine-
teenth century, not only produced enduring changes in the everyday economic
activity of Berliners, but it had also led to the creation of new consumer spaces
and had even impacted the capital’s appearance. Berlin had increasingly come to
be described in terms of consumption. With the birth of the department stores
at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, the
city became a “consumption metropolis.” Reports and fictional adaptations in
literature and film established an image of urbanity defined by new shopping
opportunities that were fascinating for some and suspect for others. The city had
once held a spartan Prussian image, but that changed after the founding of the
German Empire in 1871. In the boom phase of the 1870s, apartment houses
on Unter den Linden gave way to fashion shops, restaurants, banks, and hotels.
This was in keeping with imperial policy, which placed a high value on appear-
ances. In the new Kaiser-Galerie, modeled on a gallery in Milan and completed
in 1873, customers could enjoy the consumer experience in over 50 stores, cafés,
and other establishments. Such sensational new buildings received a great deal of
attention.72 This trend continued after World War I. Consumption opportuni-
ties were now considered an essential part of the Zeitgeist and of contemporary
lifestyles. Thus, observers in the 1920s often compared Berlin to Chicago, which
they saw as a shining example in this respect. What people had in mind with such
descriptions were above all the large department stores, such as the Kaufhaus des
Westens, which opened in 1907. These businesses offered such an undreamed-
of variety of attractively displayed products that shopping became a thrilling
experience. At the same time, new entertainment facilities and even public adver-
tising changed the cityscape, while posters and neon signs started to change how
Berliners perceived their surroundings.73
For all that, descriptions attributing modernity and world power to specific
sites of consumption did not have much to do with the everyday lives of Berliners.
Such accounts, whether positive or negative, overlooked the diversity of con-
sumption spaces that typified the city. Alongside new forms of the retail trade,
there were still traditional forms of shopping at markets or with peddlers, street
vendors, and “flying exchanges (fliegende Börsen).” These distribution points con-
tinued to exist for a long time. They continued to shape many quarters of the city
 Prologues ● 33

into which the new consumer world of department stores, retail shops, fast-food
stands, and entertainment facilities was only slowly making inroads, if at all.74
The topos of modernity was probably also the expression of a rhetorical break
because Berlin in the 1920s looked like anything but the modern consumer city:
the images of chaos—recall Deutmann’s description—stood in stark contrast to
the new forms of presenting goods and of shopping.
As far as bartering went, Berlin saw plenty of it already during World War
I. This kind of trade continued into the early 1920s, largely unabated by the
“extortion courts (Wuchergerichte).”75 There was a whole series of terms for the
new black market practices: Schleichhandel, which meant “illicit trade” and con-
veyed a sense of sneaking or creeping about (schleichen); “chain trade,” which
pictured goods passing through the hands of many middlemen; “wild [unautho-
rized] street trading”; and “profiteering (Wuchergeschäft)” in the sense of charging
extortionate prices. The distinction between “real” and “wild” street trading, in
particular, preoccupied many outraged observers and reflected the fact that at
the beginning of the 1920s, legal street trading was more widespread than in the
1930s. But illegal trading also proliferated. According to contemporary estimates,
the number of participants increased by the thousands between 1920 and 1921.76
As such, illegal trading became a problem for rather different groups.
The topic was mentioned in numerous petitions and letters between the Berlin
police headquarters and the city government. In June 1919, the police division
responsible for enforcing trading laws reported to the Berlin municipal authori-
ties that the “wild street traders and their following” have attempted “to establish
themselves on Küstriner Platz after [having been] driven out of the Schönhauser
district and the Andreasplatz.” The policeman in charge assured that he was
“doing all he could . . . with all the means at his disposal” to stop the “wild street
trading, which is spreading in a most annoying manner.” That this was not an
empty threat soon became clear. The authorities advanced with military squads
against the unwanted trading.77
Markets were in fact strongly regulated. The various “market police regula-
tions for municipal market halls and weekly public markets” in the individual
Berlin districts determined, for example, the “market area” and “freedom of
access.” The planners had also thought of “business conducted while walking”
and immediately prohibited it. Market stands had to display both their propri-
etors’ names and the goods’ prices. “Loitering” was forbidden, “as well as violating
basic decency or disturbing the peace, hawking wares or auctioning them off, and
preventing or disrupting purchases and transactions with physical force or by out-
bidding or indeed by any other means.”78 These regulations made the contrast to
unregulated “wild trading” in the streets all the more apparent. Complaints about
unregulated trading began to pile up at municipal offices from shop owners afraid
of the competition who objected, for example, to the poor hygiene where illegal
street trading took place. They also bemoaned disturbances caused by hawking
and pushing, or they simply protested the underhanded competition.79
Food producers and the Berlin Market Hall Association also criticized street
trading. A complaint from 1919 stated that although many people suffering from
34 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

disabilities, war injuries, and unemployment sought “to create a source of income
for themselves through street trading,” these efforts could not be allowed “to
degenerate to the degree that whole streets” were no longer available to “public
traffic.” This problem was particularly serious “in the area around the two central
market halls on Neue Friedrichstrasse and Alexanderplatz.” Under pressure from
these complaints, municipal authorities called for “a stronger police presence to
keep the area around the market halls, in particular, as well as the most impor-
tant traffic routes, free from street traders.”80 Residents and shop owners alike
complained about congested streets and access roads.
The Berlin police seem to have been most receptive to this last point. They
had been trained to see the streets as the site of “street politics” and understood
street trading as a disturbance of the peace, which they subsumed under the con-
cept of “traffic problem.”81 They kept meticulous records of the preferred black
market trading sites and at the same time used raids to gain the upper hand, albeit
with only partial success. Yet as a letter from the Stettin Food Office made clear,
there was no legal foundation for such police actions. The police justified their
approach with reference to street regulations because other applicable regulations
did not exist. Stettin authorities therefore intended to amend the regulations to
enhance their control.82
Street trading had become a political issue, and it remained on the agenda
in Berlin throughout the entire Weimar period. Political parties represented in
the capital city’s government had rather different opinions about the practice.
The Social Democrats (SPD) and Independent Social Democrats (USPD) often
supported street traders. In their opinion, poor Berliners—and thus the war’s real
losers—depended on street trading, and the right-wing coalition against the prac-
tice was primarily interested in protecting and representing the interests of “the
propertied classes,” “wholesalers,” and “capitalists.” In the meeting of the Berlin
city council on March 4, 1920, SPD representative Zimmermann responded to
someone who had interrupted him and associated street trading with profiteering
and hustling:

When one speaks here of profiteers and hustlers, then I could say with the same
justification that the merchant class, too, is riddled with [them]. . . . I need only
refer to the large department stores Wertheim and Tietz, who put their retail outlets
on the best corners. The merchants, too, systematically move their businesses to the
busiest parts of the city.83

His party viewed street trading as a “necessary branch” of Berlin’s economic

life. Street trading not only created jobs for those not so well-off but also
ensured that there was a quick and cost-effective distribution of goods. Of course,
“real businesses” had to be strengthened, and one had to cooperate with mer-
chants toward the “elimination of all abuses.”84 USPD representative Nawrocki
explained only a few weeks later, on May 26, that the measures against street
trading demanded by the Liberals and the DNVP were an expression of political
patronage: “As a matter of fact, they see a certain danger in the possibility that the
 Prologues ● 35

street traders could have a moderating effect on prices, so that the businessmen
cannot increase prices as much as they would like. During the war, businessmen
played fast and loose with the proletarian population.”85
By contrast, liberal and conservative representatives emphasized that street
trading harmed retailers and that the bulk of participants were not the poor
but criminals. Furthermore, in their opinion, the “wild hustle and bustle” led
to “disfigurements” in the “cityscape” and massive traffic problems. The city
council member from the Economic Party of the German Middle Classes (aka
Wirtschaftspartei or WP) made some remarkable statements that read like a pro-
logue to the sort of scenes that became characteristic of the Berlin black market
in the 1940s:

You all know it—you only need to go into the streets where there are lots of people;
it doesn’t have to be in the west, it can also be in the center of the city—when you
walk home you often hear: cigarettes, chocolate! But the man never has anything in
his hands. Rather, he takes everything out of his overcoat. Is that legitimate street
trading?

The answer to Roeder’s rhetorical question was clear. He agreed with city
councilman Frank that unregulated trading should be prohibited. To be sure,
the latter took the position “that it would be very difficult today to draw a clear
line between honest and dishonest street trading.” At the same time, however,
Frank also took a “strong stand . . . against the havoc—which is spreading more
and more—of smuggling, price gouging by middlemen, and black marketeering.”
The “men of action in this business” are “people who are well off, who live in the
western part of Berlin, and who earn millions in this profitable business.” These
same people also controlled the trade in currencies, securing for themselves “huge
profits by trading in foreign currencies.” Furthermore, Frank pointed out “that
in the western part of the city, street traders were conducting a flourishing trade
in cocaine.” In spite of the fact that it was very difficult to distinguish between
“honest” and “dishonest” trading, he called for “the government to take appro-
priate measures to protect fully the interests of legitimate street traders [and] to
suppress the illicit trade on the streets.”86
Frank gave voice to a moral division in the city that would persist for a long
time to come. Remarks by city councilman Warthemann continued in a simi-
lar vein. Warthemann asked whether traders in the Weinmeister and Grenadier
Streets were “Berlin citizens.” He surmised that they were not but were “Jews who
had come to Berlin from the East.” “We cannot and must not,” he continued,
“allow such trading in the streets of Berlin to continue.” The Liberal Democratic
(FDP) representative Hausberg supported such appeals. He spoke of the “vermin
of economic activity” that had to be “removed from our street life.”
In his reply, SPD representative Zimmermann stated that he wanted to make
people aware of the disproportionately harsh measures against street traders.
He saw grave differences between the small-time street traders and the circles
described by Councilman Frank: “the contraband trade works with wagonloads
36 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

and whole trains, whereas the street trade cannot push whole wagons and trains
of groceries, etc.” In response, someone cried out, “We denounce both.” Clearly,
the streets had become a contested consumption space, yet Berlin street traders
would remain familiar figures in the city into the 1930s.
The moral economy expressed in such statements did not only reflect views
on decent behavior in the marketplace but also showed an awareness for the
outward appearance of the city’s public spaces that had changed a lot since the
prewar years. Did street trading really fit into the picture of a modern metropolis?
Yet street trading was not necessarily backward per se. As late as the second half
of the nineteenth century, it was considered typical of big city life.87 During the
1920s, a significant portion of these traders were news vendors; in 1929, there
were 3,700 officially registered news vendors in Berlin alone. The sale of news-
papers in the city streets came to symbolize the need for information, imparting
an image of speed and rapid change that seemed essential to modern urbanity.88
On the other hand, just as this branch of the mobile business seemed to fit well
with the image of a modern metropolis, hawking small items and foodstuffs on
the street could be considered backward because it stood in contrast to the new,
opulent business premises. With its direct confrontation between buyer and seller,
the seemingly provisional presentation of goods under unhygienic open-air con-
ditions had something old-fashioned (if endearing) about it. The authorities were
not indifferent to such appearances. On the other hand, the state made money
on the itinerant traders. Only in 1937 did the revenue generated for the state by
the itinerant trade tax decrease significantly, by around 80 percent compared with
1929.89 Furthermore, street trading created jobs for the lower classes, above all,
for women, senior citizens, children, and people with handicaps. Thus, allowing
such trading was a matter of socio-political significance.90
Alongside street trading, market halls shaped the Berlin consumer landscape
between the wars.91 With the slaughterhouses and the indoor market halls, the
city provided “the most important facilities . . . to organize the distribution of
food” in Berlin.92 Whereas the market hall in the Neue Friedrichstrasse was
exclusively for wholesalers, the other ten halls, spread over the whole city, were
open to wholesalers and retailers alike. The market halls flourished so that by the
late 1920s, their total floor space once again expanded. Within three years, the
floor space increased from under 27,000 square meters in 1926 to 28,000 square
meters in 1929. Some 500,000 tons of fruits and vegetables were sold here in this
period.93
To understand the transformation of the urban consumer landscape in the first
third of the twentieth century, we must keep in mind that in 1927 there were still
regular hay and straw markets in Wedding and Friedrichshain, and horse markets
in Charlottenburg and Spandau.94 Whereas, the new had arrived in the form of
modern consumption temples, elegant cafés, and music halls, for example, on
Potsdamer Platz, Unter den Linden, and Kurfürstendamm, consumption spaces
in other parts of the city that seemed anachronistic remained. Most important for
the everyday Berlin consumer were the regular weekly markets, at which, above
all, foodstuffs were sold. In 1927, there were 114 weekly markets in Berlin, both
 Prologues ● 37

public and private, with more than 250 market days per week. The 58 public
markets were spread out relatively equally throughout those districts that were not
part of the central city; the most important were Charlottenburg, Schöneberg,
Steglitz, and Treptow. The markets in the city center were exclusively in the hands
of private businessmen.95
Street trading, market halls, and weekly markets remind us that not every-
where was Berlin becoming a new, modern consumer city. All the same, things
were changing. In Berlin, too, retail trade came to be what Uwe Spiekermann
calls the “foundation” of the new “consumer society.”96 One important objec-
tion to street trading as a whole thematized the insecurity of the illegal or at
least ephemeral business in the street. “I must emphasize,” explained the city
councilman Dr. Falckenberg, from the national liberal German People’s Party
(DVP),

that the shopkeepers are stable, that they live there, so that the customer who buys
something that does not fit or is poorly made can go back to the shopkeeper and
return it. The street traders, however, disappear in a minute, and whoever has been
deceived by them has simply lost out.97

This was a decisive point against street trading. On the other hand,
Falckenberg’s remarks reflected a contemporary perception that the customer had
grown accustomed to the secure spaces of retail stores. The modern retail business
met this need for security. And that it did so was, alongside its decentralized and
efficient distribution function, one more reason for its success.
To an ever greater degree, retail stores and large department stores crowded out
more traditional consumer spaces. Between 1924 and 1932, the number of large
department stores, cooperatives, and other stores with a wide variety of goods
increased significantly throughout Germany, although smaller and medium-sized
stores still formed the backbone of retail in Germany.98 In the business census on
May 17, 1939, a total of 31 department stores were registered. Just under 23,000
people worked in them. For standard price, variety, and bulk goods stores, there
were 30 entries and a comparable number of employees, 19,000.99 According to
the same census, there were even more retail businesses for food and beverages.
By May 1939, their number had increased quickly to 31,395. There were also
about 7,000 clothing shops.100
The expansion of the retail and department store trade laid the foundations
for a new culture of shopping that profoundly affected the everyday lives of con-
sumers, especially in terms of how people interacted with one another. A new
set of roles developed for buyer and seller that were subject to rather fixed rules.
“Shopping,” observes Spiekermann, “was transformed into a ritual, where the
process, aim, and subject of commercial communication between retailer and
consumer were increasingly regulated.”101 Yet these new rules were ambivalent.
On the one hand, there was greater anonymity, something generally attributed
to life in the big city. In place of personal relationships with a shopkeeper and
their accompanying forms of interaction, there was now a relatively uniform
38 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

pattern of paying without a longer sales talk. Prerequisite for this change was
the standardization of both goods and prices. At the same time, the situation was
characterized by a limitation on competition left over from the war and infla-
tion years. Until the late 1920s, the prices for bread and other baked goods
were set by law throughout Germany. Milk prices were specified by local offi-
cials. At the same time, name-brand items with standardized prices made up over
half of all food sales. Only a couple of goods such as salt, sugar, and lard were sold
as “competitive articles.”102 Together with price levels established for policy rea-
sons, the introduction of price standards ensured that there would be a different
sort of shopping. These standards enabled people to orient themselves quickly; a
lengthy, protracted inspection and examination of the goods was no longer nec-
essary. Thus, how one shopped changed. Shopping became more anonymous,
could be completed much more quickly, and promoted new expectations for the
behavior of buyers and sellers.
On the other hand, the shop as a “basic innovation,” to use Spiekermann’s
phrase, strengthened relationships between vendors and their regular customers;
indeed, it made such relationships possible. As a new consumer experience in the
nineteenth century, especially in regard to communication, the new store created
space for a new, recurring, and therefore secure shopping experience. It became
much easier for the customer to enforce his or her demands—for example, in
regard to the quality of goods. Furthermore, shopping took place in a social con-
text that went far beyond a simple exchange of goods. The small corner shop
in particular was the ideal trading site for not only goods but also gossip. The
decentralized distribution network of small retail shops was not only modern,
but it also provided the starting point for social integration in the supposedly so
anonymous big city. Small retail stores broke down the complexity of the modern
metropolis into comprehensible units.103
When the National Socialists came to power, the conditions for street trading
in Berlin changed considerably. The National Socialist measures that affected the
consumption landscape were not solely motivated by ideology but by a bundle
of motives that mixed ideological guidelines with questions of city planning and
public health, in addition to strictly economic policy calculations.
Perhaps most important were those conceptions of the National Social-
ist leadership—specifically of Hitler and Goebbels—that aimed at a complete
“cleansing” of Berlin’s appearance. After what Goebbels called the “battle for
Berlin,” the “red Moloch” (the communist-infested metropolis) became the
object of National Socialist transformation gigantomania.104 Berlin was not only
the center of Germany; it was also the center of the National Socialist theater
of power. From 1933 on, the National Socialist claim to power found expres-
sion in torch and military parades, spectacles at the Olympic Games, and urban
development. Berlin was not only the metropolis of government and administra-
tion; it was also the most important site where the well-ordered, powerful masses
marched. In these ostentatious displays, the National Socialist leadership found
an expression of support.105 “Berlin is Germany and Germany is Berlin” were
the words in a 1937 booklet commemorating the 700th anniversary of the city’s
 Prologues ● 39

founding. Scarcely had the National Socialists “established the city as their capital
when they claimed to have turned it into a bastion of order, decency, and correct
thinking,” whereas before it had been little more than an accumulation of male
brothels, amusement temples, and drug markets in their eyes.106
The Nazi takeover of the city involved the city’s administration and public
spaces. Dr. Julius Lippert, chairman of the NSDAP faction in the city council
and Reichskommissar for Berlin, was responsible for the “cleanup.” After years
of bitter street battles between communists and the SA, paramilitary National
Socialist troops ruled the streets of Berlin, whereas the Berlin police preferred
to act against fringe groups. In December 1933, newspaper articles celebrated
“the cleansing of Berlin,” stating that “the measures of the Berlin police and their
results find the support of everyone. The capital city is freed within a few months
from an evil whose scale represented an unacceptable annoyance to Berliners and
to visitors in the city.”107 In fact, this violent “pacification” of the streets appears to
have enjoyed the approval of the populace. It hardly mattered that the city’s trans-
formation and the resulting new National Socialist cityscape were the products
of terror.
The anti-Jewish policies of the new rulers formed a central aspect of violent
Nazi control of urban space. The prohibition of street trading for foreigners,
which affected especially eastern European Jews, so-called Ostjuden, and which
was supposed to keep the city streets “pure,” brought together anti-Semitism,
“cleanup” policy, and local commercial policy. From the perspective of the
new rulers, unauthorized or “wild” street trading was incompatible with “clean”
German streets and therefore had to be prohibited. This policy comported with
existing anti-Semitic attitudes, but there was something new about it. It was not
limited to spontaneous or individually planned attacks. On the contrary, actions
against street trading were radicalized and systematized. This National Social-
ist ideal of “German cleanliness” bore fruit in public spaces during preparations
for the Olympic Games. To improve the image of the city abroad, “measures to
impress foreign visitors with Berlin’s civility included a roundup of beggars and
known con-men, as well as a prohibition on price-gouging.”108
Other aspects of Nazi ideology also played a role in reshaping the city’s
consumption spaces. This was particularly evident in the idea of a collabora-
tive relationship between buyers and sellers as an organic constituent of the
Volksgemeinschaft. In the 1930s, state regulations increasingly specified certain
roles for merchants as well as for consumers. In theory, both sides were under-
stood to be partners with equal rights who were supposed to act in the economy
for the good of the whole. As a result, medium-sized retail stores were increas-
ingly supported, whereas large businesses, small stores, and itinerant traders were
suppressed.109 Between 1933 and 1941, authorities drastically reduced the num-
ber of business licenses. If in 1933 there were still 6,620 street merchants, by
1941 this number had declined to under 2,000. In particular, the municipal
administration limited street trading in connection with preparations for the
1936 Olympics, because in its eyes street trading did not conform to the ideal
of a clean and modern metropolis. The beginning of the war was also a pivotal
40 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

moment, although it was much less dramatic because it was part of a general
trend to restrict consumption for the duration of the war.110
On top of these anti-Semitic and ideological motives, there was economic pol-
icy. Here National Socialist Germany pursued two contradictory goals. On the
one hand, the regime worked to increase armaments production. On the other
hand, it worried that its armaments policy could hurt consumption and therefore
cost the government popular support. These dual concerns required careful bal-
ancing, which Hitler himself underlined in 1935 in the face of a strained supply
situation.111 The issue of “adequate provisions” was explosive because of the expe-
riences of World War I. The National Socialist leadership believed that hunger
since 1916 had played a decisive role in the home front’s collapse in 1918. A
starving home front was not to endanger the state ever again.
To be sure, the capital received particularly favorable treatment when it came
to provisions for the populace. But even in Berlin, food supplies were limited by
raw material shortages.112 Well before 1939, the precursors of wartime rationing
affected everyday life in Berlin, as the government quietly began to ration certain
goods. Already by the mid-1930s, attentive observers noticed the state taking the
first steps toward a war economy with a regulated supply of foodstuffs. The nec-
essary measures for agricultural products had already been “planned in detail,”
according to a 1934 report from SOPADE, the Social Democratic Party in exile,
which had sources in Germany. Indeed, the “sales and market regulations” for
foods such as milk, butter, and eggs “certainly also [reflected] important pricing
policy goals.” At the same time, they constituted “the completed framework of
a command economy in the event of war.”113 Only a year later, SOPADE cor-
respondents noted that the deputy to the Führer “at the beginning of October
[1935] . . . still repudiated the introduction of compulsory rationing or a ration
card system.” By the end of November, however, “an indirect card system was
introduced for all fats in the form of customer lists at retail shops and butch-
ers.” This procedure, the authors supposed, was chosen “because one wanted to
avoid reintroducing the ration cards that had been so hated during wartime.”114
Already in June 1938, as a result of the restrictions and limitations, a black mar-
ket for rationed foodstuffs started up in Berlin. For example, the authors of the
SOPADE report suspected that the eggs being offered for sale in the city were
part of a slowly expanding illegal black market.115
These new market conditions resulted from an economic policy that was
primarily interested in rearmament and that viewed consumers as a potential
risk.116 The introduction of the Four-Year Plan in 1936 constituted a milestone
in economic policy as the regime’s economic preparations for war aggravated
declining conditions in the consumer goods market. The consequences reached
all the way down to the relationship between merchants and consumers, for
now it was important to cultivate one’s contacts in order to receive preferential
treatment. At the same time, every purchase could provide information about
one’s—perhaps improper—consumption habits. Merchants thus became poten-
tial agents of a steadily spreading surveillance culture that sought “deviants”
outside the Volksgemeinschaft. As a result, power relationships shifted against
 Prologues ● 41

consumers in favor of sellers; the retail trade became a seller’s market. Together
with the regulations that enforced the rationing, these new market conditions
defined the legal consumer spaces that Berliners increasingly attempted to get
around during the war.
The emerging Berlin black market constituted an evasive action, as often hap-
pens in markets with a regulated consumer supply. It was the exception that
occurred in the supply-demand relationship in the context of prohibitions.117
Economic theories explain the formation of black markets as a response to reg-
ulatory measures. Such restrictions lead to a decline in supply, which in turn
increases demand and affects black market prices. When officials undertake no
further measures, the relatively small amount of goods in demand initially flows
to those who first set up their shops, who have privileged access to the goods
in question, or who know the right people. Finally, black markets can arise “if
adherence to a maximum price at distribution points cannot be guaranteed or if
goods are traded after their distribution at other sites.”118
On August 27, 1939, five days before the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, the
National Socialist government required Germany’s inhabitants to use food ration
coupons, although initially the authorities exempted bread, flour, and eggs. The
longer the war lasted, the worse the supply situation grew. Consequently, more
and more goods became subject to rationing, and officials had to regularly read-
just the size of a permissible ration in light of worsening shortages. In 1940, the
percentage of freely available foodstuffs sank to 20 percent of total revenues.119
Rationed goods were dispensed at distribution points set up in existing stores.
Although the first shortages could be compensated for, in the summer of 1941
weekly meat and meat product rations had to be reduced by 25 percent to 400
grams for ordinary consumers. The most far-reaching changes up to then in
the basic living conditions of the German people came on in February 1942:
bread, meat, and fat rations were reduced drastically.120 This was a turning point.
A subsequent increase in rations was temporary and only served propagandistic
purposes. A stabilization in 1943 also did not last long, and rations remained
meager. Military developments were decisive as the destruction of streets and
trails by Allied air raids hampered the distribution of goods throughout the
country.121 Production declined further, and massive problems with distribution
made things worse. The winter of 1943–44 saw a new low. Finally, in the last
year of the war, “the food situation worsened to a frightening degree.” Accord-
ing to Gustavo Corni and Horst Gies, the average nutritional value of rations for
ordinary consumers sank by about 40 percent over the course of the war, and the
situation in the cities was especially dramatic.122
Government-issued ration cards complicated things further by linking goods
and time in an unfamiliar way. In contrast to money as a means of exchange,
which ideally could be converted for an indefinite period into the future,
ration cards had only limited security for equivalent values, which furthermore
depended on the course of the war. The operationally effective fiction, according
to which a collective trust in currencies is both a precondition of their stabil-
ity and simultaneously something that perpetuates this stability, could never be
42 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

achieved to the same degree by the substitute currencies of the allocation system.
Just the opposite: the responsible state agencies repeatedly had to assert that the
supply situation and thus the system of providing food and goods were not at
risk, in the process conveying their own concern. At a meeting in early 1944, the
magistrate was informed by City Councillor Dr. Petzke about the general situa-
tion and upcoming reductions.123 Petzke explained decreases in rations, periods
of frost, and problems in the provisioning of coal. At the same time, however, he
mentioned that he had been successful “at the Ministry for Public Food Admin-
istration in pushing through an allotment of 250 grams of herring per head
in Berlin for the near future.” Not without pride he added that “the herrings
are already underway.” According to the meeting transcript, “laughter” followed.
Nonetheless, Petzke’s next remark showed just how precarious the situation was
and the extent to which not only consumers but also planners calculated only for
the near future as this adjustment was only to last for four weeks.124 The tense
situation clearly caused problems for more than just the ministerial elites as is
evident in the concern Petzke retrospectively expressed vis-à-vis coal supplies:

The situation back then [in 1940/41] was, if you remember, extraordinarily precar-
ious, for we had to declare effective March 31 that although the entitlements had
not all been handed out, the ration cards for coal were no longer valid . . . . This
was a step that we did not want to take because, of course, such measures shake the
trust of the population.125

The phrase “trust of the population” can be considered a key concept. Often
the authorities did not particularly trust those receiving the rations. Long before
black marketeers such as Martha Rebbien were arrested, planners in the Justice
Ministry had anticipated such cases, and by shifting the boundary between what
was legal and illegal, they defined a new market space; by describing the practices
allowed, they set forth ex negativo the framework for the emerging black market.
What, authorities asked, would happen if the war were to continue for a long time
and a large number of Germans on the “home front” attempted to get around
the rationing restrictions and improve their standard of living?
The people who asked this question were able with a certain justification to
refer back to the experiences of World War I, when increasing numbers on the
“home front” integrated illegal bartering practices into their everyday lives.126
Naturally, this was also a special worry of the National Socialist leadership—even
an idée fixe of a group of men, the logical consequence of their interpretation
of the defeat in World War I, which saw a weak “home front” as a decisive fac-
tor in the German setback. Both the experiences and the interpretation of these
experiences formed a benchmark that people used to assess their situation at the
beginning of World War II. Thus, the legacy of World War I formed the back-
drop to the formation of bartering networks in Berlin that Martha Rebbien and
many other Berliners engaged in.
The regulations were supposed to help prevent social disintegration, but
they generated confusion. When in March 1948 Hamburg Oberregierungsrat
 Prologues ● 43

Herbert Klüber published the third edition of his overview of the “Gesetzliche
Grundlagen zur Schwarzmarkt-Bekämpfung” (“Legal Basis for Combatting the
Black Market”) ten years after its initial publication, the legal situation had
become even more confusing.127 To Klüber’s great disappointment, a decade after
the first regulation had gone into effect, it was still not possible to fight ille-
gal trading “on the basis of a uniform law.” Rather, “an extraordinarily large
number of regulations” was required.128 Alongside regulations on how to pro-
ceed against black marketeers, there were regulations on the war economy, on
consumption, and on price law as well as, at least in Klüber’s list, 12 more
regulations.129
The most important regulation, which set forth the framework for all fur-
ther interpretations of “black market trading,” was the so-called War Economy
Regulations (Kriegswirtschaftsverordnung, or KWVO).130 This regulation called
for jail time or—in especially serious cases—for the death penalty for those who
destroyed, set aside, or held back “raw materials or goods that are a part of the
vital needs of the population, and who through this maliciously endangered the
covering of this need” (§1 paragraph 1). The same was true—according to the fol-
lowing paragraph—for certificates concerning the right to obtain certain benefits
as well as the manufacturing and use of such documents. Those who committed
fraudulent acts to enrich themselves would also be fined (§1 paragraph 3).
Concepts such as “setting aside” or “vital needs” were a matter of interpre-
tation, and judges viewed them in different ways in their rulings. Was one to
perceive “in the relocation of a storage location for a certain good a diversion of
such” within the context of the KWVO, as was stated in a court judgment from
1940? Did “luxury articles and beauty products” fall under the category of “vital
needs?”131 In an article for Deutsche Justiz, Berlin public prosecutor Karl-Heinz
Nuse explained early in 1940 what the War Economy Regulations meant in his
view. They were primarily supposed to “catch a certain sort of criminal, namely,
the ‘war profiteer, the hustler’,” in order to ensure that a situation such as had
occurred in World War I could not happen again. “Whereas in the First World
War, at least in the first few years, war profiteers and hustlers were able to act
undisturbed—their behavior harmed their own people and contributed signifi-
cantly to the collapse of the home front—with this regulation we have eliminated
such a possibility,” wrote Nuse. The regulation gave judges and prosecutors a
“strong weapon to use against the parasites.” The judges, Nuse continued, should
not “shy away from the death penalty if one of the criminals” had “shown himself
or herself to be an especially asocial personality.” On the question of the meaning
of the passage “vital needs,” Nuse added,

the provisions of §1 aim to ensure the well-ordered functioning of the economy,

especially to ensure the provisioning of the population with all those goods to be
included under the concept of vital needs. The definition of the “vital needs of the
population” is broad. Not only are articles one needs to stay alive included, so, too,
are coffee, tobacco, and alcoholic drinks. Indeed, there are few items which do not
fall under §1.
44 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

The National Socialist justice system described all black market trading as
offenses against the regulations listed above and subsumed them generally—even
those which, according to the files, belonged to other groups of crimes—under
“Offenses against War Economy Regulations.” Only in individual interrogation
records as well as in the written judgments do terms such as “black market
trading,” “smuggling,” or “hustling” appear. Of course, in his speeches, Hitler
captured quite well the public’s attitudes toward “hustling.” He stated many
times that “one should use barbaric punishments against the professional hustler.”
On the other hand, he also stated that one should not “stop trains and buses . . . in
order to search for what might be just three eggs bought or stolen from a
farmer.”132 How this “program” could be put into practice was a problem that
occupied a whole legion of employees in the various ministries and local state
agencies. The formulation of the regulations and the further debates to flesh out
the details as well as determine how to ensure adequate enforcement took up a
great deal of National Socialist planners’ time and energy. These discussions cir-
cled around how to sustain and uphold public order and a stable “home front.”
The German Justice Ministry remained the most important supplier of keywords
for the elaboration of this policy both on the national and the local level. The
strict centralization of the National Socialist justice system above all in the realm
of the so-called jurisdiction of a special court of law meant that decisions made
in Berlin decisively shaped National Socialist black market policy. The special
courts were responsible for enforcing the most important sections of the regula-
tions. Even if one can recognize local differences in sentencing policy, one must
assume that the general lines of the policy were decided on the national level and
that furthermore—given its importance—it was constantly monitored.133
At a meeting in the German Justice Ministry, Freisler emphasized that it was
necessary in wartime “to eliminate every symptom of decay, to start when these
symptoms are barely recognizable” and “to eradicate every sign of discord.”134
Moreover, questions of adequate punishment had to be reevaluated. This was
especially true for the “holding back of vital and essential foodstuffs,” which was
the equivalent of “stabbing the German people in the back.”135 With an eye to the
situation on the “home front,” Justice Minister Gürtner stated on the same occa-
sion, “in war . . . even at home one’s personal fate has to be subsumed, without
consideration, to the defense of one’s people.”136 The Berlin municipal authority,
Brombach, added that

in the present war, which has been forced upon us, securing the vital needs of the
German people is one of the government’s most important tasks. On 27 August
1939, in order to guarantee a just and equal distribution of consumer goods, the
government issued the “Regulation for the Temporary Safeguarding of the Vital
Needs of the German people (RGBl. I, p. 1498).” This regulation introduced
rationing coupons . . . for a large number of consumer goods.137

The judges of the special courts could mark a person who had committed
offenses against War Economy Regulations as “harmful to the nation” and, in so
 Prologues ● 45

doing, as a rule, assign a harsher punishment. As a commentary in the Deutsche

Justiz from 1940 made clear, under the rubric “Decisions by German Courts,”
“it is simply not true that offenses against War Economy Regulations do not
correspond to the conditions in Paragraph 4 of the Regulations against Crimes
Harmful to the Nation.” However, in these cases, there had to be “substantiated
reasons to be found especially in the state of war, which had not yet been taken
into consideration in the elements constituting the war crime.”138
In the following years, such strict and relatively concrete guidelines described
the space within which legal consumption practices were possible. The opposite
side of this coin was that whoever disobeyed these regulations had to reckon with
the possibility of severe penalties or sentences. That was the result of a policy of
securing political authority and power that took into account and, to a degree,
accepted illegal trading during the war—with good reason, but which at the same
time also defined this as an illegal activity. Taking a look at it from the state’s per-
spective, there was no getting out of this dilemma. Intelligent solutions were not
even discussed, such as attempting a limited legalization of bartering in carefully
controlled spaces. This would turn out to be a burden. For it very quickly became
clear that regulations and punishment would not be able to curb massive illegal
trading.
 CHAPTER 2

The Wartime Networks: The Martha

Rebbien Case

E
arly in the war, trading in the Berlin black market took place primarily in
networks. Unlike late in the war or immediately afterward, people could
not just visit an existing market and choose their partners from among
those there at that time. Instead, they had to establish contacts and make arrange-
ments to meet. This clandestine part of the Berlin barter culture, between 1939
and 1950, has long been overlooked by historians.1 And yet this phase was more
than just a prologue. Rather, in this phase, manifold displacements both at the
practical as well as at the discursive level occurred that make it an important part
of urban bartering culture between the beginning of the war and the development
of the economic societies of East and West Germany.
At the center of the story here are the activities of one woman, Martha
Rebbien, and of the participants in her black market trading network around
the Gesundbrunnen city train station in northern Berlin. Using this example, we
can follow the important changes that characterized everyday life in the huge
metropolis under the conditions of a barter culture, including new everyday
consumer habits and practices. The first part of the chapter investigates how
bartering networks came about, the degree of professionalization of bartering
practice, the social profiles of the participants, and the changes in social rela-
tionships engendered by bartering in the city. The second part investigates the
changes in the use and perception of urban space. These changes constituted a
specific form of collaborative city making, a practical and moral renegotiation of
urban spaces and their residents. The third part concentrates on black marketeers’
unique way of dealing with goods and currencies. It looks into the steps toward
professionalization and into the “tagging” of money and the meaning assigned
to various bartering equivalents. That bartering culture did not remain limited
to the practical dimension of exchanging goods can be seen most clearly in the
evaluation of the protagonists. The fourth section examines the discourse on the
hustlers during the war and thus the core of the aforementioned ongoing debate
48 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

concerning moral rectitude in managing one’s household. In principle everyone

was guilty of some bartering. Which groups were most often accused of being
hustlers by the outraged Volksgemeinschaft? One would perhaps imagine that
fringe groups, especially, would be at the center of practices considered so harm-
ful to the people. Yet Martha Rebbien and her bartering partners do not clearly
fit this profile.

The Participants and Their Practices

The history of Martha Rebbien and her bartering partners is a case study with
which one can describe and analyze the characteristics typical of the Berlin black
market during the war. Of course, we can only discover the degree to which
Rebbien’s history is representative if we compare her case with others. This inves-
tigation is based on an analysis of 183 individual cases, a sample created from
the lists of the cases of the public prosecutors at the Berlin Special Court in the
Landesarchiv Berlin. In order to avoid distortions that can arise if one starts with
one case and then merely follows the cross references, I systematically examined
every tenth dossier from the list. In individual cases, I was able to elaborate on
or verify previous findings by means of cross references. Martha Rebbien’s case
makes a good example because the police and investigator reports make it possible
to reconstruct, relatively clearly, the history of a bartering network over a four-
year period. Furthermore, the records are complete, having remained undamaged
by the war.
The unemployed waitress, 55-year-old Martha Rebbien, had operated for
at least four years as a black marketeer in the German capital at the time
of her arrest on November 9, 1944.2 In her indictment, the prosecutors con-
centrated on the last two years, 1943 and 1944. The investigators’ reports
compiled from painstaking research paint a picture of a brisk business. Although
the reports convey things through a certain lens, the records of interroga-
tions and notes render characteristic details of Berlin’s black market. The
police and public prosecutors’ records comprise over 200 pages and include
materials on the black marketeers who participated in Martha Rebbien’s bar-
tering network. The investigators were interested above all in identifying the
participants and determining the quantity of goods traded. Who became
acquainted with whom, when, and in what way? How was business initiated
and conducted, and what prices or what equivalents in terms of goods were
paid? What were the living conditions and motives of the trading partners?
In the end, Berlin police received information on more than 60 people, car-
ried out dozens of interrogations, and confiscated goods worth hundreds of
Reichsmarks.
In order to obtain the information relevant for a court case, the policemen
were forced to reconstruct the everyday bartering practices of Martha Rebbien.
Using the snowball principle, they followed leads from the center outward. More
than once investigators came to a dead end (above all because of high population
turnover in the city). On the other hand, the police also discovered links to other
 The Wartime Networks ● 49

networks. In principle, every member of the Rebbien network could also have
been a member of another network. Under the surface of everyday legal life in
Berlin during the war, there were a large number of bartering networks of differ-
ent sizes, which generally intertwined with other networks in some way, forming
an overarching network. The people who were interrogated not only mentioned
names, but they also told, even if only in passing, how they had established,
cultivated, maintained, and terminated contacts. From this, we can analyze the
strategies participants used to establish contact with possible partners, establish
trust, or find suitable trading places. And, of course, we can analyze the individual
bartering transactions themselves.
At the same time, the police reports give an impression of the significance
bartering had as an everyday activity for a large number of Berliners. All the
methods and strategies of the illegal business were mentioned, such as keeping an
eye on possible suppliers and customers, the turnover of goods, et cetera. Martha
Rebbien, who was the center of her bartering network, had direct contact to at
least 20 people and indirect contact to at least another 20 (see Figure 2.1). The
actual number is likely even higher as the police were presumably only able to
expose a portion of her business relationships, as the prosecutors asserted in their
indictment.3
A considerable portion of the work of the Trade and Safety Supervision Ser-
vice (Gewerbeaußendienst), the police, and the Gestapo consisted of conducting
surveillance of local “hot spots,” following tips from the population, and engag-
ing in the grunt work of exposing complex exchange relations.4 The Berlin police,
prosecutors, and special courts enforced the mistrustful National Socialist policy,
which aimed to confront any possible destabilization of the “home front” with a
comprehensive juridical catalogue of regulations and punishments. On Novem-
ber 9, 1944, they caught up with Martha Rebbien and some of her bartering
partners.
Police records make it possible to trace the bartering deals between Martha
Rebbien and her partners back to November 1940. The picture becomes more
diffuse the further back one goes, either as a result of the witnesses’ inability
to remember or their unwillingness to give out information or because the Berlin
police and prosecuting authorities were most interested in information they could
use in prosecutions. All told, one finds references to over 30 meetings in which
bartering transactions were initiated, prepared, or concluded. Of these, 11 took
place in the last week before Rebbien was arrested, that is, between November 2
and 9, 1944.
Martha Rebbien’s business activity went through a number of phases, each
reflecting external circumstances and events. Rebbien had to move three times
during the war, twice because she had been bombed out. The war on the home
front, during which the capital was attacked by British and American bombers,
had a direct impact on Rebbien’s everyday life—and thus on her illegal business.
As can be shown in the well-documented last phase of her business career, she
built up her bartering network in the confined spaces of her district or Kiez.
Moving for her, therefore, meant that she had to build up a new network of
 50

Figure 2.1 The black market network of Martha Rebbien

 The Wartime Networks ● 51

bartering relationships. In the last phase, the sites where contacts could be ini-
tiated and where traders met and conducted business were almost exclusively
near the Gesundbrunnen train station and Rebbien’s apartment on Swinemünder
Street, where most of the participants also worked and lived.
In the course of a protracted investigation—the interrogations produced new
suspects and witnesses, and lineups were used to try to clarify facts when there
were contradictory versions of events—slowly but surely the picture emerged.
Although Martha Rebbien confessed immediately in her first interrogation on
November 18,5 she insisted that she had been “merely the go-between for other,
larger suppliers” and “that she had not earned much money doing it.”6 The goal
of the investigation that followed was to discover who the other individuals were
as well as the extent of the business—in short, to discover the full extent of the
Kiez bartering network around the Gesundbrunnen.
On November 24 the investigators got an indication of the earliest ascer-
tainable date of Martha Rebbien’s career as a black market trader from Hanna
Zabel. From November 4, 1941 to April 1, 1942, Zabel had sublet her apart-
ment to Rebbien (and lived with her), and she told the police of her difficulties
with the accused.7 Approximately 4 percent of all citizens in Berlin lived in such
often conflict-laden arrangements, where one’s behavior could easily be moni-
tored by others.8 Rebbien’s quarrel with her landlady apparently had to do with
her illegal business. Zabel named Rebbien’s “behavior and . . . social interaction”
as the reason for her hostile stance and for her ultimately successful attempt to
get Rebbien out of her apartment. “She had a lot of visits from people I don’t
know,” Zabel explained in her interrogation and continued, “I often had the feel-
ing that the people visiting made a less than reassuring impression. I can’t say
what the people wanted there, as I wasn’t much concerned about that and wasn’t
home very much.” She also denied “quite strongly” that she had ever been a “sup-
plier of coffee, canned meat and chocolate,” goods she claimed to have received
from her husband, a prison warden. Rebbien, however, incriminated her former
landlady, stating that Zabel had indeed given her diverse foodstuffs.9 Zabel also
confirmed Rebbien’s own testimony that she had already become a black marke-
teer in 1940. Even before the wartime black markets in Berlin were established,
Rebbien had taken an initial step into illegality. In 1937 she had been convicted
of embezzlement and sentenced to a year in prison.10

A Network Arises: Trust and Contacts

Being able to trust one’s trading partner in Rebbien’s network, as in all black mar-
ket networks, was a fundamental component. Using the example of the Rebbien
network, we can examine some of the important strategies black marketeers used
to build up, stabilize, and sustain trust. A central problem for all Berlin black
marketeers was initiating contact with potential bartering partners. It was cru-
cial for Rebbien and her partners to find the right mixture of prudence, on the
one hand, and trust or confidence, on the other, as demonstrated not least by
the demise of the Gesundbrunnen network. Because Rebbien had conducted
52 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

business with Erna Kuschy, allowing her to see behind the curtain of her bar-
tering practice, Kuschy was able to pass on information about her to the police,
resulting in the dissolution of these bartering relationships by means of the police
and public prosecutors.
Trust and mistrust are thus the critical elements of any bartering practice in
several respects. Partners have to be able to trust that the others will uphold the
imperatives of conspiracy. Martha Rebbien, for example, tried to build up trust by
telling potential bartering partners that if she were arrested she would not betray
them.11 Investigating authorities, in their efforts to fight the black market, made
use of this problem in that they attempted to win over “persons in a position of
trust” who for their part had tried to win the trust of their bartering partners
in order then to “misuse” it by “entrusting” the authorities with their knowl-
edge. There was no absolute security for the participants of the Gesundbrunnen
network. But one could attempt in a number of ways to minimize the danger.
One of the strategies was to trust only those with whom one was already
acquainted.12 There were a number of advantages in starting up a conversation
with someone one knew and involving them in business transactions. First of all,
one did not have to engage in tedious searches, which saved valuable time. Sec-
ond, depending on the degree of familiarity and the credibility of the first person,
one could assume that the other candidates for bartering were more credible than
just any complete stranger. Friends of friends had already been tested in regard to
their trustworthiness. There was thus less risk: further tests could be less extensive
or could fall away completely. Third, obtaining “personal data” was often already
combined with a preliminary discussion, in which persons interested in trading
could ask their intermediaries whether or not they were at all interested in certain
goods or if these were to be obtained from them. Information about a person’s
credibility could also be combined with an exchange of information concerning
the assortment of goods, which, in turn, also saved time.
Martha Rebbien chose a whole series of bartering partners in this manner (see
Figure 2.2). Such multiplex relationships in which bartering relationships were
built up on the basis of other relationships (colleagues at work, neighbors, or
friends) formed in all likelihood the vast majority of all bartering relationships in
Berlin between 1939 and 1945.
The trading cluster depicted in Figure 2.2 is based on the multiplexity rela-
tionships of the network participants. The participants in the network were
acquainted with each other mostly as colleagues at work. With the exception
of two participants, they all worked as waiters and waitresses in one of the bars
or restaurants in the Gesundbrunnen Kiez. The relatively high network den-
sity (0.24)13 —which led to greater social control, that is, monitoring by other
people—had both positive and negative effects. On the negative side, it increased
the likelihood of conflicts (and of betrayal), but on the positive side, it enabled
the black market participants to exchange information and goods quickly in a
narrow and limited “network space.”
Yet Martha Rebbien went one step further. Instead of restricting her trad-
ing to acquaintances, she “expanded,” by contacting Friedrich Wiggers, another
illegal trading broker. Of course, Wiggers had been introduced to Rebbien and
 The Wartime Networks ● 53

Figure 2.2 Cluster 1 of Martha Rebbien’s black market network

was thus not a complete stranger. Indeed, they had a common acquaintance.
Wiggers and Rebbien had become acquainted through Ursula Förster, whom
Wiggers had met at Rebbien’s former and Förster’s current workplace, the restau-
rant in the Gesundbrunnen train station. Förster had often met Wiggers here
and had become “better acquainted” with him.14 According to Wiggers, he estab-
lished contact with Förster in September 1944. Ursula Förster confirmed this
and described their first meeting: “I became acquainted with Wiggers about a
month ago in the restaurant in the train station in Gesundbrunnen. He told me
that he was a traveling salesman, and that he sold Maggi [a well-known pack-
aged spice blend name].” All in all she met him five times, usually in a café on
Danziger Street. Already at their first meeting she had noticed “that he spent a
great deal of time in the restaurant in the train station in Gesundbrunnen.” When
she asked him “why he did this, he did not really . . . give a sufficient answer.”15
Finally, she took him with her to Rebbien’s apartment, where he was introduced
to a “Martha.” After this Wiggers visited Rebbien once again under the pretense
of asking about Förster. On this occasion a “bartering transaction” took place.
Förster and Rebbien had already discussed the topic of a “bartering transaction”
in the presence of Wiggers: “We talked about all sorts of general topics. But we
also talked about goods now being sold on the black market. The conversation
turned to city handbags. Wiggers said he had some that he could sell. He said
that he could give Rebbien about 10 of them.”16
Martha Rebbien disagreed with Förster’s version of the story and stated that
when she had first met Wiggers on November 2, there had been no talk of
business.17 Still, Wiggers came back to her “on the same day . . . a couple of
54 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Figure 2.3 Cluster 2 of Martha Rebbien’s black market network

hours later” and asked if she “had a use for shopping baskets.” The busi-
ness relationship then became steady. This relationship considerably expanded
Rebbien’s network. Through Wiggers she had access to a new network cluster
(Figure 2.3).
This expansion brought together two business models of illegal trading
because Rebbien and Wiggers followed different strategies in building up their
illegal business relationships. Wiggers acted in his black marketeering primar-
ily as a representative. In order to do business, he spoke to people he was not
acquainted with in bars and cafés. In contrast to Rebbien (in Cluster 1), he thus
avoided the dangers of a high degree of social control. This is evidence of the
relatively low density of his network cluster. Wiggers accepted the high price of
initiating contacts with all that entailed—for example, testing their reliability—in
order to be able to avoid the monitoring of multiplex relationships. This strategy
can be characterized as targeted action. Wiggers ensured that his relationships
were non-binding by maintaining anonymity and keeping them secret. On top
of this, he had skills he had acquired as a “representative in the food indus-
try.” He was already well acquainted with how to address people and to engage
them in sales talk. Now he adapted his actions to the needs of illegal trading—
being careful and keeping secrets—and thus developed a successful black market
strategy.18
As a result of Wiggers’s involvement in Rebbien’s network, her network pro-
vides an example of two different methods of network formation. On the one
hand, there were those (like Rebbien) who chose to bet on a higher degree of
 The Wartime Networks ● 55

multiplexity in their black market business relationships. This method had a

number of advantages. Being acquainted with some of her partners from other
contexts, Rebbien could preselect them and reduce the danger of being discov-
ered. She not only saved time by doing this, but she was also acquainted with
the economic circumstances of her partners, their credit rating, their preferences
and their characteristics, and their ability to get at goods in demand. On the
other hand, as her relationship to Erna Kuschy shows, there was no guaran-
tee that the bartering partners she selected would follow the rules of the illegal
business—most importantly, the rule of secrecy.
Wiggers for his part relied on non-binding bartering relationships. He became
acquainted with his partners in places that were semi-public, said little about
himself, and thus lessened the risk that other social factors could harm his busi-
ness. Yet this entailed a lot more work. He had to invest a great deal of time and
energy in initiating and cultivating his contacts. Whereas Rebbien conducted the
largest part of her business in her own four walls, Wiggers’s black marketeering
involved going from door to door as an “anonymous” representative, addressing
strangers.
Such encounters with strangers were problematic, especially if one had little
practice in them. The case of the Croatian worker Stevo Calic offers an example of
how black marketeers had to overcome mistrust little by little before they could
do business with each other. Calic had come to Berlin in February 1942 for a
“work assignment” at AEG. Soon he “stayed away from work without permission”
and traveled to Swinemünde and Vienna before returning to Berlin in February
1943.19 In the restaurant “Aschinger” on Alexanderplatz, he became acquainted
with a fellow Croatian, Vladimir Savo, who offered to provide him with a cer-
tificate of need for food ration cards, for 100 marks. However, Calic was careful
vis-à-vis his new acquaintance because he did not yet know or trust him. He
wanted to hand over the money only after the cards had been delivered.20 Trust-
ing a person, trusting in a regular bartering transaction, and trusting in the goods
themselves went hand in hand here, as in all black market business transactions.
Hildegard Mielke, who belonged to Cluster 2 of the Rebbien network, described
once how a bartering relationship between strangers became consolidated when
she recounted how her bartering partnership with Wiggers had started.21 In her
interrogation on November 28, she said that she did not know the person police
described as Wiggers by name. Wiggers had introduced himself to her as “John”
and had answered her “many questions as to his name” by saying merely that
“names do not matter here.” He also did not give his exact address but rather
only spoke of an apartment near Danziger Street.
Mielke and Wiggers had become acquainted in the restaurant “Dachgarten”
on Badstrasse: “I wanted to get something hot to drink and I sat down at a table
where three men were already sitting. Wiggers and I started talking. Because
I wanted to get married, I wanted to buy wedding rings. I told Wiggers this.”
Mielke did not say whether or not she had made the remarks in regard to the
wedding rings with the intention of finding out whether Wiggers might be
a potential supplier or if the conversation coincidentally turned to the rings.
56 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Wiggers replied that he could supply the rings, whereupon Mielke gave him
her address. Eight days later the rings were exchanged; the two bartering part-
ners had already agreed the night they first met that two postage stamp albums
and detector equipment with two headphones constituted his payment in return.
The two sat together in her apartment and ate a piece of salmon together that
Wiggers had brought. Eight days later, when Wiggers brought the wedding
rings, the “case was closed” and the bartering transaction was over. However,
“after another eight days, Wiggers stood once again in front of her door. He
had brought with him a roast duck” and asked if Mielke wanted to have it. In
the interrogation, she explained, “I had no reservations about taking the duck.
He didn’t want me to pay for the duck. I didn’t want to take it as a present,
and I gave him a hair dryer.” A couple of days later, they exchanged goods for
money for the first time. Wiggers brought flour after Mielke had a need for
some. She bought the flour for ten marks per pound, as well as some tobacco.
“On the same day he brought along a blouse, dark blue, which he wanted 150
marks for.” The bartering relationship became steady. “Over time,” Mielke told
the police during her interrogation, Wiggers obtained from her “another bird-
cage, a small piece of silver for technological uses, and a broken fountain pen.”
However, these things were presents; no further reckoning with other goods took
place.
The bartering transaction between Wiggers and Mielke is a good example of
how a bartering relationship was successively built up through repetition beyond
what originally had been viewed, at least by one party, as a single transaction.
From someone looking for and someone offering a ring, a firm configuration for
exchange was developed. Wiggers, as a “representative” of black market goods,
regularly approached Mielke; he used the fact that she had been looking for
a wedding ring as an opportunity. Whether or not he actually had two wed-
ding rings when they had become acquainted in the “Dachgarten” restaurant or
whether he was simply trying to procure them in order to be able to win a fur-
ther customer for his goods, cannot be established with certainty. The fact that
it took him eight days to deliver speaks for the second option. The history of
the bartering partnership between Friedrich Wiggers and Hildegard Mielke is
thus, from the traders’ perspective, a success story. Seller finds buyer and wins
his or her trust, leading to further business transactions. At the same time, it also
testifies to the effort and energy required to participate in this illegal business.
Instead of simply going into a business, one had to bring along a good deal of
time and be able to keep calm in the face of risk to acquire the product desired—
if it was available at all. Having to deal with these adversities was the everyday
practical challenge that all black marketeers faced, whether they were “little” or
“big,” “clever hustlers” or fearful “occasional, private traders.” But is this popular
breakdown of the group of participants even true? A closer look at the bartering
networks not only helps to identify different roles people played in the illegal
markets but also serves to deconstruct some of the apologetic rhetoric about the
black market and the people involved in it.
 The Wartime Networks ● 57

Network Positions, Professionalization, and Methods of Bartering

Our analysis of bartering practices can build upon much excellent theoretical
and empirical work on the nature of networks. Integrating such work into our
analysis helps us to better understand the network character of the phenomenon
and to determine more exactly the structures and the relevant details at the level
of practice. Thus, one can investigate the different roles played by various actors
as well as processes of group formation and adaptation. Black market trading
practices can be differentiated according to the centrality of the actors, the degree
to which they were integrated into the network, their cut-point positions, bridges,
network paths, and last but not least, the density of networks and their parts.
These characteristics illustrate the logic of illegal trading.
The police investigations form the basis for reconstructing the individual net-
works. Of course, these records have a certain perspective. Although Berlin police
attempted to develop a comprehensive picture of the activities and the contacts
of traders who had caught their attention, they had to rely on the willingness
of witnesses to cooperate and were unable to follow up on every tip and every
individual contact.22 This means that the records evaluated here are only part of
the picture and indeed distort the perspective. Police investigations followed the
logic of the snowball system; they were, however, not free of pragmatic consid-
erations. Policemen set priorities in their investigations, and thus the picture of
complex bartering networks was centered on individuals or groups of individu-
als rather than the whole picture. I assume that the networks reconstructed here
are incomplete. However, individual positions within the network and different
degrees of professionalization or different types of black marketeers can be clearly
identified.
In the case of the Gesundbrunnen bartering network, with the inherent restric-
tions on entering networks in the illegal Berlin markets, various power positions
evolved that solidified into so-called broker positions.23 People who were privi-
leged because of their access to goods that were in demand or because of their
greater efforts to get goods could use their position to profit as brokers of the net-
work. Brokers are defined as those who “no longer [exclusively exchange goods]
for their own interests, but rather do so in the interests of a third party, who
themselves have no access to the bartering partners.” These professionals “[act] in
an entrepreneurial spirit” by calculating the supply and demand situation and by
“allowing themselves to be paid with extra profits for their mediating services in
trading paths blocked by social structures.”24 They used the advantages they had
or had acquired concerning contacts for obtaining goods that they themselves
were not necessarily interested in consuming. They could resell these goods to
other traders in the network who were either less privileged or interested in the
goods for an additional charge (commission). Brokers were thus not only occa-
sional, private traders; they also took on the role of vendor in the illegal markets.
However, the transition from non-broker to broker, from occasional, private
trader to professional trader, was not abrupt; one did not advance from being
58 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

an amateur to a professional “hustler” from one day to the next. Rather, there
were successive levels of professionalization, and semi-professional participants
can be distinguished from others. Often after one had taken the step into black
market trading as a business, a whole series of options opened up in regard to
optimizing one’s business by means of, for example, bookkeeping methods or
high credit standards. Professionals of the illegal Berlin business systematized
their business processes as much as possible under the adverse conditions of ille-
gality. At first glance, one discerns two types of black market traders: occasional,
private traders and brokers. The group of brokers, though, encompasses traders
who employed such different trading practices and had such different business
sizes that it appears useful to differentiate between small and large ones.
The criteria that distinguish the three types (occasional traders and small and
large brokers) are the amount of time invested, the quantity of goods traded
(or the sales), the degree of network connectedness, the covered area of their
“markets,” and the extent to which they had developed professional accounting
and organizational methods. In the networks that have been reconstructed, the
broker as a rule had a central position with a higher degree of connectedness than
the occasional, private traders who were usually located at the fringes. Exceptions
to this rule are found above all among brokers who specialized in goods that were
especially difficult to obtain (goods that were traded across borders).
Time was a decisive factor. For Martha Rebbien and her bartering partner
Wiggers, the black market was a full-time job; they were, therefore, among the
brokers. The most important preconditions for being able to conduct black mar-
ket trading professionally were relatively unlimited availability and the possibility
of combining legal and illegal business activities. Martha Rebbien was able to
maintain a network of considerable size successfully only because she did not
have any other regular job.25 Brokers whose occupation overlapped with their
black marketeering activities had a special position. Those who owned bars or
who were salesmen, independent retailers, or waiters came up most frequently in
the case reports.26
Others conducted their black market trading only in their free time. Occa-
sional, private traders such as Hildegard Mielke traded only every now and then,
usually because they needed something, many only for special occasions such as
organizing festivities (birthday celebrations, Christmas, or leave from the front)
that required “something special.”
The second criterion, sales, presents something of a problem as it does not
clearly distinguish occasional, private traders from brokers, at least not when
considered in isolation. In the language of National Socialist justice, it was effec-
tively defined as the line between trading “for one’s own need” and “commercial
smuggling”—where to draw this line, though, was one of the most controversial
debates of these years.27 Ultimately, this boundary was implied by the quantity
of goods and was not definitively resolved but was left to the discretion of the
special courts. Looking back, it is quite easy, as a rule, to correlate the quantity of
goods with the type of merchant—especially if this is only one criterion among
many under consideration. The source of goods also helps to clearly distinguish
 The Wartime Networks ● 59

one type from another. Hildegard Mielke, for example, traded goods she had
personally owned but could dispense with and not the goods that she first had
to obtain. This distinction also relates to a trader’s area of operation. Brokers had
far larger areas in which to trade their goods that could be transregional or even
transnational.28 In addition, the number of bartering partners recruited helps us
to measure the full size of a black marketeering business—a number that can be
defined as a degree within a network. Of course, specializations could lead to even
large brokers not necessarily needing to achieve a high degree if they conducted
their business primarily as middlemen for goods especially difficult to obtain.
This brings us to the final criterion for analyzing the type of merchant: sys-
tematizing techniques. These techniques could consist of such specializations but
also of certain accounting practices or security measures.
Overall, it can be said that the three different types of merchants in the Berlin
black market can be differentiated by their different practices and activities and
by the size of their black market businesses. These factors in turn correlate in
most cases with the position of the actors in the network. Martha Rebbien and
Wiggers were small brokers. The time they invested and the degree to which they
had already started to specialize in certain goods or to systematically organize
their trading business were quite different from those who only participated spo-
radically in the black market. On the other hand, their practices never reached
the level of professionalization of the large brokers.
The example of a broker Hermann Weese from Neukölln makes these dif-
ferences quite clear. Weese was the principle actor of a bartering network in
Neukölln that traded primarily in jewelry provided by a Dutch supplier. Weese
systematized his trade for example by exchanging samples. Weese, who had a bil-
liard room on Hermannplatz, arranged for the sale of this jewelry that had crossed
national borders by showing potential bartering partners sketches of the rings
he possessed before he concluded the transaction. As one of Weese’s bartering
partners explained in his interrogation,

in order to be able to strengthen what he had told me, especially in regard to the
rings he was selling, he pulled out of his wallet two to three charts or tables on
which he had drawn in pencil the individual rings available. He said that he could
not always carry the rings, even if he wanted to sell them, so he had made sketches
to show potential buyers. It seemed to me that he had about 50 to 60 rings sketched
in this form.29

Instead of carrying around the valuable goods, the Neukölln jewelry mer-
chant lowered his risk by using small cards to advertise his rings. Weese’s business
practices thus resembled those of a registered retail business—putting him some-
where on the scale between the necessities of the illegal business and modern
forms of advertising.30 Weese’s bartering practice was not only highly special-
ized, but it also met the other criteria of regarding him as a large broker. These
included using transnational “weak ties” in the Netherlands, mixing—and thus
hiding—his illegal activities with the business in his billiard room, building up
60 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

a local distribution network, which covered at least the market in Neukölln,

and developing a working relationship with the police in order to safeguard his
business.31

Social Profiles
According to the image of the hustler popularized by the media, black marketeers
were mostly young men, classical social climbers. Hustlers were young, indepen-
dent, and without scruples. They lived in style, having become well-to-do by
means of their illegal wheeling and dealing and by using their existing (business)
contacts for “dirty” deals. Yet did this correspond to reality? Perhaps a more real-
istic picture of the social reality for black marketeers can be found by examining
the members of Martha Rebbien’s bartering network. How representative was
the Gesundbrunnen black marketing network? Was it a special case in its social
composition, or was it a representative cross section of Berlin black market soci-
ety during the war? Valuable clues can be found by comparing the social profiles
of Martha Rebbien and her partners with the analysis of the personal data of a
sample of 500 people indicted for offenses against War Economy Regulations.
The data consist largely of information suspects themselves provided in their
police interrogations. Analyzing the statistical data of the Berlin public prose-
cutor is quite easy. The police interrogation form asked for information both
on the suspect’s occupation and income. However, this information proved to
be problematic in many regards. First of all, occupations were often expressed in
ambiguous and vague ways.32 For example, it is not always clear whether someone
described as a baker owned his own business or was simply employed by someone
else. Further, “worker” covers a broad range of activities requiring various training
and correlating with quite different levels of income.
Nor is it always possible to reconstruct how reliable income statistics are. Some
delinquents may have believed that stating a low income illustrated a certain
poverty that they hoped would reduce their sentences. The incomes of the self-
employed are even less clear. As a rule, police officers accepted the information
provided by the person being interrogated without undertaking further investi-
gations or asking them to provide supporting documents. Usually the estimates
of those being interrogated were simply noted with the phrase “their own esti-
mate” written on the side. In July 1943 these inadequacies induced the director
of the trade inspection service to address the problem in an “Order of the Day,”
in which he criticized the fact that “many cases only indicate sales but not prof-
its and then only for 1942.” Further, there was no information at all concerning
the extra profits. In order to provide Division IV, which was in charge of these
investigations, “with a clear picture of the income and surplus profits obtained
exceeding the price . . . especially the sales and the profits achieved during 1939–
1942” were to be highlighted “and the increase or decrease in profits should be
described in the form of percent,” at least in those cases “where an especially harsh
punishment [wa]s called for.” Furthermore, the police were to note whether the
income had been “determined” or if it was “only an estimate.”33
 The Wartime Networks ● 61

There are also uncertainties concerning suspects’ occupations at the time of

their interrogations. Often people being interrogated listed vocational qualifi-
cations and occupations from the prewar period. It was by no means certain
that they were still able to practice these occupations. As the war economy had
brought about displacements and shifts in the structure of the occupations, it
was possible that they had become soldiers and were receiving soldiers’ pay or
that they were working in another field in the meantime. In part, the analysis can
compensate for this imprecise information considering the text part of the inter-
rogation, where individuals sometimes gave more information concerning their
careers. At any rate, we have to keep these limitations in mind when we look at
the statistics.
Nonetheless, the data do provide evidence of the social nature of the partici-
pants in the black markets, as they do allow us to make plausible interpretations,
even if we need to treat them with caution. The black market was largely a
market of opportunities and was thus different from markets that had specific
entry requirements. Martha Rebbien, for example, belonged at first to a minor-
ity in Berlin’s black market society, simply because she was a woman. Around
70 percent of the accused were men. In her network as a whole, the ratio
was about 50–50. Furthermore, Rebbien, who was in her mid-50s, was older
than the average female black market trader. The average was around 40 (see
Figure 2.4).
What especially stands out is the high percentage of 40–50-year-old female
black market traders. For one thing, this reflects the high percentage of this age
group in the population of Berlin as a whole. In the census of May 17, 1939,
there were 418,000 women in this age cohort, making it the second largest, only
exceeded by the group of 30–40-year-old women.34 Another factor explaining the
high number for Rebbien’s age cohort is the occupational groups (see Figure 2.5).
What is striking here is that the vast majority of the indicted women were
employed. Only 7 percent were unemployed, including Martha Rebbien, or were
“housewives” subsumed under the category “none.” The most important occu-
pational groups were the self-employed and employees with low incomes, as in
the larger society. The percentage of female employees in 1939 was especially
high in the civil service and in providing services in the private sector.35 But the
high number of female black marketeers who had some form of employment

Age of female defendants (in years) In%

<20 2
20–30 17
30–40 20
40–50 42
50–60 13
60+ 4

Figure 2.4 Age of female defendants in cases of war economy crimes

62 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Occupation group In%

White-collar employees/civil servants 43

Self-employed 26
Workers 22
Non-identifiable 7
Small trade 2

Figure 2.5 Occupation groups of female defendants in cases of war economy crimes

Age of male defendants (in years) In%

<20 1
20–30 15
30–40 25
40–50 28
50–60 20
60+ 11

Figure 2.6 Age of male defendants in cases of war economy crimes

can be explained by two factors. First, of those who had jobs, many worked in
restaurants and bars. Martha Rebbien, too, before she lost her job, had worked
as a waitress, which meant she had dealt with and had access to foods that were
in demand. Second, having an occupation gave these women opportunities to
establish contacts in semi-public spaces such as shops, restaurants, bars, or even
government offices. Women who worked had greater mobility and thus a broader
set of acquaintances.
The picture of indicted men looks much different (see Figure 2.6). What
is striking is the underrepresentation of 20–30 and 30–40-year-olds compared
to the older generations.36 There is an obvious explanation for this: members
of the older generations (40–60) were often exempted from military service
because they were already at a point in their career where they were considered
“indispensable” whereas a large percentage of young men served in the army.
The distribution of occupations among male black marketeers has two stand-
out groups: the self-employed and the lower-ranking civil servants and employees.
If one looks more closely at the composition of the self-employed group, which
included master craftsmen, then a connection quickly becomes clear. This group
included a large number of grocers, bakers, tobacco merchants and tailors, own-
ers of garages and repair shops, innkeepers, and restaurant owners. All of these
people had access to goods in demand. The illegal trade in food, textiles, tobacco,
and various services was above all a second-hand market: one had to have access
to goods that were scarce to enter the market; that one could reach circles of
customers easily through legal business contacts also made this easier. At the
same time, people who worked in these fields were continually observed by the
police. Among the routine tasks of the trade inspection service was to monitor
 The Wartime Networks ● 63

Occupation group In%

Self-employed 20
White-collar employees/civil servants 20
Workers 18
Small trade 11
Merchants 11
Unemployed 5
Others/non-identifiable 13

Figure 2.7 Occupation groups of male defendants in cases of war economy crimes

businesses and restaurants. The probability that one would be discovered was
correspondingly high, which also contributed to the percentage of the accused in
these occupations being overly high (see Figure 2.7).
The group of the lower-ranking civil servants and employees was composed
above all of employees in the hotel and restaurant business and food agencies.
On top of this there were truck drivers, railway employees, as well as factory safety
and postal service workers. What was true for the members of the first group was
also true for this one. Employees in hotels, canteen kitchens, restaurants, and bars
also had easy access to food. They had opportunities as well to make contacts in
their workplace. It was easy for a waiter to recruit his customer base from among
the restaurant patrons. Where other people would have to undertake complex
and elaborate searches to find people, these black marketeers were able to dip
into a large reservoir of potential bartering partners.
When comparing the groups of indicted men vs. women, an inequality
becomes clear. Whereas the indicted men reflect a relatively representative cross
section of the social classes, the women’s group was dominated by members of the
lower classes. There appears to have been an inhibition threshold that middle-
class women had to overcome that made it more difficult for them to find access
to the illegal markets. A large part of the market activity uncovered by the police
took place in bars and restaurants, which, given contemporary moral attitudes,
were hardly open to middle-class women.
Even if one was successful at entering the black market, participating in it was
stressful. Alongside the pressure of illegality and the danger of being discovered,
trading often had an impact on the social relationships of the partners.

Bartering Culture and the Transformation of Social Relationships

The illegal bartering transactions of the participants in the Berlin black markets
were social and cultural facts. These facts had an impact upon society as a whole
and on the web of social relationships, just as they also reflected the breakup of
existing structures. An analysis that only considered the economic aspects of the
illegal trading would fail to see one of the most striking characteristics of the
“black market era”: the markets became a catalyst of a comprehensive process
64 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

of re-evaluation which brought forth a different urban social reality at the level
of interpersonal relationships. Illegal trading, one of the most important institu-
tions of everyday interaction for Berliners during and after the war, was built up
around personal contacts and at the same time confirmed and intensified these
contacts.37 Black marketeers renegotiated friendships and love relationships and
relationships to their neighbors, supervisors, and subordinates under the condi-
tions of the Berlin bartering culture. Symmetrical and asymmetrical relationships
between formerly acquainted participants were either revised or confirmed. New
partnerships into which one had entered solely for the purpose of the bartering
transaction could take on new directions. Thus, participants were able to tran-
scend accepted borders between social milieus and social roles and effect new
distributions of power that had not previously been customary.
In this way, Berlin’s bartering culture turned one of the trends of modernity
on its head. Modernity’s trend toward “disembedding” interpersonal communi-
cation and replacing it with an impersonal system of social rules38 was turned
upside down by the complex trading practice of Berlin’s black marketeers, which
undermined money as a generalized, symbolic sign. Illegal trading also challenged
the “reembedding services” that had cropped up in reaction to the processes of
increasing anonymity. This was because the polite act of not paying attention and
the specific beat of life in the big city, which had begun to characterize life in the
modern metropolis, made it difficult to establish bartering partnerships. Those
who participated in the black market were required to modify their patterns of
communication, at least in part. This was easier for them to do when other social
relationships could provide the foundation for future trading.39
The majority of bartering partnerships built on existing social relationships.
The participants were already acquainted with each other as neighbors, friends,
or colleagues before they became “intimate antagonists” in the illegal markets.40
It made sense to fall back on existing contacts, especially if these had proven reli-
able in the past, as this precluded the need to spend a great deal of time searching
for contacts. Black marketeering was based on existing links yet also changed the
character of these contracts.
There was a basic change to all types of social relationships under the condi-
tions of the barter culture. As participating in black market trading was equivalent
to taking a step into illegality, it meant that any relationship of trust that had
already been created between bartering partners was once again tested and—if
found trustworthy—deepened. Especially when bartering partners traded with
each other for a longer period, they shared the experience of taking part in
something that was not allowed and was even prosecuted. The conspiracy in
turn had two effects: an increased dependency on one’s partner, for the part-
ner could betray one at any moment, and, as a result of this, a strengthening
of the relationship’s cohesion, as the social relationships between the participants
became more intense. All bartering relationships were subject to this process,
independent of the distribution of power. On the macrolevel of Berlin war soci-
ety, this development promoted the formation of an everyday life that carefully
compartmentalized its components. This everyday life was characterized by a
 The Wartime Networks ● 65

“shadow world” formed alongside legal procedures and spaces and occupied by
an increasing number of citizens. Moreover, this shadow world demanded that
participants—at least for a while—lived some distance from the “normal,” every-
day life, which was closely monitored by the authorities and by large sections of
the Volksgemeinschaft. Thus, in a sense the black market represented a process of
privatization. The black market had removed itself from the urban public space
controlled by the National Socialists and created a sort of counter public space
that was largely apolitical. National Socialist black market policy, which aimed
to reduce the amount of black marketeering to a minimum, merely moved the
activity “into the underground.” That this “underground” existed was the result
of the regulations prohibiting it. It was the activities of the black marketeers and
the changing conditions filling this space with life that ensured its establishment
as an independent and persistent social reality in the everyday life of Berliners.
The far-reaching consequences can be shown in detail in four examples.
1. The “normal” type of social relationships between people who exchange
goods or services with one another is that between buyers and seller. Black mar-
ket traders often fit this pattern by extending previous legal relationships under
quite different conditions: the baker who “sold” bread that was not part of the
official allotment alongside the goods he had been officially allotted and who
in return allowed himself to be “provided” with other goods, or the seamstress
who traded custom tailoring for meat. There was a typical script for interac-
tion underlying these relationships between customers and sellers. Researchers
into socialization and the psychology of relationships make a distinction between
“role relationships” and “personal relationships.”41 Between the seller and the cus-
tomer, there were “stable patterns of interaction,” mutual expectations in regard
to one’s roles: “ ‘Role’ describes here the expectations, culturally determined, in
regard to interactional behavior.”42 Both sides are acquainted with one’s own and
others’ expectations and practices concerning the interaction. Furthermore, they
were in possession of a script for the situation in which they found themselves.43
At the same time, there was never a pure, clear (theoretical) distinction
between role relationships and personal relationships even in the trading in legal
markets. Buyers and sellers did not just rely on abstract, given understandings
of roles. Indeed, this was all the more true the longer there was a relationship
between a customer and a merchant on the corner, for example. Instead, a com-
mon history formed the context of the relationships: merchants and customers
were, as participants in the events in a particular quarter “in the picture,” aware
not only of what was going on, but also of each other (their preferences or cus-
toms). All the same, the relationships that were defined by the roles that they
had to take differed from other social relationships such as love relationships, in
which the pattern of interaction depended primarily upon the personalities of
those involved: the personalities of the other person are of less significance in role
relationships. In principle both the role of the customer as well as that of the ven-
dor could have been acted out just as well by another person without changing
anything important about the pattern of interaction, a situation that pertained
all the more the more impersonal the relationship was.44
66 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Shopping is certainly one of the most important everyday situations in a

consumer society. However, especially in grocery stores, there was a decisive dif-
ference in the buyer-seller relationship between the legal and the illegal sectors.
In the legal sector, shopping followed well-established rules and rituals. One
could expect a certain assortment of goods to be available; these goods could
be examined on the spot and acquired for a set price. In the black market these
rules did not apply. A set of goods was the exception.45 Even when trading with
those who specialized in a certain assortment of goods—for example, with bak-
ers, tailors, or tobacco merchants—one had to take advantage of opportunities.
Not all goods were available at all times, nor could one make demands in regard
to certain brands or other special wishes. In place of the superficial inspection
or examination of goods that was possible in modern retail trading, where the
quality of standardized goods was certified by the state, it was now necessary for
customers to monitor the quality and quantity of the goods being sold them-
selves, even of the most fundamental product characteristics. Finally, the price
often had to be negotiated.
To be sure, many customers did not make use (at least at first) of the possi-
bility of haggling and paid the price the vendors demanded. For one thing, this
was a sign of the huge demand and of the increased power of the vendors. For
another, dispensing with haggling over prices corresponded to the old pattern of
interaction between the buyer and seller.
However, one could observe learning processes on both sides: vendors who
found that the prices they asked for were paid without any haggling attempted
in the next transaction to raise their prices—often with the terse observation that
“prices have gone up.”46 They could count on newcomers not being informed
about prices, and therefore as a rule they had an information advantage vis-à-vis
occasional, private traders. Customers for their part learned (partly as a result of
the behavior of the vendors) that prices in illegal trading, unlike prices in stores,
were flexible and could be negotiated. The free play in the setting of prices con-
fronted the customer with new challenges. Merchants who were well trained in
their regular occupations in methods of appraising value, and in calculating and
negotiating prices, had decisive advantages. In contrast, participants who were
not professionally trained had to learn these things if they wanted to compen-
sate for this disadvantage—provided that they were willing and able to engage
intensely with the framework of the illegal trading. Occasional, private traders
who were able to afford it tended to pay more than they had to in order to
have as little “contact” with “shady business.” The negotiating position of those
who were living in hiding was especially limited because they were politically
persecuted and therefore had no legal rations.47
In this way power relationships in the illegal markets shifted. Previous cus-
tomer protections from abuse did not exist in the black market. Accordingly,
those offering goods had an advantage. The difficulties in obtaining goods in
short supply during the war and the postwar period privileged those who worked
in occupations that gave them access to such goods (e.g., retailers, manufacturers,
and the food or textile trade) and who were thus able to enjoy the advantages
 The Wartime Networks ● 67

of a supply oligopoly.48 The numerous shortages, organized by rationing, opened

up for retail business owners a number of potential consumer channels, so that
the purchaser was limited in his ability to determine how the transaction would
be concluded. Dissatisfied customers had almost no possibility of redress, except,
of course, to break off the bartering relationship, engage in negative advertising,
or—and this was very risky—inform on the other.
If customers wished to avoid being swindled, they had to immediately rec-
ognize counterfeits or imitations or even the diluting of goods (thinning down,
mixing in inferior product components, etc.) and mention these observations to
negotiate a lower price. In black market transactions, the consumer bore the full
risk of testing the quality and the full cost of conducting such controls. The con-
sumer in the illegal Berlin markets did not have any enforceable rights like those
guaranteed by the state in legal markets.
This asymmetry in the buyer-seller relationship in the black market was only
partially compensated for by the social integration of the business. From the
perspective of the customer, there were numerous advantages in bartering rela-
tionships with brokers with whom one was personally acquainted as a business
partner. Retail business owners, in particular, who knew the value of regular
customers, proved to be more reliable bartering partners.
2. During the 1920s the “new woman” appeared as the protagonist of a mod-
ern feminine way of living and working. This development was accompanied by
a motif that thematized the logic of give-and-take as an expression of gender-
specific power positions. Engaging in sexual bartering transactions with male
supervisors in order to advance socially was both part of the everyday realm of
experience of a growing number of female employees as well as a hot topic being
debated during that era. In Erich Kästner’s novel Fabian. Die Geschichte eines
Moralisten, a contemporary commented on one actress’s doubts about these prac-
tices: “Does that surprise you? Isn’t that why you came to Berlin? Here goods
are swapped and exchanged. Whoever wants something has to give whatever he
or she has.”49 The black market merely rendered such amalgamations of sexual
and socioeconomic trades more visible. One does not, however, have to assume
that the existence of such a market necessarily had a negative impact on inti-
mate relationships.50 In the public discussions concerning the illegal markets,
the association of (material) trades and sexual favors played an important role.
The behavior of German women who traded with “foreigners,” especially—that
is, during the war with foreign laborers or forced laborers and after the war with
Allied soldiers or displaced persons—provoked the displeasure of many observers.
In the eyes of many, women who engaged in such trading were committing
treason. The myth of the rapid capitulation of German women in May 1945
describes nothing other than the alleged “major sin” of the women and girls who
“sold” themselves to the victors for—according to the obsessive, primarily mascu-
line view—a couple of cigarettes or pairs of nylons.51 Marlene Dietrich’s “Black
Market Song” from Billy Wilder’s film A Foreign Affair, which takes place in
Berlin, treats bartering as something prostitutes engaged in. The female lead,
played by Dietrich, offers “kisses for chewing gum,” hinting at the relationship
68 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

between illegal trading and prostitution. The topic of trading for sex was ever
present.
However, apart from the question of the role that bartering and (occasional)
prostitution played in the precarious definition of a moral economy in the
postwar period, it is clear that already during the war the illegal trading of
goods and sex of the Berlin black marketeers, both male and female, were closely
intertwined. And this is true as well for other types of personal social relation-
ships in the black market—economic practices and multiplex relationships had a
reciprocal influence on each other.
Love partners engaged in a constant give-and-take in any case: signs of affec-
tion sometimes took the form of objects, of presents. These signs not only
sustained the friendship but also served as evidence of one’s feelings. As a rule,
they formed an important part of that complex social reality that can be charac-
terized as love—long before marriage as a special contractual relationship came
into play. Inasmuch as a love affair aimed to become a (long-term) partnership,
factors that have little to do with romantic love influenced the choice of a partner,
such as similar backgrounds, status, and income.52 Presents, and other exchange
processes that dispensed with the veil of one-sidedness caused by the time delay
of gift-giving, thus played a central role in the game of love. They not only served
as evidence of one’s feeling but also informed the partner being wooed about
one’s social and economic power.53 Under the conditions of the limited supply
of goods, partners of both sexes who were able to “supply” products in demand
could increase their market value. To be sure, there were many factors to choos-
ing a partner, and the partner’s ability to ensure a certain standard of living was
only one of them. However, in the context of an unclear family situation, insecu-
rity in regard to food and supplies, and insecurity in regard to one’s own future,
this factor could indeed prove decisive. Of course, the overall context during the
war changed considerably. Because so many men had been drafted, there was a
large surplus of women in Berlin. Thus, the contemporary shortage phenomenon
existed in the marriage market as well or, more generally, in the partnership mar-
ket. Meat, fats, and textiles were in short supply; so, too, were men. This was
a source of worry not only to women but also to the state agencies responsible
for National Socialist family policy. The absence of men made it more difficult
for women to find a partner and led inevitably to a declining birth rate.54 This,
however, ran counter to the plans of National Socialist leaders, who had made
having a lot of children the foundation of their expansive and racist reshaping
of Germany and of all of Europe. Official efforts to promote racially desirable
heterosexual relationships and thus to work against “sexual segregation” during
the war found expression in state sponsorship of letter exchanges and of events
where people could get acquainted.55 These efforts, however, were largely unsuc-
cessful. By far the vast majority of contacts initiated for the purpose of finding a
sex partner did not take place under the auspices of the state.56
This finding is substantiated by analysis of the black market as a contact
exchange. If one understands Nazi family policy as an intervention in the mar-
ket and as efforts to create an official market for founding partnerships, then the
 The Wartime Networks ● 69

black market can be understood as an “alternative” infrastructure—a much more

successful alternative. Considerable parts of Berlin’s black market functioned as
a partnership market. In approximately 20 percent of all the black market trad-
ing cases I examined, I found evidence that sexual and bartering relationships
were closely interwoven with each other. The barter of goods as well as various
forms of providing love and care for others were closely related to one another.57
This overlapping took place at two levels. On one level, black market trading as
a gregarious social practice provided the ideal environment for people to become
acquainted with potential lovers. Whether one was alone, married, or widowed,
the black market, a market with a great deal of personal closeness, brought men
and women together under the mantle, sometimes as well as under the pretext, of
trading goods, functioning as an important site of everyday (sexual) interaction.58
In this, it was unimportant whether partners were already acquainted with one
another. In every case the trading sequence followed a logic of social exchange
that corresponded closely to how lovers became acquainted with one another:
from addressing a person to testing a person to completing a transaction. The
example of Wiggers from the Rebbien network, who as a broker engaged in
bartering transactions with a whole series of women whom he regularly met in
cafés or in their apartments, makes it clear—independent of whether the desig-
nation “friendly relations” (freundschaftlicher Verkehr) used in the language of the
bureaucracy implied sexual relationships—that black market trading increased
opportunities to meet people.59
Furthermore, the two markets were quite close to one another or even shared
the same space. Restaurants and bars, among the most important sites for clan-
destine industries, also served as contact sites for black marketeering groups.
Often people exchanged both goods and intimacy. Just as the two markets can-
not be kept distinct from one another in terms of space, so, too, the dividing
line between material and social or physical bartering equivalents often remained
vague. Where, for example, was the dividing line between giving a gift as a
friendly gesture or as part of a seduction, and where did “paying for” a partner
begin or end?
In extreme cases, black market goods could be seen either as a payment by a
client to a prostitute or as a present, as is shown by the example of a fish merchant
who stated in his interrogation:

in the Central Market Hall I heard that in a house on Alexanderstrasse 42, at the
apartment of a certain Miss Bienert, there was a sleazy hotel with pretty women. I,
too, went there a number of times in order to have sex with a woman called Pia.
After the first meeting . . . she received 10 marks from me. In about five other cases
I gave Pia some fish as a gift . . . . It could have been overall 6 kilograms of fish,
which Bienert and Pia shared.60

Obviously it was easier for the person visiting the brothel to declare that the
exchange of goods for sex was a present, whereas paying for sex with money
was socially unacceptable. With this, the bartering culture blurred unequivocal
70 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

classifications. To describe the black market as a market of love relationships

amounts to differentiating among a wide swath of different transactions as
well as differentiating among the interpretations of these transactions and the
relationships themselves.
Of course, the complexes of “providing for” and “partnership” have always
traditionally been quite close. An example that makes clear the changes accom-
panying the shifts caused by the war, the allocations, and the shortages is the case
of Elisabeth Hanke and Edgar von Vahl. The two became acquainted in January
1940 in a restaurant. Hanke came there after work to spend a couple of hours
with her colleagues. Von Vahl was a regular patron.61 Leaving aside the emo-
tional aspects, which can only be hinted at and which therefore will not be taken
into consideration, the bartering transactions between Hanke and von Vahl are
a classic case of trading in scarce goods. Hanke had access as an employee in the
Rationing Card Office 12 in Charlottenburg to food ration cards. As she told
the police—with a certain amount of pride—she herself played a role in deciding
whether or not those who for whatever reasons had not picked up their ration
cards in the allotted time would still receive their contingent of ration cards:

Whether or not things were in order was more or less a question of instinct and
tact. If I wanted to reject a request by a Volksgenossen to hand over the cards, then
I had to go to the supervisor and he would decide. I could, however, approve the
request on my own.62

On numerous occasions she embezzled cards that had not been picked up and
thus became an interesting acquaintance for all black marketeers:

One evening in November I sat down after work in the Löwenbräu in the
Tauentzienstrasse. A man sat down next to me . . . . We started to talk, and he asked
me where I worked. I told him that I worked in a Rationing Card Office. In the
course of further conversation the man informed me that he had some coffee that
he had received from France that he wanted to get rid of, and that he would be able
to supply me with fabric. I badly needed cloth for a coat. He made it very clear that
we could do business with each other.63

However, in the case of her bartering relationship with von Vahl, the situation
was obviously much more complicated. If previously she had merely bartered
with the men in the “Löwenbräu,” when she became acquainted with von Vahl
emotions played a role. For Elisabeth Hanke, von Vahl represented a scarce good:
men. In her interrogation she stated that her first marriage had ended in divorce
in 1931 and that she had been identified as the party at fault. Since 1933 she
had lived with her mother and her sister in their apartment in Zehlendorf.64
Under these circumstances, there were obviously good reasons she wanted to
catch von Vahl. He had attended the Cadet School, had worked as a farmer and
as a bank accountant, was divorced, and had worked since 1939 as a civil servant
in the German Aviation Ministry. According to his own statement, he earned 500
 The Wartime Networks ● 71

RM per month.65 Thus, he fulfilled two important measurable criteria, alongside

those that cannot be analyzed such as his emotional qualities or his appearance:
he had a certain status, and he was present.66 And other women appeared to find
him attractive. In her interrogation Hanke repeatedly stated that her bartering
partner and lover was idolized by other women, which only increased his value in
her eyes.67 As, furthermore, he seemed to know this, the price increased. Not only
did Hanke repeatedly pay for him, invite him to dinner, and pay for a trip that
they took together by taking “rationed goods out of public distribution.”68 Sex
was also among the goods Hanke was willing to trade. She stated in her interro-
gation that although she found it unpleasant, she allowed herself to be seduced by
von Vahl to engage in “indecent” sexual practices. On top of this she was willing
to make false statements both to him as well as, later, to the police. She suggested
to him that she was reasonably well-off (in spite of his income von Vahl clearly
still had debts to pay); vis-à-vis the police she covered him in regard to his partic-
ipation in the illegal transactions as long as she could and was only convinced to
make a much more complete statement about her black market transactions after
a conversation with her lawyer. She later admitted, after von Vahl had been taken
from the interrogation room, that she had lied to him about what she possessed
because she could imagine, “that (he) would rather have a woman with him who
had money than a woman without money.”69
Von Vahl’s services were non-binding. The time they spent together and the
alleged prospect of a common future and of getting married were the goods that
he could trade:

During the trip von Vahl had held out to me the prospect of marrying me, or of
moving in with me into a four-room apartment. I was to take care of the house,
but I was also supposed to continue working. To be honest, I didn’t take the offer
seriously.70

However, although she supposedly did not take the offer seriously, Hanke
appeared to continue at the very least to have hopes in regard to a common future.
Her attempts, however, to tie von Vahl down were unsuccessful. He claimed that
when he had looked at an apartment with her this had been non-binding. Accord-
ing to Hanke, he told her they were “in the same boat” after he found out that
the police were investigating them, in order to make her understand that he was
standing by her. Only when Hanke observed in the police interrogation that her
bartering partner and lover did not appear to be holding up his part of the bar-
gain did she change her tactics and incriminate him by revealing his part in the
illegal bartering transactions.
Not always did the pressure applied by the investigating authorities lead barter-
ing pairs to mutually accuse each other, causing the partnership to end. In some
cases, the relationship became especially intense because of the police investiga-
tions. The sexual desire, the consumption wishes of the participants, and the
conspiratorial community of the bartering partners created a peculiar mixture.
The role constellation of a pair of lovers running away from the authorities
72 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

rehashed in numerous works of fiction took on concrete form in such cases. Like
Bonnie and Clyde, many lovers experienced their relationships as a special one-
ness. The secrecy, one of the basic preconditions of illegal trading, stimulated the
erotic relationship. As “partners in crime” the black marketeers experienced an
extraordinarily close oneness. This intensified the drawing of boundaries vis-à-vis
the environment (in this case perceived to be dangerous) that helped to con-
stitute the pair. As they further developed their conspiratorial methods, forged
common escape plans, and went into hiding together, this strengthened that feel-
ing of singularity characteristic of love relationships: “we, and we alone, belong
together.”71
An especially striking case of such “partners in crime” was the relationship
between Erich Bruselat and Margot Engel.72 It was a bartering relationship and a
love affair, and they shared the excitement of being on the run. Although (or per-
haps because) Bruselat had suspicions in regard to Engel when she had become
acquainted with him and had hired a private detective to conduct inquiries into
his—as it turned out—quite glamorous way of life, she entered into a relationship
with him.73 In her police interrogation she later stated that because of the “sexual
contact,” she had “become a slave” to Bruselat, the former managing director of
the nightclub “Lichtburg.”74 Whether that was true or whether that was merely an
effort to protect herself can no longer be ascertained. It is certain, however, that
Margot Engel used Bruselat’s black marketeering competence. To be sure, she
stated in her interrogation on November 4, 1944, “I reject the claim that because
of my relationship to B., I or my relatives enjoyed any economic advantages.”75
However, Bruselat was able to demonstrate that his “expensive lifestyle” was ulti-
mately connected with the exquisite presents he had purchased for his lover in
the black market.76
When the busy black marketeer, who, among other things, had repeatedly
transported goods from East Prussia to Berlin via airplane, had to go into hid-
ing, the story of a pair on the run began.77 Engel shielded her lover, deceived the
police officer conducting the investigation, and met secretly with Bruselat and
with someone who claimed he could forge passports in order to give him the
photos necessary for the forgeries. Switzerland was their common destination.78
Although the course of events in this case was quite dramatic, it should not
deceive one about the fact that the described effect of a “partners in crime”
situation played a role in less spectacular relationship dramas, too.
3. Bartering touched on at least two taboos. According to prevailing beliefs,
love was something that, at least in its true, romantic form, was not to be based
on material performance, as long as social conventions (partnership and mar-
riage) were upheld. There was a complex set of rules that distinguished between
acceptable and unacceptable forms of behavior. This points to the great impor-
tance of these conventions, at least in bourgeois circles. The second taboo was
that for business within the family, the rules of the free market were not sup-
posed to apply. “A household,” in the words of Max Weber, was “economic
and personal . . . : solidarity toward the outside and communistic use and con-
sumption of everyday items . . . on the inside on the basis of unity and strict filial
 The Wartime Networks ● 73

piety.”79 To be sure, this initially applied, Weber continued, only to “pure” and
“primitive” forms; however, “the household communist principle that ‘one does
not calculate’ ” continued to exist “as the essential characteristic of the ‘family’
household.”80 And in the context of “helping one’s neighbors,” along the lines of
“doing each other favors,” Weber recalled the still valid principle that “brothers
do not haggle over prices.”81
Therefore, bartering did not merely supplement the relationships between
family members by adding another variation of social interaction. Rather, it
fundamentally called into question the concept of “family.” Was a family not
characterized by the fact that one could not raise the topic of economic services,
or if one did, then only in conventional forms such as parental care? Could one
exchange goods with family members, could one barter with a brother, a sister,
or an uncle, that is, calculate prices or even insist on one’s advantage? “Hustlers”
as popularized in the media were individuals who pursued their shady business
alone. One could not even think of them as family persons. From the perspective
of the “normal” and “decent” Berliner, hustlers were “asocial.” In contrast to this
ideal fiction, black marketeers were often not only family oriented, but they also
used their families to assist them in their illegal business and even bartered and
traded with them. The popular talk about “hustlers” thus did not do justice to
the family context of many black market trading networks. The verdicts of the
courts, published in the state-controlled press, against those who had committed
offenses against War Economy Regulations and the descriptions of black market
business transactions they contained, denounced especially the “transgressions”
of black marketeers who had worked with their family and made references in
such cases to the apparent “asocial” character of the families. This use of language
accorded with National Socialist discourse policy, which bet on the use of stereo-
types of perpetrators that aimed to stigmatize those alleged to be foreign to the
community to increase the cohesion of the Volksgemeinschaft.82
This did not stop a whole series of participants from choosing their barter-
ing partners from among their family members. In part, these family members
were merely intermediaries. For this purpose black marketeers remembered that
they had an extended family, even distant relatives, that perhaps they had not
seen or thought of for years. The chance to obtain goods in demand or to carry
out lucrative business transactions could reawaken family ties that had been dor-
mant for a long time.83 All the same, the convention remained that wherever
family members bartered with each other, these business transactions were gen-
erally not perceived as bartering or at the very least were not labeled as such.
“It’s true that I once received 100 cigarettes from my sister,” said the 40-year-
old Martha Tomczak in her interrogation at the police station in Schöneberg.
However, she did not pay for these cigarettes; rather, she “did a favor” for her
sister “in a different way.”84 Her sister confirmed this later when she was interro-
gated. She said that she had “not received and also not demanded” any payment
for the cigarettes.85 That which black marketeers quite openly labeled a bartering
transaction when the business was conducted with strangers was, as a rule, consid-
ered a “favor” when family members were involved. Among sisters, in a variation
74 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

of the rule cited by Weber, one did not barter and one demanded nothing in
return.
However, this was not true for all market participants. Diverse black
marketeers moved beyond such conventions. For example, the engine mechanic
Arthur Wissel, who was employed by the Awia aircraft factory in Prague,
described his transactions in the following manner:

In September 1944, as I was visiting Berlin, I brought back with me from Prague
some bottles of alcohol. . . . In the beginning of October 1944 all of a sudden [a
supplier] brought me 45 bottles of alcohol of various brands. I paid him 110
marks per bottle. In December 1944 I brought these 45 bottles . . . to Berlin to
my wife. . . . My wife paid me 130 to 140 marks per bottle.

Even if Wissel did not speak of “bartering” or of “selling,” it was clear that he
expected a higher price from his wife than he had paid when he bought the bot-
tles. Business transactions involving married people were a conflict-laden practice,
testing the strength of the relationships. The same was true of relationships in
which only one of the two partners engaged in bartering, while the other rejected
this “hustling.” The illegal business separated the partners and produced massive
tension. Such conflicts escalated regularly when the police made the consequences
clear to those involved.86
4. Among the most regular, everyday contacts were those between colleagues
at work. Therefore, it is not surprising that bartering in the workplace was
widespread in Berlin. One was acquainted with one’s colleagues; one had friends
among one’s colleagues and thus the necessary steps had already been taken
toward creating a level of trust. A remarkable transformation of social relation-
ships in the workplace took place because of the bartering culture—less among
colleagues of equal rank and more in the relationships between subordinates
and supervisors. The asymmetrical distribution of power in these well-defined
roles could be profoundly changed by the bartering practices, even to the degree
that in some cases the roles were reversed and supervisors became powerless and
dependent on others at work.
The metalworker Emil Gierschner, for example, undertook on behalf of his
supervisor a business trip to Ostrowo to trade old clothes for food for himself
and his colleagues.

In Berlin I packed an old suit of mine and four other suits from colleagues at work
or from acquaintances (!), two pairs of boots and men’s underwear. . . . I talked
earlier about colleagues at work; I am now willing to name names: 1) my fac-
tory manager Schumann—who gave me one pair of boots to take along . . . . The
goods which were received in exchange for clothing were supposed to be distributed
among those named above.87

Furthermore, his supervisor Schumann provided the necessary travel permit

and gave his employee vacation so that he could carry out these transactions. Par-
ticipating in such transactions meant that a much more complicated relationship
 The Wartime Networks ● 75

replaced the clear distribution of power between subordinates and supervisors

that increased the status of the weaker party. Such displacements had long-term
consequences on the structures of authority. In extreme cases it could lead to the
complete dissolution of existing structures of power and order, as in the case of the
warehouse management at the “Generalbauinspekteur der Reichsstadt Berlin.”
As became clear in the rather comprehensive investigations—there was even talk
of the intervention of the “Reichsführer-SS”—the complete management of the
warehouse had participated in and approved of embezzlement and “hustling.”
As a consequence, the structures of authority almost completely dissolved. Sub-
ordinates told their supervisors “to their face” that they were “hustlers” and were
able to get away with it because the supervisors feared being reported to the
police.88
Such developments affected not only interpersonal relationships but also large
social networks and urban spaces. The changes in everyday life in Berlin during
the war were accompanied by innovations or improvements or striking conti-
nuities in the use and perception of urban spaces. The black market trading
functioned as a lens shaping contemporaries’ perceptions of their city. Both
the participants in the black market and criminal prosecutors, as well as mere
observers, were participants in that process of city making, in which the city of
hustlers practically and rhetorically came to life.

Bartering Spaces and Movement Patterns

Over the course of 1944, already before illegal trading moved into the streets and
squares of Berlin, black marketeers began to use some public places for trading.
They integrated well-known meeting places, in particular, into their bartering
practices. For example, Elisabeth Hanke and her bartering partner Strassburger
from the Gesundbrunnen network used a flower stand at Wittenbergplatz as
a place to meet as well as a place to trade.89 One no longer had to make
an appointment in order to barter. The elevator operator Otto Stock stated
on February 13, 1943, in his police interrogation that he had known that
“on Linienstrasse, on Rosentaler Platz, there was a lively black market.” So he
went there shortly before Christmas “to see” for himself “what was going on”
in the Spandau district. And as a matter of fact, “there was a dense gather-
ing of people at the corner of Linienstrasse and Kleine Rosentaler Strasse.”90
As the statement of another witness made clear, it was still a good idea, even
in September 1944, not to undertake such bartering transactions outside dur-
ing the day. In this case, the transfer of 1,200 cigarettes took place on the
Hohenstauffenplatz. The witness received the goods, “in the public square,” but
only “in the evening.”91
Another public site for bartering was the weekly markets, for example, on
Winsstrasse in Prenzlauer Berg. Here, in the hustle and bustle of the marketplace,
one could exchange goods without standing out. People who barely knew each
other, such as Frau Kehler and Frau Menge, who before had only greeted each
other but had not had been “friendly” with one another, met here in January
76 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

1945 and started up a conversation, and finally one of them offered the other
some meat as part of a trade.92
As is made clear by the history of the origins of Martha Rebbien’s trading net-
work, the transactions during the war occurred “in public” to varying degrees.93
Trading outside was the exception; enclosed spaces were preferred. In part, these
spaces were commercially defined. Illegal trading took place in sites generally
reserved for legal business such as bars or restaurants. Because these sites were
coded as sites of urban socializing, it was easier to use them for illegal trad-
ing. Encounters and consumption were their very basic functions and were still
possible here, as they had been before. Of course, new practices changed well-
established concepts of space. Trading changed the character of existing urban
spaces, and even those who did not participate in black market trading faced the
consequences of illegal trading.94 Furthermore, in the black market, the relation-
ship between what was near and distant changed, and existing concepts of privacy
and publicness were called into question. It was necessary to go to quarters of the
city or to places that were further away, and these trips built only in part on
existing patterns. Why did female Berlin black marketeers prefer certain spaces?
What impact did illegal trading have on the urban, regional, and transnational
patterns of movement of those who participated in the markets? Which routes for
trade and flows of goods linked individual market areas to one another? How did
such shifts and displacements in how space was used modify the perception of
certain sites? And, finally, what did the mobility requirement for participating in
the market mean for different groups of people being to participate successfully
in the trading and to be able to profit from their allocated rations?
As we have observed that a large part of black market trading took place in
rather limited spaces, we now turn our attention to the structures of the city
districts and to individual bartering sites such as apartments and restaurants.
Of course, beyond this, patterns of movement extended over the complete urban
space, the surrounding countryside, and all of Europe. The shifts in the use of
everyday space were above all products of the techniques developed to ensure
secrecy. Trading was likewise one of the sites where a confrontation between
black marketeers and prosecuting authorities concerning the use of urban spaces
at different levels of the public sphere took place.

The Structures of the Districts and the Sites of Encounters

Martha Rebbien’s bartering network offers some clues regarding the spatial orga-
nization of the black market during the war. What is most striking is the space
in which it was conducted, the local district or Kiez. Rebbien hardly ever left her
Kiez to conduct her business—not to procure goods to replenish her supply, to
arrange to meet customers, nor to hand off the goods.
The central area consisted of a couple of streets around the Gesundbrunnen
train station. The bartering activity thus occurred right next to one of the most
important “bottlenecks” of the Berlin public transportation system. As Erich
Giese’s study on the “future suburban train network for Greater Berlin” from
 The Wartime Networks ● 77

1919 has already shown, the train station that lay to the north of the city had
the greatest amount of traffic among the train stations on the line that circled
Berlin. Already in 1912/13 over 9.5 million people passed through this train
station. Almost half of them were either coming or going from the northern
suburbs. Even in 1936 the number of tickets sold in Gesundbrunnen was signif-
icantly higher than in one of the best known and centrally located train stations
in Berlin, Alexanderplatz.95 This volume derived from the station’s use largely
by the working class; large segments of Berlin industrial factory workers came
through it on their way to work.96 The trading between Martha Rebbien and her
bartering partners took place mostly within one square kilometer of this trans-
portation hub. The apartments, bars, and cafés on Badstrasse, Bellermannstrasse,
Swinemünderstrasse, and Brunnenstrasse as well as those on Prinzenallee were
part of this central area. The trading of the network participants thus took
place within the spheres of everyday life; everything was within walking distance.
Repeatedly, Rebbien described her walks through the streets of the district to the
police.97
There were a number of reasons to trade in the Kiez. For one, it was neces-
sary for people to live near each other for them to develop trading relationships
and to exchange information over goods, prices, possible offers, and interested
parties. Most black marketeers did not have a telephone. Only Erna Kuschy had
one. Anna Auricht at least could be reached at her landlord’s.98 Sending things via
mail was difficult, took time, and increased costs. A large percentage of traders,
therefore, had to be able to visit their bartering partners to deliver or pick up
goods.99 On top of this, to take advantage of the trust-building “pre-existing non-
commercial ties between buyers and sellers” with neighbors or with other district
acquaintances required physical proximity.100 It was thus logical for traders to
build up a trading space that they could manage and keep an eye on. Ultimately,
the Gesundbrunnen Kiez, teeming with bars and cafés, supplied a good infras-
tructure; some participants were already well integrated into the Kiez because they
worked there as waitstaff. Consequently, trading in Rebbien’s network fit very
well into the already existing everyday relationships among people and spaces.
This was one of the conditions for the black market’s relatively long record of
success here. This local neighborhood formed the basis of the illegal everyday
trading in the Berlin black market. In almost every one of the cases investigated
here, one’s district in Berlin was also where one did business.101 This is not really
all that surprising. For already in the nineteenth century, relationships among
neighbors had often developed into patronage networks; “the owner of a shop in
the quarter who gave [his customers] credit . . . was integrated into such a neigh-
borhood system.”102 “Occasions for informal mutual assistance among equals,”
too, functioned as a catalyst, which helped define the neighborhood as a space
encompassing “sociability.”103 In this space the black marketeers could conduct
their business in relative security.
By moving frequently from one apartment to another and by visiting the same
restaurants, bars, and train stations, traders wove their illegal activity into their
everyday routines; the different sites of the district were joined together into a
78 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

network of black market trading centers. Indeed, only by means of such repe-
tition could individual districts become black market trading centers. The area
in and around the Gesundbrunnen train station was one such center because
black marketeers like Martha Rebbien conducted their business there; the black
marketeers helped the restaurants and bars become central meeting points for
illegal trading. This points to a spatial concept that extended beyond one’s own
neighborhood. Rebbien’s Kiez had become attractive to commuters who had pre-
viously used the transportation hub to get to the inner city and now, with the
black marketeering, could use it for its new, alternative infrastructure. Trading
in the Kiez expanded the market’s catchment area, opening up opportunities
for local merchants to improve their sales. Even black marketeers who up until
now had not been to the quarter could go to northern Berlin in search of bar-
tering partners, as one witness said in her interrogation, “to buy cigarettes in
restaurants or bars around the Stettin train station or the Gesundbrunnen train
station.”104 The location of this trading space had advantages for both sides. The
local Kiez market was able to expand and thus profit from the central location.
This enabled commuters to appear quickly and without any problems on the spot
or to conduct their business while on their way to work or on their way home
from work.
The illegal trading expanded the district not only by adding a new infrastruc-
ture; it also changed the character of individual meeting spaces in the district,
including, of course, the participants’ apartments. As “central sites of private life,”
apartments were profoundly important to urban life.105 Activities that took place
in apartments were largely private. To a certain degree, other people and the law
did not have a right to enter this space. Of course, privacy was limited, de facto,
by legal regulations, norms, and also the social control of the neighbors. On the
other hand, privacy was the ideal of the bourgeois family.
One was safe in one’s living space, and such a space was to be protected from
too much outside interest.106 Bourgeois ideals of privacy had slowly influenced
how bourgeois families lived as well as how their apartments were designed. The
interior was considered women’s space; the organization of the space within the
living quarters reflected gender differences in that, for example, the kitchen was
separated from the “living room.”107 This trend was part of bourgeois culture, but
its impact extended to the working class, where a trend toward the “privatization
of family life” could likewise be observed.108 The apartment as the “box of the pri-
vate man” corresponded to a “need for closure” that transcended class.109 Having
an apartment meant “upholding the feeling of being protected, both symbolically
and in reality”;110 this need became especially apparent when one had lost it. The
southern Westphalian Gauleiter Albert Hoffmann, who was considered an expert
on the air war, was particularly sensitive to this. In meetings in August 1943, for
psychological reasons, he argued against housing those who had lost their homes
in temporary settlements as the director of the Deutsches Wohnungshilfswerks,
Ley, had advocated. Hoffmann felt that it was better to find housing for them
near where they had lived—even if this was only provisional, because it would
perhaps avoid irritating those who had lost their dwelling.111
 The Wartime Networks ● 79

Losing one’s apartment was a major event for many Berliners. The “loss of the
familiar living space” often led to a “desperate search for a new interior space,”
to attempts to try to at least simulate “provisional, unconnected living quarters.”
The familiar interior of one’s own apartment offered security and the possibil-
ity of “well-defined areas of different levels of privacy.” The hallway, for example,
could mark the area where one would decide who was a client or a guest. The loss
of such stable sites for doing business was one of many “deep cuts into the cus-
tomary everyday order.” The absence of an apartment, “of space for intimacy, of
space at all” would characterize “the lives of millions of people” from the moment
of the loss “until well into the 1950s.”112
If one takes the number of apartments built in Berlin as an indicator, apart-
ments became even more important in the first half of the twentieth century.
Between 1929 and 1932 and between 1937 and 1940, there were significant
increases in the number of apartments; all in all, 272,361 new apartments were
built between 1925 and 1944.113 The number of apartments increased from
1,210,602 in 1927 to 1,551,356 in 1939. This number was highest at the
beginning of 1943, when there were 1,562,641 apartments. The bombing low-
ered this figure; in 1943 alone, over 200,000 apartments and houses in Berlin
became uninhabitable. At the end of 1944, there were only 1,222,085 units.114
Most of the apartments hit by bombs—around half—were in the densely popu-
lated “central city” (Mitte, Tiergarten, Wedding, Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain,
Kreuzberg).115 The newly built housing was evidence of a continuing housing
shortage. At least in propaganda, National Socialist city planners emphasized
that they wanted to preserve and renovate the working-class housing in Berlin.
From 1934 on, especially, these efforts were intensified as it was useful, from the
viewpoint of the new rulers, not only to use this policy “as a means to produce
consensus” in those districts suspected of being “red” but also to use these labor-
intensive but not capital-intensive measures to create jobs.116 All the same, at no
time did the government succeed in making enough apartments available. Apart-
ments remained a scarce commodity. The housing shortage persisted throughout
the war, exacerbated by the concentration of the government administration in
the capital and the influx of arms industry workers.117
Of course, this does not change the fact that “one’s own four walls” became
a preferred site for Berlin black market trading during the war. Apartments
remained a relatively private space and were thus difficult to control. In them,
black marketeers were able to meet with their bartering partners undisturbed, to
examine goods, to haggle over prices or other terms of exchange, and to conclude
their transactions.
This did not have to have been the intention of those involved. Often, in
conversations concerning the general supply situation, people revealed that they
knew a supplier. Sometimes, one encountered this information accidentally, as,
for example, in this statement about a female black market trader under interro-
gation: “One Sunday, Drosdowska, the woman who has been indicted, overheard
in her bed how Anita Schwarz and Dubtschak were talking . . . business. Some-
times one came to know of crimes by chance—even though one had not wanted
80 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

to. Drosdowska therefore also received a ration coupon from Schwarz.”118 One’s
living space, thus, likewise became a site of unintentional proximity that could
endanger black market trading. Allowing those only coincidentally in the know to
participate in the business was one way to buy their silence. However, apartments
as a rule served as sites for initiating mutually desired bartering transactions.
National Socialist efforts to control the private sphere of the Volksgenossen
made it more difficult for black market trading to develop undisturbed. A whole
series of state measures and new forms of everyday interaction undermined the
private character of encounters both in the neighborhood and in apartments.
These state measures aimed to establish the “National Socialist claim to absolute
power in living quarters.”119 The introduction of the Hitler salute subjected even
the simplest interpersonal communication between neighbors to the everyday
culture of surveillance that integrated the majority and exposed the minority.120
Social control among neighbors increased continuously as reflected by punish-
ments meted out for offenses against the “Regulations on Radio Use”; in addition,
the naming of block wardens and fire protection officers further permeated the
private sphere.121 Informers divulged the crimes of family members and neighbors
to the authorities.
As Robert Gellately has noted, “Germans . . . not only paid attention to crim-
inals and deviants, to social outsiders and ethnic minorities; they also mutually
stalked each other.”122 This integration of the Berlin population into the struc-
ture and functioning of the National Socialist regime took place partly by means
of people’s willingness to adapt to a system of mutual surveillance that found
expression even in harmless-seeming institutions such as emergency services or
courses on how to run a household. Thus, urban living space was penetrated,
or squeezed, simultaneously from “above” and “below.” State surveillance and
people’s willingness to inform on one another are two ends of a broad scale of
practices that could make one’s living space dangerous for illegal trading.123
The large number of denunciations demonstrates the importance of black
market trading in the relationships between neighbors, especially as the num-
ber of unknown cases remained high.124 Attempts to bring the living quarters
of the Volksgenossen under state control were never fully successful. Illegal trad-
ing, for which at least a minimum of privacy was needed, remained widespread.
Thus, black market trading promoted movement away from public control in an
era filled with community (such as the “housing community” and the “bunker
community”).125 Those who bartered in their own homes insisted on their right
to privacy and retained or indeed won back part of their sovereignty over their
living space.
Yet this sovereignty was always threatened: Neighbors paid close attention
to comings and goings, as an unusual number of strangers or people with
unusual luggage suggested illegal business. Social control in the neighborhood
was directed against any possible “hustling,” as evidenced by the statement
Rebbien’s landlady, Hanna Zabel, made.126 The “housing community” registered
the goods “brought up” at birthdays in the neighborhood that suggested spe-
cial “connections” with great suspicion. A police report from district 107 shortly
before Christmas 1944 provides an example of such observation:
 The Wartime Networks ● 81

[T]he local police were informed confidentially that . . . Paul-Heinz Brinkmann . . .

has not had a job for months and that he is earning his living through black
marketeering. As a rule, according to the informer, he brings his black market trad-
ing goods into his apartment during the night from Friday to Saturday. He then
sells these same goods over the next few days to buyers who call upon him in his
apartment.127

The use of apartments for bartering had a lasting effect on well-established

living concepts. Rooms for relaxing, for familiarity, for privacy, became—at least
temporarily—rooms for doing business. Some rooms were set up as business
rooms and others as storage space. Sometimes there were hiding places set up
to keep bartering transactions secret from other people living in the apartment.
Anna Auricht, an employee of the German National Railway, stated in her inter-
rogation that Martha Rebbien generally went “into another room” when Anna
was present because she herself “did not want to have anything to do with the
whole thing.”128 Black market traders who regularly used their apartments as sites
for bartering had to adapt their private space to the requirements of the illegal
business. For example, a customer remembered: “I can say nothing definite about
the people who went in and out of G.’s apartment. When I visited him, he showed
me a separate room and we conducted our business there. I seldom saw his vis-
itors face to face.”129 Apartments served both as places where vendors handed
over goods as well as for deliveries. Interested parties were asked to come to the
vendor’s apartment for either negotiations or merely the transfer of the goods.130
When Berlin black marketeers used their apartments to barter, they negated
the distinction between public and private space, one of the most important in
everyday urban life. The door to the apartment and the hallway as the thresh-
old to one’s everyday living space became more permeable. This endangered the
security of this space and created tensions among family members or roommates,
presupposing as it did a considerable willingness to take risks.131 By no means
were all roommates willing to take on this risk, nor were all traders able to use
their own living spaces. For those afraid to expose their homes in this way, con-
ducting business in a restaurant or a bar was an alternative. However, trading in
these rooms was also risky because there were people one might run into and
other potential witnesses among the public.
Why did so many Berlin black marketeers prefer to conduct their business
in such semi-public spaces such as bars, cafés, or restaurants? There were many
reasons. Because there was a limited public here, these sites provided a useful
platform for many of the integral black market practices. First of all, these were
normal spaces for people to meet; encounters between bartering partners thus
looked in no way suspicious. Where else could one—disguised within institution-
alized socializing—dare to begin a business transaction and dare to meet a new
business partner? If the bartering partners came regularly, if they were among the
regular customers, then they had the advantage that they were well acquainted
with the local customs, with the employees, and with the guests.
For the civil servants of the Berlin trade inspection service, surveillance was
a routine part of the job. At first, though, they did not have to combat black
82 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

marketeering. Rather, their tasks were to monitor prices as well as enforce health
and liquor regulations and such things. When they had to start fighting illegal
trading, though, it made their lives considerably more difficult. Unlike monitor-
ing prices or observing business transactions between customers and employees in
a bar or a restaurant, this new sort of surveillance required different investigative
techniques, such as planting police informers in suspicious circles and eavesdrop-
ping on conversations.132 On December 30, 1944, for example, following a tip
from a “confidential” source, two policemen went to a restaurant in Schöneberg
and conducted an “inconspicuous surveillance” of the personnel. In their report
afterward, they noted that one of the waiters in the restaurant not only “con-
versed quite actively” with a guest but also received “numerous cigarettes” from
this guest. They searched and arrested him immediately.133
The police felt that such methods had become necessary because restaurants
and bars offered a mixture of clandestine activity and openness, of privacy and
public realm, which was favorable to illegal trading. For one thing, restaurants
and bars, as public spaces, enabled traders to meet a potentially infinite number
of bartering partners. For another, the size of the rooms and privacy they offered
groups of various sizes secured traders a certain control over their networking
or bartering partners. Entering a restaurant and engaging people in conversa-
tion was a harmless act, in no way suspicious in and of itself. Such encounters
could, however, at any moment turn into trading situations without this being
monitored.
But even the relatively manageable public nature of restaurants, bars, and cafés
was not sufficient for some black market traders. Instead of transacting their busi-
ness at a table or at the bar, they used such spaces only for negotiations and retired
to other sites for handing over the goods. A police informer, for example, noted
the following events:

On 12 October 1944, around 20:00, I observed a person with a briefcase in the

restaurant Schirmer in the Linienstr. . . . I could see that the man went to the bath-
room with his briefcase and a number of other people and that this occurred a
number of times. This is how, as is generally known, the bartering transactions
were conducted.134

And a participant reported on the bartering trade by waiters and guests in

the “Hotel Bristol,” which was next to the Schöneberger City Hall, that on the
day of his arrest he had handed his bartering partner “around 16,500 marks,”
which came from the sale of goods. This money transfer, he remembered, “took
place at the door to the restaurant’s toilets.”135 Less careful local traders did not
have to retreat to the toilets but could offer their goods directly in the restau-
rant. Typically, they kept their goods in an inconspicuous bag or briefcase. For
example, one witness remembered: “in the last four weeks before S.’s arrest, I saw
him enter Frau Lipp’s bar with a briefcase . . . he was always selling stockings. He
always came at around 21:00.” Every day he sold as many stockings as he could fit
in his briefcase. 136 When asked about this in his interrogation, S. admitted that
 The Wartime Networks ● 83

“it had gotten around” that he sold stockings. He merely disputed the alleged
extent of his business.137
It was especially easy for waiters to deliver their goods. News of their prices
and delivery methods spread quickly among their customers—especially among
their regulars—so waiters merely had to wait until guests addressed them with
the “right” question. They did not even have to know them. As the waiter of a
restaurant in Schöneberg said in his interrogation, “I do not know the names of
the guests in question, nor can I say where they live. The sale of these cigarettes
took place like this: the people in question asked me for cigarettes and I laid a
pack on the table, without naming a price.” Such transactions took place with-
out lengthy and protracted negotiations. As the customers paid a fixed amount
without asking the price, this information was obviously generally known.138
In the districts where there were a lot of restaurants and bars, a bartering net-
work often developed among them. Traders in these networks visited a number of
bars and restaurants and traded goods they had acquired in one bar or restaurant
in the next. One trader, for example, who was obviously quite successful trading
in this fashion was incriminated when a bartering partner told an investigating
officer about the trading network in the restaurants of Spandau. Her partner
had used the “Münze” in the Münzstraße to procure his goods, as here he could
“buy everything from the Dutch and the French” and then resell these goods in
neighboring bars and restaurants.139
Such areas profited from a market-movement pattern used both by small bro-
kers as well as occasional, private traders. Often, people conducted their black
market business in the same way that city dwellers legally bought supplies.
Inevitably this led them to centrally located bars, restaurants, and stores that
had a reputation for black market trading. Sometimes they had already visited
such sites for “legal” reasons, thus bringing new (illegal trading) and old (familiar
environment) together. They found it easier to visit the site since they had already
been there, and they could feel more secure if complications arose.
These market spaces for district-crossing traders were contiguous with the
well-known centers of social activity, including the bars and the stores in Spandau
around the Oranienburger Strasse, on Alexanderplatz, on Friedrichstrasse, around
the Cottbus Gate, or the restaurants and cafés at Kurfürstendamm.140 For occa-
sional, private traders from other parts of the city, the distance from their own
apartments made these areas attractive sites; it was less likely that these black
market traders would run into their neighbors. Unpracticed occasional traders
appreciated the anonymity. This was a clever strategy, considering the large num-
ber of investigations prompted by information supplied by neighbors. Yet these
traders also had to accept that these locations were closely monitored by the trade
inspection service.
This sort of information about trading opportunities reinforced such black
market trading centers becoming more established in the city up to the point
when the sites of illegal trading turned into a well-known urban infrastructure
that coexisted and sometimes was enmeshed in its legal counterpart. One investi-
gation indicates that traders did not need to know each other at all. One accused
84 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

City district In%

Mitte 16.7
Charlottenburg 11.5
Prenzlauer Berg 9.8
Schoeneberg 7.5
Kreuzberg 7.5
Wilmersdorf 6.9
Wedding 6.9
Neukoelln 5.2
Lichterfelde 4.6
Other 23.4

Figure 2.8 Defendants’ places of residence in cases of war economy crimes

trader told interrogators that he had decided to go to a particular place because he

“had heard that foodstuffs were being sold in these places.” The policemen found
it implausible that he claimed not to be acquainted with his unnamed partner,
but he insisted it was true: “I had no connection to these places, and I can only
say that I went there purely by chance.”141 Black marketeering thus pulled in new
interested parties, expanding the catchment area of a bar where black market
trading took place and further concentrating trading in certain sites.

Centers of Black Market Trading

In order to draw a picture of the spatial distribution of the black market in Berlin
during the war, it helps to take a look at where the accused lived (Figure 2.8).
Analysis of the residential areas of the arrested black marketeers shows that
most trading during the war took place within local networks. This analysis
also points to where the trading centers were and where illegal business was
concentrated. Mitte was clearly the most important black marketeering area
in Berlin, followed at some distance by Charlottenburg and Prenzlauer Berg.
Schöneberg and Kreuzberg were in the middle of the pack—about equal to
Wilmersdorf, Wedding, Neukölln, and Friedrichshain. Lichterfelde, Lichtenberg,
and Friedenau followed closely behind and what was left, about 15 percent of the
whole, was distributed across the rest of the city.
Overall, black marketeering was concentrated in the center of the city; more
than two-thirds of all defendants lived in or near the city center. Mitte and
Charlottenburg, in particular, already established as sites for consumption and
amusement, provided attractive spaces for trading. Indeed, these two large central
areas of black marketeering, only separated by the Tiergarten, were both cen-
trally located and boasted numerous stores, providing an ideal starting point,
with a limited public, for clandestine trading. Some numbers indicate the con-
centration of this legal infrastructure, which was so important for the black
market. Almost half of the 10,128 bars and restaurants with “full licenses” to
sell alcoholic beverages in 1938 were located in the center of the city. This
 The Wartime Networks ● 85

number declined up through March 1941, but only minimally to 9,809, and
the distribution remained the same.142 The distribution of hotels and guest-
houses was similar. Of the 18,685 beds for hire in all of Berlin in 1937,
9,612 were in Mitte and 2,188 in Charlottenburg. Almost two-thirds of these
were in the districts where most people lived. Between 1932 and 1942 the
number of overnight stays more than doubled. In the third year of the war,
there was a new record, with 1,990,333 “overnight stays by non-Berliners.”143
Retail stores, too, were similarly dispersed. The business census from May 17,
1939, revealed that approximately 48 percent of all Berlin retail businesses were
located in the city center. The distribution of employment was even more pro-
nounced: 55 percent of employees worked in one of the central city districts.144
The decline of the smaller and middle-sized firms in the Berlin consumer
goods and textile industries contributed further to the previously somewhat
industrial central district becoming “more and more a residential and business
district.”145
All in all, this concentration of consumer spaces in the city center, increas-
ingly also the western part of the city, was a development that professional
observers had already noticed in the 1920s. In 1929, Berlin Mayor Gustav Böß
had realized that

the trend of the development in the center of the city is [moving] . . . from east
to west. The main business areas, which originally were in the old city to the
right of the Spree, have extended beyond Unter den Linden, Friedrichstrasse,
Leipzigerstrasse and Wilhelmstrasse to the Potsdamer Platz and the area around it.

This had resulted partly from the development of the public transportation
system ring, the center of which was the train station at Potsdamer Platz.146 Con-
sequently, Böß had correctly predicted how this would develop further: “the area
around the Zoologischer Garten will become a part of the inner city, even if of a
different sort.”147
However, to attribute this concentration of black market trading centers
emerging from analysis of the defendants’ residential districts solely to the cen-
trality of the Berlin consumer spaces and the opportunities they provided would
be to neglect police bias in their practice of combating the trade. Indeed, one
has to assume that the investigative activity of the trade inspection service was
largely selective and contributed, along with other paradigms for interpreting the
cityscape, to generating this distribution of “black market centers.” To be sure,
the trade inspection service had at its disposal a comprehensive network of “sup-
port points,” and these points had to report weekly to the supervisors of their
division on the events in their relevant segments. However, when an “initiative
Sonderkommando” was established in July 1942, which was responsible directly
to the director of the division and which could be deployed for “special controls”
throughout the whole city, the detection and work on the crimes was no longer
organized around a particular location.148 From that point on, investigations were
concentrated in areas prioritized by the police.
86 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Even when investigative work remained centered around a certain location,

subjective decisions played a role. All of these factors need to be kept in mind
because they relativize the picture provided by the police records. In extreme
cases, criminal prosecution depended on the involvement of individual police-
men. For example, some especially committed policemen spent their free time
pursuing perpetrators of offenses against the War Economy Regulations.149
On top of this, individuals working on cases could impact the classification of
crimes, for example, by setting the income level “as a percentage . . . the turnover
and profit realized from 1939–1942” because they wished to encourage “an espe-
cially strong punishment.”150 The work of the trade and health inspection service
was certainly not purely rational and objective; rather, it took place within the
context of guidelines of interpretation, which formulated a political evaluation of
the black marketeering.
The phrase “it is widely known that in this area black market trading transac-
tions are taking place” regularly appeared in police notes and in written verdicts.
It formed a part of a collective process whereby official agencies and “simple”
urban dwellers divided up the urban space of Berlin into moral zones. By prior-
itizing individual sections of the city, in a practice known in ethnomethodology
as “crime producing,” the police anticipated, confirmed, and even strengthened
the moralistic subdivision of the city. This pattern built on a long tradition.
Already during the Kaiserreich, certain sections of the city had been defined
“from above” as “political fields of conflict.”151 Delineating such “problem dis-
tricts” helped to shape perceptions, influencing the practical measures criminal
prosecutors took against “hustlers” in the bars and against the “underworld” in the
middle of the city and in the “decadent west.” Such patterns of perception, devel-
oped over a long period, included the practices of persecution against “Jewish,”
“asocial,” and “underworld elements,” for example, in the Scheunenviertel or in
the Friedrichstrasse. The Scheunenviertel, in particular, had already had a bad
reputation shaped by anti-Semitic resentments during the Weimar Republic.152
Berlin’s city planners considered the area a “disgrace” and tried to remove the old
Scheunenviertel from the city. Toward the end of the 1920s, following the plans
developed by Hans Poelzig, city planners attempted to improve the region by
constructing apartment for the “new middle class” in it.
These efforts were only partially successful. National Socialist plans to reshape
this city district seemed to pick up where the Weimar Republic had left off.
However, the National Socialists also interpreted the redevelopment of the
Scheunenviertel as the structural implementation of a racial-ideological policy of
modifying urban space or—as Harald Bodenschatz put it—as “political and social
cleansing, as a new interpretation of the old, historic section of the town.”153 For
example, a “local history” publication of 1938 stated that
in a few years . . . we will barely recognize the streets in this part of the city, which
was once ruled by the Jew and where the Reds committed their worst murders,
where Horst Wessel fought, suffered and died . . . , a new city will rise up, with
sunny apartments and with Germans as occupants.154
 The Wartime Networks ● 87

In the police work of the 1930s and 1940s, therefore, two strands of inter-
pretation converged in which the district was construed as a “problem district.”
These two tracks are not identical, but they do overlap.
Of course, the Berlin police also built on their anti-drug experiences of the
1920s.155 A book written in 1924 by retired detective Ernst Engelbrecht, in
which Engelbrecht describes his experiences in raids against the Berlin “under-
world,” gives an indication of this. Written to be sensational and appeal to a
popular audience,156 the book, and especially the chapter “Cocaine Epidemic in
Berlin,” not only acquainted readers with the common practices of drug dealers
(middlemen, selling in the street and in certain restaurants and bars, etc.), but
also pointed out trading and consumption centers, “primarily in the west and
in the south of Berlin.” Engelbrecht named “a large number (of ) cocaine cel-
lars” where those in the know got their cocaine, located primarily in and around
Charlottenburg and the Wittenbergplatz, the “central meeting point of homosex-
uals.” He named the Zoologischer Garten train station as a further trading point;
indeed, the “most important trading site” of the “wild cocaine trading” was in the
“Zoo-Diele,” the waiting room for first- and second-class passengers.
Engelbrecht’s description corresponds, both in terms of the sites he named
as well as his labels for the drug scene and for black marketeering, to the pat-
terns of perception of those fighting the Berlin black market during World War
II. Engelbrecht demanded, for example, “strong action against cocaine deal-
ers.” He spoke of “wholesale dealers” with middle-class professions, for example,
pharmacists or doctors, which enabled them “to deal part time in cocaine.”157
Engelbrecht’s book gave some insights into the police work that divided the city
up into criminal areas and, at the same time, underscored the semantic proximity
between the black market and the drug market and subsumed the protagonists
of both under the stereotype of the hustler. The continuity of these descriptions
of criminality could be maintained without any difficulty because they built on a
discourse on hustlers that, in its anti-decadent approach, condemned certain dis-
tricts of the city—such as those of the “well-to-do west.” It is therefore not very
surprising that the better “bourgeois” districts, such as Dahlem, Zehlendorf, and
Lichterfelde, hardly appear in the official records documenting black marketeer-
ing. To be sure, in these districts, too, there was black marketeering—as is shown
by individual cases; however, the police paid little attention to these activities,
which likely significantly distorted the distribution.
If one reads the statistics as evidence of a view of black market trading cen-
ters shaped by the perceptions of the state actors, what stands out is that these
centers clustered into two groups: first, primarily “working-class” and “Jewish”
districts—Spandau, the Scheunenviertel, and northern Berlin; and second, sites
of “decadence” or “luxury” in western Berlin. Charlottenburg, Schöneberg, and
Wilmersdorf, in particular, were associated with the black market, suggesting lav-
ish and wasteful “luxury” (rejected by both the working class and the middle
class).158 Such calumnies, which denounced the alleged Bohemian lifestyle of
a “decadent west,” harked back to a tradition of labeling the boomtown that
continued to be applied after World War II. For example, a commentary in
88 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

the Tagesspiegel referred in 1947 to the alleged, historically developed difference

between Schöneberg and Charlottenburg: around 1870 in Schöneberg

one believed that one was open-minded, well-to-do and ambitious; one was solidly
middle class, with a promising future . . . . This self-understanding was by no means
so utopian if one considers that at that time Charlottenburg was not much closer
to Berlin than Potsdam is today from the city borders, and the Kurfürstendamm
was still the stuff of speculators’ dreams.159

Even if what was meant here with unreliable, shoddy, and thus disreputable
practices were the real estate speculators at the end of the nineteenth century,
the association was with the “nouveau riche,” with parvenus, an accusation that
hardened into a cliché. There is a hint of this in Alfred Kerr’s harmless description
of western Berlin as “an elegant small town . . . in which people live who can do
something, who are someone, who have something, and who think that they can
do, be, and have three times as much as they really do.”160 At the same time, the
attention paid to this reflected the fact that internal migration was possible and
that since the 1880s ever more Berlin Jews had moved into the western districts of
the city. Already by 1910, 40 percent of all Berlin Jews lived here. The synagogue
in the Fasanenstrasse, finished in 1912, visually marked the process of the Jews
“having arrived” in western Berlin. In 1925, Wilmersdorf, with 13 percent, had
the highest percentage of Jewish citizens. Certain areas, such as the Hansaviertel
in the Tiergarten and the area around the Bayerischen Platz in Schöneberg, had
developed into concentrated areas of Jewish life.161
People viewed the city morally along two axes in accordance with these pre-
conceptions. On the one hand, one assessment, which informed the work of the
Berlin police, saw asocial “swarms of small hustlers” in Spandau, Prenzlauer Berg,
Wedding, and sections of Kreuzberg and Neukölln. On the other hand, there
was the condemnation of the “elegant café visitors” of the “well-to-do west,” who
were considered “thoughtless spendthrifts” who seemed to fit the category of the
smart, hustling parvenus. This image built at least in part on older patterns of
interpretation from the 1920s. This division adapted anti-Semitic stereotypes
and, at the same time, spatially implemented the scapegoat mechanism that
helped to create social unity at times of crisis. Such attributions made it possi-
ble for people to distance themselves morally from behavior they did not like
and were therefore useful in labeling behavior that was “harmful to the nation”
as the practice of specific minorities, whom one could assign to certain spaces.
Accordingly, the concept of the Volksgemeinschaft itself provided an ideal tem-
plate for the black market crisis discourses that began in 1944; construed in
a broad consensus with official agencies already during the war, it structured
a vague, flexible interpretation of black marketeering that loaded certain city
districts with various negative connotations concerning trading that could be
deployed as needed.
 The Wartime Networks ● 89

Goods from All of Europe

Among the peculiarities contemporaries ascribed to the black market was the
assortment of luxury goods it had available. And typically, luxury was associated
with choice foreign products transported by streetwise hustlers across the whole
continent. But the reality was more profane. Even small brokers in the Berlin
black market brought together both local and transregional dimensions—as did
their professional “colleagues.” The black market adjusted the geography of mar-
kets. For one thing, the black market provoked a contraction in the city. Instead
of being able to choose consumer spaces freely, everyday traders now often turned
to their own district and organized their transactions around neighborly relations.
This was very similar to the organization of rationing, which required customers
to shop at a local neighborhood store; one had to be registered at a store to pick
up one’s rations there.162 Yet the black market opened up new possibilities, espe-
cially as its sphere of influence for goods expanded as the army advanced. Some
Berlin merchants knew how to exploit these new markets and became the driv-
ing force behind the movement of goods out of Berlin, which established illegal
networks with France, Poland, the Netherlands, and the Soviet Union. Along-
side the old, common ways of shopping in the neighborhood and commuter
business in the city, these distant markets opened up new possibilities for black
marketeers. These did not, however, achieve the same degree of organization as
legal, transnational wholesale trade.
The extensive postal traffic with German soldiers in the occupied territories
formed a special variation of a transregional market link, integrating Berliners
into a trading network that spread over the whole continent. The vastly expanded
radius of private, long-distance relationships provided an ideal basis for shipments
of goods. In the luggage soldiers on leave brought home from the front, there
were goods from all of Europe. The significance of this was soon quite clear to
the responsible agencies, who formulated new regulations to curb such practices.
For example, the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht issued a whole series
of “regulations” on the “sending and taking of goods” from the occupied territo-
ries, establishing maximum amounts.163 “Along with one’s official equipment,” it
stated, everyone is allowed “only to take along as much luggage as he can carry in
both hands without the assistance of straps or of carrying devices.” What consti-
tuted “official equipment” obviously had to be more clearly defined. According
to the Supreme Command, this included “for those providing their own uniform
(Selbsteinkleidern) the officer’s field case, for officers or civil servants suitcases with
a tight, hinged lid.”164 Apparently, there was a reason for such counter measures—
the military leadership had not failed to recognize that officers were bringing
home vast quantities of “gift souvenirs” from foreign countries.
The quantity of goods one could send by mail was limited. Furthermore, the
“responsible commanding officer” could prohibit the sending of certain goods,
at least de jure. De facto, however, it was almost impossible to stop soldiers and
other members of the army from sending goods, and the practice flourished.
90 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

This was not changed by penal provisions that expressly and “strictly” forbade
“the divestment for profit of imported goods to strangers either through sale or
through bartering.”165 It was not just in Berlin that illegal trading was a part of
everyday life; it was also conducted by German soldiers and by many departments
in the occupied territories themselves. Although, for example, “Reichsführer SS”
Heinrich Himmler repeatedly pointed out the relevant prohibitions, the SS, too,
bought goods in local markets.166
However, the market traffic that extended beyond the boundaries of the city
was by no means limited to members of the army. Berlin’s black marketeers,
regardless of their level of professionalization, participated not only in the local
markets in individual districts or between different parts of the city, but also in
bartering transactions with a much wider range. In part, they brought in goods
from the area surrounding Berlin or from sites with which they were previously
acquainted. Large brokers employed supply services for this. They merely had
to supply the contacts and the commissions to transact their business outside of
the boundaries of the city; they left the transport to liaisons, who also assumed
the risk associated with such transport. The example of Hermann Weese from
the network around the Hermannplatz in Neukölln illustrates the connection
between a locally organized trading network in the city and the transnational
networks of the Berlin black market. Weese occupied the decisive intersection:
through a middleman he received gold from Holland, which he was then able to
sell in the local markets in Berlin. But even small brokers organized their trade in
part beyond the boundaries of the city. Regular deliveries from Krakow, Warsaw,
Bulgaria, or Holland were not all that rare.167 The goods that flowed through
Martha Rebbien’s network came both from nearby as well as from Hamburg or
Prague.168 Of course, foreigners living in Berlin who could have goods sent from
home had an advantage. Because of the scarcity of particular goods, they could
often demand very high prices for goods still relatively easy to obtain in France,
for example.
Facilities that brought together soldiers on leave from the occupied territories
or from the front with local Berlin traders proved to be especially successful.
One example of this was a brothel in the Alexanderstrasse, not far from the
Alexanderplatz. Indeed, the brothels in Berlin quickly moved up to the very
top of the list of suspicious sites that needed to be monitored to control the
black market. On November 6, 1943, the police in Mitte reported that “broth-
els, in particular, and these sorts of undertakings . . . are often visited by people”
who want “to sell rationed goods at vastly inflated prices.” It was “a matter of
experience that prostitutes, especially, given their relatively high incomes, did
not have any inhibitions in this regard” and bought anything they were offered
“indiscriminately.”169 This description was simply false in that not all Berlin pros-
titutes had high incomes. It also distorts the picture by neglecting the trading by
men that took place in the brothels.
Prostitution, that is, exchanging sex for money or goods, was an integral part
of Berlin’s illegal bartering culture. As Annette Timm showed using the example
of Berlin, the prostitution policy of the NS regime changed during the 1930s and
 The Wartime Networks ● 91

at the beginning of the war. On the one hand, Berlin authorities considered pros-
titutes asocial, strictly monitored them, and kept them from publicly practicing
their trade.170 On the other hand, their services were very welcome for strength-
ening soldiers’ and workers’ morale. National Socialist policy toward prostitution
evolved over time from rhetorical and legal marginalization to increasing accep-
tance until the practice finally became an instrument for providing the most
effective and thorough social mobilization of German wartime society.171 The
state considered setting up, organizing, and maintaining brothels necessary both
for the soldiers as well as for workers on the home front. Alongside brothels
for local civilians, state agencies also established some for “foreign workers,”
which sometimes presented organizational problems. In February 1942, a report
by the relevant agencies stated that “establishing brothels” for foreign workers
“in Staaken and Königsheide is acceptable.” However, the report immediately
pointed out that negotiations to establish similar facilities in Wilhelmsruh and
Friedrichsfelde “are not moving forward,” as the main planning office had still
not issued any “site maps of the available property.” This was all the more remark-
able as the construction had to move forward and both the “Herr Minister”—this
was Göring—as well as the “Main Security Office” had already pressed to have
this issue “taken care of.”172 Clearly, the Interior Ministry and the subordinate
authorities thought that it was very important to have both an adequate supply of
brothels as well as a clear separation in the different facilities for different groups
of customers. To justify setting up this special brothel system, it was repeatedly
pointed out that it protected Germans. When Germans visited the brothels, the
government supervision enabled measures to prevent the spread of sexual dis-
eases to be taken, and when foreigners visited brothels, German women could be
protected from sexual assaults.173 Whether or not this breakdown of groups was
effective, it soon became apparent that brothels contributed to undesirable black
market trading, which would generate considerable problems for the prosecuting
authorities.
The illegal trading in the Berlin brothels and among street prostitutes formed
part of the black market built on customer-client relationships. Traders were able
to build on established relationships of trust and familiarity. The bartering rela-
tionships between clients and prostitutes also benefited from the fact that one
could count on anonymity in this “shady” business, which created an excellent
environment for illegal trading. In the Berlin brothels and hotels, customers and
prostitutes met one another in a carefully controlled clandestine atmosphere,
which provided ideal conditions for black market transactions. In many cases
one gave only one’s first name (not always the real one.) If further information
was volunteered, it was in good hands with the owner of the brothel, whose very
livelihood depended on her respecting the wishes of her customers.
The mutual anonymity extended to suppliers and customers limited social
control of brothel trading. The customers could depend on their bartering part-
ners remaining quiet. The madame of one brothel, Clara Biniek, explained to
the civil servants of the trade inspection service, “Strangers with whom I am
not acquainted are not allowed in the rooms.”174 As it turned out, she made
92 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

exceptions to this rule if customers or potential suppliers were either introduced

by regular customers or if the business promised to be profitable. The problem
was that male visitors not only desired sex but also wanted alcoholic drinks and
tobacco, for which she did not have a license. Accordingly, Biniek began to look
for these goods in the black market, and ultimately she discovered the black mar-
ket as a business. The demands of her customers, their desire to consume food
and liquor, gave rise to her career as a black marketeer. From the very beginning,
this branch of her business overlapped with her regular brothel business; over
time it developed into a profitable second line, and ultimately it earned her more
than her regular business. According to her own statements, she received 10–15
marks for a glass (2 cl) of schnapps. Customers wishing to “be served” by one
of her two “monitored girls” had to pay on average about 20 marks, and Biniek
received half of this.175
As a rule, customers paid cash for sex. However, as a police report from
March 13, 1945, noted, it was also common to pay in kind. As “primarily busi-
nessmen” went in and out of Biniek’s business, “the illegal acquisition of food
was especially easy.” Retailers and shop owners, who found it relatively easy “to
take away” something from their contingent, particularly relied on this form of
trading, as evidenced by the fish merchant Heinrich Kierspel. As the official of
the trade inspection service noted with outrage, Kierspel had been “deferred from
military service” for his business, but, instead of dutifully organizing the distri-
bution of fish for 3,500 customers as he was supposed to, he had “gone so far”
as to withdraw his goods from his intended customers. Accordingly, the police-
man wrote, “his behavior . . . in the sixth year of the war” was to be considered
“especially reprehensible.”176
Whereas Kierspel and others like him may have failed their duties “as trustees
of just distribution,” as “Volksgenossen who were supposed to prop up the
National Socialist supply system, and as comrades in arms on the ‘home front’, ”
the second group of traders in Biniek’s brothel got off relatively easily. These were
the soldiers who stopped off at Biniek’s “accommodation,” as the investigation
showed, with their goods from occupied Europe, making it function as a site
linking local and more distant distribution networks. Only some of the soldiers
made use of the services of the “girls.” Others were primarily active as suppli-
ers of foreign goods brought in their luggage. For example, a delivery of cognac
from France found its way to Berlin in an army rucksack. How the soldiers came
to be in possession of the goods in question cannot be reconstructed in most
cases, although the civil servants of Berlin’s trade inspection service did confiscate
cans of meat from the stocks of the army near Biniek. The sources were thus
bought or commandeered not only foreign goods but also army stocks and stolen
goods.177
There was thus a special trading relationship between the capital and the occu-
pied territories. Through interfaces such as the brothel in the Alexanderstrasse,
soldiers could introduce small presents into the local distribution system of the
Berlin black market economy. In return, the soldiers received goods withdrawn
from the legal supply chain, above all food, but also the “services” of prostitutes.
Consequently, one can speak of the home country as a place to relieve the strain,
 The Wartime Networks ● 93

a place to recuperate, and a place where “girls” offered their bodies for goods
that had been brought from abroad. On top of this, the brothel brought together
two groups of male participants: the soldiers and local Berlin traders. Thus, state-
sanctioned prostitution ultimately functioned as a catalyst for illegal black market
trading. That this compensation for physical and psychological stress removed
itself from state monitoring and led to disastrous misallocations of supplies was
clearly not what was desired. From the perspective of the authorities, it was good
that prostitutes supplied a service important to the war effort; yet these same
authorities considered it scandalous that at the same time, they withdrew goods
from local Berlin food markets.
The overlapping of the front and the home and the changes in the structure in
local districts and in black market centers resulted from a spatial reorganization
of everyday life in Berlin under the conditions of the barter culture. These pro-
cesses ultimately reflected individual and group mobilities. Women, men, and
youths who had mobility also had ample opportunity to use what the black
market offered to their advantage.
The different black marketeers’ conceptualizations of the use of space dis-
played gender- and milieu-specific discrepancies. The practice of visiting restau-
rants in certain districts remained reserved primarily for men, or women from
the lower classes. Women of the middle class would almost never visit one of the
black market centers in the Scheunenviertel, in the area around the Silesian Gate,
or in Mitte. If they did, they had to reckon with the potential for earning a rep-
utation as “fallen women” or as social people.178 Middle- and upper-class women
found it best to develop bartering partnerships in cafés or restaurants through
acquaintances. Women caught trading in bars—as random samples show—were
employed almost exclusively in “menial tasks” and had a lower income. Of course,
all women could use their own private rooms and the local distribution networks
in their respective city districts. Thus, the black market maintained the gender-
specific discrepancy in the use of space that pertained to most spaces; men had
access to almost all public spaces, whereas women were restricted to a rather lim-
ited domestic sphere.179 Those not blocked or bothered by such obstacles had,
in the black market, a whole series of possibilities for creatively shaping their
own bartering practices or adapting them to the particular circumstances. This
applied to both the goods and the currencies in which business was conducted in
the illegal markets.

“Illegal” Currencies, Bookkeeping, and Goods

Since money, as the existing and active concept of value, confounds and confuses
all things, it is the general confounding and confusing of all things—the world
upside-down—the confounding and confusing of all natural and human qualities.
Karl Marx, The Power of Money180
The feeling of personal security that the possession of money gives is perhaps the
most concentrated and pointed form and manifestation of confidence in the socio-
political organization and order.
Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money181
94 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Contemporary descriptions of the chaotic activity in the black markets appear at

first sight to be accurate in at least one regard: a barely manageable “currency dis-
order” prevailed. Goods had replaced currencies. Ration cards and ration coupons
had taken the place of money. The Reichsmark, as a currency, no longer had a
stable value nor the normal functions of a valid currency such as exchange and
settling accounts. What one could buy for money today one could buy tomor-
row only with cigarettes. The dissolution of the boundary between goods and
currencies seemed inexorable so that the use of “normal” means of exchange like-
wise seemed impossible. Yet can we assume that people who traded with one
another sometimes over weeks, months, and years, who negotiated, calculated,
and made agreements about prices, and who were engaged in understanding the
rules of the business or, indeed, in rewriting these rules failed to develop a system
for dealing normally with “their” goods and currencies? This seems unlikely. It is
much more probable that, in the face of the dissolution of stable areas of practice,
such attributions of chaos simply reversed the widespread negative interpretation
of the modern money economy, which cast money as a demon and a medium
of selfishness and social indifference. Many contemporaries were painfully aware
of the loss of the function of money for reducing complexity and expediting
action. Confronted with the consequences of the “money disorder,” they would
have preferred the unambiguous relationships between people, money, and goods.
By rejecting the “currency chaos,” these interpretations overlooked the fact that
the “chaos” had its own rules.
One can only talk about money and its social effects in the plural—this is the
quintessence of analyses in economic sociology—which examines the very dif-
ferent everyday practices of distinguishing between and “marking” various sorts
of money. Money for managing the household, savings for education, donations,
and gifts are only some of the categories used to distinguish various expendi-
tures and give them a social meaning, which varied starkly by gender and class.182
These distinctions took the bite out of the idea that money capitalism obliterated
social contexts and interpersonal relationships. Simmel’s judgment that money
belongs “to those standardizing ideas . . . which themselves submit to the very
norm that they themselves are” needs therefore to be put into perspective.183 Even
if the expansion of the “modern” money economy had a “standardizing” effect,
these relationships remained caught up in a network of social meanings wherein
family relationships, friendships, and other group relationships were not aban-
doned; rather, people attempted to bring their money practices into harmony
with social facts. This was certainly true for Berlin black marketeers’ handling
of their currencies. Not only did the Reichsmark retain its validity as the legal
currency for a long time, but it was also accepted in the black markets as a com-
mon means of payment. The prices on the black market were both calculated
and paid for in Reichsmarks. This officially recognized currency continued to
function both as an accounting unit and a means of exchange. A black market
trader who had wanted to go into the city to barter said in the fall of 1944 in
a survey that he had explicitly asked one of his acquaintances the price “in the
black market in Berlin for a kilo of butter.” He remembered that she was able to
 The Wartime Networks ● 95

give him precise information: “Frau K. told me that a kilo of butter cost about
120–130 RM.”184 For small brokers, especially, who worked on commission, the
paper currency proved to be an important exchange medium.
As the goods being traded often could not be divided up, it was easier for
the profit to be paid out in Reichsmarks.185 The population’s lasting trust in
the value of this currency resulted from two contradictory feelings. On the one
hand, this trust limited the fear of inflation, which prevented mass flight into
material assets.186 On the other hand, the existing juxtaposition provided fertile
ground for diverse trading practices that utilized the official currency in growing
black markets as a perfect accounting measure and opened up greater flexibil-
ity. Furthermore, the RM still had the advantage that—at least temporarily—it
did not lose its value as quickly as ration cards, which were distributed for a set
time period. The RM therefore remained the preferred currency for black market
trading. Nonetheless, during the war some black marketeers avoided the RM and
explicitly demanded payment in kind.187
Black marketeers sometimes treated their illegal profits like “normal” house-
hold income. For example, the cloth merchant Capaldo admitted that he had
no records concerning the fabric that he had sold on the black market and that
he had also not given out any receipts. And indeed, he had his son deposit the
RM just like any other income into his account at the Dresdner Bank, where
it was mixed in with the money that he had earned legally.188 As a rule, how-
ever, traders kept the various monies separate from one another; they kept money
and other means of exchange from the black market at home or made sure that
these were quickly turned around and converted, for example, into food.189 This
approach coincides with behavior patterns researchers have often analyzed in
regard to groups participating in at least partly illegal activity. The reasons for the
quick turnover of illegally obtained goods varied; it could be simply to acquire
something new, something one actually desired, or to get rid of evidence quickly.
Possessing such goods weighed heavily on one’s conscience, and a rapid turnover
could provide relief.190
The division between “legal” and “illegal” monies meant that profits made in
black market trading seldom found their way into the legal retail trade and instead
were used primarily for further black market transactions. It is obvious why this
would be the case when goods were used as the means of exchange, as there was
scarcely any possibility of reintroducing them into the legal retail trade. However,
even if a merchant sold, for example, a suit or a clock on the black market for
money, it was quite probable that he would reinvest the profits in black market
goods or buy food on the black market.191 Although the circulation of money and
goods in legal and illegal consumer spaces continuously overlapped, merchants
attached importance to being able to distinguish between the two. “Clean” and
“dirty” monies had a different (moral) significance and were kept separate from
one another. Special purchases, such as gifts for children, Christmas, birthdays,
or weddings justified crossing such borders. Many traders used such arguments to
part with money or things they had actually not intended to use for consumption
and especially not for illegal transactions.192
96 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Other traders attached less importance to keeping their monies distinct. It was
a common practice to use one’s “savings” to buy black market goods if one had
already found a buyer. As a rule, most traders used the profit from these trans-
actions to buy consumer goods, but they might also use it to expand their black
market business. The commercial clerical worker Heinz Binder, for example, who
drove to the outskirts of Berlin to buy some pork from a farmer in March 1945,
stated in his interrogation that the 1,450 RM that he had paid for 27 kg of pork
was his “own money,” which had “(come out) of his savings.”193
In weighing punishments, the courts did not distinguish between the use
of rationed goods or ration cards for transactions. In the judgment in the case
against Elisabeth Hanke and those indicted with her, the judges of the Berlin
Special Court wrote “that ration cards for essential products are to be considered
equivalent to the products themselves” as had been “repeatedly emphasized in
numerous decisions by the respective Special Court.”194 Ultimately, the proper
handling of food ration cards by the employees of the Rationing Card Office was
an especially sensitive realm within the war economy. The accused, who had been
convicted of embezzling ration cards, had, through “her wicked example called
forth the danger of imitation by a third party and of rebellion by other people
against the state’s distribution system.” In the court’s view, however, the “people”
had to “be able to rely upon the fact that the Ration Card Office” worked “hon-
estly and reliably . . . and that every infringement w[ould] be strictly punished.”195
Even though the courts aimed to punish trading in ration cards and bartering
with goods equally, this helped to blur the boundary between officially approved
means of exchange and what were, in a strict sense, goods for trading.
The blending together of goods and currencies as means of exchange resulted
not only from certain practices among black marketeers but also from a compli-
cated substitute system of cards, ration coupons, and real goods. The confusion
this created found its expression in official designations taken from the money
economy. For example, the ration coupons for tradesmen bore relatively unspe-
cific names that had nothing to do with the good for which they were valid,
such as “Punktschein (point certificate),” “coupon,” or even “Punktescheck (point
check).”196 For individual traders, in particular, who regularly managed large
amounts of rather varied “ration coupons,” viewing such substitutes for money
as currency was even advisable, especially as these corresponded to contingents
that gave them a certain flexibility in regard to time or quantity, which normal
consumers were not aware of. The ration cards thus had a flexible exchange value,
which meant they could function like a currency such as the Reichsmark, storing
value and providing compensation.
The system of allocation, as rigid and normative as it was compared to
unrestricted shopping, could also be flexible. The best example of this was a dis-
tribution introduced to calm the “population” after air raids, so-called special
allocations. As special allocations were not part of the normal ration scheme, in
which contingents were restricted to a particular time period, black marketeers
could quickly integrate them into their trading practices. And because these spe-
cial allocations were not included in the individual allocation plans and could
 The Wartime Networks ● 97

be more freely exchanged, they were very popular means of exchange. Black
marketeers reported again and again that the goods they were trading had come
from such allocations. There was, of course, a reason for this. Because these spe-
cial allocations were handed out irregularly, after air raids, many allotments went
unclaimed, so they became available to shop owners for trading. Moreover, the
paths these allocations took were difficult to control, which made stating these
special allocations as the source of one’s goods both a way to protect accomplices
and to deny that one was trading in stolen goods.197 The situation for contingents
from the period before the war was similar.198
The currency practices of Berlin traders thus helped to reorganize goods and
currencies. In short, they helped to organize and constitute the black market as
an alternative infrastructure. The official distribution system organized an infras-
tructure “from above”; the black market alternative was a means of correcting this,
albeit one that competed with the public order. This competition contributed, on
the one hand, to establishing and perpetuating the boundaries between legality
and illegality, without, however, containing the phenomenon on a sustained basis.
As confiscated black market money from police searches and arrests was clearly
marked as such, the state at first glance seemed to undo the blending of legal and
illegal goods and currencies generated by the bartering transactions. The con-
fiscated black market goods were eventually moved from the evidence rooms of
the police departments to appropriate distribution points, which then transferred
the goods once again into legal retail spaces. For example, the police carefully
listed and then passed on the black market goods seized from Martha Rebbien in
exactly this way. They were especially enthusiastic when seizing goods from such
“unscrupulous war vultures.”199 One final report, after harshly describing the sus-
pect, concluded with concern about rapidly redistributing the seized goods into
the regular distribution pathways:

in order to ensure that the goods will not be destroyed by the terrorizing air raids,
we ask that you inform us quickly what is to be done with them. As it is not possible
to ascertain who the owners of these goods are, we suggest that we turn the fabrics
over to the Economic Division and the boots over to the NSV.200

This concern was well justified because, especially toward the end of the war,
goods sometimes were destroyed before they could be redistributed. For exam-
ple, the trade inspection service reported on March 13, 1945, that the goods
confiscated from black market transactions in a brothel had been given to the
“disabled persons division of the urban hospital” because they were “perishable”;
the report neatly listed a total of 17 items, including several liters of alcoholic
drinks, goose liver, and canned goods. Moreover, the report stated that many of
the goods stored in the police headquarters on Magazinstrasse had been destroyed
in the March 10, 1945, air raid.201
Money that was confiscated was sent down different paths, establishing once
again the division between goods and currency. For example, whereas the con-
fiscated goods in the example cited immediately above were sent to the disabled
98 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

persons division, the confiscated money that had been paid for those goods, 250
RM found on the accused, was deposited in the “cash office of the police for safe-
keeping” together with the 14,807 RM found on the brothel’s madame.202 A large
portion of black market money was processed in this way and thus brought under
the supervision of government institutions (by means of receipts and documents)
and once again made legal.
Bookkeeping methods give an indication of how professional an individual
black marketeer in Berlin had become. Once business activity had achieved a cer-
tain size, it became necessary to write down information to keep track of pending
deliveries, provisions and debts to be paid, contacts, and even prices. Traders’
notes and records are still in the archives and—the police often used them as
evidence—are therefore carefully preserved. These documents reveal that book-
keeping styles ranged from amateurish to professional.203 They include telephone
numbers, price calculations, and systematic lists on other documents or in the
margins. In their note-taking techniques, the vast majority of black marketeers
never achieved the degree of accuracy one finds in the very carefully maintained
lists of the Berlin police. When the bartering partners were already acquainted
with each other from relatively close multiplex relationships, they were merely
building upon already established relationships and did not need to note much
beyond the items and exchange values.
Black marketeers bartering with unknown persons, however, needed to record
more information. As a rule, they needed to exchange (and thus, often, record—
depending on the number of trading contacts and their individual memory
capacity) information concerning meeting places, telephone numbers, and goods
in demand. Individual or chance trades could be noted on any sort of paper one
had brought along. If the number of contacts and transactions increased, black
marketeers often carried lists of telephone numbers or calendars. Some pages con-
tain calculations or lists of names with telephone numbers associated with goods
and prices. In his interrogation, Martha Rebbien’s bartering partner Friedrich
Wiggers, for example, explained that his notes of names and goods represented
completed transactions but that some were also memory aids to remind him of
certain requests people had made.204
Such improvised bookkeeping served, first and foremost, as a memory aid.
If one had a large business, like Martha Rebbien’s, one could not possibly remem-
ber all the prices, amounts, times, and names one needed. Furthermore, notes
could serve as evidence if trading partners disagreed about terms. A written note
did not necessarily have to convince the other person but did tend to make an
impression, especially if the other person had failed to write anything down. Ref-
erence to a bookkeeping method conveyed an impression of professionalism that
improved one’s negotiating position.205
Bookkeeping was necessary for growing one’s business. Only those with some
form of record-keeping could compare long-term prices, identify demands, and
thus improve their business. Traders who thus systematized their work docu-
mented that they had at least a partially professional attitude to their black market
business. They organized their time, contacts, and business commitments around
 The Wartime Networks ● 99

Goods and services In%

Food and ration cards 23

Clothes and fabric 23
Tobacco 19
Services 13
Jewelry 3
Drugs and weapons 3
Foreign currencies 3
Other 13

Figure 2.9 Goods and services in black market transactions

their illegal business. The degree of organization reflected in one’s bookkeeping

style revealed the importance black market trading had for participants. Further
tools included notes concerning supply and demand. For example, an “acquain-
tance” of Erna Kuschy, Heinz Zeisberger, passed a note to Martha Rebbien with
the shoe sizes of Kuschy, himself, and his brother so that she could find the right
shoes. According to Rebbien’s statement, Kuschy and Zeisberger had done this to
“produce evidence to prove that Rebbien was engaged in black market trading.”206
Regardless of their intentions, the police valued such documents as evidence, and
thus the example documents a common, widespread practice, not only used by
informers.
What goods did black marketeers trade most often? Figure 2.9 gives an
overview based not on the amount of goods but on the percentage of transactions
in which the individual groups of goods appear.
At first glance, this information does not seem surprising. Rather, it shows
that the most important goods were rationed ones, which were in short supply:
food and textiles. Tobacco products are third because they were used not merely
as consumer goods but also as currency. The most important services were those
of tradesmen, such as, for example, those of a tailor, with services paid in kind. It
is interesting that jewelry—that is, valuables that were personal possessions—did
not play an important role during the war. At the same time, the low figure for
weapons and drugs shows that the black market offenses being analyzed here did
not conform to the traditional business transactions of the underworld; this was
truly an “everyday” black market.
The goods included here under “other” reinforce this idea: these were pri-
marily household goods and furniture that cannot easily be categorized and,
as keepsakes, often had a special significance well beyond their actual value.
Personal “valuables” only played a very important role after the end of the
war—at the very least in the public perception and in Berlin black marketeers’
self-understanding—pointing to a fundamental change. Bartering deals during
wartime were also an attempt to improve one’s own income. It was only when
the supply situation worsened in the postwar years, when there were no more
deliveries from the occupied territories and harvests were poor, that a section of
the Berlin black market became the “poor man’s market,” where people traded
100 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

their valuables for necessities. This new market then became the focus of outrage
in the insecure and suspicious postwar society.207

The Usual Suspects: Stereotypes of Hustlers in the Postwar Era

The Nazi regime had faced a dilemma concerning its black market policy. On the
one hand, the hustler, or Schieber, provided a useful negative symbol. High-
lighting and denouncing individual cases made visible the border between the
Volksgenossen who submitted themselves to the rationing war society in which
one did without any “selfish” black marketeers. In this, the hustler helped to
integrate that society. On the other hand, the hustler concept had its problems.
At first, the jurists in the Justice Ministry did not use the concept, even though
it would have been very easy to draft an explicit anti-hustler regulation, because
they wanted to avoid any association with the “turnip winter” (1916/17) that
would remind people of shortages, hunger, black market activities in wartime,
and the chaotic inflation era.
Whoever spoke of “hustlers” reminded Germans of their experiences in that
“upside-down world.” Concepts prefixed by the word “war,” by contrast, held the
implicit promise that rationing and the consequences of the war economy, such
as punishing offenses against these regulations, would remain temporary. The
expression “Offenses against War Economy Regulations” was designed precisely
along these lines. It designated a special, war-related condition, which called for
special measures that would in no way be comparable to conditions after the
defeat of “1918.” However, this avoidance strategy was never consistently applied
as it was too self-contradictory. The image of the hustler formed in the early
1920s turned out to be very popular during World War II.
Innumerable publications in the 1920s and 1930s, ranging from pamphlets
full of politically charged defamations to cabaret-like performances, had por-
trayed the “hustler” for the first time as a formative figure associated with a series
of allegedly typical behavioral patterns. Alfred Müller-Förster’s reader, whose
title translates to Reheated Potatoes: A Booklet for Politicians, Hustlers and Chim-
ney Sweeps, for Reich Presidents, Shoemakers, Ministers, Virgins and Those Who
Wish to Become Such, attempted to parody the relationship between politics and
“hustling.”208 Max Brinkmann’s Kleiner Knigge für Schieber [Little Etiquette Man-
ual for Hustlers] described the embarrassing situations Berlin “hustlers” and their
wives could get into as nouveau riche—for example, at formal dinners or in the
theater—if they did not put aside their petit bourgeois attitudes and failed to
take on the manners of “high society.”209 Above all, “hustling” and “hustlers” had
become the negative symbols of an “upside-down world.”
This discourse thus put black marketeers in a negative light long before
National Socialist propaganda, and most Berliners held this view of them as well.
The stereotype of the public discourse simplified and exaggerated the “hustler,”
especially concerning the complex issues of the illegal economic activity. Yet the
individual characteristics of the hustler in this discourse could be associated with
real people and real events. The pattern of perceptions of the “hustler” and the
 The Wartime Networks ● 101

actions of real hustlers mutually influenced each other. Looking at the figure of
the hustler from the perspective of discourse analysis, what is especially interest-
ing is the ways it structured perceptions, which could be called up as a set of
attributes, assigned, and thus confirmed. Language functions as a series of pre-
conceptions, sorting and organizing “possible experiences according to guidelines
of the figures of speech, the metaphors, the topoi, the concepts, the textualiza-
tion, indeed, the ability to articulate, which at the same time shapes and limits
our consciousness.”210
To a large degree, the wartime hustler discourse picked up on well-known
motifs. Even the lawmakers and judges who were bound to utilize the concepts
associated offenses against War Economy Regulations started expressions from it.
The term Schieber appeared regularly both in indictments and in written ver-
dicts. For example, a Berlin Special Court verdict stated that the accused had
become “a ‘hustler’ ” by his behavior and that “such phenomena, which played
such a sad role in the last war and which contributed significantly . . . to under-
mining the will of the people” had to be prevented by applying the laws strictly
in such cases.211 The use of the popular concept points to a semantic shift that
ultimately acknowledged the power of the existing stereotype. The term “those
convicted of offenses against War Economy Regulations” was too unwieldy for
everyday colloquial language to refer to black marketeers. Even more unwieldy
was the phrase “Offenses against the Verbrauchsregelungsstrafverordnung (Penal
Code for Consumption Regulations).” This did not even make clear who the
actors were. Such terms could not displace the simple and convenient term
“hustler.”212
The persistence of the older figure had definite advantages for the Nazi
leadership. Although it might have reminded people of World War I, it
made it much easier to stigmatize black marketeers as “social outsiders” or
Gemeinschaftsfremde.213 These two interpretations remained the predominant
interpretations during the war as can be seen in the two very different groups to
which the term was most typically applied. The first consisted of fringe groups
on the edge of society, even though their most important offense was quite often
not illegal black marketeering but was, rather, their foreignness and purported
asocial nature, which Nazis wished to eradicate from the “body of the people.”
This policy picked up and modified resentments that had been cultivated in
Germany for generations and was directed above all against Jews, foreigners, pros-
titutes, and alleged criminals. As in the anti-foreigner and anti-Semitic discourse
of the 1920s, this Nazi discourse mixed racist and economic discourse elements
together. The second group consisted primarily of young men who seemingly
made their money without any great effort and flaunted their wealth. There was
often little evidence against them, even though it was derived from the culture
of surveillance of everyday life in Berlin. These young men fit the image of the
“hustler” as a war profiteer, as someone who profited from crises and who had
become the object of envy and fear of many Germans during the inflation period.
Yet there was also a third and final group comprised of individual traders who
traded goods in demand. Many Berliners assumed from the start—and as we have
102 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

seen this was not completely without foundation—that shop owners or hospital-
ity employees in hotels, restaurants, or bars like Martha Rebbien were involved
in illegal trading. This, too, was not a new phenomenon; the trading among
middlemen “which drove prices up” at the beginning of the Weimar Republic
had been the focus of numerous consumer protests.214 The relationship of broad
sections of the population to this last group is important, especially in regard to
the consequences of the “black market era.”
But let us look first at the first two groups, the “classical” fringe groups
and young war profiteers. The phrase “those convicted of offenses against
War Economy Regulations” appears only sporadically in the vast majority of
informer letters to police, complaints, and witness statements. Instead, the terms
“hustlers,” “smugglers,” and “black marketeers” are used repeatedly. Even Hitler,
the final authority in Germany, avoided using the vocabulary coined by the judges
of the justice system when he spoke of black marketeering.215 Almost everyone
spoke rather of “hustling food” than of “being convicted of offenses against the
War Economy Regulations.” Authorities in the police and justice systems who
combated black marketeering were no exception. For example, the “counter-
intelligence representative” of the Daimler-Benz factory in Berlin-Marienfelde
turned over a number of foreign personnel to the police for “hustling food.”216
In numerous letters to the police informing on people—letters which often
led to police investigations—the recourse to the terms “hustling” and “hustlers”
was especially striking. For example, an anonymous informer from Kreuzberg
in the winter of 1943 wanted “to bring the police’s attention to a number of
large hustlers.” The author continued, “The previous leaseholder Frohlschläger,
a street girl from Alexanderplatz, understood how to draw a large number of
shady dealers and hustlers to herself in the bar” to earn money to pay her rent to
W. Moreover, “Jews were given shelter and the goods were sold preferably to such
at huge prices” in the restaurant, and W. had begun “running the hustler business
with even more verve by himself and O. in their apartment.” After advising the
police on how and when to conduct surveillance, the author referred to a second
case in nearby Schöneberg, where a fish merchant had allegedly stored all sorts of
possible goods that he sold at “enormous prices.” Clearly, the anonymous writer
believed he was carrying out a mission as he closed with a warning: “after these
cases are taken care of, more will follow. Heil Hitler.”217
This letter informing on neighbors brings together with the “street girl,” the
barkeeper, the Jews, and the fish merchant representatives of nearly all the groups
typically accused of being involved in illegal trading. Another anonymous letter
mentioned the only group not addressed in the first example: foreigners. The
letter writer highlighted the contrast between his Nazi perspective and credentials
and the shameful acts of foreign hustlers. “As a National Socialist and a fighter
for the National Socialist worldview, as a veteran of 1914–1918, who received
the Iron Cross I and the Iron Cross II as well as the medal for bravery and the
purple heart,” he felt compelled to inform on a Belgian waiter who had offered
him cigarettes with a total value of 1,000 RM. “We Germans,” continued the
outraged letter writer, “are with all of our thoughts and souls for our Führer and
 The Wartime Networks ● 103

Fatherland. It is our faith that gives us the strength to endure all the hardships.
And then these annoying foreigners come and are so shameless as to quite openly
carry out extortion with our common property.” In any case, he had tried to get
to the bottom of the “dark intrigues” and had come across “a center of black
market trading” with “a large number of French, men and women,” who had set
up an apartment as a “smuggler band” and whose irregular comings and goings
suggested they were not involved in any sort of “honest work.” The letter writer
wanted to know that the authorities would make “short work” of them.218
Although prosecuting authorities did not make “short work” of foreign black
marketeers, whenever they did arrest and prosecute “foreign workers” or other
foreigners living in Berlin who participated in the black market, harsh sentences
would be handed down. For example, the judge of a local court wrote in his
written explanation of the verdict against Belgian traders that it is “especially
irresponsible . . . when foreign workers who have found work here use their stay
in Germany to conduct their hustling business and in such a careless and reckless
manner make money on the side.”219 The trade with food rationing cards among
“foreigners,” another report stated, had “taken on epidemic proportions.”220
Foreigners could sometimes profit considerably by selling goods sent from
their home countries that were hard to get in Germany except on the black mar-
ket. In a letter intercepted by the Foreign Letter Inspection Service of the Gestapo
in Cologne-Riehl, Belgian worker Robert Parmentier described this activity to his
parents in these words:

In regard to food, one does whatever one can to help oneself. I can tell you that
I am not suffering from hunger, but you would be amazed at what I am doing to
get food. . . . Only one example: here in Germany you can hardly find any film, and
I sell at least 50 rolls of film every week. You can imagine what sort of profit I am
making.

As he did not want to mail all the money home, Parmentier had gone on a shop-
ping spree and bought, among other things, a suit, a gramophone, and numerous
books.221
In spite of these advantages, foreigners (“forced laborers,” “foreign workers,”
and other foreigners who were at least temporarily in Berlin) were not nearly as
well represented and numerous in the black markets as contemporary descrip-
tions and some historians would suggest.222 Foreign women accounted for 5
percent of market participants, foreign men around 15 percent. If one consid-
ers that the number of foreign workers in the city increased during the war, the
percentage was comparatively small—at least from the evidence of the Berlin
courts. Up through 1944, across Germany the number of foreign workers rose to
about 7.7 million. This represented about 20 percent of the labor force and about
10 percent of the population.223 The number was further distorted by more inten-
sive surveillance of foreigners in camps and in the city than of their non-foreign
counterparts.224
104 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Surveillance was at least as intensive when Jews participated in black marke-

teering. In the summer of 1943, the local Berlin court heard a case in which one of
those accused was listed as a “Jewish half-breed.” The case involved the wholesale
perfume firm Walter & Liebe.225 The two owners, Ulrich Walter and Karl-Heinz
Liebe, sold different sorts of cosmetics and had business relationships with per-
fumeries in Vienna, Prague, and Milan. Their shop was in the Uhlandstrasse in
Charlottenburg. The prosecutors indicted them on July 5, 1943, charging them
with having secretly “sold goods for around 20,000 RM” between April 1941 and
the summer of 1943. A letter to the police had got the ball rolling.226 G. Müller, a
soldier, had filed a complaint leading to the indictment, in which he made all sorts
of anti-Semitic comments. Müller wrote that as “a soldier who since the first day
of the war” had been fighting “for a better future for our Fatherland,” he had been
passing by the Hotel Imperial “on a short business trip through Vienna,” when
he saw, to his “great surprise, the merchant Walter . . . with (his) girl” coming out
of the hotel. Müller suspected that Walter had presented the woman accompany-
ing him as “his wife.” Scrupulously, the soldier noted in brackets: “Thus, a false
report, I will look into it the next time I am in Vienna.” Müller’s description
developed another aspect of the popular cliché of the hustler in describing him as
someone who wasted money on women:

Walter is half-Jewish and ran away from the military after the decree of the Führer
regarding the half-Jews. Now he is once again conducting his business, and has
been for more than two years, in the Uhlandstraße. There he earns loads of money,
as he is engaged in all sorts of crooked transactions.

Recently, Müller continued, Walter had been in Prague quite often, where he
had had “a Jew make many shoes” for a long time, and on top of this brought
back “suits, furs, and the like.” The owner of the perfume shop, Müller sus-
pected, had to have “a battalion of shoes and clothes at home.” The letter writer
was even outraged by Walter’s alleged consumption of food. Walter had bought
food at “high black-market prices,” had traded “goods for food,” and furthermore
had only exchanged goods from his own assortment when he received something
he needed in return. Müller also cast suspicion on one of Walter’s employees,
who was “also half-Jewish and probably working (with Walter).” He called the
owner of the business a “person harmful to the nation,” who insulted and abused
“everyone and everything in the Third Reich,” and engaged in “extensive whisper
propaganda.” It was “extraordinarily bitter” for the fighting men that they had to
fight “under unimaginable suffering and affliction for Greater Germany,” while
the “half-Jews as business owners” made loads of money and, moreover, behaved
like “political swine.” How could it be “that a half-Jew could be the owner of
this business?” The soldiers, Müller charged, hoped “to see a change as soon as
possible.” He concluded with a summary:

to conduct fraudulent transactions, to buy food for the highest prices on the black
market, in short, to lead a life such as we decent businessmen cannot afford even in
 The Wartime Networks ● 105

peacetime, while valuable men are dying for Germany’s greatness out on the front
once again [is a travesty]. Many of my comrades are already buried in foreign soil
and I myself may die today or tomorrow. At least take a close look at this man
and see that this half-Jewish vermin, who is an active enemy of the state, cannot
have himself a business. Walter has a decent Aryan partner, whom he has probably
cheated badly, but who can’t do anything about it right now as he has been drafted
into the army.227

The final police report carried forth the anti-Semitic tone of the denunciation:
“Although (Walter) as a Jewish half-breed must have had an excellent business
given his partner’s absence, he was only interested in earning his money through
dirty business transactions.”228
Such remarks, which took up the National Socialist state doctrine of anti-
Semitism, were by no means rare. At the same time, they contained references
to another motif commonly applied to hustling: the suspects’ conspicuous con-
sumption. Conspicuous consumption was a prominent theme in the case of
Erwin Frank and his cohorts. He was interrogated two days before his thirty-third
birthday by policemen from Schöneberg. Frank, who had been born in 1911 in
Berlin-Lichterfelde, claimed that he was a self-employed businessman and lived
in an apartment on Babelsberger Street.229 This was a good district; Babelsberger
Street was not far from the Bavarian Quarter, which had been developed around
1900 by the Berlinische Bodengesellschaft and had become a good residential
area. Representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie, above all, doctors, lawyers, intel-
lectuals, and artists, lived in the large apartments—some of them with up to 12
rooms.230 It seemed that the young man enjoyed it here. He always had some
cigarettes for friends and acquaintances who visited him. Frank was, as became
clear during the investigation against him, a broker in the Berlin black mar-
ket. Not only did he have at his disposal as a grocer a widespread network of
individual colleagues with whom he could trade, but he also had contact with
an office manager of the German Allocation Offices for tobacco products.231
The exact number of cigarettes he had traded remained unclear—the numbers
fluctuated between 15,000 and 50,000. A policeman estimated that the total
value of the goods that Frank and the other members of the “wartime black
marketeering band” had traded was around three million RM.232 Lance Cor-
poral Wagner, who was one of Frank’s bartering partners, was court-martialed
and sentenced to death “because of black marketeering and for bribing a civil
servant.”233
A case such as Erwin Frank’s had all of the characteristics of scandalous hus-
tling. As a matter of fact, both the public prosecutors and the police spoke in
this case of a “Major Crime against War Economy Regulations” and described
the participants as “war profiteers.” However, a large portion of those who par-
ticipated in the Berlin black markets did not correspond to this image of the
“splurging hustler, with a hedonistic lifestyle of luxury.” Exchanging a few food
rationing cards or attempting to barter for some candles for a relative’s birthday
did not fit these categories. All the same, traders who only traded “for their own
106 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

needs” could not be sure that they would not be labeled “hustlers.” The boundary
between reprehensible hustling and lesser offenses was not clear, which made it
possible for those in power to determine the patterns of interpretation to describe
various wide-ranging cases as examples of “unconscionable hustling.”
At the same time, it was easy for the Berlin police, as well as witnesses
who informed on their neighbors, to incorporate their impressions about black
marketeers into the stereotype of the hustler. In the case of 32-year-old Max
Scheffler, who between 1940 and 1942 embezzled numerous barrels of industrial
oils and traded them on the black market, what witnesses as well as investiga-
tors immediately took notice of were the characteristics that made Scheffler a
prototypical hustler. These included his worldliness (Scheffler spoke a number
of languages), his red Mercedes convertible, which he regularly drove through
Berlin, his love affairs (to make things worse, one of his girlfriends was French),
and his extravagant lifestyle (according to a witness, he “lived in style”).234 The
car and his love affairs, above all, took up a great deal of space in police records.
Meticulously, the investigator noted the dealings of this hustler with his German
girlfriend, Lieselotte Stange, who allegedly had become a “victim of Scheffler,
who sought pleasure without inhibition” and had become his slave because of his
sexual practices. Even though it became necessary to interrogate Stange in the
course of a manhunt for Scheffler, who had succeeded in making a getaway in his
automobile, the interrogation certainly did not have to extend to the defloration
of a young woman.235 In this, as in the careful investigations into his possession
of the automobile, one observes a focus on Scheffler’s “typical” hustler character-
istics. The police added the key to Scheffler’s Mercedes convertible to the police
records like a trophy after they had succeeded in arresting Scheffler and con-
fiscating this automobile, with which he had humiliated the police during his
escape.
This fixation on the automobile as a key characteristic of hustlers repeated the
view of conspicuous automobile consumption that ranged between horror, envy,
and fascination. In the “Roaring Twenties,” the automobile had become a charac-
teristic of the modern dandy lifestyle.236 In the minds of many contemporaries, as
is evident in the actions of the investigator, young and apparently successful men
of Max Scheffler’s caliber had role models such as the “gentleman author” Arnolt
Bronnen. In the 1920s, Bronnen had invested the unprecedented sum of 12,000
marks in a “fast car” in order to roar like “a tiger in the asphalt jungle” to speed
“through the streets of Berlin.”237 Owning and driving an automobile expressed
both urban modernity and a Bohemian lifestyle, as well as forming a means of
social differentiation.238 In Thomas Mann’s short story “Disorder and Early Sor-
row,” the only person who owned an automobile was a stockbroker described as
follows:

A pale, tall youth with pearls in his shirt, the son of a dentist; he is nothing less than
a stock market speculator and lives . . . like Aladdin with his magic lamp. He has a
car, serves champagne to his friends at expensive dinners, and enjoys handing out
 The Wartime Networks ● 107

presents immensely whenever he can, expensive little presents of gold and mother-
of-pearl.239

Many observers simply did not understand the modern, “speculative” money
economy and especially how it created wealth. For many contemporaries, both
the money economy and driving cars—signs of “modern times”—were not just
positive but were envied and hated. Alongside a reassessment of existing social
and economic patterns of order (such as those between creditor and debtor),
the experience of acceleration—such as in the devaluation of the currency in
the hyperinflation—generated uncertainty among contemporaries. “The [people
doing the] devaluing are driving automobiles and the law is running after them,
out of breath,” is how in 1923 an observer described the attempts of the legal sys-
tem to adapt to new formulas of what was just and equitable.240 All three of them,
Mann’s stockbroker, the author Bronnen, and the hustler Scheffler, counted
among those who had been able to keep up with the signs of disintegration and
who had therefore been able to “enrich” themselves. At the same time, they exem-
plified an individualism that appeared to set itself apart—demonstratively—from
the idea of the Volksgemeinschaft. From the perspective of many Volksgenossen,
many of these men had come undeservedly to their wealth (and thus to lux-
ury and women) because they did not do any productive work. As a “money
man,” the speculator embodied “the highest possible degree of individualism
and—because his actions were not bound by tradition—of freedom.”241
Concerning Scheffler’s case, those who incriminated him made him out to
be a hustler above all because of his conspicuous consumption of luxury goods,
travel, and women. Often the second-hand information provided about Scheffler
and his activities formed a conglomeration of “traits” that made him appear to be
a hustler.242 For example, the washerwoman Emilie Paul, who got her informa-
tion from her son-in-law, who himself had worked with the accused, mentioned
Scheffler’s “hoarding trips” in which he allegedly used secret storage places in
his car; she also mentioned a trip with his French girlfriend to France—people
talked of 50 liters of cognac, of trades in foreign currencies, and of stashed
radios.243 The son-in-law, in turn, had heard stories of secret smuggling auto-
mobile trips from a coworker, of “signals” using a flashlight at night, and of a trip
to Paris.244 Thus, he was not at all surprised to hear that Scheffler was wanted as
a “smuggler.”
A specific sexualization of the hustler was a core motif of the stereotype, with
negative connotations similar to those in the canon of anti-Semitic attributes.
Integral parts of this topos that were often repeated were promiscuity, an abil-
ity to seduce women, a preference for young and pretty girls, and “perverse”
sexual practices. With this, the hustler took his place in a gallery of ancestors
of intra-community stereotypes of the enemy constructed through attributions
of sexual deviance, which, in part, were projections of desires.245 The con-
spicuous consumption practices of the hustler were closely associated with his
sexual conquests; in this interpretation, it was easy for him to seduce young and
108 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

inexperienced women with all sorts of presents he could afford because of his
illegal practices, rendering them prostitutes.
A respected source, oft-cited and well-known journalist Ursula von Kardorff,
shows that even observers who did not usually adopt the stereotypes of the hustler
all too frivolously were not immune to using them. She wrote in her diary on
April 12, 1944:

Recently, in a bar it became clear to me what is to come. Next to us sat a couple, she
in a dirty pullover, he in suspenders. They had Advocaat in a large water bottle and
offered some to the waiter. As we finished our miserable meal with a pudding with
a poisonous color, they were served roast duck, and with this red champagne. These
are the types to whom the future belongs. With us, everything is at a tipping point;
every day our downfall can come, but these types will be on top in any regime.246

It was easy for the concept to be used in this way because, for one thing, it
was relatively ambiguous and open. When asked to define the characteristics of a
hustler, most observers would have been able to name only some of them. This
openness made it possible to attribute certain characteristics on a case-by-case
basis: for example, one could describe trades in one’s own circle of acquain-
tances as courtesies while condemning another case unequivocally. Of course,
such outraged accusations and suspicions relied upon a set of core hustler fea-
tures, including typical practices such as conspicuous consumption (of goods that
were scarce), smart (“streetwise”) appearance, and a certain lack of scruples. Other
characteristics referred to outer appearance, such as dressing elegantly. It was no
coincidence that the suit was a defining hustler characteristic both for Thomas
Mann and the soldier Müller.
The characteristics assigned to the hustler centered above all on the automo-
bile. This was in part because the automobile was a symbol of wealth, but also
because it implied mobility. The hustler was always on the move; he was here
today and there tomorrow; he traveled abroad or drove with his car through the
city. As a result, he appeared to be uncatchable—and at an advantage. More-
over, unlike other Volksgenossen who were tied down to a place or a job, he
was in charge of his own time and decided where he was going for himself.
The hustler—this comes through repeatedly in contemporary statements—was
his own boss and was not responsible to anyone. From the perspective of the
observer who was not “free,” this was immoral but also attractive.
Interestingly in this context, people who were involved in black marketeering
were often accused of being “indolent.” Hustlers did not have to work because
they could earn their living completely by means of their illegal business. Usually,
it was not clear if the hustler first became a hustler and then realized that he was
indolent, or if it was the other way around and that particularly indolent persons
became hustlers because it fit their temperament.
All of these attributions functioned to make at least the Volksgemeinschaft, if
not the hustler, unambiguous by meaningfully including the majority and exclud-
ing minorities both discursively and practically. Because people in the wartime
 The Wartime Networks ● 109

society saw themselves exposed to a whole series of massive social shifts and rear-
ranged hierarchies, their need to bring order and clear meanings into increasingly
contingent conditions and to find scapegoats for developments increased. This
is precisely what made it possible to reassess complex situations and questions
according to moral standards that did not allow any gradations but simplified
the understanding of wrong behavior by attributing it from the outset to certain
groups of people.
 CHAPTER 3

Destruction, Disorientation, and New

Patterns of Order: Changes in the Black
Market Landscape during the Transition
from War to Postwar

The notion of extermination is exemplary in Berlin. In the unerasable city, the

impression one gets when looking at the photographs . . . is that the one thing that
was not erased in all the bombings—and almost everything was—were the streets:
the makings of the streets, the curb, only a few centimeters high.
(Daniel Libeskind, Radix—Matrix)1

I
n the last months of the war, the landscape of the Berlin black market
changed. Alongside the trading in closed spaces, markets now became visible
in the city. They became a new sort of public space. Of course, individ-
ual trading partners had already used streets and street corners as trading sites.
However, no later than in October 1944, groups of black marketeers became a
permanent presence in “focused gatherings.”2 There were a number of reasons for
this. Alongside the difficult supply situation, this development was part of a com-
prehensive crisis of urban life under the mantle of “everyday life in the state of
emergency.”3 Agencies whose job it was to uphold public order were increasingly
reduced to mere observation. The brutality the government used against “quib-
blers,” plunderers, and deserters was one side of the state exerting its power when
it was no longer able to disguise all the signs of disintegration.4 Among these,
increasingly, were the appearance of black marketeers in public spaces and a spe-
cific form of consumption. These signs were both contributed to and reflected in
the crisis of everyday life in the city.5
In the confusion of the last weeks of the war, absurd situations arose.
On April 23, 1945, for example, members of the Japanese embassy threw an
encoding machine with the name “Hinoki” (life tree) into the Krumme Lanke, a
lake not far from Grunewald.6 They did this as a security measure because enemy
112 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

forces were advancing, but they need not have wasted their time. The British had
already broken the code and had read intercepted telegrams with great interest,
hoping to find relevant information on conditions in the city. It was not only
German security authorities, such as the SD, but also enemy intelligence ser-
vices that were interested in the living conditions in Berlin, which fostered the
development of alternative infrastructures. London wanted to be well informed
about the military strength of the German troops and was also interested in the
city’s “morale,” in everyday life there. On March 15, 1945, decoders distributed
the summary of an intercepted message classified as “Top Secret U[urgent]” to
the Foreign Office, the military staffs, and MI5. The decoded text was from the
ambassador, General Oshima, to his supervisor, the Japanese foreign minister
in Tokyo, and informed the Axis Power allied with Germany about the “living
conditions in Berlin.” This telegram was one of Hinoki’s last acts.7
The British officials analyzing the long telegram filtered out the information
that was important to them about the state of the infrastructure and the nature
of everyday life in the capital of the Reich. The report was primarily concerned
with the breakdown of public transportation, including subway trains and trams,
and with the scarcity of everyday provisions. The almost constant alarms were,
as the ambassador expressed it, “certainly annoying.” On the whole, the telegram
conveyed an image of a city in a crisis, a city with almost no contact to the outside
world. Still, analysts reported that the Japanese diplomat still felt

that in spite of the continued presence in Berlin of large numbers of foreign labour-
ers and Soviet prisoners-of-war labourers there is no evidence of anxiety as to the
maintenance of order. Petty thefts of food, liquor, tobacco, etc., continue, but he
has not heard of any particular increase in robberies or violent crimes.

Furthermore, the ambassador had noted that “although food ‘points’ are being
limited in various ways, one’s rations can still be obtained so that at least a min-
imum livelihood is assured.” The state agencies, the analysts conveyed from the
report, still largely had the situation under control.
It is not known what the various British agencies did with this information.
They would have been well advised to view the report critically because the
ambassador was interested primarily in supplying his officials with gasoline and
also had to combat the disloyalty of his subordinates.8 Oshima no longer really
knew what was going on in his embassy. Because he was fixated on the gaso-
line problem, he reported to Tokyo that “the allowance of 200 litres [of fuel]
hitherto assigned to the Embassy has been stopped as from March. Supplies are
accordingly being bought on the black market in exchange for coffee, though
even such purchases are becoming more and more difficult.” What he did not
take notice of, however, was that alongside these officially acknowledged efforts
to ensure that his vehicles would be able to operate, Berlin’s black market had
planted itself in the embassy. The building, erected in the 1930s in the embassy
district of Tiergarten as a National Socialist prestige object, had become a site
for illegal trading.9 The Berlin police were much better informed about this than
 Destruction, Disorientation, and New Patterns of Order ● 113

the ambassador. As the astonished policemen at the police station in Schöneberg

found out on September 5, 1944, the automobile upholsterer Eduard Sternhagen,
whom they had interrogated on a different matter, had received both eggs and
radios from members of the embassy.10 It was extremely likely that the 360 eggs
Sternhagen had acquired for 700 RM from a chauffeur at the embassy with the
name of “Lio or something like that” came from the embassy as well. Such a
large number suggested official sources. At best, one could pardon the Japanese
ambassador’s ignorance as a consequence of not needing to be interested in such
“small” offenses. This, however, would be further proof that the criteria used to
measure whether public order still existed had shifted enormously.
This shift in standards emerged from the gradual disintegration of normal liv-
ing conditions, which took a sharp turn for the worse with the heavy air raids on
the city. “All signposts of the LTI [Lingua Tertii Imperii, that is, the language of
the Third Reich],” Victor Klemperer noted in The Language of the Third Reich:
A Philologist’s Notebook, “either point to or from Stalingrad.”11 With this state-
ment, Klemperer, in his analysis of the Third Reich’s language, got to the heart of
an experience many contemporaries shared and that historians would later note.
After the strategic military defeat in the winter of 1942/43, which was also disas-
trous from a psychological standpoint, there was a swing in public opinion and
signs proliferated, indicating that a growing number of Volksgenossen were losing
their confidence and that people were more willing to be critical.12
The events of 1943, which began with the defeat at Stalingrad and which
marked the turning point of public opinion, when confidence was replaced by
skepticism or even by defeatism, also marked a turning point in the lives of
many of Berlin’s citizens. For various reasons, everyday life was directly affected.
Many of the life stories captured in the records on the black markets took a new
direction in the course of 1943. Above all, people were forced to become more
mobile.13 Many of those indicted and suspected of participating in the illegal
markets were confronted with the same problem: they had been bombed out and
had had to move. Such turning points in an individual’s life did not always cor-
respond to “historic” dates reflecting developments at the front. It was not 1939
but the air war, which had intensified since November 1943, that confronted
many Berliners with the reality of war. There was no space in the war society for
a public discussion of the terrible experiences of being bombed. The “collective
injury” caused by the bombing could scarcely be articulated if normal life was to
go on merely a short time after the raids.14
Before the war and, though less so, even in its first year, urban life had been
characterized by continuity and routine. Individual actors and the city as a whole
used “normal” rhythms in order to survive. Individual “patterns of action,” being
automated, provided a great deal of relief as they made life easier. The inextricable
interrelationship of subconscious body control and everyday activities provided
most citizens with a feeling of security under largely unaffected conditions of
everyday urban life. Routines made a sort of normalcy possible and could them-
selves “reproduce continuously both the personality structures of the actors in
their everyday activities as well as the social institutions.”15 They provided for
114 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

body practices that contributed to an individual’s experience of security. The body

and the “experience of the movement of the body” formed “the center of forms
of action and forms of consciousness,” and it was the “activities of the body in
the flow of action” that were “immediately involved in the ontological security
or attitude of ‘trust’ towards the continuity of the world and of self implicated
in the durée of day-to-day life.”16 Such experiences were not dangerous until well
into the war, as shown by pictures from the first years of the war. Many routines
remained “normal,” such as trips to the swimming pool, trips through the city,
normal working days, et cetera, so that individuals could experience a minimum
of security every day.17 As they did so, city dwellers repeatedly experienced as new
the self-evident validity of the everyday world as a guarantee of social order; the
practice of everyday routines suggested “normality.”18
Although the first air raids generated a great deal of fear, most people living
in the city, at least those who did not live or work in the districts hit by the
bombs, were not directly affected.19 Still, some observers noticed first signs of the
coming disintegration in the course of 1943. Ursula von Kardorff, for example,
who worked as a reporter for the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, made the following
notes on September 25 in her diary:

In our house there was only a small fire on the roof. . . . In many places
there were small phosphorus flakes . . . , which fortunately we could cover
with sand . . . . Finally we were overcome with a sort of fatalistic merriment.
We looked for something to drink. . . . Then off we went. We came to the
Kurfürstendamm. . . . “Around the Memorial Church” other powers than those of
the times of pleasure had turned on the lights. . . . The zoo has been hit hard; many
animals are assumed to have died and others escaped. It is an eerie feeling that on
any street corner a tiger might suddenly appear.20

At this point, although this was a terrifying experience, it was also exceptional
and somehow exotic and ended well (a tiger at the Memorial Church!). Two
days later she reported, “in the newspaper office everything goes on as if nothing
happened. Berlin is so large that many colleagues did not even notice the air raids.
The Promi [Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels] admits that the attacks were
by far the worst that any city has ever experienced.”21
Only half a year later, the perception was completely different. On March 1,
1944, Kardorff wrote, “Today once again everywhere an alarm psychosis, because
exactly one year ago, on the ‘Air Force Day,’ the first heavy air raid against Berlin
took place. How harmless that all was back then. One almost looks back with a
certain longing.”22 Karl Deutmann, by contrast, had had a dark foreboding dur-
ing the air raids in the summer of 1943 when he wrote in his diary, “The houses
shook and trembled . . . will you continue to live, you sea of houses of Berlin, or
will the wings of death spread over you, over a dying city? The people are quiet
and the streets are emptier than usual. A large city holds its breath—and waits.”23
Not all citizens were equally affected by the changes in urban life wrought by
the air raids. Although it mattered a great deal whether one lived in the middle of
 Destruction, Disorientation, and New Patterns of Order ● 115

the city or close to large parts of the infrastructure, the dominant feeling was that
fate determined whether one was bombed out, so, in principle, it could happen to
anyone. A good number suffered this fate more than once. Martha Rebbien had
to move three times between 1940 und 1944, twice because of damages caused
by air raids. Such forced moves led to major changes; as a rule, it was necessary
to set up a new apartment and to determine new supply chains. “My wife and
I have just moved again—for the third time,” Karl Deutmann noted in his diary
in February 1944 and continued,

Once again I have pounded nails into the wall of the new apartment and sealed
off the windows with cardboard. Once again my wife has found a place for
our stuff, cleaned everything, made it pretty and cozy, wound up the cuckoo
clock, placed flowers on the window sill, and did it all with great care and
a positive attitude. . . . The day before yesterday the owner of the apartment
returned. . . . Therefore, we will be moving again in the next few days—for the
fourth time. . . . I wonder if it will be the last?24

Moving not only meant that apartments had to be repaired in a makeshift

manner but also brought bureaucratic problems. One had to be allocated a new
place to live; new furniture had to be applied for; the government agency respon-
sible for the ration cards had to be visited; new allocations for new address had
to be entered on the ration cards. Often, these bureaucratic problems were not
so easily solved, as the above example of the returning apartment owner shows.
There was thus plenty of incentive to try to get around these difficulties, with
“wild” (unofficial) rehousing and relocation quite often the consequence.25 Mov-
ing was a very painful experience for many because they had lost their belongings.
It was a precarious experience of mobility, as it meant the disintegration of
the space where one felt at home. Furthermore, moving to a new part of the
city brought unfamiliarity with the new surroundings. Even if the loss “of the
feeling of being at home in one’s apartment” did not have to “lead to the break-
down of one’s feeling of personal identity,” for many it remained a traumatic
affair.26
On February 1, 1944, Ursula von Kardorff wrote in her diary, after she had
gone to Neuhardenberg for a few days to get away from the air raids:

To be able to sleep undisturbed for four nights; this is a gift today. . . . Better not to
think about all that could still happen. . . . Our house was hit in the last air raid by
a bomb. Nothing is left of it at all. The other seven apartments where we lived in
Berlin are no longer standing either. I feel in myself the growth of a wild vitality,
mixed with defiance, just the opposite of resignation. Is that what the English hope
to achieve with their attacks on the civilian population? One certainly does not get
worn down. Everyone is caught up with himself. Is my apartment still standing?
Where can I get tiles for the roof, where cardboard for the windows? Where is the
best bunker? The catastrophe, which affects Nazis and anti-Nazis equally, welds
the people together. Furthermore, after every attack there are cigarettes, real coffee,
116 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

and meat. “Give them bread and they are attached to you,” the Grand Inquisitor
in Dostoevsky says.27

At the beginning of the war, it was primarily the NSDAP that “looked after”
the population after air raids. After the first major air raids, coping with the
damages was reorganized and became the responsibility of the Commissioners
for the Defense of Germany (Reichsverteidigungskommissare), which established
“Regional Operations Staff ” (Gaueinsatzstäbe) to “combat heavy damages after
air raids.” They were increasingly unable to find available substitute apartments,
food, and articles of daily use. As the war continued, providing for the population
became an ever more urgent problem.28
Being bombed out, as well as city-country transfers, even if temporary, under-
taken directly because of the war or for a better supply situation, meant that the
city experienced more new patterns of movement and dissolution than usual.
There were also shifts in everyday practices, in the allocation of the roles between
the sexes, and between older and younger citizens. Once the tension of the air
raids ended, according to Kardorff,

among people who had lost nothing, a merriment broke out that could not be held
back by anything, and the numerous men who were separated from their wives
spent their evenings with less restraint than their wives, who are bored living out
in the countryside, would ever suspect. All bonds and attachments have ended;
nothing is taken seriously in light of the possibility that one could die today or
tomorrow. What indeed will be left standing after this disintegration?29

And on one of the evenings at the grand Hotel Adlon, during which she
occasionally sought relaxation and recreation, she found her assessment to be
correct:

There it was, the fast life. Lots of men. Only a few elegantly dressed women. Hus-
bands whose families have been evacuated are only all too happy to be comforted in
their loneliness. Bad luck for these young women when once again a certain order
is reestablished and they are forced to recognize they were only temporary.30

The phenomenon of disintegration not only affected fixed spatial and tem-
poral criteria used for orientation but also had an effect on role behavior and
social relationships. Previously firm commitments became less important or were
at least questioned.
Berlin became a city of chaotic events, only partly adhering to the trade-off
and substitute patterns established by the state agencies. One’s daily routine
adapted to the conditions of the war. Indeed, urban life itself in some sense
adapted and found new patterns. This included well-practiced behaviors such as
fighting fires and finding cellars and bunkers, as well as the orderly distribution
of food at the distribution points. Such state-organized substitute infrastruc-
tures remained intact for a surprisingly long time, although they had deficits
 Destruction, Disorientation, and New Patterns of Order ● 117

and were increasingly supplemented and replaced by other non-state infrastruc-

tures. The most striking evidence that the authorities were losing their ability to
maintain a well-ordered urban life emerged in the program to evacuate some
of the city’s population.31 Between the summer of 1943 and the end of the
war, around 1.2 million people left the city, leaving behind about 2.8 million.
As those remaining were largely oriented toward defense, Berlin took on more
the character of a fortress than a city.32
The Berlin youth welfare offices saw one cause of the massive disintegration
especially during the evacuations. Their reports concentrated particularly on the
effects these measures had on children and youths and determined that the evacu-
ations, necessary “as a consequence of the air war,” had broken up families, so that
many youths—especially young women—lacked a “well-ordered home.”33 Young
people were often “left to themselves,” “not responsible to anyone for their time
or their actions,” and so they sought “opportunities that made the world of being
grown-up appear to be desirable.” There were reports of attempts to misappropri-
ate someone else’s property and of the “temptation to take things” many were not
able to resist. There was an increase in the number of cases “where after air raids
youths described themselves as people who had allegedly suffered damage from
the raids, allowed the corresponding certificates and money to be handed out to
them, and received all of the benefits of a person who had suffered material dam-
age from the air raid (Fliegergeschädigter).” In general, the number of “criminal
offenses directly related to the air terror against the civilian population” increased
parallel to the “damages caused by the air war.” The increase occurred “in all sorts
of different cases of children of both sexes (although there were very few cases of
little girls) and of young women.” Commentators sought to explain these facts
with reference to a “playful urge for activity, a certain love of adventure, such as
is called forth by the war experiences in young people,” and a “desire to explore
and investigate the unknown” that enabled youths to do things that would bor-
der “on being criminal acts if they were adults and were held responsible for their
actions.”
Children, reports continued, were ultimately “not aware of how serious what
they had done was, as it was part of the events of the war.” Although they could
distinguish between right and wrong, they were tempted in many cases, as in the
saying: “an open door may tempt a saint.” In the end, the “possessions of other
people . . . simply lying around, unsupervised” were “more tempting than ever”;
indeed, they almost “invited” people “to pick them up.”34 The “young people”
had grown up quickly “through the war experiences,” which exposed them to
things “far beyond the realm of normal everyday experiences.” “[I]nterventions in
family life caused by the war, the adjustments in professional life, the progress of
everyday events at work and leisure,” especially, made “youths feel again and again
the war as an objective fact.”35 Repeatedly, the breakup of the family was seen as
the cause. Discussions centered on “insufficient supervision of the children,” of
the “absence of the father,” of the “heavier demands on the mother as a result
of her work and the difficulties in running the household,” and of the “absence
of supervision at school.” In their uncontrolled freedom, many youths therefore
118 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

went on “extended travels of discovery through the bombed out areas of the city”
and committed thefts. Often the thefts had a clear motive. “The black market
among the children” played “an important role.”36
The criminality among children and youths slid into the spotlight especially
when the public practices of foreign “offenders” were involved. For example, a
report from the last days of the war stated that “in the streets and in the train
stations . . . in the course of the winter one could repeatedly observe children try-
ing to sell pedestrians colorfully painted toys for bread coupons.” These were
“children from eastern worker camps” selling “goods . . . made by adults in a
form of disguised begging.”37 Overall, it was noted that the “youths who were
roaming around” lacked a “strong hand” because of war-generated circumstances.
The comprehensive process of existing patterns of disintegrating order extended
both to everyday routines and moral standards. The references to the increasing
coarseness of children and youths most drastically portrayed this process.38
However, such tendencies were by no means limited to youths. Criminality
was an “escalating” phenomenon among many groups.39 In the postwar period,
lawyers and sociologists spoke of a “criminality of total ruin.”40 Freiburg public
prosecutor Karl Bader, for example, maintained that criminality had “become
a lifestyle” and attempted to get to the heart of the issue concerning observed
changes in his book on German postwar criminality.41 In 1927, he stated, a mur-
der in the countryside would have had the population’s attention “from near
and far . . . for months.” In contrast, during wartime, when one heard about such
a crime, “one shrugged one’s shoulders, and even hideous and repulsive mur-
ders, which were still brought to prosecution during the complete breakdown
in the last days of the war, almost disappeared in the confusion of every-
day life.”42 The number of serious crimes committed in Berlin was not much
higher. Of the 11,724 people convicted by the Berlin courts between June 1945
and June 1946, approximately 10,000 were guilty, either directly or indirectly,
of economic crimes. These included, above all, theft and offenses against the
Verbrauchsregelungsstrafverordnung (Penal Code for Consumer Regulations), of
which illegal bartering transactions were examples.43
Contemporary descriptions regularly associated such moral upheavals with the
visible destruction of the city. The change in the city’s outer appearance cor-
responded to a mental breakdown among many of its citizens. Just as Berlin’s
buildings lay in ashes and rubble, every individual’s state of mind was also
affected. The disintegration of well-established systems of order caused a crisis
with a moral dimension. In light of these issues, finding a new orientation was,
in one sense, a strictly practical problem, such as, for example, orienting oneself
spatially in the increasingly destroyed city. Previously simple movement patterns,
such as the everyday trip to work, now became much more difficult. Ursula
von Kardorff noted that it “sometimes took her four hours to get to the office”
and, once there, there was not much hope of actually working. “It is more for
appearances, so that one makes an appearance there.”44 But there was also a new
orientation of consciousness. In view of the daily danger, the disorder, and the
loss of life, “small offenses” did not seem to matter very much. “Transgressions”
such as serious law violations were a common topic of contemporary discourse.
 Destruction, Disorientation, and New Patterns of Order ● 119

What was one allowed to do in the present conditions, and what not? In the chaos
between the war and the postwar period, this question took on profound signif-
icance. To what could “marginal ethics,” perceived by contemporaries as one of
the characteristics of the time, be applied?45
Treating the crises of the city and of individuals as parallel events first became
possible in the context of the now disjointed spatial relationships.46 The air raids
established the vertical dimension as the most important spatial reference, chang-
ing the direction people looked every day to up into the air. They looked because
they feared the danger of the bombers in the sky, the area above the rooftops of the
city marked off by searchlights, fire, and smoke, the burning roofs themselves, the
apartments with their endangered furnishings, and the largely empty and “out-
of-order” streets. At the same time, another new direction was looking down into
the cellar, the counterpart to looking up because of the attacking airplanes. With
the beginning of the heavy air attacks, bunkers and cellars became part of the
standard repertoire of everyday spaces in Berlin, turning into a “major feature
of everyday life during the war.”47 On January 25, 1944, Kardorff described a
typical bunker situation in her diary:

recently I was . . . in the bunker at the zoo. Spooky. When the flak begins to start, a
herd of human animals runs in the dark to the entrances, which are small and much
too narrow. Flashlights go on and everyone screams “Lights out!” The people push
and prod into the building, and once one is in, one is surprised that it more or less
went ok. The walls of the bunker, massive, coarsely hewn stone blocks, have the
same impact as the stage setting for the prison scene in Fidelio.48

Beginning in the winter of 1943/44, everyday life in Berlin increasingly moved

underground to the cellars and other protected spaces. Underground life was
not primarily in the bunkers because these were not yet completed; the building
projects initiated under General Building Inspector Albert Speer were far behind
the original planning schedule.49 Instead, beneath the Berlin apartment houses, a
“system of paths and tunnels” had come into being. In them, as in the bunkers,
some order was supposed to be maintained, with a clear hierarchy—air-raid shel-
ter wardens and bunker wardens, as well as marshals, in control. But hunkering
down in these emergency shelters became ever more torturous. Alongside acute
danger, hygiene was insufficient. Accordingly, the mood swung between panic
and apathy. Reports from doctors in the bunkers registered “that people who were
usually quite proper and neat have become brutish and crude; suddenly, after
the loss or the destruction of their possessions they have become cave dwellers.”
Irritability and violence were often the result.50
The crisis of the city manifested itself in its loss of sovereignty over the section
between the street and the roof ’s edge—that is, the part that, in peacetime, was
most characteristic. To the degree to which people, when they left the protective
spaces, lost the protective roof as a point of orientation, the street as the space
in front of the body gained in importance. The air war transformed the closed
spaces of the city as well as the public spaces and thus the mode of existence
and the mode of movements of survivors. In the “city of ruins,” everyday life
120 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

shrank more than ever to the height of people’s bodies and thus to the precar-
ious space of personal encounters.51 An example that illustrates this reduction
of available urban space is that of changes in leisurely strolling through the city.
“Strolling” constituted one of the most prominent forms of movement in the city
in peacetime.52 That aimless movement, turned toward the street, the people, and
the architecture of a city, which could also always turn effortlessly toward the shop
windows and make the transition to urban consumption, expressed an individual
pace and conveyed relaxed sovereignty. Those who strolled slowly through the
city set themselves apart from the hectic, purposeful streams of movement and
allowed themselves simply to enjoy the spectacle of the city. Strolling meant tak-
ing one’s time, appearing to be uninvolved but really perceiving the whole city as
an urban living space. It was a luxury but a democratic one that allowed people
to demonstrate their command of this typical urban appropriation. Such move-
ment patterns were only possible because they could take place in a familiar and
unthreatened urban environment. Strolling was thus also an act that reaffirmed
one’s familiarity with one’s surroundings, establishing once again secure environ-
ments and arrangements, which at best led to only small corrections of what one
already knew. The city landscape that one registered as one walked through it was
an agglomeration of institutionalized, durable arrangements that were not only
reliable but also able to convey certainty.53
All this was no longer possible in the landscape of ruins. Strolling along the
city streets now only existed in people’s memories of the city before the war.
Ursula von Kardorff likened the movements of the people she had observed hur-
rying into the bunkers to a “nervous multitude of ants” and spoke of life in the
endangered city as being equivalent to “the lives of termites.”54
After the war, when the situation was more secure, it once again became pos-
sible to stroll through the markets. This was greeted with relief as being able to
do so was an essential part of the discourse wherein the markets and their fields
of activity registered as signs of peaceful times and of normalization.55 Kardorff
noted on September 20, 1945, “In the evening, I was on the Kurfürstendamm.
Pretty girls with ribbons in their hair and purses on their arms stroll between
English, American, and French soldiers.”56 However, negative connotations could
also resonate in such descriptions. Those who continued to miss their custom-
ary urban practices and security-signifying routines terribly saw in this strolling a
disproportionally nonchalant behavior that only occupiers and hustlers could—
quite literally—afford. To these people, such behavior seemed inappropriate
when the city appeared to be a “pile of rubble” and many citizens were worrying
about their very survival. The contrast between one’s sequence of motions and
the “setting,” the destroyed city, was particularly stressed in such interpretations.
Individuals acting in an old-fashioned manner in a destroyed city drew attention.
In his diary, Karl Deutmann recorded his impressions from numerous walks
through the city in the spring and summer of 1945:

Ride into the city. Berlin has become a pile of dirt and rubble. . . . On all of the
streets and squares there are piles of ruins, out of which barricades are built.
 Destruction, Disorientation, and New Patterns of Order ● 121

Wherever a better café is still open on the Kurfürstendamm, well-fed women in

men’s suits flail about on the padded seats; these women have most certainly never
moved a finger for the German people. . . . What has become of you, my beautiful,
clean, shining Berlin? A violent, invisible wrecking ball has torn down the palaces
and churches, universities, theaters, museums, department stores, villas, elegant
streets, embassies, travel agencies, sports centers, ministries, train stations, facto-
ries, market halls, restaurants, working-class districts and districts of villas—all torn
down and all that is left is dust. Ashes and—nothing. That’s life. . . . We who have
survived will have to be hungry a great deal in the near future and we are going to
have to fight bitterly every day of our life. This is spring in Berlin.57

What bothered Deutmann, above all, was the “well-fed women flail[ing]
about,” actions which stood in sharp contrast to the destroyed city. A couple of
weeks after the end of the war, on another tour through the city center (via Adal-
bertstrasse in Kreuzberg, the Michael’s Church Bridge and the Alexanderplatz up
to Brunnenstrasse), Deutmann focused on his tentative movements through the
city, which had replaced a normal walk:

The streets are, as much as is possible, cleared of rubble, so that the traffic once
again can move along, albeit with difficulty. . . . At times one walks on a carpet of
dust. Or one walks like a tightrope walker on wobbling, flat slabs of stone that lie
on the steel girders of a leaning, destroyed bridge. . . . The city is a pile of rubble
with an eerie effect, with haunting shapes of former houses, streets, squares and
districts. Russian soldiers move through the city of rubble; car horns beep.58

In this chaos, black market meeting places became central reference points
in people’s perception of the city. “On a street corner,” Deutmann added to his
above notes,

there was a wild black market going on. Here one could buy or exchange anything.
Depending on the quality, Russian soldiers and officers gave some pounds of butter,
meat, tobacco, or money to the Germans for a wristwatch. Suits, shoes, underwear,
stockings, shirts, rings, pocket watches, and much more were available.

Deutman had gotten a headache from all the “hustle and bustle” and was
relieved when he and his wife once again left Berlin.59 Only slowly would these
negative assessments of the black market be joined by more positive ones. Many
observers never changed their attitude vis-à-vis the “hustlers” and their “behavior
harmful to the nation.” On the contrary, toward the end of the war, with defeat
imminent, they responded even more sensitively to the black market as a symp-
tom of disintegration. In the “Reports on the Mood of the Population by the
Army Propaganda Division” (Stimmungsberichte der Wehrmachtpropaganda-
Aktion), which attempted, in the style of the SD reports, to trace the mood and
the attitudes of Berlin’s population, illegal trading played a central role.60 Pub-
lic trading engendered indignation. To many observers, public trading appeared
to herald the coming defeat because it reminded many of the end of the war in
122 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

1918. In recorded statements, the disintegration of the existing order, the black
market as the symptom of this disintegration, the imminent defeat, and the fear
of inflation formed a symbiosis. From this perspective, black market trading was
the visible symbol of this process in the image of the city. If illegal trades could
take place “in broad daylight” in public squares, unchecked or even in front of
the police, then the end was not that far away.
The negative attitude of “everyday Berliners” and of the Nazi leadership came
together in this condemnation of hustling. Again, one can see that a significant
number of city dwellers agreed, at least in their basic evaluation of the situation,
with the National Socialist propaganda slogans.61 However, the political lead-
ership and the population had rather different reasons for coming to the same
conclusion. To be sure, both sides had reason enough to fear the defeat and
thus to reject the black market as an (alleged) harbinger of imminent personal
misfortune. However, from the perspective of “common men,” who did not see
themselves as having political responsibility, the looming “doom and destruction”
was more significant. To them, the black market symbolized, above all, the dis-
integration of an existing order, no matter how “abnormal” and “out of joint”
this order might have been, as well as increasing uncertainty. The experiences of
the inflation era were thus associated not only with military defeat but also with
a chaotic period in one’s personal life. The full effect of such associations found
expression in the popularization of the hustler figure who always profited from
this disorder. For these observers, the emergence of hustlers and hustling thus
signaled the onset of disorder and at the same time reminded them of their own
experiences of deprivation.62
The discourse on the black market and the discourse on the looming doom
and destruction thus followed and modified familiar patterns of interpretation of
the experiences of the end of the war in 1918 and the inflation period.63 This
included the subtext in which in a whole series of expressions linked the ille-
gal hustling activities to treason. The accusation that traders undermined public
order was made quite explicitly about foreigners, in particular. Although for-
eign workers had been stigmatized as special elements who had advanced the
black market in the earlier war years as well, now, in the face of imminent defeat
and with the “wild vagabonding” of camp residents who had lost their homes to
bombing, the reactions became more virulent. There were repeated complaints
that this group of people was especially responsible for the flourishing trade in
the public squares and restaurants.64
Germans who traded were judged differently according to their gender.
Observers interpreted illegal trading by German women and girls as especially
reprehensible if it had been “conducted with foreigners.” In this case, as well,
trading with foreign workers had previously been branded as an “evil,” yet it
now moved into the center of public interest. The members of the Army Propa-
ganda Division noted numerous expressions of outrage thematizing the behavior
of German women trading publicly with foreigners in cafés:

In the bars and cafés in the center of the city . . . but also in the bars and cafés of
the so-called better west . . . on Kurfürstendamm—one can see over and over again
 Destruction, Disorientation, and New Patterns of Order ● 123

that German women are behaving in a way that is more than offensive. Appar-
ently they think nothing of allowing themselves to be kept by foreigners. . . . It is
especially regrettable that these so-called German women even sell their honor for
cigarettes. . . . The German women and girls who are present are not at all interested
in the other Germans there, but rather sit exclusively with the generally well dressed
foreigners and then later take these foreigners home with them. At the same time
there is also a good deal of bartering going on between the girls and the foreigners,
for example, silver rings for meat ration cards.65

The talk about “traitorous” German women was a precursor to the discourse
on “the speedy capitulation of the German women in May 1945,” women who
stabbed the Volksgemeinschaft in the back in a particularly shameful way by trad-
ing with foreigners. The sexual connotation could not be missed. When “being
kept” was spoken of in connection with trading, the accusation of prostitution
was in the air. This included the description of what was being bartered, as well,
with cigarettes and jewelry regularly being mentioned. The image of “easy” or
“fallen” women who gave themselves to foreign men to indulge in excessive pat-
terns of consumption of luxury goods determined these patterns of perception
in the Berlin black market discourse. This image picked up on stereotypes from
an earlier black market discourse when newspapers, for example, had reported
that the cafés of the “well-to-do west” were preferred sites for this business. The
city’s division into certain types of people in certain spaces that these stereo-
types established was adapted and enriched with the new paradigm of foreign
and potent men.
What was most scandalous about the bartering of German men, by contrast,
was the failure of the masculine forces of law and order. When it was German
members of the army or the police doing the bartering, comments were par-
ticularly indignant.66 In this perspective, the participation of German men in
uniform illustrated most poignantly that law and order was collapsing and that
defeat was that much closer. An SD report from November 1944, for example,
stated that the police “in most cases simply looked on without doing anything
or even participated in the buying.”67 The discursive construct of the failure of
the masculine forces of law and order was the passive corollary to the masculine
hustler figure. Whereas hustlers knew how to take advantage of the situation and
thus harmed the general public, policemen and members of the military police
failed by doing nothing to stop the illegal activity. Consequently, collective fail-
ure and individual cleverness were two sides of the same coin. In the same way,
talk of “bands of hustlers,” that is, coordinated criminal behavior, could still be
clearly differentiated from the interests of the community. This questioned the
relationship between the individual and the community, between pure egotism
and a minimum of collective solidarity. In this way, black market trading became
a symbol of defeat and a medium of attributing guilt that incriminated certain
segments of the population and made them responsible for the downfall and its
expected consequences.
Such conflicts displayed rather different ideas about the morally correct use
of city space. Just as new spaces and their uses began to shape and characterize
124 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

everyday life in the city, old spaces and uses had to be abandoned or repurposed.
The streets, as the most important public areas in the city, changed especially
rapidly. In 1937 streets and squares had made up about 10 percent of the devel-
oped city area.68 At the end of the war, about 40 percent of the buildings had
been destroyed. A large part of this immense pile of rubble blocked the streets.69
It had already become increasingly difficult to utilize the street system for its main
function as an urban network of thoroughfares during the war. Pedestrians had
to climb over piles of rubble ever more often; in some places it was impossible to
get through. On top of this, the Berlin streets became the background to scenes
of vast destruction. One noticed dead bodies in the streets. Deutmann described
the effects of an air raid in February 1945:

In the area around the Spittelmarkt and on Moritzplatz whole streets have dis-
appeared, along with the people; all that is left is the ruins of the houses.
On Neuenburgerstrasse, which was near the Halle Gate, a vocational school for
girls was hit; hundreds of girls had sought shelter in the cellar. Later the parents
stood before the torn up, denuded corpses and did not recognize their daughters
anymore.70

Looking at Berlin’s streets after another air raid, Deutmann remarked, “Any-
thing one can imagine, anything this life requires, is in the streets, strewn with
the shells of fire bombs of all different calibers. Pictures, letters, pianos, and
mattresses. It was a sad picture on a beautiful summer Sunday.”71
“You will no longer recognize Berlin,” Goebbels had promised Berliners, allud-
ing to the grand reconstruction plans the National Socialists had for the capital.
However, the citizens would soon have difficulty finding their way around for
another reason. The expanses of rubble made it difficult even for experienced
pedestrians to find their way. Street corners, street signs, businesses, stores, metro
entrances, and many signposts were gone or no longer visible. “This Berlin!”
complained Ursula von Kardorff, “The streets previously so clean have become
squalid.”72
The spatial references of everyday life in the city had quite literally come apart,
and the temporal organization had lost its rhythm. The war dramatically dis-
rupted the daily routine of night and day in peacetime, with its relatively stable
periods of work and leisure. Ursula von Kardorff wrote on February 11, 1944,
“Yesterday the daily alarm. A nervous mass of ants heads quickly to the terri-
ble cellar of the publishing house; between volumes of books in the archives
and underneath the water pipes one sits and waits to find out what will hap-
pen . . . haggard women and girls, hunched, hobbling men.”73 Indeed, some of
the most common motifs in contemporary descriptions of the time were the
periods in the bunkers and the end to daily rhythms. “Early this morning there
was a huge dark gray cloud of smoke,” Deutmann wrote of one such experience,

then the sun disappeared like a red ball in the dark and was not able to force its way
through until midday. Up through the afternoon burned paper and ashes rained
 Destruction, Disorientation, and New Patterns of Order ● 125

down on us. After a hard day of duty, which had seen so many tired and weary
people, men, women, and children, afraid of another air raid, rushed in droves to
the public trains to leave the city.74

A couple of months later he wrote, “As we left the bunker the sun had disap-
peared; the skies were cloudy. Over the whole of the city center there was a huge
ocean of thick smoke, fed by innumerable, small and large fires. . . . On this day,
in the streets of the city it was night at noon.”75 This time disorder had a par-
ticularly negative impact on many Berliners. The irregular phases of being awake
and asleep, and living in a state of constant vigilance, perpetually fearing the next
attack and thus not sleeping well, affected Berliners’ health, leading to exhaustion
and sometimes complete breakdowns: “At night one started up out of one’s sleep,
suspecting that bombs were falling.”76
The slow but steady disintegration of fixed frameworks of time and space as
well as the erosion of norms of behavior had the effect not only of promoting
alternative infrastructures, such as public black markets. This disintegration also
affected legal everyday trading sites in Berlin, such as municipal market halls. In a
heavy air raid during the night of November 22–23, 1943, Martha Rebbien lost
her apartment on Swinemünder Strasse.77 About 200 meters away, Reich Defense
Commissioner Joseph Goebbels in his command post “felt that the whole gov-
ernment district was burning.” The Wilhelmplatz was almost as “light as day.”
While Goebbels was describing—with a curious distance, given the destruction
around him—this “modern war” as “nothing but a great horror,” Central Market
Halls I and Ia, likewise not far away, were badly hit.78 “The shops in the halls
burned to the ground,” noted the report of the city’s finance department, “the
roofs, were destroyed most of all, down to the iron frame. The galleries in both
market halls were destroyed; the flooring was very badly damaged and as a result
is no longer waterproof.” Yet interestingly, people adapted immediately to the
new situation:

In spite of this heavy damage the market still functions regularly under the galleries
and in the passages. The daily stay in the vending stalls makes especially heavy
demands on the proprietors of the stands because at present there is very little
difference between this market place and a market out in the open.79

Because of the difficulties, the proprietor of one stand asked for a “reduction
in rent,” which was granted “only until the provisional roofing of the Central
Market Halls is installed.” The booth rents sank for the short term by a third.
Yet the conditions in the market halls remained precarious. A good half year
after the end of the war, the fee question remained open. A memorandum from
October 23, 1945, of the division of the Berlin municipal authorities responsible
for the markets noted that a final “modification of the scale of fees” for the market
halls had not been made because one had to see how business would develop.80
A familiar site for legal shopping had been partially shut down over night; its
outer appearance had come to resemble the street trading. Although no records
126 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

show that the partially destroyed market halls were turned into black market
trading sites, other examples indicate that damaged legal consumer spaces often
quickly mutated into sites of illegal trading. The damages seem to have reduced
people’s inhibitions, transforming what legal infrastructure still existed into illegal
trading spaces.81
Among the conditions that opened public spaces up to black market trad-
ing was the crisis of temporal and spatial everyday routines, of well-established
role models and social relationships. The transition from familiar routines to
improvising made a “virtue,” as was so often described in contemporary sources
of adapting to new conditions and transcending the boundaries of previously
acceptable behavior.82 In addition, the worsening supply situation prompted ever
more people to participate in the market, which also drove the activity out into
the streets. These conditions altered the cost structure of an individual’s partici-
pation. The expansion of the market activity made it much more difficult for the
prosecuting authorities to enforce their sanctions in the phase of disintegration
between the looming end of the war and the development of new administra-
tive structures under the Soviet occupation power. The Berlin black markets that
gathered in public spaces emerged in this vacuum of state order.
The critical moment came at some point in the last half year of the war. For
the moment, there was no going back, especially not only because, after war’s end,
successfully established meeting points offered some protection from prosecution
but also because the new rulers had reduced the punishments for such crimes.83
According to a public opinion poll conducted by the Institute for Public Opin-
ion Research in Allensbach in 1948, 52 percent of responders in West Germany
stated that they had participated in the black market before the currency reform.84
Given the disreputable illegality of the market, the true number was probably
even higher. Even if a good number of these were only occasional, private traders,
the numbers alone meant effective criminal prosecution that would deter crimi-
nals and win back public space was no longer possible. A system of public trading
places was coming into being that quickly spread through the whole city. This
new public form of the Berlin black market resulted in part from the chaos, from
the disintegration of the legal routines of everyday life. However, similar to the
black market trading in networks during the war (which also continued to take
place alongside the public markets), the trading in public spaces followed rules.
Some of these were adapted from existing conventions; some had to be devel-
oped in the new trading practices. The transition from accidentally meeting or
from making individual arrangements to meeting to trade in marketplaces with
relatively stable hours and alternative market regulations began with the transi-
tional phenomena described here: destruction, disorientation, and new patterns
of order. At the end of this process, by the summer of 1945, there were public
black markets with their own market regulations that became a permanent part
of the city.
 CHAPTER 4

Black Markets from the End of the War

to the Currency Reform

New Spaces: Public Black Markets

The appearance of Berlin’s black markets changed toward the end of the war. The
public black markets emerged as the state’s control over the city began to erode
and a new form of political control had not yet been established. Although illegal
bartering transactions continued to take place in apartments, restaurants, and
in other open public locations, marketplaces also sprang up at this time, open
to the public, where bartering no longer had to be pre-arranged. Henceforth,
those who wanted to exchange goods could assume with relative security that
they merely had to visit one of the well-known places to meet others interested in
exchanging goods. Expanding the areas involved in market activity made business
considerably easier. The costs for the participants likewise decreased. Traders who
had not previously dared to engage in bartering in the open street and violate city
ordinances now found a new situation. The larger the crowd of people meeting
publicly to exchange goods became, the lower was the threshold to join in. A self-
fulfilling, self-generating process set in that new countermeasures were no longer
able to stop, let alone reverse.1

Central Locations: The Logic of Distribution

It is not clear what happened to Martha Rebbien after April 10, 1945. Perhaps
she built on her old contacts and continued to trade without getting caught by
the authorities. Perhaps she stopped her illegal trading. It is more likely, how-
ever, that she became a participant in one of the open public meeting locations
in Berlin. Her story cannot, in any case, be followed past this point because
whatever she did, she did it anonymously. Compared to the network of struc-
tures in wartime, anonymity was one of the main characteristics of the new black
marketeering. The disappearance of Martha Rebbien is indicative of this shift to
128 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

relatively anonymous public trading. The more visible the marketplaces became
in the city, the easier it was for individual traders to hide in the crowd. Instead of
detailed investigations of individual cases, the everyday work of Berlin police con-
centrated on large-scale raids in which over 1,000 people could easily be arrested
at once. These raids did not just occur at the few places captured in the pictures
in the historical chronicles of the period. From the summer of 1945, a network
of black marketplaces extended over the entire city.
If one looks at the network of bartering sites, two things stand out: above all,
the number of marketplaces. Even if one excludes unclear cases—for instance,
when the proximity of the markets in question is too close to distinguish between
regular and black markets—60 black marketplaces remain. If one counts the swap
markets officially set up by the authorities, where it can be assumed that illegal
black marketeering regularly occurred, then the grand total of known or regis-
tered sites (either in police reports, newspapers, and personal accounts) increases
to 75. This surprising number is all the more remarkable in that the unclear cases
could make it considerably higher. The second conspicuous characteristic is the
discernible regularities. For example, there is a clear distribution of markets along
the S-Bahn ring (city-wide, above-ground tram network) that functioned as an
outer boundary for broad swaths of Berlin; there are also clusters of markets in
Charlottenburg, in the western and eastern inner-city areas, in the area around
the swap market on Brunnenstrasse between Wedding and Prenzlauer Berg, as
well as at the Silesian Gate.
With these areas of concentration, the system of public black markets adopted
patterns established in the early phases of the war, as the majority of black
marketeers who had been arrested also lived in these neighborhoods. The most
important open public black markets in Berlin were in the center of the city
and in Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf, west of the city center. The Tiergarten,
with its large park an impediment to effective raids, functioned as a revolving
door between the two core areas,2 resulting in an east-west axis offering the
residents of other Berlin districts a variety of starting points for black market
activity. To the north of the center, the black markets of the old Scheuenviertel
and Spandau were linked. The Brunnenstrasse (an officially founded swap mar-
ket positioned further to the north) also developed into an additional important
institution of the black market cityscape, both in the swap market itself and in
areas adjacent to it. The swap markets on Frankfurter Allee and at the Lichtenberg
railway station in the eastern part of the city, likewise, also functioned as sites
of black market trading. The area around the Silesian Gate formed the core of
the Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain black market scene, which built upon the black
market trade in restaurants and bars already established there during the war.
As this area (Friedrichshain) was near the eastern harbor and the Upper Tree
Bridge, it provided opportunities to exchange greater quantities of goods on
ships.
Of course, the distribution of public black markets is also heavily shaped by
official sources, so, as we repeatedly saw before, we can expect the surviving
records from the prosecuting forces to distort it. Yet the question remains of
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 129

whether this picture strictly reflects police report patterns or if there were not
other reasons for this pattern. The open public black markets in Berlin arose
spontaneously. However, their positioning within the city was anything but ran-
dom or spontaneous. Rather, it followed a developmental logic that factored
in several conditions. The large trading centers fulfilled exactly the function
described in the theory of “central spaces” as distribution points for specific
trade segments at these locations. Karl Deutmann described the traders and their
assortments of goods with the following words:

[We] visited the “black market” at the Brandenburg Gate. Here American and
Russian soldiers buy and sell everything from watches, clocks, items of clothing,
rings, jewels, boots, binoculars, cameras, razor blades, and fur coats to stockings
and women’s silk underwear. Many Americans and Englishmen buy only watches,
clocks, and jewelry. The Russians, however, buy clothing for their women and give,
in return, beyond what they pay for the product, food such as butter, sausage,
bacon, sugar, or bread.3

Other sources confirm Deutmann’s assessment of the assortment of goods and

traders in the central markets. One female contemporary, for example, described
the route to the black market at the Reichstag as follows:

[I went] on this day straight through the Tiergarten and came out near the
Reichstag. I had to go through thousands and thousands of people; the black mar-
ket was in full swing. Many Russian soldiers had butter, bacon, sugar, and other
delicious things we hardly recognized anymore. Starving, desperate people brought
their last precious jewelry and exchanged it for something to eat.4

As central places, the trading sites now formed the allocation nodes of a new,
alternative infrastructure where goods that had some value were traded for goods
that met daily needs. They were spaces where the mostly German suppliers could
sell their valuables to Allied soldiers while these same valuables had been on offer
for the German buyers in the city’s shopping venues before and for some time
even during the war. The concept stayed the same; only the direction of the
transfer of goods had changed.
This points to distribution being a fundamental criterion for economic
agglomeration. Economic geography and urban studies have developed nuanced
but different models for describing this phenomenon. In urban studies, for
example, Michael Porter applied the concept of evolutionary processes to inves-
tigating the competitive advantages of cities and regions.5 The aim of his analysis
was to recognize and formulate the guiding mechanisms whereby cities and
regions—similar to neoclassical agents—attain competitive economic advantages.
Economic geographers, on the other hand, point to the geographic and economic
historical differences of competing regional and urban locations. Cities, in par-
ticular, function as spaces with historically developed features that define them as
economic entities and guarantee them a niche in national and regional reference
systems. When studying economic entities such as marketplaces and their spatial
130 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

distribution, one simply cannot ignore specific local rules and regulations, mores,
and traditions.6
A good example that illustrates the mutual influence of various factors in the
development of a black market in Berlin is the history of a smaller exchange area
not far from the Silesian Gate in Kreuzberg. A report by a Kreuzberg citizen
describes its beginnings:

My company’s first big building project, an apartment complex on the corner

of Cuvrystrasse and Schlesische Strasse, was owned by the gastronome F., who
owned a big establishment on the corner, formerly known as the “Hackepeter.”
He had shrewdly recognized the times and set up a huge lunch table and buf-
fet . . . . A black marketplace had developed in front of this restaurant, where food
and grocery items along with ration cards were exchanged and traded; the cigarette
trade played a big role as well. All around the Silesian Gate, similar to the situation
on Bernauer Strasse, the black marketplace grew and grew . . . Many businessmen
used this opportunity and settled on Schlesische Strasse, as [they did] on Bernauer
Straße, building huge stores. The black market was especially attractive to the citi-
zens from East Berlin, who came via the Upper Tree Bridge and thus significantly
expanded the circle of customers.7

These observations indicate the complex interaction of factors in the devel-

opment and establishment of black marketplaces. In addition to the macro-
conditions, infrastructure played a decisive role. Indeed, the establishment of
black markets often entailed transforming meeting places already well known
as legal consumer spaces. Not by chance did the distribution of illegal trade loca-
tions throughout the city follow the pattern of development of pre- and postwar
legal consumer spaces.
In the Kreuzberg example, the hotel and restaurant businesses were an attrac-
tive starting point as they allowed for a critical mass of agents to easily interact
in and around the building. Whereas other cases might have led to illegal trad-
ing in the store, the social hustle and bustle of this city street corner presented
an opportunity for public meeting and trading. Furthermore, the restaurant
was favorably situated vis-à-vis the public transportation system. It could be
easily reached by commuters from Friedrichshain and Treptow and also bene-
fited from the long-term bottleneck at the Upper Tree Bridge arising from the
lack of passable bridges nearby.8 A final factor was the area’s reputation as a
center for black marketeering developed during the war. Those interested in
bartering knew this area as “Kreuzberg 36” and already recognized the restau-
rants as consumer space. Therefore, they did not have to change their daily
routes through the city to visit the area. The neighborhood was already estab-
lished as a center of black market activity, and it merely changed its outer form
by adding a trading site. Thus, along with the infrastructure conditions, local
traditions of consumption such as black marketeering centers already devel-
oped during the war played a decisive role in the development of public black
markets.
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 131

Site history affected the development of the trading centers in the city center
as well. In addition to benefiting from their central location, the marketplaces
at the Reichstag, Tiergarten, the Brandenburg Gate, Alexanderplatz, Potsdamer
Platz, as well as the Zoo train station distinguished themselves from their district
marketplaces by their “fame.” All these marketplaces had a touristic tradition.
Already in the 1920s and 1930s, visitors to the city had taken sightseeing tours
of these spots or were more or less forced to deal with them if they formed
part of the transportation infrastructure. By around the turn of the century,
cities were coming to be identified by their most striking squares and build-
ings. This sort of identification would continue to influence visitors’ images of
Berlin. Black markets in the city center conveyed images of exotic and mys-
terious undertakings. The Times of London, for example, regularly reported
on the black market activities at Potsdamer Platz, on the shopping boulevard
Ku’damm, or in the area between the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and
the Tiergarten.9 American magazines printed anachronistic-seeming pictures of
hustling with German traders and occupying soldiers communicating via hand
signals. These images transmitted a picture of postwar Berlin in which the
anachronistic conditions stood in stark contrast to the consumer metropolis of
yesteryear.10
Naturally, it was not only these famous squares that profited from their
location in the public transportation system or even from being on the bor-
ders between Allied sectors—such as the area between the Reichstag and the
Brandenburg Gate. Smaller meeting sites for illegal trading also used existing
transportation hubs as a starting point—whether or not the hub was a function-
ing means of public transportation or simply a footpath. Train stations, regional
train stations, and underground stations developed into important centers of
black market trading.11 There were at least two reasons for this. First of all,
the stations formed one of the most important points of spatial orientation for
Berliners’ daily routines. The extension of the railway system and the immense
increase in the numbers of commuters made the train and public transportation
system major factors in the lives of Berliners. The new infrastructure supplied a
useful and effective system of reference Berliners could use to generate “mental
maps” of the city.12 Paths in and through the city could be memorized along the
“routes” of the metro lines and the interconnections and could be integrated into
a repetitive daily routine. Schematic outlines and maps reorganized and shaped
the image that both Berliners and visitors had of the city. As black marketeering
was not much different from “business trips,” the stations of the public trans-
portation system formed semi-natural passageways and waiting rooms, as well as
economically relevant meeting places.
Secondly, metro and train stations functioned as important meeting places
so that whoever wanted to could stay awhile and start up a conversation with
other people, even though these encounters had a timeframe fixed by arrival and
departure. The transitory character of the black market business, created from
the dangers of illegality, thus found its complement in the timeframes tradition-
ally ascribed to train stations. Furthermore, train stations and metro stations had
132 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

served as meeting points before the black market period. Meeting someone at the
train station was an integral part of the urban lifestyle, so it was not suspicious.
Moreover, some train stations opened certain rooms to the public during the cold
winter months of the postwar era, so-called warm rooms where the (provisionally)
homeless could find heated shelter. Like almost all infrastructure facilities used
by human social groups, these warm rooms were also transformed into trading
sites.13
Beyond being transportation facilities, many metro stations were also con-
sumer spaces, with small restaurants and shops. Cigarette and newspaper stands
and even retail stores had already begun to influence the image of the “train
station” in the 1920s into a consumer space. Even where such sites of consump-
tion were not present, the ticket counter still remained as a consumer space that
combined the daily experience of shopping with the public transportation system.
Figure 4.1 shows a small black market at the ticket counter of the
Schnönhauser Allee train station in Prenzlauer Berg in 1945. As locations tied to
the individual movement patterns of the city, facilities such as these public trans-
portation stations brought groups of people together. At the station, the ticket
counter formed a meeting point for focused gatherings of everyday life within
the station’s larger space. Consequently, public transportation facilities were ideal
meeting places for exchanging goods.
Next to the black market centers and the traditional weekly marketplaces it
was above all the established exchange sites—some of which covered the same
ground as those after World War I—that formed the starting points for illegal

Figure 4.1 Black market at the ticket counter of the Schönhauser Allee train station (Prenzlauer
Berg)
Source: LAB 1 NK, Nr. 373689, date of photograph: July 12, 1945.
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 133

trading. “The black market blossomed after this war just as after the First World
War,” remembered Heinz Frank, who was 35 when the war ended, “in some cases
in the same places.”14 In August 1946 Frank walked to get some tomatoes for
himself and his wife. With a map of the city in his head and with the knowledge
of the black marketplaces after 1918, he took the shortest route, going to all the
major black marketplaces in the center of the city. Apparently, the interaction
between “direct experiences and practical necessities” allowed Frank to complete
a mental map of the illegal Berlin consumer landscape during these critical times
that considerably assisted his orientation in the black market era. His mental
map functioned as a “subjective, inner spatial image of a part of his surrounding
environs,” with which he could mark the illegal markets as important sites that
he could visit later.15
“I didn’t know . . . which black market I would honor with a visit,” Frank
said, describing his tour through the Berlin black market scene. “In part,” he
remembered, “public transportation was already up and running, but I decided to
walk.”16 Shortly after he left his apartment in Schöneberg and “visited” Potsdamer
Platz, he decided “to go to the black market on Münzstrasse.”17 On his way there,
he went to Potsdamer Platz and other attractions and also visited the black market
squares in the Tiergarten, in front of the Reichstag, at the Brandenburg Gate, and
at Alexanderplatz. Arriving on Münzstrasse, he got caught in a police raid after
he had bought the tomatoes he wanted for 70 RM. He came home that night
without the goods. “However, the next day,” he reported, “I went out and visited
the black market at the Bülow Arch.” His motivation was clear. He “did not want
to look for very long.”18 He did not wish to risk another fruitless odyssey across
Berlin’s inner city, so he decided to take the shorter route (again based on his
knowledge of the black market scene from World War I).
Apparently, Heinz Frank had a clear idea of the assortment of goods offered at
the various marketplaces as well as where they were. His route enabled him to visit
all of the larger marketplaces in the city center, and he seemed to know that the
object he was seeking—tomatoes—could be found at the market on Münzstrasse.
In other words, he had knowledge of the structure of the distribution of goods
in Berlin. The markets around the warehouse district (Scheunenviertel) and in
Spandau traded typical end-user products, above all grocery and food items.19
This exemplifies the overlapping of the assortment of goods between legal and
illegal distribution centers because even though illegal trading had disrupted
existing structures, certain elements like central locations or products typical of
certain spaces remained. They stood in a sometimes longer, sometimes shorter,
line of consumer tradition, and they made it easier for people to find their way
in the seemingly chaotic system of public black marketplaces (out of which an
orderly pattern emerged soon enough).

Insecurity and New Routines: Practices and Techniques in the Black

Marketplaces
The consumption practices of Berlin’s black markets were spatial practices. Goods
and suppliers were sought; goods were offered, tested, and exchanged. In the
134 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

process, a complex system of spatial rules and regulations arose that allowed
the black marketplaces to appear highly organized despite their fragile nature.
What appeared to be a chaotic hustle and bustle, in truth, followed rules that
ordered diverse patterns of role playing and interaction and body language
and rendered conflict-laden, illegal trading a successful, constant, social, and
spatial institution in everyday life in postwar Berlin. It is important not to
conceive of the marketplace as an amorphous, accumulated heap born out of
the necessity of the day. Such a description merely perpetuates the simplistic
Trümmerzeit discourse that pushed the “black market era” into a diffuse, his-
torical “no man’s land.” To gain more insight into this time, one should consider
how the complex order of the black markets emerged and perhaps improved
everyday life.
To better understand the nature and importance of these marketplaces as
“focused gatherings,” it helps to look at Berlin’s legal weekly markets, market
halls, and official swap markets. The decisions Berlin’s municipal authorities and
Allied commanders made concerning consumption formed part of a history of
modernizing the municipal markets and their rules and point to postwar normal-
ization, hygienic considerations, and contractual security. Out of the innumerable
drafts, variations, and existing market regulations, competing interests managed
to carve out a canon of decisions about the marketplaces.
Ideally, according to this canon, the markets were to be spatially and tempo-
rally fixed. “Marketplaces and market times” were some of the most important
specifications contained in the market regulations.20 They regulated the exact
location and opening and closing times for each market square, as well as the
exact quantity of legal goods that could be traded. In addition to prohibitions on
certain items, there was a prohibition on “mobile trading activities.” Moreover,
the canon regulated the arrival and departure routes to the market square, the
setting up and taking down of the stands, as well as the fees to be paid. What
differed most from the black marketplaces was the limits on trading activities
and the official, printed code of market behavior. The former placed the distri-
bution rights of the market stands in the hands of local district administrators in
the Berlin municipality, according to which “no one has the right to any certain
stand. Nor does any merchant at the market have the right to pass on his market
site to another party.”21 The rules for “Maintenance and Appropriate Behavior at
the Market,” in turn, required market traders to publicize their identity (using
a sign with a name and address) and regulated hygienic standards and lighting.
Importantly, traders had to comply or pay a penalty.
The organizational forms of the illegal trading activities appear to have devel-
oped spontaneously and, therefore, at least implicitly, at times remain unclear.
Nonetheless, they generated a space of relative transparency and security. The
temporal framework provided an important element of consistency for the pub-
lic black markets. The large squares at the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and
the other important meeting places were “open” daily, only interrupted by the
inevitable police raids. These relatively fixed market times guaranteed traders
a stable infrastructure and certain minimum expectations. Unlike trading in
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 135

networks, it was not necessary to make exhaustive arrangements and appoint-

ments. Those interested in trading merely had to visit one of the well-known
squares to meet with other traders and acquire new information. The open-
ing and closing times were, of course, determined by extenuating circumstances
such as light and climatic conditions. If it was raining, the market at the
Alexanderplatz, for example, moved partly to the underground subway station.
Generally, the market was outside only during daylight hours.22
A different temporal specification of market parameters resulted from seasonal
trading activity. Before holidays, especially, market participation increased with
many who otherwise abstained frequenting the black market. Occasional, private
traders sought Christmas decorations or flowers, for example, so that some illegal
trading was a seasonal business. Accordingly, illegal trading for these seasonal
items overlapped significantly with the legal Berlin Christmas market.23 At the
same time, illegal trading fluctuated by the day of the week, with Sundays being
particularly well attended, as one police report noted.24
Potential market participants could be just as certain that they would find bar-
tering partners at one of the larger trading centers as the black market was flexible
in reacting to police disturbances. Over time, patterns of movement became rou-
tine, enhancing market flexibility. This allowed for a market that had suddenly
disappeared to reappear at a different location, or traders would wait until a raid
ended and return to trading at the same location after the police had departed.25
The temporal framework eased the burden of participating; so, too, did the
spatial stability of market activity. The illegal individual trading spaces consti-
tuted a spatial inside-outside relationship that structured the markets on the
microlevel, much as the stands and spaces were formally defined in the legal mar-
kets. Black markets, consisting of at least two participants of traders, formed a
mobile, indeterminate, yet identifiable entity. The margins—the most impor-
tant sign of the market’s amorphous character along with the movements within
the crowd—spread out and were themselves always moving, thus embodying the
“indeterminable,” “overflowing,” and “steadily growing” nature of illegal trad-
ing practices. At the same time, these characteristic pushed the identification of
participants and the point of market entry into a gray zone where the precari-
ous crossover from being a moral observer to an immoral participant took place.
In contrast to the official swap markets, which one entered at stipulated points
after purchasing a ticket, black market trading places were in principle open on
all sides.
The outer border of the market was only absolutely clear when the police
marked it with a raid ring. For many Berliners, the illegal markets were the first
place they came into direct contact with the police when they were encircled
by a chain of policemen, loaded onto trucks, and taken to the police station
on Dircksenstrasse. Although these actions quickly became peaceful and routine,
numerous memoirs give over a good deal of space to describing the raids.
The disturbing experience of being involved in a police raid left a deep impres-
sion. The state, present in these raids, expressed itself physically in the formation
of these police raid rings, enacting its power to “draw boundaries.” Whatever
136 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

happened to be within the police ring belonged for the moment to that entity.
Only in the second step of the investigation did police begin to distinguish
between those one could and could not prove guilty of a crime. At this point,
the police ring’s definition of the market as an anonymous, mass phenomenon
was broken down into individual, moral categories of illegal black market traders.
Eyewitness reports did not initially address the question of whether their authors
actively participated in trading and concentrated instead on the raid as an
overpowering experience.
The markets were the product of a communicative action that reconsti-
tuted itself from scratch every day. The participants formed a social entity—the
market—by physically coming together, perceiving one another, negotiating, ges-
turing, speaking, and exchanging goods. This market entity functioned, on the
one hand, as a phenomenon that participants could anticipate, and, on the other
hand, as something that they could constantly form anew, reproduce, and mod-
ify by their practices. The public trading sites of the Berlin black market era thus
had both a material and procedural component; they were comprised of a spe-
cific material infrastructure and interactive processes, and the urban sites made of
stone, surrounded by buildings and heaps of rubble or ruins, provided the space
for participants’ practices. Both together gave birth to the Berlin black market as
a social phenomenon and institution of this critical transitional period.
To analyze the history of Berlin’s black market from the perspective of the
logic of interaction at the microlevel, it is necessary to contextualize this his-
tory by looking at the physical condition of the city’s inhabitants and their daily
experiences. Generally speaking, during the war and the postwar trauma, daily
life took on a new quality of physicality. The closeness of death, injury, disease,
and hunger pushed the body as a medium of historical experience into focus.26
Although the danger of being killed by the military slowly subsided as tensions
eased in Berlin after the end of the war (although, nevertheless, it never com-
pletely went away because of the uncertain situation), the question of procuring
one’s daily sustenance remained crucial. Not to be forgotten were also the climatic
conditions within a city that suffered from an acute housing shortage and lacked
sufficient combustibles for winter heating.27 While black market trading helped
some participants overcome the precarious supply situation and thus improve
their standard of living, it was, nonetheless, hard work and an imposition to the
extent that they had to learn new and unusual rules of interaction and overcome
a general situation of uncertainty.
To speak of the black market as a market of closeness is to take the phys-
ical experiences that inevitably accompanied illegal trading into consideration.
In Berlin’s marketplaces, bartering partners met each other in an unusual man-
ner and under exceptional circumstances. Whether participating out of necessity
or acting voluntarily, traders nonetheless encountered many strangers, which
brought with it difficult processes of differentiation in the establishment of “ter-
ritories of the self.”28 The illegal marketplace was a site for injuries, feelings of
insecurity, discomfort, social uneasiness, and inferiority. The precarious character
of Berlin’s illegal consumption spaces becomes clearer as one views the varying
situations more closely. To begin with, one had to approach a market.
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 137

Figure 4.2 Black market in Wedding district (Müllerstrasse)

Source: LAB 1 NK, Schwarzer Markt, Nr. 7862.

The traders approached the site from a certain distance, waited a certain
amount of time, gained an overview of the situation, assessed the danger (the
presence of soldiers or police), and only after this brief retarding moment did
they act. “Small groups of people were standing around everywhere and hag-
gling,” was how one person described her first encounter with public trading.
“First I looked around to see what was being offered and finally wound up with
a group selling clothes to the Russians.”29 Nonetheless, Figure 4.2 shows clearly
that experienced black marketeers, for whom trading had become an everyday
job, or who felt certain that there was no danger, simply approached various
groups without hesitation.
Before participants could assess the market situation and look for goods or for
well-known faces, they had to successfully enter the market. This process func-
tioned in what Lynette Lofland, describing the behavior of individuals in public
settings, termed an “entry cycle.” To navigate one’s entrance into the market, one
could not simply use customary practices from other well-known public situa-
tions like restaurants (such as hanging up one’s jacket or making contact with
the host), utilizing a code that prescribes each phase of entering a public space.30
Perhaps the moment of a last body check (such as checking one’s hair or one’s
clothes) also played a role in the entry cycle. Often people got rather dressed up
before going to the market square, much as they would dress up before going
shopping. Anna Fetting remembered that before she visited the black market at
Potsdamer Platz, she put on her “pretty, burgundy red dress . . . My missing hus-
band,” she explained, “had always liked this dress on me so much, and that is
why I brought it along with me when we fled.”31
Contemporary summer photographs show most of the participants in fash-
ionable clothing. The men are generally pictured in a shirt and a blazer, and
sometimes also a tie, as a rule a hat and—even in summer—an overcoat.
The ostentatious display of all sorts of jewelry is also conspicuous. While this
138 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Figure 4.3 Women with jewelry in a black market in Zehlendorf, July 10, 1948
Source: LAB 1NK, Schwarzer Markt, Nr. 998.

seemingly tacky display of jewelry was a part of dressing up, it also represented
a way to present goods to be bartered. This type of advertising on the body had
already become predominant during the war. Black marketeers announced them-
selves as trading partners by displaying their rings, watches, and other jewelry,
utilizing their bodies as display cases (see Figure 4.3).32
Although entering the market space remained difficult for many partici-
pants despite such preparations, the fluctuating borders and lack of clarity about
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 139

internal and external spaces made it a little bit easier. The existing delineations
within the market made it easier to look for goods or trading partners yet
remained fluid to enhance flexibility. The nature of the situation—be it one of
supply, demand, or supply and demand—was decisive for the movement pat-
terns of the participants. Suppliers positioned themselves either by taking a fixed
position or by covering a small area by strolling about in it. For example, one
participant at the market at Brunnenstrasse described putting her “open suitcase
on the ground” and concluding her first transaction before being interrupted by a
raid after which she simply “returned to [her] spot” to make some more money.33
Such spatial distribution with fixed “spots” functioned at the illegal market-
places just like they did in their legal counterparts, where one’s own body and
objects “centrally marked . . . personal spaces [and] owned territories.” Magda
Thieß, for example, who found herself set up at the black market despite initial
reservations, spoke of her black marketeering “ ‘colleague’ right beside,” alluding
to a temporary yet stable spatial distribution.34
Goffman describes these situations in theoretical terms. They involve “situ-
ational territories” distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. This division
required the presence of the participant and could be disputed. The “personal
space” surrounding the potential seller became a sort of shop space open to poten-
tial buyers. At the same time, this space was exposed to “territorial attacks” from
potential vendors (especially those selling similar goods). This complex bodily
social form of black market organization, which was highly prone to conflict
(and had to do without certain regulations like market stand rights), affected the
“smallest possible personal space,” the body. “Injuries” to the established “terri-
tory of the self ” (important for one’s sense of self ) occurred when others got too
close, too aggressive with their voices or gesticulations, or violated (via unallowed
contact) a person’s “shell” (i.e., clothing or body).35
In interaction theory, the individual groups of merchants in the marketplaces
could be described as so-called F-formation systems.36 Such interaction clusters
come about “whenever two or more people sustain a spatial and orientational
relationship in which the space between them is one to which they have equal,
direct, and exclusive access.”37 As individuals have control over their own individ-
ual “transactional segment” defined by their bodies that they attempt to maintain
and defend, the space between two or more persons encountering one another
can be described as an “o-space.” This describes the spatiality in which the indi-
vidual transactional segments overlap to form a “joint transactional space.” The
most important act, trading, takes place in this space. Most interesting for the
investigation of these small group clusters or F-formation systems is the observa-
tion that they are able to retain their structures when a single participant leaves
the formation and is replaced by a new participant or when the remaining group
members renegotiate a new “o-space.” A behavioral code stands ready to enhance
member participation and stabilize the sites of interaction.38
As the groups of black marketeers met for the purpose of trading, the group-
ings formed vis- à-vis or L-forms of organization. This is a sign of “competing
pairs” (to be differentiated from “cooperating pairs” or “separately acting pairs”),
140 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Figure 4.4 Groups of merchants in a black market in Berlin (around 1946)

Source: LAB 1NK, Notstände nach 1945, Nr. 252899.

Figure 4.5 Schematic representation of the F-formation system

to whom Geertz’s concept of “intimate antagonists” aptly applies. Figure 4.4

exemplifies such F-formation systems. Figure 4.5 is a schematic representation
of this organization.
The pictures of the bartering situations show that evaluating partners’ goods
formed a closed gathering, so that the “o-space” grew smaller.39 While customers
investigated the goods, sellers appeared to be participating in this process in
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 141

Figure 4.6 Evaluating goods and negotiating in Berlin’s black market (around 1946)
Source: LAB 1NK, Versorgung/Schwarzer Markt, Nr. 252901.

reevaluating their own goods. This situation marked the point in time when bod-
ily contact was the closest between black market traders. Potential buyers touched
the goods handed to them for examination, turned the goods over and over, per-
haps even attempting to smell them, and then eventually handed them back to
the sellers before beginning or concluding price negotiations (see Figure 4.6).
In such situations, traders could not avoid touching one another. With bodies
screening the investigative moment, small groups formed around the market-
places; often a participant would join an initial group of two, looking over the
shoulder of the bartering partners, pressing them slightly from behind. Naturally,
this led to conflicts as the original small “buffer zone” (the “r-space”) became
smaller and was occasionally “violated.” If black marketeers had their goods on
their bodies—for example, in the pockets of their overcoats—then the inspection
of the goods resulted in relatively intimate contact between buyer and seller.40
For many participants, meandering among thousands and thousands of peo-
ple and withstanding the physical encounters involved in the exchange situation
were very problematic. Many black marketeers described these feelings of insecu-
rity, which correspond to a phenomenon that behavioral psychologists refer to as
“crowding stress.”41
This often manifested itself when one approached a small group on the mar-
gins of a market. Interested parties wandered about and then approached a single
person or a small group around a supplier, as Anna Fetting did. She “had no expe-
rience in such things” and was “somewhat queasy and nervous” when she reached
142 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

the market at Potsdamer Platz. Yet finally, she calmed her nerves. Her description
of her experience conveys the general atmosphere:

I walked towards a young Russian roughly my age and offered him my coat. He
didn’t want to have the coat, but he was very enthusiastic about my dress and said
repeatedly to me, “you take off, I buy, 1000 mark” . . . . Through sign language
I made it clear to the Russian that I wanted to give him the dress and that he
should wait a bit. I hurried to a set of ruins, always looking behind me to see if the
Russian was following me. Wearing only the overcoat, I brought him the dress and
received 1000 marks for it.42

Traders had to withstand physical contact in the black markets. Feelings of

shame and shyness could be a real problem. If intimate contact made traders feel
uneasy or distracted, they either had to avoid the market, work to overcome their
discomfort, or find someone unbothered by this to act as their proxy. Irmgard
Chambula, for example, who found the black market “a lot of fun,” traded on
behalf of a friend:

my longtime colleague Ille, too old-fashioned to consider visiting the market, still
had some old blouses from her adolescence . . . . I said to her, bring the things along,
perhaps I can get rid of them . . . . I barely had the blouses displayed on my arm
before they were all gone. Ille was very pleased when I . . . told her everything was
sold.43

The friend’s “old-fashioned” nature suggests an array of possible motives that

might have kept people from visiting the black market, from lack of knowledge
about the unusual practices and general shyness to fear of a violent attack. Vio-
lence could arise from close physical contact or from sexual aggression as the
boundary between trading goods and forms of situational prostitution was not
always clearly defined; some male participants (as well as many of the public
observers) sometimes simply assumed that female participants were prostitutes.
To give “a kiss every now and then” for food was common when trading goods.44
Of course, there were certain areas of concentration for prostitution. Neverthe-
less, women who were interested only in trading goods usually had to contend
with sexual solicitations and harassment as well.
It helped if one could assume a demonstratively laissez-faire attitude. One
of the terms most often employed for the movements in the marketplaces was
schlendern (to “loiter” or “meander”). On the one hand, this term carried positive
connotations that helped move the black market experience out of the context
of the bunker era into the normalcy of shopping. On the other hand, the term
aptly described the gait and attitude of the black market participants, who bal-
anced outward nonchalance with business acumen. Their aim was to engage in
trading as well as to signal non-involvement in case of a police raid. Addition-
ally, this “loitering” made it easier for black marketeers to make the rounds and
establish contacts, because both sides (seller and buyer) could go slower. This
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 143

slow approach was necessary to compensate for the lack of clear spatial parame-
ters, such as doors and counters, that one finds in normal stores. The slowness
was also necessary because there were no spatial definitions to expedite the search
for a particular good. Finally, this type of gait reflected the movement patterns of
inner-city shoppers that had been established before the war in large metropolises.
In this way, the black market became a sort of “department store on the street.”45
Over time, participants were able to master these approaches and contact sit-
uations and tended to do better the more often they engaged in them. Novices
visiting the black market were often lost and scared; they didn’t know how to
approach a potential bartering partner. As a rule, approaching traders and mak-
ing contacts followed certain patterns. In some cases, for instance, the seller called
out his goods—louder or softer, depending on the level of danger—by listing
his available goods. In other cases, a silent presentation of the goods sufficed,
although it was important for them to be able to disappear quickly into pock-
ets, bags, or suitcases if necessary. The transience of illegal trading was thus also
reflected in the presentation of the goods, as captured in many photographs.
Without a doubt, squalid living conditions essentially forced many partic-
ipants into trading, so that they could not afford the luxury of exaggerated
modesty. Nonetheless, the physical demands of the black market presented them
with great challenges. Out of necessity, one paid most attention to outward
appearances when inspecting a bartering partner—in contrast to the networking
process during the war. These included the partner’s clothing, which said some-
thing about the trading partner’s class, status, fashion sense, and the hygienic
condition of the goods. One also looked at the trader’s physical features. Old,
injured, and weak persons presented less danger in case of conflict. This was
important because the only authority participants could fall back on was their
physical strength. An overt display of self-confidence (based on the black mar-
keteer’s physique) could signal trust, but it could also indicate black market
experience, which, when coupled with an ostentatious show of jewelry, could
mark him as a “hustler” or “sly fox” and thus as potentially dangerous. The
inspection of the partner’s appearance was decisive for each black marketeer. This
inspection, unlike the situation in most retail shops or in the department stores,
applied above all to the potential partner in illegal trading and only secondarily
to the goods themselves.
In recent years there has been increased interest in sociological studies on
the role of trust in the “performative construction of markets.”46 For illegal
Berlin trading, “trust as a sedative in bartering relationships” was of fundamental
importance. In order to break down or at least to minimize the high “hur-
dles for bartering relationships” in the marketplaces, trading partners had to be
able to trust one another at least minimally, as trust was the foundation of all
interpersonal communicative action.47 For the most part, it was a performative,
self-promoting act on the part of one of the trading partners that signaled credi-
bility to the other. In response, the other trading partner was then motivated to
perform the same act.48 Because the black market had little institutional authority,
the success of the market largely depended upon the performative actions of the
144 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

bartering participants. In contrast to what economic models anticipate, “softer”

factors played more of a role than “rational” calculations in traders’ decisions.
Participants’ economic practices were determined by spontaneous judgments,
fleeting impressions, and incidental evidence.49 What the research literature con-
siders special features of “market relationships in modern societies” applies equally
to the so-called anachronistic conditions of Berlin’s black markets. Precisely these
conditions demand “risky performance without always the aid of exact knowl-
edge of the trading partners, without long-standing trade relationships, and are
based on only the incomplete observation of trading activity with others in an
insecure and lawless situation.”50
Using play-acting, suppliers were able to signal their trust to buyers and thus
put themselves in the position of being able to conjure up the prerequisites for a
successful business deal. In a sense, these performances fabricated the successful
exchange of trust before the bartering transaction began. The barriers for trading
activity were lowered on the one side as the gestures led to a “calming of the trust-
giver” and gave the trading situation a definitive frame. These also represented the
first move in the trading game, “into which the participants took turns drawing
themselves further step by step.”51 Some possible strategies of performative pre-
sentation fall under the following categories: binding, congruent expectations,
competence, and integration. In the case of the binding strategy, a lengthier
trading discussion made it increasingly difficult for the buyer to terminate the
discussion, since the principle of reciprocity demanded a response after the seller
had invested so much time in trade negotiations. Congruent expectations could
be raised by presenting a shared similarity with the potential buyer. Terminating
negotiations with trading partners with whom a situational familiarity or trust
had been established based on similar lifestyle symbols was much more difficult
when one dealt with members of a different social class. In Berlin’s illegal black
markets, the supplier’s investment in signals of competence was an ambivalent
issue. Signaling too much familiarity with the peculiarities of the black mar-
ket could be understood as hustler competence, which raised the partner’s fear
of deceit. Consequently, signals that testified to the trader’s integrity were more
important. Sometimes this could be achieved more effectively when one did not
show too much familiarity with the etiquette of the black market and, rather,
conveyed a certain naivety or insecurity.52
In order to be able to apply such methods, one had to participate regularly
in the market. Experienced participants used the strategies described, learned
from their disappointments, and slowly but surely professionalized bonafide black
marketeering routines. When one repeatedly traded with the same partners, one
fulfilled an economic goal; partners who repeatedly engaged in business transac-
tions with one another also created an opportunity to balance out the advantages
or disadvantages of one transaction with the next one.
Furthermore, repetitive trading—with or without the same partner—gave par-
ticipants the chance to gain experience and thus to gain an edge and improve their
position in a volatile market fraught with deceitful practices. Repetition meant
learning. Only when one had become a regular trader did one acquire the chance
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 145

to correct past mistakes and become a serious business partner who knew the ins
and outs of illegal trading. Once initiated, participants quickly structured their
trading activity. The basic methods of illegal trading (like information gathering)
became a part of their everyday routines quite quickly.53
However, this space of a relatively stable and thus secure trading routine
did not remain undisturbed. Above all, the unrelenting efforts of prosecuting
authorities to combat these practices made life difficult for illegal traders.

Power Vacuums and New Black Market Policies

The courts would continue dealing with black market cases long after the
currency reform. One example should make this clear: Leo Weissenberg was
convicted in March 1943 by the Berlin Special Court as a “person who had com-
mitted an offense against the War Economy Regulations,” and more than 16
years later, the first criminal division of the Berlin Court of Appeals reopened the
case.54 Early in 1959 the man’s daughter submitted an appeal to the Berlin court;
she wanted justice. What had he been convicted of? During the war Weissenberg
had sold some women’s and children’s coats as well as several meters of fabric
to someone who was indicted with him. Instead of charging textile points for
the goods, as required by the “point obligation” regulation introduced in 1942,
he had sold them for money. The judges of the Special Court sentenced him to
two years and three months. As the ruling of the Berlin Appeals Court tersely
recorded, he was “handed over on 16 July 1943 after partially serving his jail sen-
tence . . . to the Gestapo” and then was taken “to a concentration camp” where he
“passed away.” The daughter, living in London, referred in her appeal to the Law
for the Restitution of National Socialist Injustice. Yet she was only slightly and
partially successful. The Appeals Court reduced the sentence from two years and
three months to one year.
In their decision, the judges argued that the War Economy Regulations on
which the Special Court had based its verdict had not been a National Social-
ist regulation. In their words, the War Economy Regulations served “neither
to strengthen National Socialism nor did they aim to establish and implement
National Socialist ideas.” Rather, they had been issued “in order to protect the
vital needs of the population, to ensure the supply of goods, which were no
longer available in sufficient quantity as a result of the war.” The law there-
fore had served “the interests of a population in distress.” Further, there was no
evidence, they maintained, that Weissenberg’s status as a Jew had had any dis-
cernible impact on the Special Court’s verdict, as could be seen from the fact
that the person indicted with him, who was not Jewish and who was even a
Nazi Party member, had received just as harsh a sentence. Although the Appeals
Court was supposed to overturn convictions if the perpetrators had commit-
ted crimes to avoid the consequences of racial or other persecution, it ruled
that this was not the case in this instance. Although the judges assumed that
Weissenberg “had already suffered considerably from the existing persecution
at the time of the offense,” they refused to acknowledge any evidence that the
146 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

situation had been extraordinary. Nonetheless, the opinion of the court was
entirely self-contradictory. Elsewhere in the decision the Appeals Court stated
that “the Special Court [had] taken [Weissenberg’s race] into consideration as
something to increase . . . the sentence” so that “subjective considerations” had
come into it and admitted that the defendant “had been obliged to take special
precautions because of his race.”
The key argument in the Appeals Court decision was that the War Economy
Regulations had not been a Nazi regulation: the “regulations to secure the sup-
ply of the population with essential products in times of hardship” had also been
“applied in their full severity” after the “removal of the National Socialist regime”
and were not repealed in Berlin until July 26, 1949, with the passage of the Eco-
nomic Offenses Act. Indeed, the court continued, Council Control Law No. 50
of March 20, 1947, had amended and extended the War Economy Regulations,
even prescribing “a life sentence” for severe violations. If one looks not only at the
legal texts but also at the historical context and the legal practice at the time, it
becomes clear that this reasoning was a farce. From a legal perspective, however,
it was correct; the continuity of the sentencing framework illustrates the problem
of trying to control the black market, which was not specific to any individual
system.
On August 22, 1946, in a lecture entitled “Fighting Hustlers and Black
Marketeers,” broadcast by Sender Berlin, Strucksberg, the president of the
Appeals Court, in explaining contemporary “attitudes toward the administration
of justice” regarding illegal trading, called this “battle” an “important task” for
the justice system.55 Referring to black market trading as “the present very seri-
ous and very difficult situation,” he maintained that the system had to take up
“the battle against the hustlers relentlessly and ruthlessly and continue until these
have been destroyed root and branch.” Penalties, he felt, were not high enough
to act as a deterrent, so that “from the outset the large hustlers and their asso-
ciates in the black market merely [incorporate] the costs of potential penalties
into their price calculations.” The Allied headquarters had explicitly asked for a
better deterrent in their order of May 21. The sentences against those who “hus-
tle food and other black market traders,” Strucksberg argued, thus had to be “so
high that they worked as a deterrent.” The “intended atonement” could only be
achieved with fines so high “that the criminal not only does not profit, but rather,
just the opposite, has to suffer very severe losses . . . which under certain condi-
tions . . . should be expanded to confiscating his property.” In order to protect the
general public from criminal hustlers, “extenuating circumstances [should] take
a backseat to the consideration that absolutely every citizen of Berlin” should
receive the “food and other vital articles” he is entitled to by law. Strucksberg’s
reasoning, in this case, utilized the National Socialist category of harming the
community (Gemeinschaftsschädlichkeit) under different parameters.
As Strucksberg saw it, continuity was the key to the judiciary’s efforts to com-
bat and control the black market. Although he emphasized the independence of
the courts, it in no way contradicted their independence to remind “the judges
of their duty while administering justice, given the public’s extremely difficult
fight for food and sustenance . . . to help and always to keep in mind that in all
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 147

criminal cases . . . utmost severity in punishment and maximum speed in crim-

inal procedure is an imperative.” As he explained to the criminal judges at one
meeting, the poverty of the Berlin population required punishments of “utmost
severity.” Working together with the occupying powers, he had done everything
necessary to make it possible to speed up the court cases and “to check to see
that the sentences were not too mild.” Strucksberg concluded that “all those
unprincipled elements who especially by stealing, misappropriating, or embez-
zling farm goods” had unlawfully removed “essential and necessary food and basic
goods from a population seriously struggling to survive” should experience “severe
punishment.” This was the only way that the justice system could noticeably
contribute “something essential to the immediate and complete extermination of
black market trading.”
“Utmost severity” and “complete extermination”—these phrases constituted
the logical semantic development of the rigid policy against illegal trading that
National Socialists had publicized and practiced. However, since the Allies had
occupied the city, the policy, guidelines, and initiatives in the “battle against
hustlers” were no longer determined by Germans alone. Rather, the occupying
powers now had control. Berlin’s situation was especially peculiar, with the rep-
resentatives of five nations—each with rather different experiences with illegal
trading—participating in formulating an anti-black market policy. Prohibition
in the USA, shortages in the Soviet planned economy, and rationing in wartime
France and Great Britain were their respective points of reference, no doubt mak-
ing the black market seem familiar.56 These different experiences were likely the
reason that the Allies developed rather different ideas about how one could and
should fight the black market. Indeed, the black market policy ultimately became
an integral part of the increasing competition between the systems that reflected
a bipolar world order in the streets of Berlin and was also fought out there.57
On the one hand, this resulted from differing understandings of politics, soci-
ety, and views of mankind. Whereas the Soviet occupiers, shortly after they took
the city, began to send the black marketeers they caught directly to work assign-
ments, the Western Allies at first looked on, somewhat baffled, and then decided
to follow a criminal justice procedure regulated by prosecuting authorities.58 The
meager results of long negotiations to reach a common position found expression
in the so-called Control Council Law No. 50, which took until March 20 to be
signature-ready and contained little that was new. Its three articles dealt solely
with infringements by government officials who oversaw the administration and
implementation of the rationing process, which were to be punished by fines or
prison sentences.59
The drastic way of dealing with “hustlers” and “black market traders” of the
Soviets (and thus the Soviet-controlled Berlin police) soon became routine in the
Eastern parts of the city and in the Soviet Occupied Zone. In East Berlin, the
court trials against individuals were used to “morally discredit capitalism,” with
repeated references to the way that black market trading displayed “inconsiderate
advantage-taking” of the market reality.60
Yet it took a while for this image of the hustler to be consolidated and
employed in East-West confrontations. Initially, the Allies simply responded to
148 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

everyday problems in their measures to combat the black market. At first, and
especially because of the chaos of Allied policies, the Allies largely built on
National Socialist policies in both the legal foundations, which in some parts
changed and in some parts kept Nazi regulations, and in police measures to pur-
sue and prosecute black marketeers.61 The power vacuum, the legal uncertainty,
and the staffing issues associated with establishing a police force free of National
Socialists created broad insecurities in how to proceed. Especially in the begin-
ning, this made the job of the Berlin police extremely arduous. A note from
September 18, 1945, comparing police surveillance to fighting windmills makes
this clear.
A young man who, although only a candidate for the police force, had been
appointed head of a price monitoring agency, had shared his lament with the
leading department. He “explained that under the given circumstances, espe-
cially given the current personnel conditions in his department, proper police
work was impossible.” For one thing, the price monitoring agency and the Trade
and Safety Supervision Service did not have sufficient personnel. He also men-
tioned a lack of expertise in the area of price laws and material police law. On top
of this, what he called the “social classes working against the law in these mat-
ters” often proved to be first-class professionals and rather smart characters. All
in all, the young police officer described the status quo as a conflict between “an
understaffed police force unburdened with specialized knowledge . . . against an
extensive, professional, rather knowledgeable circle of lawbreakers in its efforts to
create order in what is currently an especially important area for the general pub-
lic.” Under the given circumstances he saw no chance of carrying out his job even
somewhat successfully. These well-trained professionals had existed “in sufficient
quantities” in the police headquarters before May 1, 1945. To replace these would
be very difficult, especially because “for reasons pertaining to staffing policy one
should refrain from reemploying former policemen.” The note included com-
ments on over 20 individual cases that dramatically exposed the shortcomings of
previous police efforts. In concluding, the head of the monitoring agency, clearly
overwhelmed, asked that his note not be passed on to trade supervision or to the
head of the department “so as not to worsen their morale for further work.”62
In their helplessness, the authorities also attempted to reign in the black mar-
ket using the classical tools of the press and information office. In a broadcast
address, the head of the Press Office of the Berlin Police Headquarters, Alfred
Fritzsche, told Berliners that they should not rely on the police but should
themselves become active in the battle against black market trading and protect
themselves against illegal business activity.63 Fritzsche noted that it was “striking
how easy some people make it for the bandits” and that newspapers carried sto-
ries of “fake policemen” who weaseled their way into searches and confiscations
by showing false identification cards every day. In a dramatic warning about the
dangers accompanying black market trading, he noted the “dark end” of many
“[d]ark dealings with acquaintances active in the black market” and referred to
a case from Neukölln where “just recently two men had been robbed and mur-
dered . . . who had engaged in black market trading in their apartment with two
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 149

people with whom they were not acquainted.” Further, he exhorted listeners to
ask “people who repeatedly show up in a house . . . without a certain purpose
being apparent . . . calmly and respectfully why they are there.” Also, he advised
that “in light of the days becoming shorter,” lamps be put up because “light is the
enemy of all dark characters!”
This warning about the dangers of black market trading, however, could be
regarded as a topos of futility. “Vigorous steps should be taken to rouse pub-
lic opinion against the growing black market through propaganda in the press,
in films, and on the radio,” demanded a report of the British Building Indus-
tries Branch in the summer of 1946. “Trade Union Organizations should be
used to the full. The United States Authorities should be invited to take sim-
ilar steps.”64 These repeated appeals largely served to illustrate the authorities’
failure to effectively combat the trading.
Of course, such appeals were obviously insufficient in a city filled with public
sites for black market trading and hustlers. Accordingly, the authorities pursued
a two-track strategy, which carried on National Socialist practices in its repressive
elements, even though penalties were less severe than those imposed by the Nazi
justice system.65 In some respects, however, the procedures did break with the
practices from before 1945.
First, the authorities insisted, similar to the authorities before 1945, on pros-
ecuting all black market crimes strictly. In their opinion, these crimes were
incompatible with the existential interests of society, leaving few mitigating
circumstances. Although a zero-tolerance policy might not have been enforce-
able, the authorities considered it desirable. A second track was new: authorities
attempted to control the existing desire to barter and trade by legalizing some of
the bartering. One was not allowed to trade objects of value or food in officially
recognized and supervised swap markets; one could, however, swap basic com-
modities. At the same time, criminal prosecution measures were realigned and
expanded.

Criminal Prosecution and Symbolic Politics

From August 1945, the Berlin police believed they were once again in a position
to fight the black market in a somewhat orderly fashion, principally by means
of regular, sometimes daily, police raids in which up to 1,500 people would be
arrested. They were taken to the police headquarters on Dircksenstrasse, where a
large courtyard, made available by destruction from bombing, provided sufficient
space for the large numbers. The goods were taken from the black marketeers,
who were registered and in serious cases sometimes brought before a summary
court. Most only received a fine. Serious or repeat offenders sometimes received
jail terms.66
Everyday market activity was only slightly impaired by this. During raids mar-
ket activity moved elsewhere for a short time, to the next marketplace or to side
streets. As soon as the people were taken away, the traders returned, soon joined
by those who had been taken away in the raid but who had not been arrested.
150 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

The Berlin police’s talk of vigorous criminal prosecution referred therefore not
so much to their success but rather to their efforts. Accordingly, both the raids
and public statements need to be understood above all as symbolic and verbal
appeals.67
This was true, for example, of what the Deputy Head of the Police and the
Head of the Department of Commerce Noack said when in May 1946 he spoke
publicly about black market trading. The theme of the event was “Down with
the prices—fight price gouging and hustlers.” Noack referred to some keywords
from headquarters in trying to convince his listeners that the police were suc-
cessful in their struggle against the street hustlers of Berlin. Immediately after
the new German police had been reorganized, he began, they “had started to
fight price gouging and hustlers, with all the means at their disposal” and would
“continue, with great determination, to root out what is left of the hustling.”
Wanting to make an impression, he went so far as to claim that the police had
succeeded “within the course of a few months” in “eliminating . . . up to 80%”
of black market trading.68 Without explaining how he arrived at this number,
Noack praised the smooth cooperation between the Price Monitoring Agency,
the Trade and Safety Supervision Service, and the police. Indeed, the newly orga-
nized Price Monitoring Agency, which had begun its activities “all of a sudden at
the beginning of the month,” had registered 1,322 offenses in the preceding 14
days. Over half of these had occurred in the Soviet sector, and the fewest, namely
112, had occurred in the French sector. Those who committed offenses against
price laws were handed over to the local or district Trade and Safety Supervision
Service. Some were fined or had their trading certificate revoked. A significant
number, Noack claimed, were also arraigned before the appropriate courts and,
when convicted, sent to jail. Noack described “price profiteering, price goug-
ing, and the black market” as the “worst curse on the economic health of the
Berlin population.” In his closing remarks he appealed to his listeners: “help in
the struggle against hustlers and price gouging, support the police and the Trade
and Safety Supervision Service, and insure amongst yourselves that every Berliner
acknowledges this cancer and helps the police fight it.”69
The vice commander of the municipal police, Wagner, said something sim-
ilar in an interview with the radio station Sender Berlin on August 6, 1946, a
large part of which was devoted to police measures against the black market.70
Emphasizing the success of the measures, which he attributed to the thorough
and resolute efforts of the police, he almost appeared to believe that the black
market would soon be a thing of the past. After they had discussed the orga-
nizational problems of police work, radio reporter Peter-Sven Schlettow asked
Wagner to summarize what had been accomplished by “the numerous large raids
which have been carried out in the last few days.” Wagner replied that black mar-
ket trading and hustlers had “almost completely disappeared from the streets,”
and the new “battle” was now to “remove this criminal activity from the bars and
restaurants and dark alleys.”
The optimistic picture Wagner drew here did not, of course, correspond to
the reality that the black market continued to flourish in the city’s streets and
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 151

squares. Furthermore, the police had difficulties because many people did not
trust them. This problem went back in part to the discourse on bartering after
1918, which had questioned the legitimacy of the police. And policemen were
themselves active as black marketeers. Accordingly, an already suspicious pub-
lic fell back on well-known discursive strategies, modernizing the old motif
of general mistrust in state agencies and their questionable trading practices.
This mistrust was directed above all against the police and the Allies, bringing
together defensiveness against higher-ups and the experience of humiliation in
dealing with the victors. The mode of articulating this mistrust, too, was quite
familiar.
When the machinations of official agencies became known, talk quickly
turned to scandal. Under the title “Shady Business Transactions of a Police
Department Head. Confiscated on the Black Market and—Passed On,” Der
Morgen reported in January 1946 on policemen participating in black market
transactions. Two leading officers had been caught attempting give an acquain-
tance the black market rugs and radios they had confiscated.71 Alarmed by this
report, the police headquarters inquired in the police division mentioned in the
article who “had floated” the article and who the department head might be who
was also mentioned.72 Although the journalist portrayed the incident as “sensa-
tional,” he also claimed that considering “the energy with which our courts are
proceeding against these cases of corruption,” one could assume that such cases
would be “completely cleared up and . . . eliminated once and for all.”
This public image that the police and courts presented of themselves was cer-
tainly well received by the media. Interestingly, the journalist used this case as a
starting point for a few general reflections on the role of the police in the black
market. He applied a variation of that well-known distinction between the “big”
and the “little man” to the ranks of the police and the prosecutors. Although he
had no sympathy for corruption among senior officials, he defended the “lower
officials” who might not understand all the details of such matters. To illustrate
this difference, he narrated the story of a police candidate: “sadly the boots were
far too large for the person who had received them. He therefore decided to swap
them and went to the black market—an unusual move for a police candidate!
And there he stumbled into a police raid.” The story suggests more a lovable fool
than someone who had broken the law. And the reporter praised the decision of
the summary court, which found the candidate not guilty.73
But was this popular differentiation between “ordinary folk” and “great
scoundrels,” because it matched the self-perception of most of market partic-
ipants, not responsible for diminishing the success of the criminal prosecution?
Did legalization not offer better chances for removing the fertile ground for illegal
trade?

Legalization and Initial Confrontations

Criminal prosecution was the first element in the authorities’ two-pronged strat-
egy in their battle against “hustlers” and the black market; the second was to
152 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

legalize trading by setting up legal swap markets. These had a clear set of rules
and were tightly regulated and controlled by the police.
The first “Market Regulations for Swap Markets,” published by order of the
Allied Forces Headquarters, came into effect already in October 1945. It stated
that “only the direct exchanges of used goods from private ownership” was per-
mitted at swap markets, “during which one item was exchanged for another.”
Money was only “permitted in this regard” as was necessary to “make up for the
difference in value between the traded items.” The value of the items bartered
was to “be within 75% of the price for similar new articles in 1939 (cut-off date
August 30, 1939).” Furthermore, “food, drinks, and tobacco of all sorts as well as
precious metals (were) banned.” “Commercial trading” and “trading new goods”
were strictly prohibited. The remaining conditions were intended to keep markets
operating smoothly; they set forth the well-known parameters of a market with
governmental oversight such as market hours and rules of behavior. Ultimately,
access to the market was supposed to be regulated through entry tickets costing
one Reichsmark.74 However, the very first experiences with this legalization tool
would prove sobering.
On August 30, 1945, in one of the first broadcasts of the new radio station,
Sender Berlin, in which “hustlers” had been accused of being “parasitic” elements,
the announcer referred to new, “effective measures” the municipal authorities had
taken “to meet the very human need to trade goods.”75 “[A]n official, public
swap market” was to be held on the grounds of the “private weekly market” on
Brunnenstrasse from September 4. Every Tuesday and Friday between 9 a.m. and
5 p.m., every “civilian [would be able to] either sell or exchange used goods, with
the exception of food and alcohol, gold and silver, and other precious metals.”
This arrangement was to prevent “goods being withdrawn from effective public
control.”
Many Berliners were well acquainted with the deficiencies of these measures.
A report by the Berlin station, which described in detail the swap market on
Brunnenstraße, spelled out the problems with these efforts to legalize the trad-
ing of used goods as indicated in “numerous letters” by listeners complaining
about market “conditions.” One of the letters was from Ludwig Oberreuter
from Neukölln, who expressed his disappointment that the legal swap market
seemed to be more of a black market: “When one demands 800 to 1000 marks
for second-hand shoes, or 4000 marks for second-hand suits, or 200 marks for
stockings, these are not healthy and sound conditions. We are not helped by
this.”76
The complaints did little to change things. Attempts to exclude certain cate-
gories of goods and to establish a framework for prices linked to prewar levels did
not reflect the realities of the relationship between supply and demand like the
black markets did. That the swap markets did not bring what the Allied agencies
and the Berlin police had hoped for was one thing; it was quite a different matter
that they even bolstered the black markets because they provided ideal opportuni-
ties for illegal traders to make contacts. It was impossible for market supervisors to
determine whether bartering transactions adhered to market regulations, so this
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 153

instrument to fight the black markets actually engendered a new black market
infrastructure.
In the middle of 1947, although the Allied Command had closed six of the
swap markets because they were so chaotic, Friedrichshain and Mitte remained
black market trading centers. As the police inspectorate of Lichtenberg recorded
in June 1948, the black market moved into the gaps these closings generated—“if
only to a smaller extent.” This was not at all surprising as the markets usually were
close to main transport hubs or were centrally located. According to the police,
large crowds made it easier for black marketeers “to disappear quickly into the
broad mass of people.”77
In the part of the city that would become East Berlin, HO shops (Handel-
sorganisationsläden, shops regulated by the state trade authority) constituted the
second attempt to legalize trading and also ultimately failed. The shops were soon
considered “little islands of the West in the East,” where rationed goods were
freely available although vastly overpriced, at least in the beginning. In truth, the
HO shops simply set up a second system for shopping alongside the rationed
economy. By means of expensive products, this system was supposed to prevent
illegal trading and to absorb purchasing power. In the end, the HO shops were
used to close the gap between financially strong market participants, who could
afford to buy goods at black market prices, and all others, who simply did not
have the money or the means to buy such goods. This system was thus diamet-
rically opposed to the ideals of equality and justice of the East German ruling
party, the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei, SED). In the long
run, this distribution system especially hurt those with a lower income who could
not afford to go to the HO shops, not least because it removed high-quality
products from “normal” distribution paths. Consequently, the HO system came
to symbolize the regime’s failure to develop a successful policy for supplying the
population; it demarcated a new social division.78
Over time, the different economic and political concepts in the West and
East to combat and control the black market came to the fore, rendering single
cases less important than questions of principle, in part because the different
authorities pursued the cases with different degrees of intensity.79 For exam-
ple, the Department for the Municipal Economy and the Soviet-dominated
Division IV of the Berlin police agreed to keep official channels short, sup-
posedly to counter black market trading with effective retail businesses. They
established the “Commission for Prohibiting Commerce,” in which officials
of the Criminal Investigation Department and the Trade Inspection Service
as well as trade union representatives participated. The commission was “to
review . . . all the processes of the Trade Inspection Service and Division K,
which (investigated) the criminal offenses of businessmen” to see “if in the
interest of the realization of the two-year plan it was necessary to terminate
(sic!) immediately the trader who is a self-employed businessman.” The district
offices were responsible for revoking business licenses. The anti-black market
policy was thus adjusted to be in line with the SED campaigns against the
private sector. The efforts to combat and control the black market became a
154 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

welcome excuse and starting point to harass the private sector out of ideological
motivation.80
The efforts to combat and control the black market became more than merely
measures to establish a public order that people trusted so that everyday life could
resume. After 1946, they also pertained to negotiating sociopolitical concepts and
stable spaces within the context of the Cold War.81 Against this backdrop, the
cases of black marketeering in which the Allies could accuse each other of par-
ticipating in and promoting black market trading became a political issue unto
themselves. Some of these accusations involved individual cases—for example,
when individual Allied soldiers were caught trading in the black market. Yet accu-
sations the Allies made against each other that the other side was systematically
intervening in the market to hamper their efforts to bring about order were much
more explosive.

Conflicts
The public Berlin black markets were sites of conflict and at times violence, even
at the level of everyday encounters. In order to avoid violent fights between mem-
bers of the Allied forces and German participants, the Berlin police generally
carried out raids. The military police and the Allied soldiers usually stayed in the
background to “cover” their German “colleagues.”
All the same, scuffles and brawls often broke out. The situation was especially
precarious when German policemen who were supposed to combat illegal trad-
ing encountered occupying soldiers. This happened, for example, in April 1946.
In a letter to the British headquarters in Charlottenburg, Soviet-appointed Berlin
Police Chief Markgraf complained about the “mistreatment of a policeman” by
“members of the British Occupying Army.” Obviously drunk, the British sol-
diers had thrown the police officer “to the ground, punching him and kicking
him” because he had apparently gotten in their way while carrying out his rou-
tine checks.82 Although such incidents always had to be settled through official
channels, the police chief ’s intervention nonetheless signals that the whole mat-
ter had a political dimension. This history of the Berlin police and their role
in the division of the city suggests that Markgraf readily built conflicts such as
this one into his confrontational strategy.83 There is no record of any British
response.
There is a record, however, of a much more significant story that took place on
the next higher level documenting the systematic involvement of Soviet institu-
tions in the Berlin black market. Starting in 1946, a number of Soviet companies
in the Soviet Occupation Zone—in part local branches of firms headquartered
in Moscow—were involved in domestic and foreign trading. These firms dis-
tributed goods and exported to the countries of the Soviet bloc and the West.
“Rasno Export,” the best known of these, was soon notorious among Berliners
for supposedly taking advantage of the needy by buying up valuables and pay-
ing with cigarettes at black market prices. British Agencies described “Rasno”
correctly when they wrote:
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 155

The Rasno agency is directly responsible to the Ministry of Foreign Trade of the
USSR in Moscow . . . . Rasno maintains headquarters in Berlin [and] has the appar-
ent purpose of earning dollars and other effective international means of payment.
It is responsible for exports of German merchandise and valuables to foreign coun-
tries; and many of its transactions affect the German black market in a direct or
indirect manner.84

In November 1947, the British Economics Division of the Trade and Com-
merce Branch in Berlin compiled the results of a comprehensive investigation
into Rasno’s system of trade.85 The investigators drew up the distribution system
in graphic form so that their superiors could get a better overview (Figure 4.7).
The complex distribution system consisted of various groups that sold tobacco
goods at black market prices, thereby injecting the goods into the Berlin market,
paid with valuables or in foreign currencies. The British authorities classified the
effect of this large business venture overseen by the Soviets as rather explosive:
“There can be no doubt that Rasno has been channeling a sizeable volume of

Figure 4.7 Distribution system for Rasno cigarettes

156 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

goods into the black market, although the agency does not seem to appear to
be a direct seller of Marks.” What especially upset the Trade and Commerce
Branch was the fact that “the size of the Rasno supply of cigarettes and other
goods and the official protection granted to their distribution have given the
black market a status that makes prosecuting black market trading difficult.” The
British observers pointed to the acquittal of some black marketeers in the Soviet
sector. The judge had written of his grounds:

In almost all public squares of the city . . . food, drink, and clothing are being sold
openly at black market prices. This occurs with the knowledge . . . of the competent
German and Allied authorities, who clearly tolerate it. It would be a parody if the
market ordinance of the Berlin Magistrate were invoked to punish persons who are
compelled by the conditions of the time to sell necessities of life, at a time when
black market trading is flourishing in the city, and tolerated by the authorities.86

The example of the Rasno company made it clear to the British agencies that
it would not be easy to combat and control the black market. The illegal market
was not an enclosed entity in a clearly defined space. In this respect, the findings
of the British investigators, who had concentrated above all on exposing “large-
scale black marketeering,” contradicted in certain ways their understanding of the
black market as “organized crime” or rather confirmed it, if one was willing to see
the Soviet state as a part of it. Black marketeering in Berlin had not only been
embedded for a long time in a network of international trade; it had also become
a tool in the political confrontation between the two sides of the Iron Curtain,
which would pull postwar Berlin into the center of international attention.
Consequently, efforts to combat and control the black market had not only to
address administrative deficiencies and economic policy decisions that, given the
chaotic postwar conditions, favored rationing and economic management over
liberalizing the market. Rather, these efforts also had to take into account the
black market’s suitability for political agitation across sector borders.
One Allied measure that differed from the policies of the National Socialists
was the selective legalization of trading. Otherwise, elements of continuity pre-
vailed both in the measures themselves and in their impact. In terms of the big
picture, neither the Allies nor the National Socialists were ultimately able to con-
trol the black market. The structure of black market was flexible and adapted
easily to changing conditions and the shifting threat of prosecution; participants
assumed the risk of arrest and fines. Even if this may have deterred some who
only occasionally traded at Gesundbrunnen or Alexanderplatz, the professional
traders regarded this as one of their occupational hazards and incorporated it into
their pricing and manner of conducting business.
Thus, on the one hand, there were obvious structural reasons for the Allies’ dif-
ficulty in developing a coherent and effective anti-black market policy. Foremost
among these was the inherited problem of the shortages and their management.
But there were other factors as well, including the occupiers’ own involvement
in the trading. The marshal himself was a black marketeer—this configuration
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 157

undermined the credibility of those who claimed to be fighting the black mar-
ket and, along with the mass nature of the hustle and bustle of the marketplace,
fostered a certain nonchalance among Berliners in dealing with illegal trading.
This nonchalance was, however, always endangered, not only because the trading
remained illegal but also because of new arrivals to the scene that black market
participants would now encounter directly.

New and Old Participants

Russian and American Occupation Soldiers: The Victors as Trading
Partners
When American President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin on June 26,
1963, the people’s enthusiasm hardly knew any bounds. The reporter of the
Süddeutsche Zeitung described the trip to Germany as a “four-day mass rap-
ture.” In his study of the Kennedy visit, Andreas Daum has written that the
trip was a “pop-cultural, interactive performance, difficult to control.” The per-
formance found the right balance between exuberance and compliance, thus
illustrating the “degree of political Westernization of West Germany” and the
maturation of Federal Republic’s democracy.87 In Daum’s view, the Berlin Airlift
was another event that positively influenced the relationship between Berliners
and the Western superpower. Having begun in the summer of 1948, it marked
a “psycho-strategical turning point” and strengthened the “special relationship”
between America and Berlin.88
Merely 18 years after the war had ended, Berliners in the western part of the
city celebrated the visit of the highest-ranking representative of the former enemy,
the young American president. Two days after Kennedy’s visit, on June 28, the
Soviet head of state, Nikita Khrushchev, visited East Berlin. This was, so to speak,
the answer to Kennedy’s trip, employing a logic of symbolic acts characteristic of
Berlin. For the entire Cold War, the city was a site for the struggle between East
and West, both real and symbolic. Khrushchev was likewise received with enthu-
siasm. However, the mobilization of the masses in the East was largely controlled
from above.89 Although the relationship of the population in both German states
to their respective Allied power(s) was never without tension, it was especially
problematic in the East. This had a history. Berliners welcomed Khrushchev as
the representative not only of the former enemy but also of a “race” that had
been denounced as “subhuman” not long before. National Socialist propaganda
had stirred up and promoted latent antipathies and stereotypes during the war.
The National Socialist atrocity propaganda, for example, had described the Soviet
Union and the approaching Red Army as barbaric butchers.90 The accounts of the
popular morale from the Wehrmacht propaganda office had regularly registered
the population’s fear of acts of revenge and noted the “desire . . . that Anglo-
Americans reach Berlin before the Soviets.”91 Indeed, the occupying soldiers of
the Western armies were somewhat surprised when Berliners greeted them with
cheers. Under these circumstances, the official non-fraternization policy could
158 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

not be enforced.92 Of course, the positive reception of the Americans also resulted
from the experiences Berliners had had with the Russian occupiers immediately
after the end of the war. Mass rapes, especially, were etched deeply into the col-
lective memory, and it was often impossible to deal publicly—or even privately
in an adequate way—with this past.93
The situation had reversed for the defeated Berliners when the Red Army cap-
tured the city and the Allies moved in to occupy it. “The only carefree people,”
noted a reporter of the Berlin Telegraf in March 1947, “are the soldiers of the
occupying powers.” For them, a trip in the Metro was a fun diversion whereas
“the former privates . . . are probably thinking back to the time when they were
the occupying power,” when they were the “carefree and lighthearted” ones.94 The
reporter, thus, pointed out the peculiar situation that the occupiers had become
the occupied, that the conquerors had become the conquered. What exactly the
Telegraf reporter meant by the “carefree and lighthearted” nature of the occupa-
tion in Europe remained his secret. At any rate, he regarded the occupiers’ life as
quite comfortable. Maybe he had some concrete notion of the comforts available
to a large part of the occupying regime because the occupation by the German
Army had opened a multitude of economic possibilities for soldiers and bureau-
crats behind the line.95 An entire pack of “Eastern hyenas,” as business employees
and the families of civil servants had been called, had enriched themselves at
the expense of the population of the occupied areas. A secret report from 1943
noted that “bartering” had been “the only thing which [had even interested] a
large percentage of the clerks working in the Ukraine.”96 Another observer com-
pared the steady spread of “smuggling enterprises” in the Ukraine with “Negro
tribes ‘trading’ glass beads for ivory.”97 In the occupied territories, members of the
occupying administration as well as the Wehrmacht, police, and private firms had
participated intensely in the illegal trade.98 The polycratic coexistence of different
agencies, the disparity of supply and demand between the rich and the poor in
the occupied areas, and the authority of the German occupiers had provided ideal
conditions for extensive illegal bartering of food and luxury goods.
But maybe the Telegraf reporter was also projecting his observations of the
Allied occupation back into war times. Most Berliners experienced the “new mas-
ters” and the occupation as humiliating. “Then, to my horror, it became clear to
me,” wrote one woman, “that we were no longer Germans, that Germany no
longer existed, that we had become the underlings of the respective victorious
powers, and that every German had become a nothing.”99 That the Allies required
trained nurses to report for compulsory labor service was “proof ” in her eyes that
Germans were no longer regarded as “independent human beings.” What had
happened to make such a substantial part of the Berlin population respond so
positively to the visits of the American president and the Soviet head of state
18 years after the end of the war—even if one takes the politically engineered
mobilization in the east into account?
The airlift in the Western section was perhaps the most important symbol of
external assistance, one that helped Germans dismantle their mistrust of their
former enemy. This spectacular action was, however, only one especially charged
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 159

symbolic event in a broad contemporary discourse, in which different practices

of giving and taking were negotiated. These reflected Germans’ understanding of
their roles in relation to the occupying powers. This context of meaning became
the most important frame of reference for anyone considering the relationship
between the victors and the losers. Since the occupation of the city, very different
experiences and very different interpretations of these experiences existed side by
side: on the one hand, there were rapes, thefts, plundering, and other forms of
taking possession, and, on the other, there were experiences of being supplied
food and presents; there were communal celebrations, and love relationships.
As situations in which services and goods were traded, the bartering transactions
in the Berlin black markets between Allied personnel and Germans lay some-
where between these two poles. Due to this, they were especially important both
in the everyday experiences of the time as well as in the memories of the contem-
poraries. Whenever German observers spoke about black market trading with
the occupying powers, they were simultaneously thematizing power relationships
and experiences of power and powerlessness. The judgments of the new rulers
fluctuated between thankfulness and reproach, between relief and horror.
The economic potency of the victors was immediately apparent to Berliners
in postwar daily life. Although the victors did not exchange ivory for glass beads,
their prosperity compared to Germans’ dire need made unfair exchange a very
important factor in many contemporary descriptions of black marketeering. The
reports of German bartering partners who had had to exchange valuable goods
for food articulated their sense of their partners having too many advantages: in
contrast to the “primitives,” to whom the “glass beads” had meant something,
they saw simply that their exchange rates were unfavorable.
The peculiarity of trading between German participants and “foreign” soldiers
becomes clear when one considers the initial situation. The precondition for trad-
ing was that “the weapons were silent.” Independent of the conflicts that would
later arise between the black marketeers on both sides, contemporaries viewed the
bartering situation always also as the beginning of a new phase: the quiet after the
battle and the newly acquired peace—irrespective of how insecure it might still
have been.100
If, up to the last days of the war, many city-dwelling civilians had more or
less perpetually had to take cover, they afterward found it safe to move about
in a much larger area of the city, even though restrictions remained in place.
Of course, many dangers persisted, such as curfews and controls and assaults by
the “victors,” so that they still could not use the full space of the city worry-
free everywhere as in peacetime. It took some time for the severe trauma caused
by the war to subside.101 All the same, there were no more bombs falling and
only sporadic shooting. In these circumstances, civilians still only went out into
the streets when absolutely necessary, such as to stand in line for water, but it
was also safer than before. In many respects, one can say that the city dwellers
gradually began to reappropriate the urban space. Scenes in public space figure
most prominently in the memories of contemporaries, suggesting that everyday
life was getting back to normal; this meant primarily that the “inexorability of
160 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

death in battle” as “the central primary experience, which all survivors had had”
was receding into the background.102
Gertrud Heidelberg kept a very detailed, nearly daily diary, which captured
the changes in everyday life from April 21 to July 28, 1945. Descriptions of
the different spaces, which reflect the shifting possibilities of using them, appear
in almost all her entries.103 For Heidelberg, the cellar was synonymous with the
“state of siege.” In contrast, the street—the site of shootings and sexual assaults by
soldiers—became the space that first signaled a fragile normalization. On May 8,
she had written that “one doesn’t want to go outside, the streets and the houses
look so terrible,” but this picture changed considerably in the following days.
Clearing rubble, running errands, and meeting acquaintances took place in the
streets. After the former retreat into the cellar, she perceived the first steps into
public space as an idyll, even if a grotesque one: “everywhere these ugly ruins and
in the chaos the blackbird sings its goodnight song.” The street remained a site
of “ugliness,” but it also functioned as a space for resuming everyday routines
interrupted by the war:

life is starting once again to be normal. In the morning we go and get water. One
attempts to prepare something to eat. From two to five in the afternoon there is
street work, from which one becomes tired, and one comes home dirty. One washes
up and—above all—rests.

These rhythms created a pattern to be seen and noted, a space between work-
ing during the day and relaxing in the evening, the first stages of normalization.
The image of the blackbird singing its “goodnight song” already suggests this
process.
Yet this process did not take place overnight. Rapes by members of the Red
Army and other forms of assault caused many men and women to prefer to
remain in hiding or to only dare “to go outside” for short periods104 — at least
until the fall of 1945. Only after the number of assaults had decreased consider-
ably could one speak of a somewhat peaceful everyday urban life, even though it
did not achieve the normalcy of previous or of later years; murders, abduction, et
cetera, occurred fairly regularly up through the late 1940s.105
In this context, many observers regarded the public black markets as one of
the greatest successes. Although some contemporaries, to be sure, described ille-
gal trading as abnormal or even dangerous, many increasingly described the lively
character of the marketplace, its hustle and bustle. Many city dwellers experi-
enced the public black market primarily as a social event.106 Eyewitness Rosa
Baer recorded in her memoirs,

it was once again a wonderful Sunday and I made my way down to “Unter den
Linden” . . . . one tried to take shortcuts whenever possible, so on this day I went
diagonally across the Tiergarten and came out near the Reichstag. I had to go
through thousands and thousands of people, a wonderful black market was thriv-
ing. . . . A raid began and I was right in the middle. . . . But it was no use, I was
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 161

loaded onto a truck with many other people. First, we had to wait some hours.
And then the most amusing thing happened. Everyone was eating; I just watched
them. Noticing this many asked me: “Didn’t ya score anything?” No, I said, I am
passing through here by chance and still have to head on to “Unter den Linden.”107

Rosa Baer surely remembered this excursion fondly because her “fellow passen-
gers” then entreated her to help them “destroy” the evidence, that is, to help them
eat all sorts of food. Her account depicts the illegal trading more as a social event
and less as a truly unsettling and dangerous situation. She was not alone in feel-
ing this way. Irmgard Chambalu, who in 1945 was 34 years old, remembered the
black market as “a great pleasure.” “Over time it became a sort of sport” to escape
the police raids, she said, and one took pleasure in always meeting “someone you
knew” and could feel a sense of accomplishment. Another probable factor in her
experience of success was that, far from finding it difficult to meet new people
face to face, she was able to experience her own individuality in a satisfying way
within the crowds.108 She was soon calling the illegal trading her “beloved black
market.”109
Whether Chambula bartered with occupying soldiers was not recorded. Such
trading soon became especially challenging, in that they marked the winners and
losers of the “total war” meeting to start up conversations, to negotiate goods
and prices, and ultimately to trade.110 These encounters took place in the context
of a system of symbols wherein the distinction between victors and losers was
rewritten or updated every day.111 The Soviet flag on the Reichstag was only the
best-known example of a new symbolic order reflecting the relationship between
victor and loser—an order that extended far into the household, as well as the
symbols and gestures of daily life. Other examples of this comprehensive reorder-
ing of signs and symbols of authority included signs in Russian, English, and
French, the introduction of Moscow time in Berlin, and distributing hunting
licenses for Allied soldiers. The new signs both expressed a change in power rela-
tions and helped to bring them about. In the tense quiet after battle, changes in
symbols, representing the confusion in the status quo, became very important.
Experiencing the defeat psychologically and fearing how the victors would treat
them in the future made Berlin citizens especially sensitive to the different signs
and customs of the “new masters.”112
The physical presence and behavior of the Allied soldiers played a very promi-
nent role in this.113 Initially, Berliners perceived the soldiers as enemy combatants,
plunderers, and rapists, but new encounters unfolded over time, for example, pri-
vate conversations or meetings between citizens and Allied agencies. Of course, in
these new situations, the victor-loser relationship was also significant. Depending
on the attitude the opposite sides took and the gestures and signs they used, these
encounters between Germans and members of the Allied forces could look very
different. The victors had the advantage of having the power to take the initia-
tive. The formula for determining the patterns of action and reaction between
the parties was defined by the end of the war and shaped the relationships—at
the level of the nation-states as well—far beyond the immediate postwar period.
162 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Staging military marches and parades is one of the most important forms of
symbolically portraying one’s dominance. The entrance of the victorious generals
into the defeated city, which stood pars pro toto for all of Germany, was part of
a long tradition of well-established symbolic signs of authority. Red Army Gen-
eral Zhukov’s ride through the ruins, in particular, adapted well-known symbolic
patterns—the victory celebration as well as a claim to power—which demon-
strated power and consolidated authority and was understood in this way by the
citizens of the city.114
The right of the victor to carry arms was also a profound sign of the different
power positions and thus the different negotiating positions. As combat opera-
tions ceased and both victors and losers had their hands literally “free” to check,
to count, to pick up goods, to make themselves understood, and to trade, the
pistols of the Allied soldiers marked a clear dividing line. The newly recruited
German (auxiliary) policemen, deployed in order to fight the black market, soon
faced the problem of their authority not being respected in the markets so that
they could only stand around helplessly during violent disputes.115
German participants and observers paid very close attention to the signs and
gestures of the victors while trading. For one thing, the illegal markets offered
opportunities to meet the victors “eye to eye.” Unlike the demonstrations of
might such as one found, for example, in military parades, the losers und vic-
tors stood directly across from each other; they talked to each other, negotiated,
and traded.
In a letter of August 21, 1946, Gerda Pfundt, who lived in Charlottenburg,
came up with her own typology of the new rulers:

a further feature of postwar Berlin is the Allied soldiers. With only a few excep-
tions, they don’t really bother us. We have become accustomed to them, and we
can hardly imagine the streets without them. The English are—as one would expect
from their manner—reserved, polite, correct. The Americans, who are always chew-
ing gum, are somewhat noisier, but essentially harmless with a few exceptions, then
referred to as “Russians with creased trousers.” I know nothing about the French
because I haven’t had any contact with them; indeed, I have scarcely seen any. One
says, however, that they are also peaceful. And the Russians? Well yes—they are
Russians. One has to have experienced them. I for one always have wobbly knees
and put my watch and my bracelet into my handbag when they cross my path.
One never knows.116

Bartering with members of the Red Army was considered especially precarious.
Encountering the Russian victors was emotionally charged, generally with fear.
In 1977, Margot Raedisch recalled a situation that had taken place at the black
market in Tiergarten in the fall of 1945 when she was 30. Together with her four-
year-old daughter, whom she, as she explains, could not leave alone by herself, and
a “friend,” whom she classified as more “spirited” than herself, she had made her
way to the popular black market in order to get some food.
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 163

On the edge of the Tiergarten there were Russian trucks; their soldiers were watch-
ing the scene in the black market. As we passed one such vehicle, a soldier who was
no longer quite so young looked at us. Suddenly he ran up behind us and called
loudly: “Little Kalinka, little Kalinka, you give me, I give you bacon and bread.”
While doing this he pointed excitedly at my daughter’s doll. He continued yelling
as he seemed to believe we had not understood him. That we had, but we did
not want to trade the doll. The child had also understood what he wanted from
us—distressed, she pressed the doll to her body and started to cry.117

After Raedisch had made the soldier understand that the girl did not want to
part with the doll, he left them alone:

He could not believe it and looked sadly at the doll and at my child. But then
he stroked my daughter and said: “niet, niet!” He did not want to take it away.
We were relieved; what could we have done if he had torn it away from us? His
eyes told us that he very badly wanted the doll—certainly for his own child—but
he had a good heart. And to recognize this in these times was very reassuring.118

Such accounts show the degree of mistrust of the Soviet soldiers that existed
in the black markets. What Raedisch and Pfundt expressed openly can be found
between the lines in other accounts. Karl Deutmann, for example, recorded a
different trading situation in his diary:

a Russian officer sat in an automobile. He had a knife in his hand, and in front
of him there was a container with butter. A translator sat across from him. She
handed him the watch so that he could examine it and conveyed to the Germans
the number of kilos or the number of pounds of butter or bacon or canned meat.
For gold pieces he gave fats; shoes, etc., were paid for in cash. There was, however,
no deceit. What was agreed upon was adhered to. A G.P.U. (Soviet intelligence)
officer, who suddenly appeared with a car, put an end to this. He was, however, not
interested in how the Germans interacted among themselves. Later, after he had
taken off, the business happily resumed.119

Deutmann’s emphasis on the lack of deceit between the Russian officer and
the German bartering partner points, first of all, to the basic problem of illegal
markets: there was no legal framework. Yet beyond this, his account highlights
practices that made the imbalance of power between unequal partners evident
and reinforced it. The offering of goods, which Soviets then examined, impres-
sively demonstrates whose market power was greater in such a bartering situation.
The image of the individual Allied soldier surrounded by a cluster of German
hustlers wanting to trade illustrated the economic power of these “foreigners,”
who had the scarce goods in demand at their disposal.
Multitudes of people hustlers clustering around one trader—this was a com-
mon, everyday scene in the black market. This phenomenon received special
attention when, as Deutmann described in his example, Allied soldiers drove up
164 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

in their cars and remained seated while trading. Already well before the war, as
more and more cars came into the city, they had come to symbolize the unequal
distribution of power. Since the 1920s, the automobile had played a prominent
role in debates about luxury as well as in commentaries on social inequality in
Berlin. As early as 1933, Berlin columnist Heinrich Hauser had noted in an article
for the monthly, Die Tat, that “the difference in Germany between those who are
transported in an automobile and those who are forced to walk is profound” and
that the different forms of transport marked the “largest class differences.”120 This
common picture, which characterized the social contrasts in Berlin according to
the economic power of automobile drivers, had been an important part of the
discourse on hustlers, as the story of Max Scheffler showed above. This picture
was now transferred to the occupying soldiers sitting in automobiles.
In contemporary Germans’ accounts, trading from within a car was a recurring
theme,121 which clearly showed the inequality between the “new masters” and the
citizens of Berlin. The automobiles of the Allied soldiers also offered very practical
advantages for illegal trading: mobility, means of transportation, and speed. The
final point could be especially crucial as it enabled drivers to quickly obtain a
general idea of the latest price developments in every market and to use them to
their own advantage.122
On the other hand, German observers viewed cars as symbols of (trading)
power. Allied traders’ remaining seated symbolized their physical and economic
strength, which the defeated regarded as equivalent to the victors parading “on
a high horse.” In contrast to these “new masters,” German market participants
as a rule came on foot, wandered down the individual market spots row by row,
and afterward often had to make the arduous way home at least partly on foot.
A contemporary poem captured this feeling of inferiority that Germans adopted
toward the motorized soldiers:

On the streets the cars whiz by/ fat Russians stretch out/ In the cushions of
our carriages
It seems they mock me/ That one there in front of me is drunk
Vodka! He roars, all hail/ Oh how low we have sunk
Poor Germany, are you still alive?/ ( . . . ) Wish they were all spooky spirits/
Passing me by
But as I can’t deny it/ This is “eastern Berlin.”123

Yet Germans were wary of all the Allied soldiers, not just the members of the Red
Army, which was particularly evident in regard to ongoing debate about German
woman trading with Allied soldiers. “All the English correctness, American
cheerfulness, and Russian brutishness,” recalled one contemporary witness,

do not prevent Berlin women from hooking up with the Allies. It begins with a
Chesterfield or a “Hello, girlie” called out from a jeep and ends in true love and
sometimes plans for marriage. The first Berlin girls have been granted permission
to marry the English. The marriage announcements were even printed in newspa-
pers. The Americans have not yet been given such permission. In general, there is
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 165

nothing to be said against this activity. Were our soldiers always alone in France,
Denmark, etc.? Less delightful is the variety of women who do not leave the meet-
ing to chance but set up in front of their doorways and seize the initiative. Sadly,
sadly, this does happen.124

In everyday situations “beneath” the level of official demonstrations of strength

by the victors as well, Germans experienced the precarious dividing line between
the winners and the losers. Although many contemporary accounts displayed an
almost seismographic sensitivity to such experiences of inferiority, the accounts
that stand out take as their subject the relationship between victors und losers in
regard to gender relations. In an article titled “Social Passes—Popular After All:
Keeping a Close Eye on the Berliners,” the Telegraf informed its readers about
the different types of German women who—in order to visit American clubs with
their American partners—solicited so-called social passes.125 The article expressly
pointed out not only that most of the “girls” were already linked to Americans,
but that the women were wearing make-up or “German stockings, knee-length
socks” and also that some had already “discolored their German with one of those
American accents” so “that it was difficult to understand them.” The Telegraf
described a scene for its readers as follows:

Eight women had been invited. Three of them were dressed just like Americans . . . .
With the others the signs of American resources confined itself to handbags, scarves,
and the Camels they were smoking. Waiting made them all a little bit nervous. One
girl had taken along her boyfriend, an American civil servant. She had a lavish,
well-painted face, a costume trimmed with fur and red nail polish from the “land
of boundless opportunity” on her neat fingers. As the waiting took too long for her
boyfriend, he spoke a short but likely energetic word with the commission, and
immediately it was the young lady’s turn.

This article commented on the triangular configuration between German

women, American soldiers, and German public opinion wherein humiliated men
and disappointed women shaped a negative consensus. One motif for this per-
spective was the experience of powerlessness vis-à-vis the victors. The victors
seemed to “take” the German women, and the inexperienced women appeared to
be keen on securing their own advantage and youthful conspicuous consumption.
Little was so clearly regarded as an item of outrage and revulsion as the figure of
the “Fräulein” who in times of general defeat and hardship appeared to be a win-
ner, standing beside the victors. The conscious knowledge that you belonged to
the losers could always be reinforced through such small, daily defeats, in which
the American “friend” reached his goal through pressure, and a German Fräulein
who knew how to improve her situation through “American resources.” But the
knowledge could also be formulated or stylized as part of the German myth of
being a nation of victims.126
That Allied soldiers took advantage of Germans was both a real experience
and a part of this German myth. As the interpretations of illegal trading reveal,
the image of the American soldiers in the occupation army was ambivalent. On
166 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

the one hand, Germans (re-)gained a certain sovereignty when they successfully
concluded business transactions. On the other hand, the history of the trades
between Germans and members of the US Army was also narrated as a history of
victimization; and German observers interpreted these soldiers’ relationships with
German women as manifestations of the victors collecting trophies or conducting
raids.
Such victimization narratives reflect the widespread general perception that
German society was humiliated and made up of losers in comparison to the vic-
torious powers. This remained a familiar topos and was used to portray the black
market as chaotic and as a symbol of social upheavals.

A Market of “Little People”: The Black Market and the Social Question
Contemporaries’ perceptions were shaped to a large degree by the picture of
the German racketeers and the soldiers of the occupying forces participating in
markets in the central squares of the city. This does not mean, however, that
other circles of participants were forgotten. Just the opposite: the focus on the
financially strong trading groups only obtained its significance from the con-
trasting characterizations that distinguished better market positions from worse
ones and thus the powerful from the powerless.127 When Karl Deutmann drove
into the city on August 5, 1945, with his wife, he visited the black market at
the Brandenburg Gate. What Deutmann discovered there was that the typol-
ogy of the groups of participants and the goods they aimed to obtain reflected
their different power positions. To be sure, there were clearly also Germans there
who wanted to “indulge” themselves or who were looking for goods where the
demand was elastic. Yet the vast majority of financially strong market participants
were members of the occupying forces. As Deutmann pointed out, the German
black marketeers he saw were trading mostly because they were poor. It was in
no way the norm that they were seeking “small pleasures.” At the same time,
Deutmann evoked the future danger associated with trading valuables for such
“luxury items”: poverty.128
At one end of the scale, as contemporaries perceived it, were the financially
strong German hustlers and the soldiers of the occupying forces. At the other end,
there were the German participants with their impoverished misery. Observers
particularly noticed the simple “normal consumers,” as well as mothers, dis-
abled persons—often veterans—and the elderly. Hille Ruegenberg recorded in
her memoirs of the postwar Berlin period the worries of women who were
“breadwinners” for family members:

No one can rest for long when children, pale-faced, with hollow sockets, instill fear
in a mother who is solely responsible for satisfying the hunger of their innocent
mouths. . . . Amazing how in times of hardship strong forces are activated, whereas
often the satiated are afflicted with phlegm. After the black market had begun, con-
stantly looking, illegally, for additional food, I saw myself as a nervously fluttering
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 167

mother bird, constantly scavenging instinctively for food—pitiful! Emotions, of

any sort, were turned off—only cold rationality guaranteed chances of survival.129

The social division established when the regime divided the population into
specific consumer groups at the beginning of the war was often criticized because
it had prompted a “mentality of comparison” among the recipients.130 This men-
tality continued after the war ended. After all, the allocation system had set forth
a certain framework wherein, however unfair it might have been, one’s social sta-
tus was not linked to a seemingly arbitrary market mechanism, thus allowing
every individual a horizontal classification. In contrast, the black market did not
know such sociopolitical guidelines. In it, the allocation was a question of the
price, one’s decision over supply levels, and one’s survival was in part purely a
product of one’s market power. At best, less capable participants could improve
their starting position with their individual skill. Overall, however, the free play of
market forces privileged those who had things to barter at their disposal, whether
from access to goods in demand in their profession or from cash assets and unim-
paired households from which single objects could be “converted to cash” on the
market.
The black market played an important role in economic life on a whole.
In early 1948 the Department of Trade and Industry of the Berlin municipal
authorities estimated that a third of all goods traded in the city were traded on
the black market.131 Apart from particular trading segments, like the thriving
art and drug segments, food and other commodities in very short supply were
traded most often. The supply situation had worsened in the last months of the
war. Both the loss of imports from the occupied territories and disruptions to
transportation caused by the fighting contributed to this. Of course, immedi-
ately after the end of the war the Russian occupiers did everything they could to
provide for the Berlin population. They fought the spread of epidemics, cleared
the streets of rubble, and supplied the poverty-stricken population from their
own military stocks in the beginning. According to Osmar White, an American
war reporter, they benefited from the experiences they had had with their own
destroyed cities. White came to the conclusion that “the Soviets in those early
days did more to keep Berlin alive than the Anglo-Americans possibly could have
done.”132 Still, because of the poor harvest in the summer of 1945, the situation
worsened quickly. The winter of 1946/47, which became known as the “hunger
winter,” was the nadir.
Gerda Pfundt had perceived initial signs of the coming catastrophe as early as
August 21, 1945, when she described the focus on food among the survivors
in Berlin: “food is at present the most important problem, the one that we
talk about the most, the problem behind which everything else fades. There is
no encounter, no telephone conversation between Berliners in which one does
not talk about food.”133 Then, after the catastrophic experiences of the winter,
it was clear that they still resonated in June 1947 in the remarks of Berlin’s
mayor Louise Schroeder at the Minister Presidents’ Conference in Munich. In her
168 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

report on public health, she demanded “sufficient and correct nourishment for
all Germans.” She made an explicit reference to the “upcoming winter.” Both the
quantity and quality of food was important. All in all, the picture that Schroeder
drew was quite dark. She referred above all to the high infant mortality rate as an
indicator of the desperate situation.134
The misery burned deep into the collective memory. In 1946/47, 42-year-old
Konrad Born reflected on the “hunger winter” in a poem, in which he described
a black market in typical fashion under the mantle of the “moral economy” of
the bartering era:

Winter night cutting cold. Bombed out house.

In the cellar the hustlers’ dance hall
“Hey, Max, give us another round of shots
And come over here with a few cigarettes!”
A woman lives in the temporary shelter on the mezzanine,
Sick, lonely, driven out by the storm of war.
“If Werner were still around, all would be well;
And Heinz stayed in the East too!”
“Hey waiter, twelve glasses—an’ hurry;
We can do the gasoline deal!”
And glasses and plates clingin’.
And prostitutes’ tinny laughter.
The walls torn open and the windows boarded up,
A person coughing in the claws of the cold.
Was that a hoarse, hungry dog
Barking so consumptively just now?
And as she screamed the last scream of death
From the sinking, choking shadow:
“Bella-bella-bella-Marie!”
The rats bellowed in the cellar’s hollow.135

The dichotomy between misery and luxury—and thus between the guilt
and innocence associated with it—was typical for the problematic “moral econ-
omy” of the Berlin barter culture. This dichotomy placed the immorality of the
hustlers, their practices, and their way of life in stark contrast to the misery of
weaker persons. In Born’s poem, moreover, the misery of the old woman is con-
nected to her experiences of the war and the death of her men and set against
the life of the hustlers in the cellar, which is described as a party centered on life
in the present. The war and its consequences as described here offers hustlers the
best conditions for living in luxury.
In 1945, in a “Morning Commentary” for Berlin Radio, editor Friedrich Flierl
discussed a “director’s cigar villa.”136 With this, Flierl was picking up on a law-
suit against the directors of the largest cigarette factory in the British zone, the
August-Blase AG in Lübbecke, at which someone had claimed around 200,000
cigars for entertainment costs and used these as “trading materials for the build-
ing materials” for his villa. “We have, my listeners, all experienced some of these
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 169

hustling practices,” Flierl stated in his broadcast. “Alongside the cigar villa, there
is most likely a cooking pot villa and a cheese villa . . . . Such adept ‘personalities,’
free of reservations towards the general public, are the ones who succeed in these
areas.” He went on to say that to business owners and managing directors who
described bartering transactions as compensation, this was nothing more than a
euphemism because compensation was in truth nothing more than “fraud, hus-
tling, extortion and exploitation,” which should be called “bluntly . . . by their
real name.” The result of such practices, he concluded, was an “economic anar-
chy” that dumped “all the burdens on the public economy, that is, on working
people.”137
Dichotomies such as these were characteristic of the debates over what con-
stituted proper everyday morality in the state of emergency. They point to the
complexity of a society in which moral security had become unstable. “One
cannot treat industrious, hard-working people the same way one treats notori-
ous foragers and hustlers,” one “allotment owner Seybold” stated in outrage in a
radio broadcast on the black market raids, noting that some of his “colleagues”
had had their harvests taken away from them.138 Such problems were discussed in
innumerable letters to the editor, newspaper columns, and radio broadcasts. The
Telegraf asked in a piece in January 1947, “Black market trading in these hard
times—what is permitted?” The author had collected some examples:

The dear mother who attempts on Brunnenstrasse to sell the old top hat of her
dead husband for 25 or 30 marks in order to pay the rent; the diabetic who buys
a small package of sweetener for 25 marks; the transportation worker who is not
able to satiate his hungry flock of children and “obtained” a sack of potatoes from
the farmers: have they committed a crime? Many would say: no. And yet it is so.
This shows how wide the gap has become between what the law says is criminal
and what in the minds of most people is just.139

Accounts such as these make clear that—in contrast to the impression one
might get from Born’s poem—“normal people” and the lower classes did par-
ticipate in the black market. It was simply not true that there were active
and successful hustlers, on the one hand, and poor and disadvantaged peo-
ple, condemned to passivity, on the other. Indeed, the poor or disadvantaged
were important participants in the illegal street trading. Of course, their starting
position in negotiations was generally considerably worse than those they were
trading with. Need or the hope to somewhat improve their situation was usu-
ally their motive for illegal trading, not opportunities for profit or the demand
for goods of elastic demand.140 The Telegraf wrote in an article from Septem-
ber 3, 1948, in this context of a “black market of the poor.” In a “gray tenement”
in Wedding, the reporter noted, there was a small market solely for the lower
classes.

Here, where there is need and worry, a black market for the poor has sprung up,
murmuring and whispering on the billowing boulevard. Continuously, a steady
170 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

stream of people fluctuates up and down the street . . . . A pregnant woman with a
half-naked child on her arm, two skinny creatures pressed to her skirt, mumbled
with monotonous pleading “powdered milk, nine D-Mark!” But no one bought
it. Here they all have children and are themselves selling powdered milk. . . . Many
old people are walking with their last bread from their last ration cards: 6 D-Mark
at Rubelmaxe in the Lausepark gets you 20 Eastmark—that is the rent for a small
apartment. . . . A young person on crutches, a loaf of bread in his jacket, limped
back and forth. “I only have a pillow for it,” whispers a woman. “Cash smiles,” says
the man. No one wants the pillow. The woman cries. She has not had bread for
days.141

Such small neighborhood markets, often on street corners, in squares, and

near train stations away from the large commercial centers remained visible in
the city up to 1952. The police’s efforts to curb these markets repeatedly ended
in violence. For example, the Telegraf reported in May 1947 on an incident at
Rosenthaler Platz in Berlin Mitte in which a policeman had pulled his weapon,
threatened the crowd of black marketeers with it, and hit a young man “on
the head with the butt of his gun . . . so that he collapsed covered in blood.”
In response to the journalist’s questions, the Press Office of the police stated that
a “crowd that had gathered” had thrown stones at the policeman, and only then
did he draw his weapon.142 The site where this happened, the area around the
Rosenthaler Platz, was one of the areas in Berlin where there were often vio-
lent conflicts with the police. The distribution of these areas of violent conflict
corresponds broadly to the social-spatial division of the city.143
The records of Division 95 of the Berlin Special Court make it possible to
draw a picture of those who traded in the black markets.144 In this court’s cases of
offenses against consumer and market regulations, the black marketeers arrested
on the streets were mostly sentenced to small punishments; there were no com-
prehensive investigations. Accordingly, it is not always possible to say exactly
where the trading took place. The majority of the arrests were in smaller squares
in the north, in the east, in the center of the city, and in the commercial area
around the Silesian Gate in Kreuzberg. In some cases people were also arrested
at Alexanderplatz or in the western parts of the city. The occupying power also
noted that the individual illegal market areas reproduced the social divisions in
the city that had developed over a long period of time. In their “Black Market &
Price Control” report of April 1949, the British employees of the “Enforcement
Department” recorded the following under the point “Details of Black Market”:
“In the richer districts the offer of all kinds of preserves has greatly increased,
especially salmon in oil, sardines, etc.”145
In short, the geography of the black market carried on the patterns of social
inequality in the city. Still, with recourse to the seemingly rule-free and wild trad-
ing, tales of impoverishment could be told. Werner Grothge, who was 50 years
old and unemployed when he was arrested, was typical of the less privileged cir-
cles of black marketeers. As was customary in black market cases related to need,
the arresting officer noted in the documents that it was “not necessary” to search
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 171

Occupation group In%

Small-income employees 33
Workers 28
Self-employed 16
Small trade 16
Other and non-identifiable 6

Figure 4.8 Occupation groups of male black marketeers, Superior Court of Justice, 1949–1952

for more evidence because it was clear that Grothge, who lived in Reinickendorf,
was not a professional. As police trainee Wernicke noted in his report, Grothge
was “discovered on 9 April 1949 at around 12:30 on Invalidenstrasse [a black
market trading area] offering chocolate bars at 20 marks a piece.” In the final
report it stated, “Grothge was found in the area of the black market . . . standing
around with two bars of chocolate in his hand.” Like many other participants bar-
tering because of their need, Grothge was no stranger to the 17th district where
he was arrested: “Grothge had already been arrested by the 17th district police
seven times for offenses pertaining to black market dealings,” Wernicke wrote.146
Such “small” repeat offenders were generally only verbally reprimanded for their
first offenses: “although G. . . . was seriously cautioned, he continued the forbid-
den trade in restricted goods in the black market, without paying attention to the
police’s warnings. For this reason it is appropriate that G. finally be tried by the
summary court.” Accordingly, Grothge was “transferred for appropriate action”
to criminal investigation unit 5 and, on April 11, 1949, only two days after his
arrest, sentenced by the summary court to six months in prison. In his defense,
Grothge pointed out that he was unemployed and therefore in a predicament.
This made no impression on the court. The court’s verdict referred to Grothge’s
previous convictions but abstained from any moral assessment. The final police
report, by contrast, did make such an assessment, describing the accused as one
“who lived solely from the black market.”147
Focusing on a single case may distort the picture. It can no longer be ascer-
tained whether Grothge acted out of poverty or simply to earn some easy, extra
money. The picture becomes clearer if one compares his case with a sample of
cases brought before the Berlin summary court. Evaluating the personal details
of 200 people convicted by the summary court, we can see the social imbalance
in the markets. Moreover, this market for the poor lasted a long time; similar
numbers were recorded from 1949 until 1952 (see Figure 4.8).
If one compares this with the number of those convicted before the Berlin
summary court during the war (see above, Chapter 2, section “Goods from
all of Europe”), a number of things stand out. First, there is the relatively low
percentage of self-employed persons. This was, above all, because these records
reflected the new prosecution practices. In the round-ups and random checks of
the known “black market areas,” the police typically came into contact with a
different clientele than when they were conducting their surveillance of regional
172 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

businesses, where they had regularly arrested—apart from the guests—the owners
of bars, cafés, and restaurants. Accordingly, the percentage of lower-level civil ser-
vants, lower-level clerical workers, and manual laborers was higher in the postwar
period. The working class made up 29 percent, almost exactly the same share
as the first two consumer groups (manual laborers and workers) comprised in
Berlin’s whole population in 1947.148 This shift in numbers of convicted per-
sons had an unambiguous social cause independent of the fact that the number
of workers represented their share of the population. For what does not become
apparent through the mere listing of the occupations is that a little more than
half of all men convicted, although they had an occupation, were unemployed
when they were arrested. The percentage of the people who were unemployed
was therefore clearly around the percentage of the population, which in 1945 was
14.1 percent among men.149 Thus, unemployment was the defining characteris-
tic of those convicted of street trading across all occupations. Being unemployed
meant that one was classified in the lowest card category, “V” (“various”). In order
to be classified into a higher category one had to provide proof of a job.
In spite of the leveling brought about by the general chaos, that not a single
member of the higher classes was caught in one of these public black market sites
correlates both with the better economic starting position they enjoyed and with
the social division of the city that kept middle-class citizens from visiting the
“markets of the poor” in the poorer districts.
Unemployment was also an important characteristic of the social profile of the
women convicted (see Figure 4.9). This shift was especially pronounced among
lower-level civil servants and clerical workers. Whereas this group had made up
43 percent of all accused before the summary court during the war, this percent-
age decreased in the poor markets to about 10 percent. The group that saw the
largest growth was women not registered as unemployed but as “without work”;
indeed, this was the largest female group by a wide margin in the poor mar-
kets. These were women who were either dependent on their husbands’ income
or were widows. As they could not provide proof of employment, they also fell
into the lowest categories of consumers. Many women in this group had been
driven out of their wartime jobs in the course of men being reintegrated into
the civil work force.150 The decline in the number of lower-level civil servant
jobs represented also hints at the increased difficulties women experienced, as

Occupation group In%

Workers 24
Small-income employees 10
Self-employed 9
None 57

Figure 4.9 Occupation groups of female black marketeers, Superior Court of Justice, 1949–1952
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 173

this was the sort of job women had moved into. The percentage of women who
came from the lower classes was even higher than among the men: it was 67
percent.151
That it was mostly the lower classes being tried in the cases before the sum-
mary court also becomes clear when one examines the goods traded. In 41 percent
of the cases, food played the most important role in the trade; clothes in about
10 percent; 7.5 percent involved trading in other goods, above all fuel. A rel-
atively large percentage concerned tobacco (29 percent) and foreign currencies
(10.5 percent). Whereas tobacco and cigarettes were used above all as a currency
for trading, in the foreign exchange transactions, it was significant that Berlin
had two currencies. Although all of these commodity groups were also found
in the other markets, the absence of a wide assortment of jewelry is especially
interesting. Jewelry appeared in only 2.5 percent of the cases from the poor mar-
kets. This is another important piece of evidence pointing to these convictions
arising from a market for the lower classes, whose participants did not have the
trading equivalents especially sought after in other parts of Berlin.

Black Market Goods in the Postwar Years

A quantitative analysis of the flow of goods in the black markets of the postwar
period is not possible. We lack the sources that would enable us to cover all areas
of illegal trading. Contemporaries often estimated that a third or even 50 percent
of the total turnover of some goods in Berlin took place on the black market.
These contemporary estimates were themselves based on decreases in the urban
income tax (down 27 percent) and corporation tax (down 21 percent) and the
simultaneous increase in the income and sales taxes (both of which went up by
18 percent) in the first half of the tax year 1947/48. Of course, these indica-
tors only took the goods produced and the services already provided in Berlin
up to that point.152 Nonetheless, these estimates give an impression of the huge
importance of the black market for the postwar Berlin economy. Accordingly, the
assortment available in the markets was quite diverse. Scarce goods typical of the
time were traded just as often as the traditional goods of the underworld. Thus,
food, weapons, and drugs appeared regularly in the markets alongside household
objects, books, fake documents, and pictures of Hitler.153
Over time a spatial allocation evolved as indicated by descriptions that
assigned certain groups of goods to certain marketplaces—for example, watches
and jewelry to the central places (with the members of the occupying forces as
buyers) or food to the market at Brunnenstrasse.154 All in all, however, the illegal
trading remained a relatively complex institution compared to legal consumer
spaces. This confusing complexity also derived from postwar Berlin’s increas-
ing integration into an expanded network of international unofficial business
relationships. The market thrived not only because of the goods and services
produced in Berlin, but also because Berlin had become a hub of international
trading after 1945, a site for transregional and transnational shipments.
174 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

International Flow of Goods

After the war, the assortment of goods available in the black market expanded
considerably. Alongside the most important wartime black market goods, such as
basic food items, clothing, and cigarettes, new and at times even exotic goods now
began increasingly to turn up among the confiscations of the Berlin police and
the employees at the Allied posts, including building materials, drugs, or Soviet
automobiles.155 The building materials were not too surprising. The editor of the
Neue Bauwelt, Rudolf Weilbier, believed that the black market provided “the solid
foundation for construction,” without which nothing could “succeed” during
the extensive work of rebuilding. The “object” of this “black construction,” an
article in the Telegraf explained, was “the so-called single-family homes, villas,
boutiques, restaurants, pubs, and hustlers’ apartments.”156
In some specialized trading one could make substantial profits even with a
relatively small quantity of goods. The 10.8 kg of opium confiscated from one
woman on Varnhagenstrasse could have precluded her need for any further trad-
ing in the black market if she had been able to sell it.157 The Spiegel reported in
January 1947 that there were “fantastic possibilities for profit” in another market
segment, the “diamond trade in Berlin”:

There top prices of 50,000 marks were paid for one flawless carat, almost one
hundred times the peacetime price. At the same time one could acquire a one-carat
diamond in Western Germany for 15,000 and in Hamburg for 22,000 marks.
The Berlin buyers . . . it is assumed have their goods delivered directly “to the east.”
(“Beyond Warsaw all tracks disappear,” the New York Herald Tribune wrote of this
practice).158

This development was largely the result of the internationalization of trade

advanced by the members of the occupying armies and other participants with
contacts abroad; former prisoners of war and “foreign workers” or “forced labor-
ers” also belonged to these groups. The flow of goods through Europe generally
did not extend beyond Europe. It was, however, controlled by new actors and thus
often changed direction. In the British “Black Market & Price Control” reports,
there was a segment called “Main Source of Black Market Traffic.” In August
1948, this segment listed the various provenances of black market goods: “Food
from Russian and British zones. Food arriving by airlift at Gatow. Fruit, veg-
etables and potatoes from the Russian and Western zones. Gift parcels from
Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Holland, and America, containing textiles and
shoes. English, American, and Russian cigarettes.”159
Berliners, too, used their contacts abroad to obtain foreign goods and to trade
or sell these in the local market, most easily by mail. Participants who proved
especially cunning were those for whom the illegal trade was merely an exten-
sion of their normal, “daytime” mail-order business. The case of Gertrud Gräber
is exemplary. She had not started to trade illegally of her own volition but on
someone else’s behalf. Graber regularly received packages from an acquaintance
named Münzer on Pearl Street in New York, who urged her to sell the goods on
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 175

the black market for 4,000 marks a package and to deposit the proceeds into one
of his bank accounts. He hoped to finance the reopening of his Berlin shop with
them. Nothing came of this. The British informed the Public Safety Department
of the American Military Administration as well as the relevant post office, thus
putting an end to Münzer’s personal financing of the reconstruction.160
This example of supplying products via mail was not unique. The Tribüne,
which was close to the Soviet Military Administration, described the case of a
lawyer who was unable to work because he had been “an active Nazi,” yet he still
had contact with his solvent clients. He got them black market goods through
the mail. In this fashion, the well-educated black market trader said of himself,
he had made far more money than he would have made had he just continued
his lucrative law practice.161 Repeatedly, the authorities involved in combating
and controlling the black market discovered similarly structured transnational
channels of supply that Germans had created.162
The vast majority of the international trade, however, was not done by
Germans. Quite clearly, members of all the nations represented in Berlin tried
to make money in the illegal business, much to the annoyance of the British
investigators, who on September 29, 1948, noted:

The black market has grown again this month. It is flooded with Allied property
which includes cigarettes, tobacco, coffee, and all sorts of Allied foodstuffs. This
is put down to the airlift pilots who are bringing the goods into Berlin and selling
them on the black market to obtain Marks to enable them to have a night out in
Berlin.163

The description of the most important trading sites in the British sector read
like accounts from an international exchange: “The main three [black market
centers] appear to be Bahnhof Charlottenburg, Bahnhof Zoo, and Schlüter-
strasse. . . . At Schlüterstrasse the crowd consists mostly of Polish, Allied, and
German nationals, while at Bahnhof Charlottenburg Polish, Yugoslav, Bulgarian,
and other foreigners predominate.”164
The Berlin black market was integrated into an international market through
the foreign actors and the currencies they introduced. Displaced persons were
considered, especially by the British offices, to be particularly active in using
their international connections to benefit personally. The aforementioned report
pointed out the profitable opportunities for such DPs and attributed the price
reductions in the black market “to the steady reduction in the exchange rate
of the dollar which results from the fact that larger amounts are brought to
Berlin illegally from the Western zones where foreign exchange is cheaper.” How-
ever, it also reported that the profit margins had decreased on account of the
gradual assimilation of the dollar exchange rates and the concomitant drop in
the price of gold. “At present it is 0.68 dollar for 1 gram of 5.85 carat gold.
At the corner of Kurfürstendamm and Schlüterstrasse there is a new black stock
exchange where hundreds of DP’s meet daily in order to trade information about
the latest development.”165 These observations fit the worldview of many an
176 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

observer. In the August 26, 1948, edition, the reactionary National-Zeitung crit-
icized “individuals, members of the Western allies, who are behind the black
market” under the headline “Airlift Supplies the Black Marketeers: DPs say: ‘One
can always earn the most money in Berlin’. ” The article blamed French and above
all American sources for positively “flooding” the markets and the lax efforts of
West Berlin police to combat and control the black market for its flourishing.
Fighting the trading, some of which was professionally organized, was a never-
ending task. Successfully prosecuting these crimes required tremendous resources,
so even the better equipped British posts could only watch the “hustle and
bustle” helplessly. When there was a special interest, however, various agencies
could coordinate and mobilize their forces. The case of fighting the trading of
counterfeit Cadbury chocolates is worth detailing because it exemplifies both
the characteristic structures of organized crime as well as the coordination and
resources required for prosecution. Together with the Berlin police, members
of the British Criminal Investigation Department (CID) came across numerous
black marketeers trading primarily in chocolate in November 1948 in a rou-
tine raid around the Kurfürstendamm.166 After initial arrests and confiscations,
the investigators worked to discover who was involved and the source of the
goods. The next raid was preceded by two days of surveillance of the scene on the
Kurfürstendamm. On December 11 the policemen struck again, registering their
campaign as “very successful.” In 13 of the 16 arrests, they were able to secure
Cadbury bars in small quantities. The actual success, however, was the arrest of
two “small distributers” caught doling out their shipments to individual street
traders. One of the two did this on bike but was still caught. After this, another
raid was undertaken against—as it turned out—a larger chain of middlemen who
not only tried to escape arrest but also threw stones at the arresting officers. The
violent actions of the traders reinforced the suspicion that those arrested were not
just small brokers in the Berlin black market.
What followed was classic police work. “All the persons arrested were closely
and continuously interrogated with a view to ascertaining the main sources of
supply.” These interrogations led to the search of 30 houses and apartments.
The largest (still modest) find came from a search in Wilmersdorf, where 142
bars of “Cadbury” chocolate were found. All in all, the investigators confiscated
432 bars of different sorts of chocolate and 8,800 American cigarettes. However,
they still did not know where the goods actually came from. Only slowly, in the
course of their investigations, did the picture both of the people involved and the
flow of goods become clear. The British and Czech chocolate products originated
from the American zone as well as from Switzerland. They were brought by truck
through the Soviet zone to Berlin-Pankow, where they were temporarily stored
before being transported in smaller amounts and in part with the assistance of
members of Eastern European embassies into the Western sectors. The individual
street traders on Kurfürstendamm in Charlottenburg were thus only the last link
in a chain that included at least four middlemen.
The entire setup of the chocolate trade reminded the CID and the Berlin
police of the well-known structures of organized crime: extensive distribution
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 177

networks, a transnational setup, black marketeers who fought back, and—except

for the street sales—payments being made in “cash.” What most clearly indicated
organized crime practices were the traders’ methods for maintaining secrecy. Indi-
vidual small traders worked independently of one another; they knew nothing
about their “colleagues” and knew their contacts only by their nicknames: “almost
invariably the names and addresses of the black marketeers are not known to one
another, and they carry out black market business through pre-arranged meeting
places or by nick-names.”167
These professional security methods reduced risks to a minimum for orga-
nized networks. Such structures also made it easier to penalize the final, small
distributors, because the suppliers had a large number of them. If one of the
“small distributers” behaved disloyally, he or she could easily be replaced with
someone else. This knowledge, as well as the awareness that they were integrated
into a network of organized crime, made the middlemen compliant and sub-
missive. The degree of organization also allowed the development of long-term
trading relationships and secure (major) customer relations. In these long-term
trading relationships, one could either terminate the business transaction or sim-
ply threaten to do so, and business partners knew the others had this option. This
was a great advantage because it made it possible to “exchange” goods of lesser
quality, in diluted form, or imitations. This path was not open to occasional,
private traders who only traded with different people. Black market business
transactions were thus a delicate question of trust; the degree of trust could decide
which attitude the players would have in the future toward individuals as well as
toward goods.

Significant Items: Black Market Goods as a Medium of Trust

The black market redirected the flow of goods. The market withdrew ever more
goods from regular distribution channels. Due to the scarcity of provisions, large
parts of the Berlin population attempted to purchase basic necessities on the
black market. However, most contemporaries regarded black market goods as in
the wrong place and at the wrong price. They were always ambivalent, being
longed for or shady, objectionable products. The experience of scarcity and hard-
ship advanced a fundamental distinction between elastic and inelastic demand.
Even goods that had previously been something one could only occasionally
afford were now considered “luxuries.” There was a great yearning for such luxury
goods. In his diary, Karl Deutmann remarked:

an intoxication has come over the people, to barter, to trade, to enjoy once again
something beautiful that one had long done without, indeed to own it at any price.
Precious objects are parted with in order to once again eat bacon, to smoke a good
cigarette, to wash oneself once again with good soap, to eat a piece of chocolate.168

The contact with such luxury goods was regularly described as an overpower-
ing experience. One participant recalled how, when she came across a stranger
178 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

by chance, she first noticed the breads he carried in his bag: “a curious, not
immediately discernible smell suddenly filled my nose. I sniffed the unusu-
ally aromatic air right around me; it was, especially in contrast to the stuffy
smell of the tattered clothes which most people were wearing back then, very
pleasant—mmmmm!—simply intoxicating.”169
Such descriptions of luxury items often compared two different types of goods
as well as two different time references and two different value systems. In this
perspective, the luxury came from the store. Someone who exchanged a cup-
board, a library, or a picture for food (no matter how exhilarating it proved to be)
was “hawking off ” solid possessions for something fleeting, exchanging an item
which might have signified security for “daily bread” and with it for a very limited
future of perhaps the next 24 hours. This ambivalence of “euphoric” happiness in
the moment and the bartering off of securities was a large problem, as indicated
by the discernible frustration and resentment about unequal trades when a deal
turned out to be clearly “fishy.”
On the one hand, people associated delightful experiences—experiences they
longed for—with the black market. On the other hand, the objects of these expe-
riences were often disappointing, even when one could take possession of them
as there were numerous imitations and low-quality products.170 The trust in the
quality of products had already been put to the test during the war as substi-
tutes had replaced many products. This interrupted a long success story that had
begun in the nineteenth century when modern product marketing and the pro-
fessional depiction of actual and ascribed product characteristics gained an ever
more crucial role. Brands proved to be especially competitive if consumers could
trust them, if they stood for a standard of consistently high quality. Brand-name
products offered a degree of security; they combined an unmistakable product
physiognomy (price, packaging, and quantity) with reliable quality, always and
everywhere. The 1930s brought the first stage of the history of brand communi-
cation to an end. Case studies indicate that “broad levels of the population” were
already influenced by trust in brands during the “transition period of product
communication” between the world wars during which brands continued to play
an important role in the creation of trustworthiness within German consumer
culture.171
In the rationing economy of World War II and especially on the black market,
where goods of varying quality—whose quality was often difficult to verify—were
traded, consumers persistently experienced insecurity instead of confidence in a
familiar transaction. Trading in the black market tested one’s trust in the product
as well as in the respective trader. Karl Deutmann remembered exchanging,

after a conversation at the hairdresser . . . a bottle of schnapps (a little under half

a liter) for six to seven pounds of potatoes . . . . The man even brought them to
the apartment and poured them into a basket for my wife. Later we found 2 large
stones among them. The German is and remains a rascal.172

Another contemporary described an even more dramatic case of trading a dress

for oil that turned out to be poisonous. A few hours after eating the oil on bread,
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 179

“we all started feeling incredibly sick. . . . We thought this is the end! Many people
died of it, for laboratory tests showed that it was Chinese wood oil, completely
inedible for mankind! My urge to barter was finished!”173
In these two cases, the fact that those who were cheated had checked the goods
for quality shows the prevalence of mistrust of goods and people and its influence
on people’s actions. Yet the measures had proved to be futile, which was very
disappointing. The contemporary who bought the wood oil to eat concluded that
“for these things I guess I was not talented enough.”174 But even less self-conscious
participants more experienced in dealing with unfamiliar trading partners could
never be completely certain. Ursula von Hanffstengel described the postwar years
quite well in her memoirs, including among other things how she had withstood
the pushy soldiers of the occupying forces and how she had “mastered” daily life.
But she, too, was a victim of sellers of counterfeits. She had traded some watches
for two pounds of butter that turned out to be “not butter, lard, reindeer oil or
cart grease. Still the people finished it and strangely no one was worse off for
using this ‘Trojan horse’. ”175
In the black market, goods became a means of verifying one’s trust in people.
As Deutmann’s example shows, many participants associated disappointment not
only with their particular case but also with the abuse of their trust and viewed
these as symptoms of the times. Thus, the black market with its unsure terms of
trade became synonymous with a culture of mistrust—a culture that had started
in the breakup of stable sites and rules for doing business. Almost all accounts
from these times refer to such experiences of disappointment, even if they were
only secondhand.176 The black market goods themselves, accurately remembered,
formed the focal point of experiences that undermined trust. Thus, they were
more than mere commodities: they were at the same time mediums of contact
and items associated with different experiential contexts. Among these was, next
to the question of trust, the question of the distribution of power between the
bartering partners.
The cigarette was the most traded item that showed this relation. The han-
dling of cigarettes and the vocabulary used to describe them reflected beliefs in
the fragility of time as well as patterns of behavior. Above all, the discourse on
cigarettes addressed different levels of sovereignty, and so it will be treated in
detail below.

The Cigarette as a Collective Symbol of the Black Market Era

A spring of comfort, an instrument against fear, a drug which procures relaxation,
which makes hunger and boredom be forgotten, a medium for showing cour-
tesy, a decision guidance, a stimulant, the arrow of cupid and a weapon against
superiors—the cigarette which a soldier smokes gives him all that he needs. What
would the soldier be without tobacco!
(Richard Klein, Cigarettes Are Sublime)177
The yellow coloration at the tips of his bloodless fingers gave away that he made
less of an effort to sell cigarettes than to smoke them.
(Phillip Kerr, Old Friends—New Enemies)178
180 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

It is part of the history of the “society in a state of complete disintegration” that

cigarettes were more than a commodity in the black markets of the postwar era:
they were a currency. The reasons for this were partly pragmatic. Cigarettes were
convenient: “the cigarette is an internationally accepted unit; it is handy, easy
to transport, practically packaged, rather durable and internationally ‘standard-
ized’ for size and weight.”179 The cigarette took the place of money not only as
an exchangeable currency. In its fleeting, evaporating materiality, it resembled
the money of the inflation period, not because its value had decreased through
a seemingly unstoppable multiplication, but because it could be consumed—
cigarette by cigarette—and its worth literally evaporated into thin air. The
cigarette was a product from the start, and a currency during the interim period,
which made it a fitting equivalent for the black market since most observers
assumed that the black market would also be only a passing phase. The elusive-
ness and temporary nature of the time thus found expression both in the illegal
markets and in the tobacco currency.
Officially tobacco was considered more than a mere (fleeting) indulgence.
Tobacco is, as the state council of the American zone asserted in a letter to military
leaders, “today . . . not only an instrument for enjoyment, but more importantly
an instrument for relaxation and a distraction from hunger and sorrow.”180 Con-
sequently, the various powers endeavored to secure the supply of tobacco and to
increase the size and acreage of the tobacco crops in Germany. The Soviet side had
special success with a system that relied on premiums for deliveries of tobacco.
In the Soviet occupation zone, within one year, between 1945 and 1946, the
amount of acreage increased 60-fold. This tripled the previous high-level mark,
yielding the Soviets a raw tobacco crop with a total value of 7.6 million marks.
This was the equivalent of 27 percent of the total German harvest. In addi-
tion, all sides benefited from the tobacco-harvesting settlers, garden-plot holders,
and smallholder farmers, whose combined revenues were estimated to be many
millions of marks.181
Still, cigarettes—especially non-German ones—remained rare and especially
desired, forming the top of the hierarchy of means of payment, with American
brands at the very top. As an article in Telegraf in June 1946 explained,

as [the Americans] in Germany can’t pay in dollars, they have created the cigarette
as an alternative currency. . . . For a package of “Ami [American cigarettes],” which
over there costs 8 to 10 cents, one currently pays 130 marks, which means that
one dollar corresponds to 1,200 to 1,500 marks. . . . This is most likely the reason
General Clay has proclaimed an import prohibition. It is not exactly an uplift-
ing spectacle to see the citizens of such a wealthy country, which has an excess of
everything, take advantage of the poverty of a poor nation that is being bled dry to
appropriate [that nation’s] last fungible value almost without a service in return.182

This clearly articulated what the cigarette, as perhaps the most important col-
lective symbol of the black market era, stood for: the different conditions of
power that could be articulated through it.183
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 181

Under the title “Camel No Longer Attracts,” a Wirtschaftszeitung reporter

noticed shortly after the currency reform that cigarettes had forfeited their
dominant market position:

among the dethroned rivals of the old currency the cigarette is at the top, espe-
cially the American cigarette. The “Chesterfield,” the “Lucky Strike,” the “Camel”
and the “Morris” . . . were for years not only the most noticeable items of exchange
in the black market in these parts, they had also developed into another cur-
rency, into a modern edition of the “Kauri Shell.” The American cigarette brought
forth . . . goods, services and “favors” like a divining rod. The cigarette had become
a vehicle of social change; it transported one closer to the top, and also let one go
in the opposite direction. In addition, it became a measure of value for some of the
trades in goods. . . . The German Mark took this cigarette-currency out of circula-
tion. . . . The cigarette, even the American, “no longer attracts.” . . . The cigarette is
once again a cigarette, a stimulant, more or less desired. It is no longer a means of
payment for which one can have anything and everything.184

In another Telegraf story, the cigarette symbolized the difference in power

between Germans and Americans in a modern fairy tale. “The Girl with the
‘American Cigs’ ” told the story of a four-year-old girl observed collecting cigarette
stubs by “a large, broad-shouldered, white-haired man with a good-natured face.”
The American “bent over the little girl and discovered with difficulty—he didn’t
speak any German and the little girl of course did not understand English—
that the twelve cigarette stubs were to be exchanged on the black market for
food.” The man was Mr. Warbington, a hard-working American farmer, who
himself had a granddaughter and was so touched by the little girl’s situation that
he took matters into his own hands and started to organize aid packages from the
United States to Germany. The article repeatedly stressed that he acted skillfully,
obtaining the best possible terms with American producers, and arranged to send
as many goods as possible at the lowest possible price to Berlin. When he told
people of his action and how skillfully he had negotiated in the United States,
“Mr. Warbington laughed loudly, with a roar.”185
This tale made the difference in power between the American and the German
side very clear by reversing the hustling situation. The aid of the American farmer,
his self-confident bearing, could only be tolerated by resorting to the topic of fam-
ily. His deftness in dealing with business partners in the United States formed the
positive counterpart to the inconsiderate and “smart” hustlers in Berlin. Market
mechanisms—this is the moral of the story—can also be used for a good cause.
Nevertheless, there was something unsettling about the “loud laughter” of the
benefactor, which brought the unequal distribution of power in the American-
German relationship to mind and could only be captured with the metaphor of
the “good uncle.”
Such positive examples gave voice to the difficulties of the times just as much as
descriptions of misery did. Collecting cigarette butts was humiliating. It belonged
to the canon of practices circling around the cigarette. Other common prac-
tices were offering (or not offering) a cigarette as well as lighting, inhaling,
182 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

extinguishing, or stepping on a cigarette. All of these actions—including how

one inhaled, and especially how one extinguished a cigarette—had a wide range
of forms, each of which articulated sovereignty. A cigarette could be flicked
away, stubbed out by hand, thrown to the ground, or stamped out underfoot.
In the eyes of many observers, these practices were an expression of careless-
ness or arrogance—albeit scarcely avoidable. At a time when city dwellers fought
to “own” sections of the sidewalk for collecting discarded cigarette butts, every
public gesture of this sort was also a demonstration of power. A Berlin woman
remembered people “shadowing . . . smoking Americans to be able to bend down
quickly and pick up the cigarette butt thrown away.” Furthermore, she had
seen how the contents of ash trays were regarded as “raw material” in some
establishments and “would be picked apart and made into new cigarettes.”186
Most importantly, the cigarette represented a hierarchy; it was possible to dis-
tinguish between the cigarette being used as a good and being used as a currency,
which, in turn, distinguished between the powerful and the powerless. Whoever
smoked cigarettes showed he did not need to see tobacco products as just a cur-
rency. To actually smoke cigarettes was a sign that one could afford to let what
others used as currency go up in smoke, as is expressed in Philip Kerr’s description
of a Russian KGB officer. It was not by chance that one of the obvious images
of splurging was to light cigarettes with paper money. Those who bent down
to pick up cigarette butts regarded actually smoking them as the equivalent of
burning money. At the same time, the sustained value of the cigarette currency
depended on the number of cigarettes in circulation continually being reduced
by consumption. This alleged “squandering” ensured that the monetary function
remained and that cigarette butt collectors could continue to use the garbage for
trading.
The cigarette became a collective symbol because the process of smoking
expressed a multitude of meanings that thematized and boiled down some of
the decisive conflicts of the black market era to their essence. Smoking (and
especially its representation in contemporary reports, films, and stories) was
never only a physical act but also a discursive one—in other words, “a silent,
but eloquent way to express oneself.” Smoking functioned as a “coded, rhetor-
ically quite complex, narrative-like articulated discourse” through which far
more could be conveyed than the mere fact of smoking (Figure 4.10). Like-
wise cigarettes presented “a subtle but efficient instrument . . . for regulating social
interactions.”187
Some people, most prominently “hustlers,” used these possibilities to express
their understanding of their roles. Thus, the cigarette became an attribute com-
plementing the typical combination of male tranquility and sovereignty that
had previously been suggested by gangsters and detectives. A hustler without
cigarettes was not a hustler. Cigarettes were a part of hustlers’ performance just
like casual clothing and casual gestures; by smoking, they exhibited a certain
nonchalance to the problems of the day. The casualness and coolness smoking
conveyed, with its ostentatious indifference to the surrounding chaos, also found
its way into contemporary youth discourse (Figure 4.11).188
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 183

Figure 4.10 Dress codes and typical postures in the black market, Berlin 1948
Source: LAB 1NK, Versorgung/Schwarzer Markt, Nr. 160976.

The hustler as a role model either had everything under control or could create
control. Demonstrative smoking, smoking with nonchalance, even in seemingly
precarious situations, became a symbol of the sovereign, unimpressed male. This
symbolic constellation overlapped with fictional characters who kept calm even
in the most dangerous situations. Keeping one’s calm could best be illustrated
through the obvious, deliberate lighting of a cigarette. If “normal” smokers
regarded lighting a cigarette as a relaxing break, the same gesture in the face
of great danger could only be understood as a sign of the highest attainable cool.
Even in the (anti-)war movies produced long after the war, the smoker who seem-
ingly always kept his cool—and remained free of any suspicion of ideological
indoctrination—was a common motif. This was carried to the extreme in John
Guillermin’s “The Bridge at Remagen,” in which a sergeant went about his work,
even during a gun battle, with a cigar in his mouth.
The description of the cool smoker with everything under control conveyed
power; being able to light a cigarette, preferably with a metal lighter, was more
184 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Figure 4.11 Children selling cigarettes on the black market in Schöneberg, 1948
Source: LAB 1NK, Kinder, Nr. 1099.

than a gesture of mere serenity. Smoking a cigarette generally led to a pause in the
conversation; it slowed down communication and therefore placed the person
lighting the cigarette in the position of being the one who could continue the
conversation whenever it pleased him. Whoever was smoking did not have to
speak and, through this gesture, had established a hierarchy or reminded one of
the existing one.
 Black Markets from the End of the War to the Currency Reform ● 185

Even before cigarettes had taken on this symbolic meaning, they functioned
as a means of establishing contact. This function increased in importance dur-
ing the black market period. To offer someone a cigarette or to ask for one was
an uncomplicated way of starting up a conversation, of becoming acquainted
with someone, or even of initiating a trade. “Cigarettes often mediate demo-
cratic, international, and cosmopolitan traits. They overcome the barriers which
the war had erected,” Richard Klein realized in his book on smoking. The prin-
ciple “that asking for a light cannot be rejected” opened up (and still opens up)
chance acquaintances for smokers: “by entering into the magical circle of smok-
ers the foreigner becomes an acquaintance or confidant.”189 On the other hand,
one could not really turn down the offer of a cigarette, even if it was the last one
because “accepting the last cigarette of a man who is in a miserable state and has
nothing else left to give means restoring to him the gift of giving”; to do oth-
erwise would deny him “the freedom . . . to act generously, discount his presents
and insult him.”190
The black market called this convention whereby the reciprocal service could
be the acceptance of a one-sided gift into question and partly invalidated it.
After all, what mattered concerning cigarettes in this context was the exchange
of material assets; the once “harmless” gesture could be read as an offer to trade.
As a medium of contact the cigarette remained effective. The fleetingness of the
moment was of importance. Initially, the attempt at contact in these cases could
be non-binding; it could be revoked. And even if a conversation or even a (trade)
relationship developed from the request for a cigarette, such acquaintances had
a different, less binding value than relationships that had developed over a long
time. The fast pace of society and the superficiality in interpersonal relationships
often criticized by contemporaries found an analogy in the cigarette as a way of
making contact with people.
Cigarettes, well-known tools for initiating contact, were a part of the erotic
game between sexual partners. Behind the outrage over the “new woman” who,
equipped with a cigarette, flaunted her self-confidence, was the uncertainty over
how a man should approach her. Whoever had mastered the new rules of the
game could light her cigarette. But in this exchange, was one not perhaps entering
into a (non-binding) agreement that could turn into a (dangerous) sexual one?
With cigarettes in their hands, women not only started to smoke like men; they
simultaneously opened up a public space for themselves. They stepped into a new
communication situation, and male participants were not always certain how they
were supposed to react.191
In the postwar period cigarettes were perceived in encounters between German
women and soldiers of the occupying forces as a means of establishing contact and
as a means of exchange. This reflected the power configurations. The subtext of
the discourse on cigarettes was that German women yielded to the enemy—and
the means of exchange were the enemy’s cigarettes. There may have been rather
pragmatic reasons behind the increase in female smoking during the war. A poll
carried out by the Institute for Public Opinion Polling in Allensbach in 1949 on
186 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

the female consumption of cigarettes found that 49 percent of the women sur-
veyed claimed to have started smoking only during the war or in the postwar
period. Yet this poll itself also conveyed a fixation on the possible meanings
implicit in smoking.
The cigarette stood as a sign at an intersection of numerous lines of interpreta-
tion. In the end, the discourse on cigarettes enabled people to turn the disturbing
experiences of the postwar era into describable—and thereby somewhat more
graspable and explainable—experiences. This struggle to create order was behind
all the talk connected with the black market. It was also characteristic of the
practices of the participants on both sides. If the policies of the Allied forces and
German security institutions to combat and control the black market could still
be described as a mixture of inching ahead insecurely, of ideological rhetoric and
pragmatic tranquility, the illegal marketplaces were sites that, on the one hand,
appeared sociable and adventurous to Berliners, but which were also unsafe, and
the chaos of the times clearly manifested itself in them. They stood for unreason-
able demands of very different sorts: for unfamiliar practices and new players, for
arbitrariness, for the loss of trust in goods, for social upheavals, and for misery,
hunger, and the injustice of a market in which humans perceived one another as
predators. Everywhere one could discern a desire for order, for rules that would
make trust possible once again. This mistrusting and waiting for signals to create
trust resulted from experiences of loss. For many, an everyday feeling of security
had been lost in the chaos of the time. The black market was exactly in the mid-
dle. The black market was a realm of experience and the symbol for the absence
of rules, an absence that was difficult to tolerate; and it was also a social event.
The black market was the unjust redistributor who rewarded the “smart” and
punished the weak. It was the site of creative development after the months of
the “final battle.” No matter how many single success stories described the market
in the sense of a creative development, the black market stood above all for the
desire for a new beginning.
 CHAPTER 5

Stories of a New Beginning: The Economy

of the Streets between the Currency
Reform and the “Economic Miracle”

C
ontrary to what is generally believed, the black markets did not sud-
denly disappear in the summer of 1948. People continued to be indicted
in Berlin for illegal street trading into the early 1950s.1 All the same,
the currency reform in East and West did represent the most significant break
in the Berlin barter culture since the beginning of the war. With it, economic
and currency decisions were made that—at least on the Western side—aimed
to break with rationing and the controlled economy. As the restrictive measures
were lifted, they gradually marginalized the illegal markets.
The first section of this chapter investigates this break and its significance
for Berlin’s bartering culture. The subsequent sections investigate how Berliners
evaluated the attendant symptoms of black market trading and what role their
experiences with the bartering culture played in the context of formulating a new
economic order.

“High Politics” and New Currency Practices: The Effects of

the Currency Reform on Berlin’s Black Market
Berlin’s black marketeers were accustomed to modifying their trading practices
in rather varied temporal contexts. Even during the war, black marketeers had
adapted to the political climate and planned for the possible end of the war.
For example, they hoarded goods and oriented their trading to the continually
changing cycles of the supply system, especially toward the end of the war. For
example, Berlin police observed that trading was more intense after air raids,
when special allocations were handed out.2 When Germany began to lose the
war in 1943, black marketeers started to hoard goods for the future. One of them
stated in his interrogation that he wanted to build up a reserve for the period
188 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

after the war; another remarked that he was expecting a “gas war” to come soon.3
The testimony of arrested black marketeers repeatedly expressed their worries
about the future and how these were strongly affected by their experiences dur-
ing the hyperinflation period. One, for example, claimed that he wanted to put
away some savings “for a rainy day” because he had “lost everything” at that
time.4 Generally, individual traders used these practices to secure their income
only in a time of need. Brokers, by contrast, acted with much more foresight.
One individual dealer explained in a letter that he was especially interested in
soap and toiletries because he believed that these articles would be in short sup-
ply and high demand after the war.5 Thus, black marketeers’ time management
practices always related to their individual strategies and were themselves derived
from reactions to larger social and political developments, as well as microlevel
organization.
The impending defeat made traders anticipate an uncertain future, which
affected how they thought about time. People worried about their fate. How
would the victors behave? What sort of repression could one expect? Of course,
occasional, seasonal supply bottlenecks prompted some black marketeers to be on
the lookout for “opportunities” and whatever was being offered at the moment.6
However, alongside this, international politics and the actions of the victorious
powers became increasingly important to the black marketeers. People expected
Germany to lose; they expected the city to be occupied. What would that mean,
and how would they get along with the new rulers? How would long-term
political decisions impact them? Berlin, in particular, was becoming the center
of an East-West confrontation that was gradually apparent even to the “simple
man on the street.” Such anxiety was only natural, as the international disputes
would have rather serious consequences perceptible to all in their daily lives.
The Red Army’s seizure of the city, the first political and administrative mea-
sures of the Soviet rulers, the arrival of the Western Allies, the division of the
city into four sectors, the coordination of the policies in the Allied military com-
mand, the work of the newly formed bodies for Berlin’s self-government, and
the beginning tension between the victorious powers, the Berlin blockade—most
Berlin citizens followed these important political and military events very closely
because they affected them directly. In this sense, everyday life in Berlin was
extraordinarily politicized. Political developments and the everyday routines of
the black market became closely intertwined and made it necessary for traders
to stay up to date and analyze new information carefully. Although this was
not a new phenomenon, the East-West confrontation increased traders’ insecu-
rity and their need for reliable information and direction on how to respond to
new situations. The Berlin newspapers were full of articles on the advantages
and disadvantages of certain developments and contained useful information
such as the dollar exchange rate or prices on the black market.7 For many, this
constant need for information was a heavy burden. Some adapted profession-
ally to the new conditions, and others passively resigned themselves to them.
Yet even those who found the pressure of the uncertain circumstances intol-
erable began to adapt. The most prominent event that brought together the
 Stories of a New Beginning ● 189

micro- and macro-elements of this development was the currency reform in

July 1948.
The solution to the currency problem in Berlin shaped up as a race, with
time playing a decisive role.8 On July 22, 1948, the incumbent mayor, Louise
Schröder, was ordered by the Chief of Staff of the Soviet Military Government
to implement Order 111 of the currency reform. The regulations formulated
in the order were to be put into effect the next day. The Western Allies were
forced to take action. If they believed it was politically important to keep their
own currency in their three sectors in the Western part of the city in order to
maintain their claim to sovereignty, they would have to raise the money to pay
for it. And how could West Berlin be supplied with its own currency? How could
procurement and the markets be organized and safeguarded? Ultimately, these
questions dealt with issues that extended far beyond the boundaries of Berlin;
indeed, they pertained to the relationship to the West German state and to the
political order in Europe. The Western city commanders decided not to adopt
the currency reform and instead proclaimed that they were thinking of adopting
the West German currency for West Berlin. Already one day later, on June 24,
they laid the legal groundwork for this with the “Regulation for the Reform of
the Monetary System.” In the future the Deutsche Mark of the Bank Deutscher
Länder (Bank of German States) was to be the official currency for the Western
part of the city. One day later, the new currency was already circulating as legal
payment.
With these steps, responsible parties on both sides had made “fundamental
decisions in regard to currency policy.” Something had started that had “its own
dynamic” and led to both parts of the city being integrated into the Allies’ respec-
tive legal and economic systems.9 This development was completed by the middle
of the 1950s. The currency reform was therefore an important step on the path to
both the social market of the West and the planned economy of the East. In the
days immediately before the reform the expectation of it had quite the opposite
effect: it led to hoarding and to a flourishing black market. The fact that two
parallel currencies existed side by side in a city that was more or less spatially
intact, in which there were relatively free conditions for trading, ushered in amal-
gamations of the currency rates and traders trying to use the difference in value
to generate extra profits.
In the weeks and months before the currency reform, Berliners were by no
means only interested in questions of supply; often they paid more attention to
the behavior of the Western powers toward Berlin and to the city’s role in the
emerging Cold War, as indicated in the thirteenth “Report on Berlin Morale” of
the Public Opinion Research Office. The report of January 26, 1948, stated that
currency reform continued “to occupy people’s attention”10 and that the pub-
lic was exceptionally interested in the general political situation abroad and its
impact on Berlin: “Not fuel, not food, not clothing nor currency reform but the
pros and cons of the evacuation of the Western Allies from Berlin is the main
consideration at the moment.”11 Large portions of the Berlin population in all
four sectors feared that the Americans, British, and French could pull out of
190 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Berlin, contrary to the assurances that General Clay, among others, had given.
The failure of the London Conference (November/December 1947) to close the
gap between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union and the militant demeanor
of Cominform, in particular, had “conspired to give Berliners a bad attack of
nerves.” By contrast, Berliners’ attitudes about the problem of the black mar-
ket were reportedly laconic: “Wer gut schmiert, der gut fährt,” noted the report,
quoting a common German saying of the time along with an English translation
(“he who bribes well fares well”). The report then concluded with a few words
on a public opinion poll indicating that most Berliners considered the employees
of the public administration to be corrupt.12 All in all, the black market and its
attendant symptoms took up exactly seven lines of a four-page report.
The belief that economic policy decisions were imminent had a tremendous
impact on black market trading. Traders turned rapidly to foreign currencies
and tangible assets, presumably because they were uncertain about the con-
sequences the expected shift would have. The fourteenth “Report on Berlin
Morale” commented on this:

Fears of Currency Reform have led to increased trading. A veritable flight from the
Mark took place at the beginning of the month when fears of Currency Reform
were at their highest, with dealers trying to buy stable currency—chiefly British
Pounds and US Dollars. Dollars were selling at RM 300–350, even rising in a few
cases to RM 500. A gold 20 dollar piece is reported worth RM 20,000. Gold and
silver and valuables generally have also risen in value. The Black Market in petrol is
now deep rooted . . . . American filling stations are reported to be sources of Black
Market petrol.13

The expectation of currency reform led, on the one hand, to a “flight into
material assets.” As these, however, could largely be exchanged only on the black
market, illegal trading also “flourished” after the news of the imminent currency
reform. A report of the British “Enforcement Department,” which was respon-
sible, among other things, for watching over the enforcement of Allied pricing
policy, noted already in April 1948:

The confidence in the currency has mostly vanished. The workman wants, if pos-
sible, to get a “payment in kind” besides his low actual salary, enabling him to get
by barter the necessary goods for daily life. As to the entrepreneurs, the distrust in
the currency is inducing them either to hold back their goods or to deliver them
only against raw material. A large stock is considered to be the best guarantee for
overcoming the currency reform.14

Thus, the same side effects could be observed in Berlin as had been observed
in the Western zones of Germany before the D-Mark was introduced.15 And, as
in the Western zones, the first effect of the currency reform was a sharp rise in
prices—sometimes over 300 percent.16
The further development of prices depended heavily on the fact that the
Western Allies, following a recommendation of the municipal authorities,
 Stories of a New Beginning ● 191

allowed payments in the Eastern currency. In the Western part of the city, impor-
tant daily goods as well as rents for apartments were calculated for and paid for
at a rate of 1:1.17 On the one hand, the existence of the two currencies generated
a great deal of uncertainty. A woman in Berlin reported:

The new currency is making life much more difficult, as we have to get the currency
from the Eastern sector. But I have no strength to do this. There are thousands of
people there in front of the banks standing in line. There are accidents and even
deaths. With East German money one can buy food. For textiles, thread, yarn,
soap, shoes, or even fruit, however, Western money is required. Apartment rents
and pensions and benefits are paid in East German money. There is a good deal
of wild trading. Whereas people previously had whispered “gold, silver, chocolate,
cigarettes,” now they ask for Western money. These two currencies are going to
kill us.18

This dark statement was only partly true because the two currencies also made
many new forms of trading possible that allowed one to improve one’s income.
For example, as the currency was exchanged at different rates in East and West,
it was possible to exchange money twice. A Berliner described the technique and
the resulting chaos in detail:

Since the first days of the currency reform the Berlin population has been in a state
of high tension . . . . Previously lines had formed in front of the grocery stores and
shops in order to get rid of the last old German money that one had. There are
now lines in front of the currency exchange offices. These lines ultimately became
the craziest black markets, such as we have not yet seen in Berlin in this concentra-
tion. . . . After hesitating in the beginning, clever Berliners in the Western sectors
of the city now [after the currency reform] exchange the quota of 70 marks in the
Eastern sector first because there they only have to show their rationing cards as
identification. After this, they use their identity card to get the Western quota of
60 marks. When news of this spread by word of mouth, there was a genuine storm
of the Eastern currency exchange offices by all West Berliners. The storm was even
larger because the newspapers, too, began to write about this and called on Berliners
to take advantage of it. What has taken place here in front of the currency exchange
offices can scarcely be described, and certainly the West must be aware that there
were serious incidents and even some deaths.19

Very quickly a value difference developed between the two currencies, with
the real exchange rates showing different degrees of trust in them. One could
certainly profit from this. As the Public Opinion Research Office pointed out
in its “Notes on Currency Reform,” which appeared regularly, many Berliners
sought to profit from this value difference:

The Eastmark is considered worthless in the three Western Sectors except for the
buying of rationed foods, coupon articles . . . etc. If using the Eastmark in this con-
nection the rate of the exchange is 1 Westmark to 1 Eastmark. This order allowing
Berliners to spend Eastmarks in the Western Sectors was given by the Military
192 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Government. It is favoured by all Berliners as they can exchange on the Black Mar-
ket 1 Westmark for 10 Eastmarks, thus buy their rations, pay their bills and rents
etc. in Eastmark for 1/10th of the original cost.20

Clearly the British reporters suspected that not only the Berliners, who were
directly confronted with the two currencies, but also their own supervisors were
having difficulty staying on top of the complex and confusing situation. Thus,
they illustrated the situation with two examples showing that some Berliners were
adapting quite well. Different regulations for the use of the currencies in the East
and the West had opened up a niche that East Berliners, especially, were able to
exploit for profit. The first example concerned the (politically motivated) per-
mission given to people living in the Eastern sector to pay for tickets for movie
and theater performances in the Western sector with Eastern money. As a result,
tickets were regularly bought with East German money and then sold on the
black market for Western money. The traders could then exchange this Western
money back into East German money on the black market at a rate of 1:10.
Movie tickets thus quickly mutated into an equivalent currency that, even if
only to a modest degree, compensated for the lower value of the East German
money.
The second example illustrated a similar mechanism on a much smaller scale.
The exchange equivalent that could be acquired in this case points to the everyday
significance of even small trading advantages. This mechanism involved small
coins. These had been devalued in the Western sectors at a rate of 1:10, making
it possible to play the two currency systems off one another in everyday life: if one
bought a newspaper that cost 15 cents in the West for two old marks, which now
had a value of 20 cents, one might receive five old ten-cent pieces in change. Now
one could not only go shopping in the East, where the money was worth 50 cents,
but also buy two tickets for 20 cents for the S-Bahn, which was administered in
the East: “So that one gets for 2 old Marks (20 Pfennige in Western money) a
newspaper which is worth 15 Pfennige and furthermore 2 S-Bahn rides gratis.”21
These were clearly conventional adaptation processes whose triviality indicates
that people did not need to have professional experience with the black market
in order to profit from it; the two currencies, in a sense, forced normal citizens
to engage in practices that resembled those of the black market. That profes-
sional black marketeers responded to the new situation quite adeptly was openly
admitted by the Berlin trade inspection service in a report translated into English:

During the first days after the currency conversion professional Black Marketeers
met in the well known Black Market centres to discuss, first of all, the new
conditions, created by the currency reform and to exchange experiences. They
refrain from offering Black Market goods until matters will have somewhat cleared
up. In some cases small quantities of cigarettes were black-marketed.22

This exchange of information among black market brokers corresponded to

everyday trading techniques such as those of the movie tickets described above,
 Stories of a New Beginning ● 193

exploiting the two currencies in the city. Although such transactions did not
generate large profits, they indicate that even occasional, private traders found
ways to benefit. In the realm of black market trading, it was possibly much clearer
than in the official markets what goods represented the equivalents of the new
currencies.
However, speed was of the essence, because the value differences reflected in
such bartering transactions evened out relatively quickly. One not only had to
know where to get such goods for a comparatively favorable price but also had
to react fast. In addition, the authorities did not just stand by and watch this
activity but rather attempted to control practices that devalued the East German
currency as a pure substitute currency. When black marketeers had automobiles
and were thus able both to quickly change their place of business as well as to
compare prices, the police did all they could to prevent this speed advantage, for
example, by confiscating the automobiles.23
The weeks and months before and after the currency reform were thus per-
ceived as fast-paced—a perception that combined with expectations and then
assessments of the currency reform. Traders reckoned with the reform and thus
attempted to anticipate its impact. Almost all black marketeers read about the
“general political climate” and used the information to generate options for their
trading and currency practices that, in turn, could often only be utilized within a
narrow time frame. On top of this, difficulties in communication and transporta-
tion cut significantly into their trading time. Time turned out to be a determining
factor not only in everyday life but also in shaping political processes.
Competitive conditions therefore not only shaped the introduction of the
new currencies but also the internal order and supply of the city, and the
establishment of the worldwide political framework. Everyday and “political”
time frames became conceptualizations of scarcity that mutually reinforced one
another. Under these conditions, a collective learning process took place in the
streets that manifested itself in a whole series of adaptive practices typical of
Berlin that were characterized by people trying to take advantage of the two
currencies.
In addition, this practical level, so to speak, was continuously linked to efforts
to provide and perceive order by applying moralistic categories to a reality experi-
enced as contingent. Talking about market conditions thus always also expressed
people’s anxiety to reassure themselves in times of transition and change. Conse-
quently, it fit into the moral discourse in which the critical economic conditions
since the inflation era were the starting point for a heated debate concerning cor-
rect economic behavior. Many contemporaries smugly anticipated the changes
the currency reform would cause to hustlers who had gotten rich in the black
market. In this attitude, they did not consider that the little man, too, would be
able to profit from the currency reform using similar practices.
When the currencies were introduced, those who had hoped that the mar-
ket itself would punish the hustlers saw their hopes realized, albeit only after a
transitional period, during which hustlers were able to conduct their business
with special fervor. The idea that the new “honest” money would recreate “fair”
194 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

exchange relationships contributed significantly to the moral legitimation of the

reforms.

The Black Market as a Political Issue: The Debates Concerning

the New Economic Order
Since its first large-scale appearance during World War I, the black market had
been a political issue. The “hustler” debates during the 1920s, the changes in
the semantics in the interwar era, and the National Socialist measures to combat
and control the black market from 1939 on repeatedly reinforced this. The black
market was associated not only with the malfunctioning of the economic sys-
tem but also with important political questions concerning the economic order
and its maintenance and questions on how quite varied groups could engage in
morally proper behavior during and after World Wars I and II. Against the back-
ground of black market experiences during World War I and in the early 1920s,
in particular, illegal trading came to have a significance that went far beyond
purely administrative problems. The market, its protagonists, and their behavior
became a prominent topic of debate after 1945, forming a polyvalent cipher for
a part of the “moral economy” that negotiated social justice and decent behavior
between World War I and the post-World War II era.
The experiences and the discursive configurations of the black market era
helped to shape the moral implications of the social market economy. Yet the dis-
course formation was ambivalent. On the one hand, the discourse on the social
market economy with its emphasis on commercial fairness was by definition far
removed from the morality of the black market. On the other hand, the positive
depiction of homo oeconomicus and his rationality, which up to then had been
rather unpopular in Germany, led to a more sober evaluation of the rationality
of the black market. In discussing this rationality, however, the representatives of
the social market economy were careful to set themselves apart from the nega-
tive moral connotations of the discourse on hustlers that enjoyed broad support.
The question of the economic rationality of the black market, in some cases,
was even able to tie the social market economy to the negative reputation of
hustlers.
After the end of the war, the morally charged discourse on the black market
continued but took on a new significance against the backdrop of the compe-
tition between the systems in East and West. Starting with the assumption that
the trading would cease one day, a first phase of historicization emerged during
the black market era that took the everyday political controversies into account.
Political elites as well as “common citizens” in East and West evaluated the black
market, its contemporary forms, and the conditions that generated it in light of
the contemporary controversies regarding future economic and political paths.
This change in the direction of the discourse did not, however, clearly break
with National Socialist discourse and patterns of interpretation but largely shifted
them, emphasizing certain elements especially to influence public opinion. These
 Stories of a New Beginning ● 195

elements took on a specific form in the context of the antagonism between East
and West.

Urgent Problems: Prices and Justice

Black market trading, which triggered indignation, was to become both a topic
and an argument in the debate about how to structure the new economy. Both
sides—those in favor of a free market as well as those in favor of a regulated
economy—found it relatively easy to interpret illegal trading in their discourse
and to use it as an argument to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of their
respective economic concept. The supporters of a state-directed economy could
count on widespread hostility toward black market trading. Their interpretation
emphasized the “scandalous” aspects of illegal trading—above all, unequal access
to the market, which rewarded some with unbelievable profits, whereas others
had to part with all of their belongings just to survive. In this view, the “splurg-
ing” made possible by the dishonest business dealings that had made hustlers
rich juxtaposed with the misery of people who had fallen on hard times through
no fault of their own represented the clearest expression of “unbridled” market
fundamentalism.
Dichotomies such as these formed components of an escalating rhetoric of
apodictically driven debates about what constituted proper morality in “everyday
life in a state of emergency.” They make it all the more clear just how complex
society was when moral certainties began to falter. Such problems were discussed
in innumerable letters to editors, newspaper columns, and radio broadcasts, as
well as in all sorts of guidebooks.
As early as August 19, 1945, a story on the station installed by the Soviets
in Berlin decided to address the topic of “inappropriate price formation.”24 As a
result of “extensive surveys,” the editor explained, there could be no doubt that
“the present untenable pricing policies in trade and commerce [had been] taken
over without reflection from the Nazi era.” His outrage was directed less at the
officially fixed prices than at the “fantasy prices” that “war profiteers and Nazi
big shots” supposedly had earlier and “easily” paid to businessmen “as one liter-
ally threw the money at them from our taxes and so-called voluntary duties and
donations.” “Of course,” continued the commentator, there were also women to
go along with this, “to participate in the lavish private parties, drinking cham-
pagne, in spite of the everyday worries and problems of the population,” who
were able “at a moment’s notice to have special dresses sewn for them for a cou-
ple of hundred marks and to indulge in other forms of luxury.” “We, however,”
he continued, “have at present no time and above all no reason to throw lav-
ish parties; rather, we must concentrate on repairing or renewing our . . . badly
damaged clothing,” and this solely for the “sober purpose, in spite of all the diffi-
culties, of going about our serious work in orderly and clean clothes.” Ultimately,
of course, both sides—buyers and sellers—were responsible for this intolerable
situation: “Everyone who demands or pays such prices . . . is taking advantage of
196 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

the people, as he is the initiator of an endless price spiral.” At the end of the story,
the commentator appealed urgently to his listeners to do what they could to stop
this development:

Free yourselves from all of your previous National Socialist customs and habits.
Do not wait for the authorities to issue regulations or to take coercive measures.
Do not wait until the trade unions become involved, which they certainly will one
day because of the importance of this problem and because the working population
has taken a stand, quite rightly, against the opportunists and hustlers.

To support, with “exemplary self-discipline,” a “pricing policy that is appropri-

ate for the time,” he further argued, showed that one understood what was “nec-
essary to build up a peaceful, democratic Germany,” and, moreover, “contributed
to doing away with one of the worst remnants of National Socialism.”25
A radio program from February 1946 argued along similar lines of coming to
grips with the past. The announcer asked rhetorically when it was that one could
buy what one wanted and immediately answered, “It was before and in the first
few years after 1933.” As soon as it became clear that the slogan “cannons instead
of butter” was meant seriously, the scarcity began. “And then,” the speaker con-
tinued, “came the war with its ration coupons. [And] we are all acquainted with
these.” It was, however, important to remind people about the cause to “show
whose fault it was that everything has become scarce, that maximum prices and
rationing were introduced. It is the legacy of the National Socialist war lead-
ership.” One of the other legacies of the National Socialist years, he claimed,
was the black market, and the story continued by reflecting on who the black
marketeers were. On the one hand, he argued, the police “could tell you a thing
or two” about “how many convicted criminals and well-known swindlers” were
to be found among the black marketeers. On the other hand, he pointed out that
black marketeering took place “not only in well-known streets and public squares
but unfortunately also in many stores.” Through their “old contacts,” many
businessmen were able again and again to obtain goods and to find buyers.26
The uncertainty about what did or did not constitute morally reprehensible
behavior, and—more important in practice—what might have found its way into
the regulations and ordinances, occupied both potential and actual black market
traders. They were quite aware that there was something like a rationality of eco-
nomic activity. Yet they wondered how individuals should orient their behavior
to a “proper” collective morality. Advice programs like “You Ask—We Answer” of
the Berlin station developed into an important source of information for Berliners
unsure of themselves. In one edition a listener contacted the show in order to find
out more about the “problem of bartering.”27 “For some time now,” she wrote,

I have been worried—as have many other national comrades (sic!)—about the
problem of bartering. This bartering has taken on an alarming shape. Trading is
certainly a good solution, so long as what is involved is a genuinely fair trade.
Some of those who have been bombed out of their homes have been able to help
 Stories of a New Beginning ● 197

themselves by trading one of their household items for another. What I am against
is the trading—to cite only one example—of a valuable good for food. In this form
of trading one of the trading partners will always be cheated.

As an example of the opposite opinion, the show presented a letter from a

different woman who stated, “There are so many who are opposed to bartering.
But this is none of their business. The only important thing is if the trading
partners are satisfied with one another.” The decisive question, the show asked,
was who was right, and could the objects of trade really be a matter of indifference
to others? The show then answered these questions with the typical propaganda of
the official East Berlin agencies: one had to consider the source of the food being
offered for bartering. The show then added apodictically: it “comes from the
black market and can only have been brought into the black market by hustlers,
thieves, dishonest civil servants, and deceitful businesspeople. These are parasites
who live off our badly suffering public body (Volkskörper [sic!]), who embezzle
goods in order to enrich themselves without a conscience. Whoever engages in
such trading harms not only himself but also the general public.” Therefore, he
appealed to everyone, “Help remove these evils; put a stop to those harming the
nation (Volksschädlinge [sic!]).”
One important topic was the question of fair prices. Complaints about prices
being too high accompanied the Berlin black market era as a never-ending
lament. Letters to the editor of Berlin newspapers as well as to Berlin radio sta-
tions were full of outrage. Hans Feit, for example, complained in a letter of the
“unbelievable prices in all the bars and restaurants on Motzstrasse.” He was espe-
cially upset about the 24 marks “two pieces of potato pancakes” supposedly cost
in the Marietta Bar there. The reporters exerted a good deal of effort investigating
such complaints and calming the angry listeners. The reporters assured Mr. Feit
that they had investigated “this matter” and that they had found out that in early
August “indeed truly unacceptable prices were being asked.” They were able to
inform him, however, that the places he had mentioned were now “serving food
at normal prices.”28
What was a just punishment for black marketeers? This was also a highly
controversial topic that exemplified the contradictions and intersections with the
criminal prosecution policies of the occupying authorities. In a “commentary”
from the summer of 1946 on Berlin radio, the reporter stated that the working
population was demanding “the strongest possible measures against extortionists,
hustlers, and freeloaders, who have become a genuine plague.”29 Although one
needed to mention early successes by the police, it was still “not a secret that
black market trading has moved from the streets and squares to the clip joints and
other areas . . . where the underworld gathers.” When, however, the police cracked
down, the decisions of the courts often drove citizens to despair. “We are a long
way from demanding that judges’ decisions be dictated by the so-called ‘public
feeling’, ” the commentary stated. The Nazis used this phrase “public feeling” to
provide legitimation for their breaches of the law. That did not mean, however,
that the “new democratic justice can simply ignore the demands of broad sections
198 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

of the hard-working population that there should be a harsh punishment for

hustlers and of black marketeers.”
The question of price monitoring was also being discussed by the trade unions
according to a report of the same radio station in February 1946 with the title
“Black Market and Productive Work.” Workers were willing to accept a wage
freeze in order to prevent inflation, it stated, yet they demanded in return “the
ruthless suppression of any and every price speculation.” As a result, a system of
price controls was agreed to for the Neukölln district. The closing words of the
broadcast repeated the idea that overcoming the black market was closely related
to overcoming National Socialism:

The quicker goods can be produced, the quicker the scarcity will be eliminated
under which today all the people of Europe are suffering as a consequence of the
Nazi war. And the quicker we will also reach a point where everyone can once again
buy what he wants and the black market will only be remembered as a part of the
dark atmosphere of the Nazi regime.

Old Problems in New Clothing: The Planned Economy

The connection between the black market and capitalism was highlighted and
emphasized in East Berlin, where commentators repeatedly stated that illegal
trading was an outgrowth of war and fascism, which itself was a product of cap-
italist imperialism. In this interpretation, black market trading resulted from the
National Socialist war economy, which had robbed the working population of
its livelihood. The unregulated market, representing the prototype of a “capital-
ist” economic system, without any security measures, “strangled” the “common
worker” and privileged the hustler. The hustler did not work. Rather, he used
all his time and energy to enrich himself at the expense of the “common man.”
Both in the general thrust as well as in the specific choice of concepts, this view
represented a variation of National Socialist interpretations of the black market.
Indeed, the antithesis between “work” and “trading” even employed a key point
of interpretation of the old National Socialist economic ideology, distinguishing
between “working and money grabbing capital.”
The opposite poles, “working” and “hustling”—themselves a variation of the
contradistinction of “working” and “money grabbing” capital—were reflected in
the policy Soviet military leaders launched immediately after conquering the city:
rather than subject those charged with black illegal trading to protracted trials,
they instead put them to work immediately cleaning up the streets of Berlin.30
The reasons for these measures were primarily pragmatic—to free the city of
rubble and get it back into order. They were not expressly directed against black
marketeers. It was quite easy to integrate such measures subsequently into anti-
black market campaigns that sharply contrasted genuine reconstruction work for
the new socialist Germany from black marketeering.
On September 4, 1945, the Berlin radio station ran a biased piece enti-
tled “We See Black . . . ,” which offered a somewhat elegiac interpretation of
 Stories of a New Beginning ● 199

the immediate postwar situation by tracing the different meanings of the word
“black” in various contemporary contexts.31 This perspective, according to the
commentators, was by no means “notoriously pessimistic.” However, given the
visible successes of the efforts to build up a new democratic state, which could
be seen all around, the listeners “as responsible members of a Volksgemeinschaft
[must also] see the shadows from the light of a situation that has been cleaned
up; these shadows cannot be avoided, as shadows are the constant companions of
light . . . We see black, indeed a great deal of black.” They could no longer close
their eyes to the problems associated with the color black that had moved into
the foreground due to their common, everyday occurrence—such as the “black
market” and “black marketeering.” They referred to the “present situation” as
“the legacy of a one-sided war economy and of a criminal, imperialistic war,”
both of which had themselves resulted from one of the defining characteristics
of the times: scarcity. “Caught between the two poles of scarcity and people’s
needs,” the responsible authorities had developed a “complicated and therefore
very sensitive system” that “manifested” itself visibly in the rationing cards. This
system regulated “the weak flow of goods between the producer and the distribu-
tor” and protected “value and price levels.” This system contributed substantially
to preserving value “against elements that would disrupt prices, leading to the
devaluation of the money, which is known to all of us as . . . ‘inflation’ and which
we remember with horror.”
The piece emphasized collective morality and called on all citizens to refrain
from participating in the black market, no matter how unimportant or insignif-
icant their trading. Every “selfish behavior,” manifested, for example, in small
favors to keep up good relationships with tradesmen, had to be “repudiated with
unchanged intensity.” The black market was, it argued, not compatible with “our
own greatest interest of guaranteeing the peace of the new German reality to be
created.”
There were clear anti-foreigner grumblings in the anti-black market discourse
in East Berlin. Displaced persons were repeatedly targeted for attack, accused
of the worst sort of black market transactions, together with members of the
American army. Neues Deutschland reported in July 1948 that some members of
a DP camp in Mariendorf that was about to be vacated were working openly
with members of the American army to sell the goods in the warehouse.32 The
report stated that anything one could want was available there for D-Mark, from
all sorts of cigarettes to the most elegant luxury cars. The purpose of this action
was clear: “the last D-Mark of their share is to be taken out of the pockets” of
the West Berliners. This tied the black market directly to the presence of the
American troops, which itself was interpreted as predatory. Even members of the
“Western police” were accused of working together with black marketeers.33
In the East, the currency reform was closely related to the black market. The
new currency was seen as a black market currency that had been forced on the
people for the purposes of speculation. With some satisfaction, a radio commen-
tator claimed on July 7, 1948, that the Berlin city government had “capitulated.”
The decision “to carry out all public business only with the old German mark,
200 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

with coupons glued on, which is valid in the Eastern zone” could safely be
regarded as “officially taking back the mark dividing Berlin and retiring it from
Berlin’s economic life.” The retreat of the mark had proceeded by “giant strides”:
“first it was 40%, then 25, then 10 and this evening it is already 0%.” “This row
of numbers” illustrated that the Western mark would soon “completely disap-
pear from payment transactions in Berlin.” With pleasure the reporter painted a
picture of what was going to break loose that night in the editorial departments
of the Tagesspiegel and of the Telegraf after the decision of the Berlin city gov-
ernment, “what a Hamburg paper had reported for the complete Eastern Zone:
raving madness.” Indicators of this were “the hangover atmosphere” that had
dominated even before the decision was made “in the camp of those who were
supporters of the Western mark.” The commentator continued, “The Tagesspiegel
writes today, in a desperate article, that this reorganization will turn the D-
mark exclusively into an ‘object of speculation.’ ‘Should you,’ the Tagesspiegel
asked in desperation, ‘continue’—pay special attention to that word, my dear
listeners—‘to support the black market?’ ” With these remarks, the commentator
believed that “the reactionary newspaper” had correctly described “the role of the
Westmark as the black market currency.”34
If one considers the shortages and the reactions of many Berliners to the eco-
nomic chaos of the time, then it is not at all surprising that the ruling communist
party of in the East, the SED, by no means stood alone in its belief that “given
the present scarcity in regard to raw materials, transportation vehicles, fuels, and
much more . . . the progress of the economy [could] only be secured by means
of economic planning.” Many political parties and groups shared this view,35
including the SPD and large sections of the CDU in the West.36
The starting point for a planned economy was thus quite favorable. In a society
that had become mistrustful because of economic crisis, the need for order was
an ideal argument. “Planning,” with its promise of security, could fill the gap left
by the chaotic black market period. Most people considered the black market,
even with all their individual positive experiences, very negative overall because
of how it reordered the routines of everyday life, because of its irksome challenges
and social upheavals. In this context, Walter Ulbricht, the general secretary of
the Central Committee of the SED in East Germany from 1950, remarked that
the GDR’s economic plan was a “friend” that had brought about “something
new and beautiful” everywhere in the streets. This statement made on the radio
in the beginning of the 1950s and subsequently often quoted had two sides,
however. On the one hand, it was justified in light of early, if modest, successes,
but, on the other, it represented proverbial whistling in the dark.37
The reason it ignored dangers was that, although the plan prompted a reassur-
ing return to well-ordered conditions in which the vast majority of goods could
be purchased in shops, East Berliners (and East Germans in general) still lived
“from plan to plan,” with scarcity and “organizing”—or rationing—remaining
common practices up through 1989. Although things were far different from
before, bartering was still a part of everyday life. Of course, as one’s very sur-
vival no longer depended on the black market, trading lost some importance,
because the transition from “sustaining to shaping one’s life” had opened up new
 Stories of a New Beginning ● 201

chances. Nevertheless, the limits of these new opportunities were soon reached.38
The claim of the East German state and party leadership that it “knew what
the population” apparently needed “to satisfy its needs” did not fit the facts; the
citizens of the GDR, to be sure, appreciated the level of security they had in
regard to everyday things, yet they never gave up their claim of being sovereign
consumers.39

A Successful Proposal for the Economic Order: The Social

Market Economy
Forty years after the end of the war, in June 1985, the hustlers once again
appeared in West German academic discourse—even if only on the margins.
The setting for this “performance” pointed to what could be called classic
examples of the success stories of West German postwar history. In the office
towers of the Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, at an event of the Gesellschaft für
Unternehmensgeschichte (Business History Association), Tübingen economist
Joachim Starbatty looked back at the social market economy from a historical-
theoretical perspective.40 Starbatty, the last academic assistant of Alfred Müller-
Armack, who had coined the term “social market economy” and who had
provided the theoretical substance behind the concept, discussed the so-called
arbitrage phenomenon. Human behavior, he claimed, is often nothing more than
“looking for time or profit differentials.” In this, it resembles the movements in
the stock markets that make use of exchange rate differences and interest rate
differentials in order to level them. Analyzing the advantages and disadvantages
of this approach in comparison with the “axiom of self-interest,” Starbatty came
to the conclusion that descriptive categories of economic behavior were especially
useful as they avoided moral implications. At the same time, he emphasized the
beneficial “macroeconomic” aspects of such behavior: people who organized col-
lective compensatory movements were able to prevent misallocations and thus
to slow down rising costs. Only dysfunctional institutions, Starbatty averred,
clouded the picture: “if seeking profit differentials” produces “undesired macroe-
conomic results,” one should “not address individual economic behavior but
rather the institutional arrangements.” He named “black markets, price gouging,”
and “hustling” as examples of such “undesired results.” “Black markets,” Starbatty
concluded, are “a typical product of badly ordered or regulated production and
trading relationships.”41
Concepts such as “black market,” “price gouging,” and “hustling” may have
sounded somewhat antiquated to Starbatty’s audience, especially in a lecture that
otherwise employed contemporary economic jargon and concentrated on current
problems such as “the contribution of individuals to the production of collec-
tive goods.” It would have made much more sense in the mid-1980s to discuss
a different consequence of false institutional developments, one that Starbatty
mentioned, namely, illegal employment (Schwarzarbeit). Yet the reference to the
“black market” and those who had participated in it turned people’s attention to
the prologue of the economic new beginning. The reference was—besides being a
part of the academic argument—reminiscent of the phase when the social market
202 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

economy had been established, of the era of the currency reform and the imple-
mentation of “Rhineland” capitalism. Starbatty thus discussed in passing two
topics whose correlation, as a rule, had been depicted quite one-dimensionally
because this narrative was a part of the foundation myth of the Federal Republic.
According to this myth, the social market economy was born in the summer of
1948 in the currency reform. The currency reform had brought about the end of
the chaotic black market era and of the inadequate rationing system and laid the
foundation for the West German “economic miracle.”
The debates concerning economic systems and markets were at the heart of
political discussions in West Berlin, in the Western zones, and in the Federal
Republic in the early postwar period. The social market economy, a part of the
success story of the West German state and one side of the debate, was not a
natural law. Rather, the idea gradually prevailed over competing—in part diamet-
rically opposed—proposals. The teleology formulated after these events, which
linked the Federal Republic of Germany from the very beginning to this concept,
does not do justice to the historical openness of the situation. This teleology is
a part of the “invention of tradition,” which itself significantly shaped the new
state’s set of beliefs.42
The tremendous importance attached to the question of the proper “moral
economy,” even in the Western contributions to this debate, can be illustrated
by the outraged responses to a remark by Justice Minister Dehler of the Lib-
eral Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei, FDP) in December 1949.
Dehler had suggested that “those who before the currency reform had violated
economic provisions and regulations” had acted “economically quite rationally.”
Dehler made headlines with his recommendation for amnesty in cases of eco-
nomic crime: “ ‘Black Market Was Rational’: Dr. Dehler: Generous Amnesty
for Economic Offenses,” was the headline in Die Welt, while the Sozialdemokrat
wrote with indignation, “Dr. Dehler Praises the Black Market.”43 “Some remarks
of the minister in Bonn,” reported the newspaper, had caused “a consider-
able sensation,” because he had described the “black market as a ‘market of
economic rationality’ . . . . Above all, the workers, who up to then had shown
restraint, [would] not be surprised if the federal government proposed putting up
a memorial for the unknown black marketeer.”
This small debate quickly became a full-fledged controversy. Citizens, jour-
nalists, and experts expressed their outrage in numerous letters to the editor
and commentaries. The justice minister had stated, pragmatically, that all black
marketeers were “rational” people who had helped generate acceptance for the
laws of the free market. These remarks, consistent with the model of homo
oeconomicus, were an affront to contemporaries, who were attached to the idea
of a moral economy and who thought largely in the categories of those who
harmed the community (Gemeinschaftsschädlinge) and the welfare of the people.
Dehler’s interpretation not only contradicted National Socialist interpretations; it
also broke with a widespread public opinion, supported by the National Social-
ist ideology, that black marketeering was an “evil” whereby a few people had
enriched themselves at the expense of the vast majority because they had the
 Stories of a New Beginning ● 203

necessary resources and a healthy dose of egotism. Rudolf Groß, who was 43 at
the end of the war, formulated his disgust vis-à-vis the immoral hustle and bus-
tle of the black marketplaces in Berlin (although he had participated in them),
using language influenced by Christianity, “Now the black market, too, started to
gain momentum with its charlatans and in that market people haggled and were
cheated; it was worse here, I believe, than with the Pharisees in the temple at the
time of Christ (!).”44
Such judgments, criticizing the “tricks,” the imitations, the advantage-taking
of the black markets, gave voice to a widespread attitude in Berlin. However, not
only private individuals or those who had suffered personally from the black mar-
ket spoke out. The moral discourse on the black market was centered in the Berlin
newspapers. In the Berlin and business sections of the Tagesspiegel, commentators
came out in favor of the currency reform and of ending most management of the
economy. Yet although these articles did call for ending the command economy
and for the greatest possible economic freedom, even the Tagesspiegel argued that
the liberal economic system could not function without morality. “Success always
depends on economic morality and on a determined administration, which espe-
cially after the currency reform should have the courage to crack down where
guidance and steering are necessary.”45
In these public debates, the black market was treated with disgust because it
promoted—and reflected—a social morality interested only in profit, where peo-
ple did not refrain from deceit, where they took advantage of the existential needs
of others. A careful appraisal of this attitude toward the black market pointed out
the difficulties of complete economic liberalization. A liberal economic order,
one in which the invisible hand alone regulated supply and demand, was not
conceivable in the German discourse. Commentators favorable to the market
economy, as well, could not imagine a forward-looking economic system with-
out economic morality—even if it was established and implemented with state
power—and without the most individual economic activity being embedded in
a set of collective values. The collective processing of black market experiences
did not lead directly to affirmation of the social market economy. Rather, market
liberalization, in particular, such as that promoted by later Economics Minister
Ludwig Erhard, called forth associations with the hustler discourse.
The debates about the economic structures that should be established were
quite controversial and diverse, even dividing political parties—for example, the
CDU—and they also mobilized trade unions and representatives of the church.46
From the very beginning, this was not solely a discourse among experts but also
one of “the streets.” Ludwig Aderbauer remarked on this phenomenon in his
1948 dissertation:

the most important question is the frightening question: war or not. Alongside this,
the public is interested in nothing so much as in currency reform and the black
market. In the streets, in trains, in bars and restaurants . . . one repeatedly overhears
such conversations. Any exchange of personal, quite private worries always leads to
a discussion of these problems.47
204 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

The disputes and discussions concerning currency reform and the black mar-
ket always circled around the same two sets of questions. First: how could the
economic difficulties be overcome? And second: which economic system would
best do this? Regardless of the starting point used to enter the debate, whether
from the macroeconomic, theoretically informed perspective of the expert or
from the perspective of a layman worried about his own rations, everyone par-
ticipated in this broad discourse, which influenced public opinion regarding the
future economic system. “Free market economy” or “planned economy,” continu-
ing “management measures” and the “price freeze” and thus the National Socialist
“command economy” or “unleashing the market forces” and “currency reform”—
broadly stated, these were the alternatives in the debate dominated by a majority
that actually wanted both.
In the historiography, the patterns of interpretation are clear. The period after
the currency reform is most often described as the beginning of a new economic
success story. In this phase, Germany was committed to the idea of competition
and free prices. The lifting of the price regulations under Economics Minister
Erhard has a prominent place in the literature, although “political prices,” hous-
ing, transportation, and the food market played an important role until far into
the 1950s and approximately 30 percent of all private goods were subject to a
closely supervised pricing policy.48 “Government intervention in the setting of
prices was repeatedly called for” both by the population and by interest groups
and parts of the West German government and, as a consequence, also carried
out. Researchers have recently described as “remarkable” the fact that even “in
the phase of rapid growth after 1952 in spite of increasing incomes,” the call for
regulating prices “was made over and over again.” The “pricing policy in the social
market economy” had begun in the Basic Principles Act (Leitsätzegesetz) of 1948
with a “fundamental decision to secure the living standards of the population,”
because the planners working for Ludwig Erhard proceeded from the assump-
tion that “in the short term the market mechanism would not create a sufficient
supply, and as a result the prices would shoot up drastically.” The “fundamental
decision” aimed therefore to “protect the broadest sections of the population and
was oriented toward the income of the working-class population.”49
This policy turned out to be less successful than expected: “in spite of the
high percentage of administered prices, which at first could be kept relatively sta-
ble,” price levels continued to be “characterized by wild fluctuations” until 1952.
The subjective impression in the population was correspondingly negative and
was reflected in trade union protests and in public opinion polls. Because he saw
the acceptance of the new economic system as endangered, Economics Minister
Erhard relied on symbolic political gestures. His ministry “initiated . . . pricing
policy measures such as the Everybody Program, the price comparison lists, the
law against profiteering, the formation of a price council, and ultimately the
Konsumbrot (consumption bread), whose symbolic importance was far greater
than its actual economic significance.”50 This pricing strategy was successful
and “remained in place throughout the 1950s.” In the Adenauer administra-
tion, it was above all the chancellor himself who, in his desire for electoral
 Stories of a New Beginning ● 205

successes, repeatedly criticized the fundamental free market course of his eco-
nomics minister and attempted “to demonstrate the government’s ability to act
in the field of pricing policy.” These public discussions contributed “to a sustained
disagreement” between these two most prominent CDU politicians.51
The rival camps thus created were not overly apparent to those on the outside.
The concept of the social market economy was so flexible that everyone was
able to emphasize one or the other direction according to his needs. That is, the
social market economy was an “ideologically pliable” construction: “some people
emphasize the adjective, others the noun, and all are of the opinion that, above
all, their interests are at stake.”52
It was not at all surprising that even prominent representatives of the concept
could change their image. Ludwig Erhard is certainly considered to be one of the
liberal founders of West Germany’s social market economy, but a radio address
he gave on December 8, 1945, shows that he was not, in fact, so very liberal but
worried about the dangers of an unrestricted market. Bavarian state economics
minister at the time of the address, Erhard stated that although he was reluctant
“to bring about economic order through police powers,” the government could
“no longer watch idly . . . while unscrupulous profiteers were taking advantage
of unsettled legal relationships and shifts in competencies in order to squander
public assets.” Furthermore, while he was not opposed “to coming out in favor
of a liberal economic model,” conditions were not yet right for such a model: “in
a fundamentally free market economy,” such “personal freedom of movement”
was “subject to requirements” that did not presently exist “given the shortages
in all areas.”53 Although Erhard wished for economic conditions to be relaxed,
he did not believe this could be achieved “through the chaos of arbitrariness,
licentiousness, and brutal selfishness” but rather required that one take measures
with all due severity against the “evil insects, parasites and grave robbers.”54 What
is interesting, above all, in this address is that its title, “Economic Order Cannot
Be Achieved through Police Power,” suggested that it would have a more liberal
slant.55
Can referring solely to the success of the social market economy sufficiently
explain the history of its origins and establishment? The most prominent refer-
ence to contextualizing the beginning success story of the social market economy
with an eye to the experiences of the black market era is found in the very writ-
ings of the scholar who coined the term, as mentioned above, Müller-Armack.
In a much quoted textbook article on the subject, he referred explicitly to the dif-
ficulties of establishing and implementing the social market economy as he had
defined the term. “If, after years of strict economic management, the concept of
the Social Market Economy was successfully introduced to the German public,”
he wrote, “this was due to the negative experiences of an era in which economic
management had not worked and in which there was ever greater currency disor-
der.” At that time, it was only when the “malfunctions of economic planning” had
been discussed that “a system based on freedom . . . could successfully claim to be
able to solve the social problems [and find] support for this claim among broad
sections of the population.”56 With this statement, one of the founders of the
206 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

social market economy referred to the historical conditions that made the success
of the concept possible, and at the same time he historicized his own contribu-
tion to the founding of the West German economic system. This 1956 article,
therefore, already referred to the “black market era” as a necessary prologue to the
very concept of the social market economy, and it recognized the experience of
the “illegal” as an important backdrop to the actual realization of this concept.
The experiences of the 1940s were important for contemporary economists
who had long been thinking about mixed economic systems and were attempt-
ing to reevaluate the role of the state in steering social and political tasks. Yet
implementing an economic program required political support as well as con-
vinced and convincing political decision-makers and sufficient support among
the population.
One of the decisive advantages of the social market economy was that the
concept was situated between the two poles of the general discussion that Erhard
named in an article, “Free Market Economy and Planned Economy,” in the Neue
Zeitung on October 14, 1946. When it was reprinted in 1988, the editor wrote a
short and pathos-filled introduction describing the contemporary context: “Peo-
ple were working like crazy, they were harassed by hunger, by the border between
the zones, by corruption, and by the black market.” The introduction also
explained Erhard’s aim “to make visible the diametrically opposite alternatives
in regard to political order.”57 Erhard’s statements in the article itself show the
difference between the subsequent glorification of his program, which he him-
self had already started before his death and which continued thereafter, and the
real program. In the article, without opening up a simple contradiction, Erhard
stated that it was characteristic “that the differences in viewpoints find expression
in extreme forms that appear to be irreconcilable—here the free market econ-
omy, there the planned economy, here socialism, there capitalism . . . whereas the
actual economic development” led one to ask, “if there [are] not effective influ-
ences from both sides” suggesting “a convergence of the positions.”58 On the one
hand, Erhard pointed out that a discussion marked by slogans and catchphrases
was scarcely suited to finding a solution; on the other, his remarks expressed
a thesis on polarization that the media took up and argued with great success,
above all, in the election campaign for parliament in 1949. This thesis contrasted
the free market economy and the planned economy, the CDU and SPD, and—
always implied in the background and sometimes pointedly advanced—West and
East.59
This staked out a framework of interpretation that would enable advocates
of the social market economy, on the one hand, to propagate their concept in
the following years as a persuasive compromise and, on the other, to address
various fears and hopes by shifting the accents in one or the other direction.
What Müller-Armack labeled a “vague usage” that occasionally hid its “intellec-
tual demands” among the public turned out, on the contrary, to be one of the
strengths of the concept. The combination of words in “social market economy,”
which some suggested had been “felt to be a contradiction in itself,” constituted
an attractive code for a new beginning; the “label” also profited from denoting
 Stories of a New Beginning ● 207

the success of the economic policy. However, to explain its success one should
look not only at the indices of (consumption goods) production, but also at
the “softer” factor of a discourse element that was able to become established,
especially since the “miracle” itself only very slowly took shape in everyday life.
Consequently, the myth of the economic miracle unfolded—at least in part—in
retrospective descriptions.
The unambiguous material success story that the concepts of “economic mir-
acle” and “consumer society” suggest was by no means so clear at the “beginning
of the consumer society.” Michael Wildt described the first decade after the cur-
rency reform as “a good deal more frugal, more limited and more gray” than the
myth of quick economic growth would have us believe.60 The well-known motif
of the shop windows filled with consumer goods once again concealed the fact
that many were simply not able to immediately enjoy what they had “long done
without.” This does not negate the success story of the new economic begin-
ning but does relativize it. Looking at the complete context of the social market
economy’s implementation requires this differentiation. The advocates of the new
economic order were able to use the pliable concept of the social market economy
successfully to deal with the problems of the chaotic era that preceded it.
The concept addressed a whole series of contemporary problems that every
individual would have experienced daily. The central elements of the new eco-
nomic order seemed to provide an answer to the existing “defects,” or appeared
at the very least promising in this regard, as indicated by Müller-Armack’s obser-
vation in 1956: the “basic assumption of the social market economy—that it has
to be possible to win trust among the broader spectrum of the population for the
social accomplishments of the market economy—has been shown to be true.”61
The population trusted the new economic order because it promised stability
and “social progress” alongside material success. Consumers’ freedom formed the
center of the public portrayal of the concept, as well as the promise of a higher
standard of living for all German citizens. Within this conception, the market
economy comprised a “system of social protection” that was guaranteed simply
by the fact that “consumers guided the economy according to their needs” and
were able to utilize the “price instrument” as “an essential apparatus for coordi-
nation and leveling out” for their own welfare. In contrast, “all central planning,”
in Müller-Armack’s account, attempted “to steer the flow of goods” in a direc-
tion different from those of “the wishes of the consumers.” This “orientation
toward consumption” in itself already constituted “a social service of the market
economy.” Moreover, “the continual increase in productivity brought about and
ensured by the system of competition” had a similar effect of fostering “social
improvement,” which was all the greater and more universal “to the degree that
it is able to curb one-sided income formation, which has its origins in a special
economic status.”62
“One-sided income formation” and “special economic status”: in common
parlance these were “splurging” and “luxury.” Popularly, those who enjoyed these
traits were called “war profiteers” and “fat cats.” During the war these terms
had been used to refer, among other things, to party functionaries in prominent
208 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

positions and to the system of an existing network of bartering relationships.

According to Müller-Armack, the system of central planning combined with
free market elements such as those that had existed in Germany in World War
II produced above all blockades and obstacles that reduced Germany’s economic
performance. The social market economy, therefore, employed competition as
“a coordinating principle,” without falling back into a radical laissez-faire policy.
The new social market economy comprised a “novel synthesis.” “The concept
of the social market economy can be defined as an idea concerning the political
order whose goal is, on the basis of a competitive economy, to link free initiative
with social progress that is secured precisely by the market’s performance.”63 That
a state social policy with its redistribution of wealth and its promises of security
should come into being alongside this novel emphasis on the independent con-
sumer made it that much easier for people to choose freedom, which represented
not only a promise but also a danger.
 Conclusion: Black Market Trading as a
Radical Experience of a Free Market

W
erner Abelshauser once remarked, “German history since 1945 has
been above all economic history.” According to Abelshauser, nothing
“shaped the West German state more than its economic develop-
ment.” The East German state, too, linked “its fate from the very beginning to
the promise of economic success.” Prosperity became “one of the most important
criteria of success in the East-West competition.” For the contemporary history
of the two German states, economic prosperity played the role of a “vehicle”
of national identification and of the state’s self-understanding. “The economic
success of the early years,” following this interpretation, served as the “material
basis for the rich consensus that made balancing the interests of social groups
possible.”1
These narratives of economic growth and progress gained great significance
because the successes—even the modest ones of the East German economy—
stood out in comparison to the chaotic period that preceded them. The experi-
ences of the black market era were thus incisive. Just as they overshadowed the
era of relative stability during the 1930s, these experiences had an influence that
can scarcely be overestimated for the two German societies in East and West.
This development can, in part, be interpreted as deriving from quantifiable fac-
tors, but it also resulted from change in contemporaries’ experiences—a turning
away from the practices, risks, and culture of mistrust of the black market era.
What does it mean in this context that the Federal Republic remained the only
country in which an institution founded to protect consumers—the “Stiftung
Warentest” (Foundation for Product Testing, established in 1964)—became a
sort of state institution? What accounts for the fact that both the GDR and the
Federal Republic experienced a “judicialization of [their] economic systems” on
a scale unique to them in legal and economic history?2 Is one of the explana-
tions for this to be found in the radical market experiences of the 1940s? This
can scarcely be quantified nor can it be unequivocally proven; it can, however, be
made plausible.
For most people the black market—independent of all the adventurous suc-
cess stories associated with it—was largely an imposition. Indeed, the very
210 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

telling of black market experiences—generally described as successfully navigated

adventures—points out how exceptional participants found the situation to be.
But why was the market an imposition? Merely because it was illegal and turned
decent citizens into criminals?
Taking a broader view, we can see that the observations made here in regard to
Berlin’s everyday trading can also be related to long-term social and cultural shifts
that are more easily discerned by looking at the black market as an influential
everyday space of consumer experience during the 1940s. This long decade then
can be seen as a period of dissolution and reformulation of social norms. Con-
sequently, the decade becomes an important point of reference for “economic
histories as social histories” of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German
Democratic Republic.
Insecurity and mistrust concerning ideas of everyday behavior became fun-
damental experiences that influenced how one evaluated roles and individual
occupational groups. This was true for the GDR with its campaigns against pri-
vate businessmen that built on such mistrust, thus discrediting whole occupations
as hustling rabble. But this was also true for the Federal Republic. In his radio
address in May 1948, Ludwig Erhard, above all, criticized retailers, whom he
counted among those who had profited from the rationing. His statement was not
completely wrong, but nor was it likely to help ease the poisoned atmosphere.3
Erhard was bound to find broad support for this view because of the black
market’s unequal distribution of power in favor of the sellers. When the black
market ended, this unequal distribution continued, with those who had been
financially strong retaining the most power in the new markets. Alongside the
already much maligned “fat cats,” other occupational groups were accused of hav-
ing enriched themselves at the cost of the majority, including retailers, restaurant
owners, waiters, farmers, and city employees. The limited access to scarce goods
privileged occupational groups that had such access, giving them the advan-
tages of a supply oligopoly. Those unhappy with this situation could do little
about it.
Under the conditions of the bartering culture, there were directly perceivable
shifts in social life, especially in the social relationships in the workplace and in
the private life of the market participants. Relationships to acquaintances, neigh-
bors, and colleagues were among those affected as they became subject to the
imperative of trading, thereby becoming components of monetary or exchange
relationships. It was difficult for those who had seen how quite literally every-
thing was for sale on the black market not to think of love or family relationships
in terms of product categories. Additionally, the black market undermined the
traditional relationship to goods and to bartering or shopping as well-known fix-
tures of everyday life; the black market thus promoted a culture of mistrust as well
as a longing for “normal” forms of interaction and business. Customers immedi-
ately had to identify fakes, imitations, or even the diluting of goods and mention
them in the price negotiations to avoid getting swindled. They bore all the risk
and all the costs for testing the quality of the goods. They had no enforceable
rights, like those guaranteed by the state in legal markets. Consequently, both
 Conclusion ● 211

personal relationships as well as one’s relationships to goods were exposed to a

fundamental culture of mistrust.
Outraged observers responded to these uncertainties and disadvantages by
casting the hustler as the ideal type that profited from crisis. This profile of the
hustler had a long tradition filled with experiences, beginning with World War
I and its aftermath. Against the backdrop of changed historical conditions as well
as the plurality of forms of hustling, this discourse reduced the complexity of
social reality. Although the image of the hustler it presented did refer to events
people had observed, it also reduced the true complexity of rather varied trading
practices and groups of participants, which ranged from the occasional, private
traders to the large brokers of illegal trade. In the black market era, hustlers were
the protagonists of a moral economy that sought to order a reality experienced
as contingent and disadvantageous and to recreate a sense of security by means
of a simple moral pattern. Anyone could be accused of being a hustler—from
neighbors to complete strangers, assumed to be dark powers operating in the
background. In fact, of course, primarily fringe groups were so accused, so the
accusation fit into that broader discourse that supported the inclusive conno-
tations of the Volksgemeinschaft by defaming those who were not supposed to
belong to it.
At the same time, this hustler discourse also thematized the central problem
of the experiences of power and powerlessness in this moral economy. After the
war, these experiences became intertwined with people’s perceptions of a precar-
ious relationship between the victors and the losers. Different interpretations of
hierarchies of signs flowed into the descriptions of the bartering activity in the
Berlin black markets, expressing both feelings of power and humiliation (in the
markets) and articulating both disappointment and insecurity in a discourse of
victimization. New patterns of explanation picked up on this discourse in part,
for example, by construing support and assistance as evidence of friendship or
partnership and using it as a means of taking sides with one or the other of the
occupying powers.
The space where new and experienced black market traders encountered one
another was the public black marketplaces that began to spread out in the winter
of 1944/45 and had become fixed parts of the everyday life of Berlin consumers
by the summer of 1945. The public squares upset many observers, although oth-
ers perceived them as a space of a new and peaceful sociability after the war.
Those who were upset saw the social relationships cultivated in them as immoral
because they damaged the community. It is characteristic that these relation-
ships were expressed in market categories because the black market—at least as
soon as it was a visible public phenomenon—quickly became known as the black
“Börse” (or stock market). The frequently observed phenomenon of haggling over
prices caused a great deal of irritation. Given their experience with set rations and
“frozen” prices, many Berliners responded with skeptical astonishment to the visi-
ble practices of the trading, especially as, because of the scarcity, the traders named
prices that seemed to be “fantasy prices” yet represented an observable everyday
reality, generating an extraordinary sense of the unreal.
212 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

Stock exchanges are institutions in which one can observe how prices are
formed. The reference to black markets as black stock exchanges thus points to
the shifting and threatening economic contexts in which contemporaries found
themselves, where they became more aware of the “free play” of market forces.
The provocative fact, visible in the public squares, that prices—which, on the one
hand, resulted from supply and demand, and, on the other hand, from observed
prices—were fluid phenomena that no longer had anything to do with the famil-
iar price schemes resulting from invisible price-structuring processes generated
uncertainty. In the exchanges, one could observe “how that enigmatic economic
product, the price, comes about.”4
The use of the term “stock exchange” for the public black markets pointed to
two things: it expressed people’s irritation with their newness, but it also sug-
gested an attempt to reduce their complexity; giving them a name suggested
that one at least partly understood them. The crux of this analogy, however, was
that although it enabled a classification, this could not fully explain the complex
events in the exchanges and thus had to become more an expression of helpless-
ness. Most participants perceived what happened in these “stock exchanges” as
impenetrable. The concept thus primarily captured their feelings of powerless-
ness, their sense of becoming the plaything of anonymous powers—or of powers
reduced to a clearly defined group of people: German hustlers, displaced persons,
and Allied soldiers. One attributed the processes one had observed to these groups
in order to satisfy a need for security and for scapegoats. What was obscene about
this became clear in the comparison of the hustler as a gambler in a dangerous
economy to the powerless market subjects with no way to actively intervene and
affect what was going on.
Against this background, the experiences of the black market era were influ-
ential in two ways. For one thing, they shaped the history of experiences with
a market economy. Some of the most important threads of the discourse in
the negotiations about self-concepts on both sides of the internal German bor-
der were the developments of both domestic economies and their market forms
(often in comparison to one other), the limits and possibilities of consumption,
and questions of “social security.” Consumers’ economic (i.e., trading) potency
and security became core elements of collective desires as well as of self-images.
Whereas in the GDR the transition “from plan to plan” limited the extent to
which people were confronted daily with unsettling market mechanisms, the
Federal Republic aimed to fence in the market economy to limit consumers’
experience of fluctuations.5 “Rhineland capitalism” was very different from its
Anglo-American equivalent. Although this development had a long history of
predecessors, people’s black market experiences profoundly strengthened it. Free
price formation, especially, met with mistrust, which was oriented around the
discourse on hustlers, leading to appeals for market ethics and state control.
An interpretation of the “chaotic new beginning amidst the rubble” that made
the black market and everything associated with it appear to be a transitional phe-
nomenon like a ghost that suddenly appeared and would disappear just as quickly
became characteristic in this period. It marked a way of dealing with experiences
 Conclusion ● 213

of insecurity, chaos, social disorder, allegedly perpetual advantages for some—in

short, with all that constituted the overwhelmingly suspicious atmosphere of the
black market era. Indeed, on posters, the black market was portrayed as a spirit,
a nightmare that had to be banished. It was generally believed that the currency
reform had, in fact, successfully banished it.
This reading of the black market resulted in part from widely shared expe-
riences. At the same time, it aligned the participants and their illegal practices
in a row of descriptions that characterized the great chaos of the time as only a
short episode that could be historicized through individual perspectives and took
on a discourse life of its own. In a way, this resembled the contemporary atti-
tude of focusing only on the immediate future, yet such a reading reduced even
“incomprehensible” events to an allegedly manageable size that could ultimately
be overcome.
This interpretation served to exonerate people in two regards. On the one
hand, it enabled both big- and small-time black marketeers to put their ille-
gal past behind them by invoking the discursively constructed caesura of before
and after the currency reform. Similar to the myth of the “zero hour” in 1945,
this perspective formulated a second, economic “zero hour” that primarily distin-
guished two daily areas of practice from one another. This touches on the second
level of exoneration because it was crucial to the public acceptance of the new
political and economic systems that this intervening period of illegal practices be
characterized as overcome.
Accordingly, research into the history of consumption needs to be more pre-
cise because the success story “at the beginning of consumer society” was by no
means as smooth as the terms “economic miracle” and “consumer society” sug-
gest. The first decade after the currency reform was more complex than the myth
of rapid economic recovery would have us believe. The well-known motif of shop
windows filled with goods did not mean that everyone was suddenly able to enjoy
what they had “long missed.” Rather, what was important about the shop win-
dow motif lay on a different level of meaning that cannot be found by analyzing
budgets. The image also expresses relief at things once again being in their place.
“Normalization” was unfolding in the reestablishment of stable, daily areas of
practice in which goods were in shop windows, roles were clearly distributed and
understood, role patterns and interactions were clear, and established social rela-
tions were not endangered by the trading. Instead of having to barter, one could
once again go shopping.
On the macro level, the dominant, semi-official economic histories of the two
German states functioned as integrating narratives; the success stories provided
a form of (substitute) national legitimation. Underlying a good portion of this
specific “rhetoric of economics” were the experiences with the chaotic bartering
era and its most irritating institution: the black market. The black market was
a photo negative, the opposite of what was desired. Both German states could
describe the goal of economic “normalization” in the sense of turning one’s back
on a society of scarcity and avoiding social upheavals by pointing to the black
market as a symbol of a period of misery and to the hustler as the one who
214 ● Berlin’s Black Market: 1939–1950

had profited from the general economic and social chaos, from the society of
insecurity and suspicion. Norbert Frei suggested that the West German federal
government’s “Amnesty Law” of 1949, in referring to the “years of hardship, of
moral degeneration, and the legal aberrations” of the black market, aimed to cover
up the political aspect of the law as amnesty for Nazi criminals. Nonetheless, that
it did so indicates that the consensus view among the population was that turning
away from the chaotic “economic conditions” was necessary.
The black market era thus formed a consensus-generating reference point for
public interpretations of the new economic beginning that helped as a subtext
until recently to shape many fields of discourse in the postwar period—even in
the two states’ perceptions of one another. For example, the discourse in the
Federal Republic spoke of the “backwardness” of East Germany’s state socialism
and its consumer culture by referring to bartering practices and rationing, which
many GDR citizens remained familiar with up to 1989. On East German tele-
vision, the “Black Channel”—propaganda broadcast each week—described life
in the “capitalist metropolis” as a juxtaposition of misery and luxury, of begging,
speculating, and economic crime, employing a pattern of interpretation that had
helped to forge the basic consensus regarding the state form by aiming to secure
the opposite of the black market era.
The short but intensive epoch of German history marked by black market
trading in the 1940s gave citizens radical experiences with markets. These coin-
cided with their experience of rapid social mobility, which for most of them,
under the conditions of the time, led to a radical social decline. There is much
to suggest that Germans’ specific reservations concerning uncontrolled, liberal
markets can be traced back to these experiences.
 Notes

Introduction
1. Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973; New York, 2000), 107.
2. LAB (Landesarchiv Berlin), F Rep. 240 (Zeitgeschichtliche Sammlung), Acc. 2651,
5, 504/1.
3. Max Brinkmann, Kleiner Knigge für Schieber (Berlin, 1921), 85.
4. See, for example, Edgar Wolfrum, Die geglückte Demokratie: Geschichte der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland von ihren Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart, 2006),
33; and Manfred Görtemaker, Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich,
2003), 29. There is a more extensive treatment in Christoph Kleßmann, Die doppelte
Staatsgründung: Deutsche Geschichte 1945–1955, 5th ed. (Göttingen, 1991), 46–50.
For East Germany, see Ulrich Mählert, Kleine Geschichte der DDR (Munich, 1998),
27; and Dietrich Staritz, Geschichte der DDR, rev. ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1996),
55. There is no reference at all to the black market period in Hermann Weber, Die
DDR 1945–1990, 3rd ed. (Munich, 2003).
5. Michael Wildt notes that the bartering and black markets belong to the “blind
spots in our historical knowledge”; see Wildt, Am Beginn der Konsumgesellschaft:
Mangelerfahrung, Lebenshaltung, Wohlstandshoffnung in Westdeutschland in den fünf-
ziger Jahren, 2nd ed. (Hamburg, 1995), 278. This circumstance has begun to change
as case studies emerge. For Berlin we now have Paul Steege, Black Market, Cold War:
Everyday Life in Berlin, 1946–1949 (Cambridge, UK, 2007); however, this com-
prehensive study is limited to the postwar years, and it analyzes the Berlin black
markets as sites of the Cold War conflict. There is also Stefan Mörchen, Schwarzer
Markt: Kriminalität, Ordnung und Moral in Bremen 1939–1949 (Frankfurt am
Main, 2011), which reads the conflicts over the illegal markets first and foremost
as indicators of changing concepts of crime and order. Individual aspects of the
black markets are treated in the following: Wildt, Am Beginn der Konsumgesellschaft;
Wildt, Der Traum vom Sattwerden: Hunger und Protest, Schwarzmarkt und Selbsthilfe
(Hamburg, 1986); Rainer Hudemann, Sozialpolitik im deutschen Südwesten zwischen
Tradition und Neuordnung 1945–1953: Sozialversicherung und Kriegsopferversorgung
im Rahmen französischer Besatzungspolitik (Mainz, 1988), 75–77; Paul Erker,
Ernährungskrise und Nachkriegsgesellschaft: Bauern und Arbeiterschaft in Bayern
1943–1953 (Stuttgart, 1990); Werner Bührer, “Schwarzer Markt,” in Deutschland
unter alliierter Besatzung 1945–1949/55: Ein Handbuch, ed. Wolfgang Benz,
365–66 (Berlin, 1999); Werner Haeser, “Vom Schwarzmarkt und Tauschhandel
216 ● Notes

zur Deutschen Mark,” Schmallenberger Heimatblätter 62 (1995/96): 75–81; Rainer

Gries, Die Rationengesellschaft: Versorgungskampf und Vergleichsmentalität: Leipzig,
München und Köln nach dem Kriege (Münster, 1991); and Alexander Link,
“Schrottelzeit”: Nachkriegsalltag in Mainz (Mainz, 1990). On efforts in Berlin to fight
the black market, see Jörg Roesler, “The Black Market in Post-War Berlin and the
Methods Used to Counteract It,” German History 7 (1989): 92–107. The black
markets are also discussed briefly in the historiography on Berlin; see, for example,
David Clay Large, Berlin: A Modern History (New York, 2001), 146. For the Ruhr,
see Lutz Niethammer, “Privat-Wirtschaft: Erinnerungsfragmente einer anderen
Umerziehung,” in “Hinterher merkt man, dass es richtig war, dass es schiefgegangen ist.”
Nachkriegs-Erfahrungen im Ruhrgebiet, ed. Niethammer, 61–62 (Berlin, 1983). See
also the following contemporary works: Ludwig Aderbauer, “Der Schwarze Markt als
Folge der Geldunordnung” (PhD diss., Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich,
1948); Paul Werner Meyer, “Über das Phänomen des deutschen Schwarzen Marktes”
(PhD diss., Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, 1949); and Karl
Kromer, Schwarzmarkt, Tausch- und Schleichhandel (Schloß Bleckede an der Elbe,
1947). Karl Bader, Soziologie der deutschen Nachkriegskriminalität (Tübingen, 1949),
does not treat the black market per se but refers to its importance repeatedly in the
context of “female crime,” malfeasance, and receiving stolen goods. See also Hilde
Thurnwald, Gegenwartsprobleme Berliner Familien (Berlin, 1948); and Josef Schouz,
“Volkskundliche Studie über das Bandenwesen des ‘Schwarzen Marktes’ ” (PhD diss.,
University of Göttingen, 1953). Contemporary studies that paid greater attention
to the complexity of the markets include Horst Mendershausen, “Prices, Money
and the Distribution of Goods in Postwar Germany,” American Economic Review 39
(1949): 647–72; and Mendershausen, Two Postwar Recoveries of the German Economy
(Amsterdam, 1955).
6. See the summary of the debate concerning a “structuralist” versus a “historicist” inter-
pretation of the economic upswing in Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte,
vol. 4, Vom Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zur Gründung der beiden deutschen Staaten
1914–1949 (Munich, 2003), 966–67.
7. Martin Broszat, Klaus-Dietmar Henke, and Hans Woller, eds., Von Stalingrad zur
Währungsreform: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Umbruchs in Deutschland, 3rd ed. (Munich,
1990), quotes xxvi and xxv.
8. LAB F Rep. 240, Acc. 2651.
9. Ursula Weber, Der Polenmarkt in Berlin: Zur Rekonstruktion eines kulturellen Kontakts
im Prozess der politischen Transformation Mittel- und Osteuropas (Neuried, 2002),
110–17.
10. Broszat, Henke, and Woller, eds., Von Stalingrad zur Währungsreform.
11. See Hartmut Berghoff and Jakob Vogel, “Wirtschaftsgeschichte als Kulturgeschichte:
Ansätze zur Bergung transdisziplinärer Synergiepotentiale,” in Wirtschaftsgeschichte
als Kulturgeschichte: Dimensionen eines Perspektivenwechsels, ed. Berghoff and Vogel,
9–41 (Frankfurt am Main, 2004).
12. Hubert Schmitz, Die Bewirtschaftung der Nahrungsmittel und Verbrauchsgüter 1939–
1950: Dargestellt am Beispiel der Stadt Essen (Essen, 1956), 41–42.
13. Gries, Die Rationengesellschaft.
14. Belinda Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War
I Berlin (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000).
15. Ernst Reuß, Berliner Justizgeschichte (Berlin, 2000), 127–28.
16. “Die Wirtschaft,” no. 4 (1948): 120. See also Roesler, “Black Market,” 92.
 Notes ● 217

17. See here Wildt, Am Beginn der Konsumgesellschaft.

18. See Uwe Spiekermann, Basis der Konsumgesellschaft: Entstehung und Entwicklung des
modernen Kleinhandels in Deutschland (Munich, 1999); and idem, “From Neigh-
bor to Consumer: The Transformation of Retailer-Consumer Relationships in
Twentieth-Century Germany,” in The Making of the Consumer: Knowledge, Power and
Identity in the Modern World, ed. Frank Trentmann, 147–74 (Oxford, UK, 2006).
19. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Die Herausforderung der Kulturgeschichte (Munich, 1998), 138.
See also Thomas Sokoll, “Kulturanthropologie und Historische Sozialwissenschaft,”
in Geschichte zwischen Kultur und Gesellschaft: Beiträge zur Theoriedebatte, ed. Thomas
Mergel and Thomas Welskopp, 232–72 (Munich, 1997).
20. See especially Martin H. Geyer, Verkehrte Welt: Revolution, Inflation und
Moderne, München 1914–1924 (Göttingen, 1998), 13–14, who sees the “city
as . . . synecdoche”; and Davis, Home Fires Burning.
21. Quote from Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden
Soziologie, ed. Johannes Winckelmann, 5th ed. (Tübingen, 1980), 385.
22. On economic anthropological approaches, see Susana Narotzky, “Economic Anthro-
pology,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. Neil
J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes (Oxford, UK, 2001), 8:4069; and the relevant ground-
work: Narotzky, New Directions in Economic Anthropology (London, 1997); Stuart
Plattner, “Economic Behavior in Markets,” in Economic Anthropology, ed. Plattner,
209–21 (Stanford, CA, 1989). The classic ethnological approach: Clifford Geertz,
“The Bazaar Economy: Information and Search in Peasant Marketing,” American
Economic Review 68, no. 2 (1978): 28–32; and Clifford Geertz, “Suq: The Bazaar
Economy in Sefrou,” in Meaning and Order in Moroccan Society: Three Essays
in Cultural Analysis, ed. Clifford Geertz, Hildred Geertz, and Lawrence Orsen,
123–264 (Cambridge, UK, 1979). On NIE, see Stefan Voigt, Institutionenökonomik
(Munich, 2002); Rudolf Richter and Eirik Furubotn, Neue Institutionenökonomik:
Eine Einführung und kritische Würdigung, trans. Monika Streissler, 3rd ed. (Tübingen,
2003).
23. Jens Beckert, “Vertrauen und die performative Konstruktion von Märkten,”
Zeitschrift für Soziologie 31, no. 1 (2002): 27–43; Mark Granovetter, “Economic
Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” Amercian Journal of
Sociology 91 (1985): 481–510.
24. Harrison White, “Varieties of Markets,” in Social Structures: A Network Approach, ed.
Barry Wellman and S. D. Berkowitz (New York, 1987), 232.
25. Religious questions, on the other hand, played a less important role in Berlin’s
black market than they did in Mauss’s analysis. Marcel Mauss, Die Gabe: Form
und Funktion des Austauschs in archaischen Gesellschaften, trans. Eva Moldenhauer
(Frankfurt am Main, 1984). On the central concept of reciprocity as the founda-
tion of the social in Mauss and Simmel, see Christian Papilloud, Le Don de Relation:
Georg Simmel—Marcel Mauss (Paris, 2002). For the context, see Malte Zierenberg,
“Tauschen und Vertrauen: Zur Kulturgeschichte des Schwarzhandels im Berlin der
1940er Jahre,” in Wirtschaftsgeschichte als Kulturgeschichte, ed. Berghoff and Vogel
Wirtschaftsgeschichte als Kulturgeschichte: Dimensionen eines Perspektivenwechsels,
169–94 (Frankfurt am Main, 2004).
26. On trust as a fundamental sociological problem, see Niklas Luhmann, Vertrauen:
Ein Mechanismus der Reduktion sozialer Komplexität, 4th ed. (Stuttgart, 2000).
For historical research on trust, see Ute Frevert, “Vertrauen in historischer
Perspektive,” in Politisches Vertrauen: Soziale Grundlagen reflexiver Kooperation, ed.
218 ● Notes

Rainer Schmalz-Bruns and Reinhard Zintl, 39–60 (Baden-Baden, 2002); Martin

Fiedler, “Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist teuer: Vertrauen als Schlüsselkategorie
wirtschaftliches Handelns,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 27 (2001): 576–92;
Hartmut Berghoff, “Vertrauen als ökonomische Schlüsselvariable: Zur Theorie des
Vertrauens und der marktwirtschaftlichen Produktion von Sozialkapital,” in Die
Wirtschaftsgeschichte vor der Herausforderung der New Institutional Economics, ed.
Karl-Peter Ellerbrock and Clemens Wischermann, 58–71 (Dortmund, 2003); and
Zierenberg, “Tauschen und Vertrauen.”
27. Luhmann, Vertrauen; Luhmann, Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie,
7th ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1999). From an ethnological perspective: Geertz,
“Bazaar Economy”; and Geertz, “Suq.” For the extensive literature on institutional
economics, see pars pro toto Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change
and Economic Performance (Cambridge, UK, 1990).
28. Luhmann, Vertrauen, 39.
29. See Frevert, “Vertrauen in historischer Perspektive,” 41; Frevert refers to Simmel.
30. See Berghoff and Vogel, “Wirtschaftsgeschichte als Kulturgeschichte”; and
Zierenberg, “Tauschen und Vertrauen.”
31. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 37.
32. Geertz, “Bazaar Economy,” 32; Zierenberg, “Tauschen und Vertrauen.”
33. On the significance of heirlooms in identity formation, see Ulrike Langbein, Geerbte
Dinge: Soziale Praxis und symbolische Bedeutung des Erbens (Cologne, 2002).
34. Consider, too, the influence of goods fed into the Berlin market by occupation troops
after the war; Steege, Black Market, Cold War, 35.
35. André Steiner, ed., Preispolitik und Lebensstandard: Nationalsozialismus, DDR und
Bundesrepublik im Vergleich (Cologne, 2006).
36. On these sites, see Malte Zierenberg, “The Trading City: Black Markets in Berlin
during World War II,” in Endangered Cities: European Cities in the Era of the World
Wars, ed. Roger Chickering and Marcus Funck, 145–58 (Leiden, 2004).
37. Roesler, “Black Market.”
38. On networks and research in this field, see Dorothea Jansen, Einführung in die
Netzwerkanalyse: Grundlagen, Methoden, Forschungsbeispiele (Opladen, 1999).
39. Zierenberg, “Trading City”; Irene Bandhauer-Schöffmann, “Women’s Fight for
Food: A Gendered View of Hunger, Hoarding, and Blackmarketing in Vienna after
World War II,” in Women in Towns: The Social Position of European Urban Women in
a Historical Context, ed. Marjatta Hietala, 158–79 (Stockholm, 1999).
40. See especially Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: The History of the
Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA, 1995).
41. Georg Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes, 4th ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1996 [Leipzig,
1900]), 319.
42. Viviana A. Zelizer, “Economic Sociology,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social
and Behavioral Sciences, ed. Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, 8:4131 (Oxford, UK,
2001).
43. Luhmann, Vertrauen, 9.
44. The phrase “everyday life in a state of emergency” comes from Susanne zur Nieden,
Alltag im Ausnahmezustand: Frauentagebücher im zerstörten Deutschland 1943 bis
1945 (Berlin, 1993).
45. On the public sphere, see Jürgen Gerhards and Friedhelm Neidhardt.
“Strukturen und Funktionen moderner Öffentlichkeit: Fragestellungen und
Ansätze,” in Öffentlichkeit, Kultur, Massenkommunikation: Beiträge zur Medien- und
 Notes ● 219

Kommunikationssoziologie, ed. Stefan Müller-Doohm, 31–88 (Oldenburg, 1991). See

also Jörg Requate, “Öffentlichkeit und Medien als Gegenstände historischer Anal-
yse,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 25 (1999): 5–31; and Zierenberg, “Tauschen und
Vertrauen.”
46. See Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge, 1990), 79;
Geertz, “Suq”; Fiedler, “Vertrauen ist gut,” esp. 584.
47. On the effects of the “final battle,” see Anthony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945
(London, 2007).
48. See Zierenberg, “Tauschen und Vertrauen.”
49. In this way, lawmakers created a market for a new kind of how-to literature, and
manuals arose to help police and consumers make their way through the jungle of
black market regulations. See Kromer, Schwarzmarkt.
50. On the various approaches to understanding discourses in terms of power, see
Achim Landwehr, Geschichte des Sagbaren: Einführung in die historische Diskursanalyse
(Tübingen, 2001).
51. Frank Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure: Korruption in der NS-Zeit (Frankfurt am
Main, 2001), 62.
52. On the concept of the public sphere, which is important to this study, see Gerhards
and Neidhardt, “Strukturen und Funktionen moderner Öffentlichkeit.”
53. On the “moral economy,” see Edward P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the
English Crowd in the 18th Century,” Past and Present 50 (1971): 76–136. In the
present study, Thompson’s concept is used broadly to designate primarily moral
interpretations of economic issues and the resulting defensive postures that economic
actors assume.

Chapter 1
1. Belinda Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War
I Berlin (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000).
2. LAB A Rep. 358–02 (Staatsanwaltschaft bei dem Landgericht), 89667, indictment,
not paginated.
3. In light of such sentences, it is problematic to speak of “peccadilloes” as Mark
Spoerer does in “Die soziale Differenzierung der ausländischen Zivilarbeiter,
Kriegsgefangenen und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich,” in Das Deutsche Reich und
der Zeite Weltkrieg, vol. 9, pt. 2, Die deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis 1945:
Ausbeutung, Deutungen, Ausgrenzung, ed. Jörg Echternkamp (Munich, 2005), 562.
The fact that not even close to all cases could be prosecuted does not belie the
rigorous sentencing policy. In the trials before the Berlin Special Court, jail terms
were the rule, and the death penalty was imposed in some cases. For examples of
the latter for “War Economy Crimes,” see LAB, A, Rep. 358–02, 89703, 89770,
and 87805. Spoerer’s broad generalization that “the German authorities” allowed
black marketeers to be active “as long as the business transactions only served [their]
personal needs” is incorrect. For some examples from the Cologne Special Court,
see Malte Zierenberg, “Zwischen Herrschaftsfragen und Verbraucherinteressen:
‘Kriegswirtschaftsverbrechen’ vor dem Sondergericht Köln im Zweiten Weltkrieg,”
Geschichte in Köln 50 (2003): 175–95.
4. One must take chronology into account (which Spoerer does not). As Mark
Thornton observes in The Economics of Prohibition (Salt Lake City, 1991), 75–77,
prohibition can at first be efficient because it is relatively easy to apply the
220 ● Notes

appropriate sanctions to a weakly developed market structure with few participants.

As prohibition continues, however, costs increase and the efficiency of sanctions
decreases in proportion to the development of alternative market infrastructures
and increasing numbers of participants. The result: “The marginal cost of increased
prohibition . . . increases.” Ibid., 77.
5. Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936, trans. Jürgen Peter Krause and Jörg
W. Rademacher, 4th ed. (Stuttgart, 1998), 663–744. On the Machtübergabe, “trans-
fer of power,” see Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 4, Vom Beginn
des Ersten Weltkriegs bis zur Gründung der beiden deutschen Staaten 1914–1949
(Munich, 2003), 580–85. On the history of the NSDAP’s rise in general, see
Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (London, 2003).
6. Gottfried Feder, Das Programm der NSDAP und seine weltanschaulichen
Grundgedanken, 13th ed. (Munich, 1930), 9.
7. Mark Spoerer, “Die soziale Differenzierung der ausländischen Zivilarbeiter,
Kriegsgefangenen und Häftlinge im Deutschen Reich,” in Das Deutsche Reich
und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 9, pt. 2, Die deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis
1945: Ausbeutung, Deutungen, Ausgrenzung, ed. Jörg Echternkamp (Munich, 2005),
485–576; Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 4:770.
8. This is the “Volksschädlingsverordnung,” September 5, 1939, Reichsgesetzblatt 1:
1679.
9. September 26, 1920, Reichsgesetzblatt 1: 4.
10. Quoted in Cornelia Schmitz-Berning, Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus (Berlin,
1998), 671.
11. Bajohr notes aptly that “the harshest critics of the Weimar Republic’s alleged fat-cat
economy [Bonzenwirtschaft] . . . established a real fat cat economy to a theretofore
unknown degree”; see Frank Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure 49–97, quote 67. For
the debates over Berlin’s corruption cases, see Cordula Ludwig, Korruption und
Nationalsozialismus in Berlin 1924–1934 (Berlin, 1998).
12. See, however, the modifications to the crisis paradigm in Moritz Föllmer and
Rüdiger Graf, Die “Krise” der Weimarer Republik: Zur Kritik eines Deutungsmusters
(Frankfurt am Main, 2005).
13. See, for example, Detlef Lehnert and Klaus Megerle, “Identitäts- und
Konsensprobleme in einer fragmentierten Gesellschaft: Zur politischen Kultur
in der Weimarer Republik,” in Politische Kultur in Deutschland, ed. Dirk Berg-
Schlosser and Jakob Schissler, special issue of Politische Vierteljahresschrift 18 (1987):
80–95; and Andreas Wirsching, Die Weimarer Republik. Politik und Gesellschaft
(Munich, 2000), 84–95. Thomas Mergel notes in Parlamentarische Kultur in der
Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 2002), 27–29, that fragmented societies were
more the rule than the exception in Europe before 1945; however, see Andreas
Wirsching, Vom Weltkrieg zum Bürgerkrieg. Politischer Extremismus in Deutschland
und Frankreich 1918–1933/39. Berlin und Paris im Vergleich (Munich, 1999), on
the special situation of the development of extreme political antagonisms under the
mantle of a “civil war” in Berlin during Weimar. Dirk Schumann argues in a differ-
ent direction, using the example of Saxony in his Politische Gewalt in der Weimarer
Republik: Kampf um die Straße und Furcht vor dem Bürgerkrieg (Essen, 2001).
14. Schumann, Politische Gewalt, 376.
15. Martin H. Geyer, Verkehrte Welt: Revolution, Inflation und Moderne, Munich 1914–
1924 (Göttingen, 1998), 396.
 Notes ● 221

16. For the basic outlines of this interpretation, see Detlev J. K. Peukert, Die Weimarer
Republik Krisenjahre der klassischen Moderne (Frankfurt am Main, 1987), 13–25,
213–42. On the differences compared to the situation in 1949, see Christoph
Gusy, “Einleitung—Weimar: Geschichte als Argument,” in Weimars lange Schatten:
“Weimar” als Argument nach 1945, ed. Gusy, 16–21 (Baden-Baden, 2003); and the
remarks by Theodor Heuss, Aufzeichnungen 1945–1947, ed. and with introduc-
tion by Eberhard Pikart (Tübingen, 1966), 128, quoted in Ulrich Baumgärtner,
“Von einer Republik zur anderen: Theodor Heuss’ Wahrnehmung und Deutung
der Weimarer Republik nach 1945,” in Weimars lange Schatten, ed. Gusy,
92–117.
17. See Wolfgang Hardtwig, “Einleitung: Politische Kulturgeschichte der
Zwischenkriegszeit,” and Thomas Mergel, “Führer, Volksgemeinschaft und
Maschine: Politische Erwartungsstrukturen in der Weimarer Republik und
dem Nationalsozialismus 1918–1936,” both in Politische Kulturgeschichte der
Zwischenkriegszeit 1918–1936, ed. Wolfgang Hartwig, 7–22, 91–128 (Göttingen,
2005).
18. See Stefan Malinowski, “Politische Skandale als Zerrspiegel der Demokratie:
Die Fälle Barmat und Sklarek im Kalkül der Weimarer Rechten,” Jahrbuch
für Antisemitismusforschung 5 (1996): 46–65; and Frank Bösch, “Historische
Skandalforschung als Schnittstelle zwischen Medien-, Kommunikantions- und
Geschichtswissenschaft,” in Die Medien der Geschichte: Historizität und Medialität
in interdisziplinärer Perspektive, ed. Fabio Crivellari, Kay Kirchmann, Marcus Sandl,
and Rudolf Schlögl, 445–64 (Konstanz, 2004). On the sequels to such forms of
political instrumentalization in the two German dictatorships, see Martin Sabrow,
ed., Skandal und Diktatur: Formen öffentlicher Empörung im NS-Staat und in der
DDR (Göttingen, 2004).
19. Mergel, Parlamentarische Kultur, 378–79.
20. See Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik, 85–87.
21. Der Montag: Jahrgedächtnis von Friedrich Hussong, no. 43, November 9, 1925, 1.
22. Vorwärts, no. 100, from February 28, 1925, 2nd suppl., 1.
23. See Geyer, Verkehrte Welt, 167–95.
24. On the “legal uncertainty in the bourgeois legal relationships,” see ibid., 209;
and the introduction to Bernd Widdig, Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany
(Berkeley, 2001), 3–30.
25. Geyer, Verkehrte Welt, 383; see also Martin Geyer, “Die Sprache des Rechts,
die Sprache des Antisemitismus: ‘Wucher’ und soziale Ordnungsvorstellungen im
Kaiserreich und der Weimarer Republik,” in Europäische Sozialgeschichte: Festschrift
für Professor Schieder, ed. Christoph Dipper, Lutz Klinkhammer, and Alexander
Nützenadel, 413–29 (Berlin, 2000).
26. Geyer, Verkehrte Welt, 239–40.
27. Robert Scholtz, “Die Auswirkungen der Inflation auf das Sozial- und
Wohlfahrtswesen der neuen Stadtgemeinde Berlin,” in Konsequenzen der Inflation,
ed. Gerald Feldman and J. Th. M. Houwink ten Cate, 45–75 (Berlin, 1989). For a
contemporary description, see Gustav Böß, Die Not in Berlin: Tatsachen und Zahlen
(Berlin, 1923).
28. Robert Scholz, “Die Auswirkungen der Inflation,” 55–58.
29. Ibid., 64–65; Molly Loberg, “Berlin Streets: Politics, Commerce, and Crowds,
1918–1938” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2006).
222 ● Notes

30. Geyer, Verkehrte Welt, 243.

31. Detlev J. K. Peukert, Volksgenossen und Gemeinschaftsfremde: Anpassung, Ausmerze
und Aufbegehren unter dem Nationalsozialismus (Opladen, 1982), 233. See Geyer,
Verkehrte Welt, 396, on the Nazis’ völkisch (national and racialist) strategy to com-
mingle “extortion,” “Versailles,” the 1918 revolution, and anti-Semitic sentiments
in their propaganda. Anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews as “extortionists” and as
disturbers of the public order could, however, also be found in Social Demo-
cratic magazines; see Julia Schäfer, Vermessen—gezeichnet—verlacht: Judenbilder in
populären Zeitschriften 1918–1933 (Frankfurt am Main, 2005).
32. Geyer, Verkehrte Welt, 244–46.
33. Look at the long row of luxury autos that the heavy industrialists, wholesale
merchants, and bankers use to drive through the city . . . They were bought at a
time when the common people had to face terrible poverty. Look at the increase
in the number of luxury and gourmet restaurants in which the bourgeoisie
squanders its loot.
Vorwärts, no. 548, November 20, 1924, 1

34. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Kultur der Niederlage (Berlin, 2001).

35. In this regard, Geyer, Verkehrte Welt, analyzes the hyperinflation as the deval-
uation of a medium of communication, which complicated social action. For
a similar argument, see Hansjörg Siegenthaler, Regelvertrauen, Prosperität und
Krisen: Die Ungleichmäßigkeit wirtschaftlicher und sozialer Entwicklungen als
Ergebnis individuellen Handelns (Tübingen, 1993), 16; Siegenthaler sees the eco-
nomic crisis as a catalyst for communicative processes of self-analysis. Regard-
ing Versailles, see Gerhard Krumeich, ed., Versailles 1919: Ziele—Wirkung—
Wahrnehmung (Essen, 2001); Manfred Franz Boemeke, ed., The Treaty of Versailles:
A Reassessment after 75 Years (Cambridge, UK, 1998); and Eberhard Kolb,
Der Friede von Versailles (Munich, 2005). On the “weight of the past,” see
Ulrich Heinemann, “Die Last der Vergangenheit. Zur politischen Bedeutung
der Kriegsschuld- und Dolchstoßdiskussion,” in Die Weimarer Republik 1918–
1933. Politik, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft, ed. Karl Dietrich Bracher, Manfred Funke,
and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, 371–86 (Düsseldorf, 1987), 371. Speaking with abso-
lute certainty has been interpreted as a rhetorically vital feature in what was
actually an insecure society and was perhaps most strongly present in the stab-in-
the-back legend; see Boris Barth, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration:
Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1933 (Düsseldorf,
2003).
36. Quoted in Berliner Tageblatt, no. 215, May 13, 1919.
37. Gottfried Niedhardt, “Der Erste Weltkrieg: Von der Gewalt im Krieg zu den
Konflikten im Frieden,” in Wie Kriege enden: Wege zum Frieden von der Antike bis
zur Gegenwart, ed. Bernd Wegner (Paderborn, 2002), 205.
38. Adolf Weber, Reparationen, Youngplan, Volkswirtschaft (Berlin, 1929), 9.
39. See Geyer, Verkehrte Welt, 294. This transfer of the stereotypical image of the enemy
took a specific direction. Again and again, indignant rhetoric of defeat painted
a propagandistic caricature in which “internal” and “external” enemies alike were
defined by their dishonest economic practices. This rhetoric did not abate but rather
outlived the Weimar Republic. It became an important motif in World War II, too,
especially in the propaganda against England. “Perfidious Albion” remained for the
National Socialist propaganda a hotbed of “warmongers” and “war profiteers.” See
 Notes ● 223

the Parole der Woche, no. 44, 1940, which was distributed in leaflets. Reprinted
in SOPADE, 1940, p. 31. Deutschland-Berichte der Sozialdemokratischen Partei
Deutschlands (SOPADE) 1934–1949, ed. Klaus Behnken (Salzhausen/Frankfurt am
Main, 1980).
40. Quoted in Berliner Tageblatt, no. 217, May 14, 1919.
41. All parties wanted to reduce reparations, but they differed over the best way to
achieve this goal; Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 244.
42. Such economic terms formed an essential strand of the anti-Semitic discourse,
which included talk of the “stock market Jews,” “the bank Jews,” and “the money
Jews”; Othmar Plöckinger, Reden um die Macht? Wirkung und Strategie der Reden
Adolf Hitlers im Wahlkampf zu den Reichstagswahlen am 6. November 1932 (Vienna,
1999), 115.
43. Hanne Bergius, “Berlin als Hure Babylon,” in Die Metropole: Industriestruktur in
Berlin im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Jochen Boberg (Munich, 1988), 82.
44. Geyer, Verkehrte Welt, 273.
45. Hanne Bergius, “Berlin als Hure Babylon,” 107–108. See also Katharina von
Ankum, ed., Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Modernity in Weimar Culture
(Berkeley, CA, 1997).
46. Ankum, Women in the Metropolis, 104.
47. Nevertheless, encounters with the criminal milieu remained problematic and had
to be brought about by “fate”—for example, love for a weak, young girl. In the
end, everything had to come out all right. See, for instance, the informative plot of
the film Asphalt, directed by Joe May, which played in the movie houses in 1929.
Already the film poster made clear what was involved: the young protagonist was
exposed to the dangers of the modern asphalt city, Berlin. The poster, in blue and
gray, showed the lettering “ASPHALT” on a slanted surface, smooth as glass, as the
letters themselves start to slip and slide. See Gottfried Korff and Reinhard Rürup,
eds., Berlin, Berlin: Die Ausstellung zur Geschichte der Stadt (Berlin, 1987), 471–73,
which includes revealing set designs.
48. On the image of the criminal in media, see Sheila Brown, Crime and Law in Media
Culture (Buckingham, 2003).
49. The original German:

Am Kurfürstendamm da hocken zusammen

die Leute von heute mit großem Tamtam.
Brillianten wie Tanten, ein Frack mit was drin,
Ein Nerzpelz, ein Steinherz, ein Doppelkinn.
Perlen perlen, es perlt der Champagner.
Kokotten spotten: Wer will, der kann ja
Fünf Braune für mich auf das Tischtuch zählen.
Na, Schieber, mein Lieber?—Nee, uns kann’s nicht fehlen.
Und wenn Millionen vor Hunger krepieren:
Wir wolln uns mal wieder amüsieren.
Quoted in Bergius, “Berlin als Hure Babylon,” 113

50. Ibid.
51. Vorwärts, no. 548, November 20, 1924, 1; Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, no. 208, May 3,
1925, 7, Beiblatt 1 (letter to the editor).
52. Schmitz-Berning, Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus, 637.
224 ● Notes

53. This desire also appeared, in a weaker form, in academic discourses, for example,
in economics. In the contemporary discussion of Joseph Schumpeter’s Theorie der
wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung (1911), at the center of which stands the capitalist
entrepreneur as the agent of “new combinations” and thus the source of economic
development, Walter Eucken asked if there had been enough entrepreneurs since
1918 who “possessed the will and the ability to be leaders of the [economic] devel-
opment.” Even though Eucken answered yes, his formulation of the question in
this manner pointed out how skeptical many were, and how many saw the search
for personalities capable of making decisions as a manifestation of a comprehen-
sive crisis. Furthermore, Eucken saw the cause of the crisis in the “state-societal
organization,” thus implicitly shifting the “leadership” problem into the realm of
the political. See Walter Eucken, “Staatliche Strukturwandlungen und die Krise
des Kapitalismus,” Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 36 (1932): 298. Dieter Haselbach,
“Die Lehren aus Weimar in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften nach 1945: Der
Ordoliberalismus,” in Weimars lange Schatten Weimars Lange Schatten: “Weimar”
als Argument nach 1945, ed. Christoph Gusy, 118–47 (Baden-Baden, 2003), might
impute to the economist too much of a critical distance when he suggests that
Eucken’s argumentation was based on long-term developments and scarcely made
reference to the Weimar period. At the very least, Eucken’s word choices evinced
a semantic alignment with the contemporary discourse of crisis, despite his having
criticized widespread faith in the “total state” and only for this reason finding him-
self strictly opposed to National Socialist ideas about “leadership.” See Haselbach,
125–26, and on the proximity of his ideas to those of Carl Schmitt, 129–30.
54. Quoted in Christian Schottmann, Politische Schlagwörter in Deutschland zwischen
1929 und 1934 (Stuttgart, 1997), 514.
55. Ibid., 518.
56. Peukert, Volksgenossen und Gemeinschaftsfremde, 233.
57. Ian Kershaw, Hitlers Macht: Das Profil der NS-Herrschaft (Munich, 2000), 248.
58. The regime made this change quite explicitly, for example, in 1934, when the party
congress utilized the slogan “Party Convention of Loyalty.”
59. Large sections of the population thus responded with more restraint when new
accusations of corruption undermined their confidence in the collection campaigns
of the National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization (NSV); see Bajohr, Parvenüs
und Profititeure, 179.
60. It therefore seems questionable to speak in this context of an “accommodating dic-
tatorship,” as Götz Aly does in Hitlers Volksstaat: Raub, Rassenkrieg und nationaler
Sozialismus (Frankfurt am Main, 2005), even independently of the transfers that
were actually provided.
61. Ian Kershaw, Der Hitler-Mythos: Führerkult und Volksmeinung (Stuttgart, 1999);
Klaus Schreiner, “ ‘Wann kommt der Retter Deutschlands?’ Formen und
Funktionen von politischen Messianismus in der Weimarer Republik,” Saeculum
49 (1998): 107–60; Mergel, “Führer, Volksgemeinschaft und Maschine.”
62. On the difference between trust and hope, see Harald Wenzel, “Vertrauen und die
Integration moderner Gesellschaften,” in Politisches Vertrauen: Grundlagen reflexiver
Kooperation, ed. Rainer Schmalz-Bruns and Reinhard Zintl, 61–76 (Baden-Baden,
2002). On Hitler’s special position, which was not affected by the criticism of “fat
cats,” see Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profititeure, 180, who quotes the Berlin Police Presi-
dent chief of police: “In this context, the population refers continually to the modest
and reserved demeanor of the Führer.”
 Notes ● 225

63. Ute Frevert, “Vertrauen in historischer Perspektive,” in Politisches Vertrauen: Soziale

Grundlagen reflexiver Kooperation, ed. Rainer Schmalz-Bruns and Reinhard Zintl
(Baden-Baden, 2002), 54–55.
64. Wenzel, “Vertrauen,” 65.
65. Ibid., 71.
66. Victor Klemperer, LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen (Leipzig, 1999), 129.
67. Mergel, “Führer, Volksgemeinschaft und Maschine,” 126, points to examples from
everyday usage, such as when renters and landlords were described as a housing com-
munity. Since the German Jurists’ Conference in 1936, lawyers were supposed to
bear the title Guardian of the Law (Rechtswahrer). This change was “the expression
of a complete metamorphosis,” claimed the state secretary in the German justice
ministry, Roland Freisler: “Rechtswahrer . . . the very word suggests someone who is
deployed for a special task, and this special task, this occupation, is to guard the law.
And whoever calls himself a Rechtswahrer is thus also taking an oath to actually ful-
fill this task”; Roland Freisler, Nationalsozialistisches Recht und Rechtsdenken (Berlin,
1938), 86–88.
68. This shift also found expression in a preference for partnerships over incor-
poration. To be sure, the original ideological radicalism gave way after
1939 to second thoughts about the configuration of a so-called volkstüm-
liche GmbH or “racial inc.” All in all, however, the partnership remained
“the preferred legal form in the National Socialist economy”; see Matthias
Stupp, GmbH-Recht im Nationalsozialismus: Anschauungen des Nationalsozialismus
zur Haftungsbeschränkung, Juristischen Person, Kapitalgesellschaft und Treupflicht:
Untersuchungen zum Referentenentwurf 1939 zu einem neuen GmbH-Gesetz (Berlin,
2002), 350.
69. Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (London, 2001), 12.
70. Uwe Spiekermann, “From Neighbour to Consumer: The Transformation of
Retailer-Consumer Relationships in Twentieth-Century Germany,” in The Mak-
ing of the Consumer: Knowledge, Power and Identity in the Modern World, ed. Frank
Trentmann, 147–74 (Oxford, 2006).
71. Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM), Rep. I, 2. Weltkrieg, F1, M, Tagebuch
Deutmann, June 24, 1945.
72. David Clay Large, Berlin: A Modern History (New York, 2001), 48–50. On the
history of department stores in Imperial Germany, see Hans-Peter Ullmann,
“ ‘Der Kaiser bei Wertheim’—Warenhäuser im wilhelminischen Deutschland,”
in Europäische Sozialgeschichte, ed. Christoph Dipper, Lutz Klinkhammer, and
Alexander Nützenadel, 223–36.
73. See Jochen Boberg, “Reklamwelten,” in Die Metropole: Industriestruktur
in Berlin im 20: Jahrhundert, ed. Jochen Boberg, 184–89 (Munich,
1988).
74. For an impressive description of a “flying” exchange at the Volksbühne in the center
of Berlin, see Joseph Roth’s report, “Der Orient in der Hirtenstraße: Besuch in der
fliegenden Börse,” reprinted in Joseph Roth in Berlin: Ein Lesebuch für Spaziergänger,
ed. Michael Bienert (Cologne, 1996). There is also a photograph here, p. 84,
from 1934 of the hustle and bustle of the marketplace in the Grenadierstrasse
(Scheunenviertel).
75. Davis, Home Fires Burning; Anne Roehrkohl, Hungerblockade und Heimatfront:
Die kommunale Lebensmittelversorgung in Westfalen während des Ersten Weltkrieges
(Stuttgart, 1991).
226 ● Notes

76. LAB A Rep. 001–02 (Stadtverordnetenversammlung von Berlin), no. 2310, 54.
In the city council meeting on June 26, 1921, the councilman Merten from the
Democratic Party estimated the number of street traders at between 20,000 and
25,000. See ibid., 139.
77. Ibid., p. 42.
78. LAB A Rep. 037–08 (Bezirksamt Charlottenburg), 51.
79. See the letter signed by nine retail business owners to the municipal government
from April 23, 1921, in LAB A Rep. 001–02, no. 2310, 116–17. See also the let-
ter from the Association for Trade and Commerce from May 12, 1921, in ibid.,
122–23.
80. LAB A Rep. 001–02, no. 2310, 54.
81. Thomas Lindenberger, Straßenpolitik. Zur Sozialgeschichte der öffentlichen Ordnung
in Berlin 1900–1914 (Bonn, 1995).
82. LAB A Rep. 001–02, no. 2310, 59.
83. Ibid., 84.
84. Ibid. The Bezirksamt Mitte was also of this opinion. See ibid, pp. 153–54.
85. See LAB A Rep. 001–02 Nr. 2310, pp. 141–42.
86. Ibid.
87. Uwe Spiekermann, Basis der Konsumgesellschaft: Entstehung und Entwicklung des
modernen Kleinhandels in Deutschland (Munich, 1999), 202.
88. See Gideon Reuveni, “Wohlstand durch Konsum: Straßenhandel und Versicherungs-
zeitschriften in den zwanziger Jahren,” in Die “Krise” der Weimarer Republik: Zur
Kritik eines Deutungsmusters, ed. Moritz Föllmer and Rüdiger Graf (Frankfurt am
Main, 2005), 274–75.
89. Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen (Berlin, 1947), 360.
90. Reuveni, “Wohlstand durch Konsum,” 275.
91. On the importance of the market halls, see Erich Rindt, “Die Markthallen als Faktor
des Berliner Wirtschaftslebens” (PhD diss., Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin,
1928).
92. Otto Büsch, Geschichte der Berliner Kommunalwirtschaft in der Weimarer Epoche
(Berlin, 1960), 126.
93. See ibid., 127; and Statistisches Jahrbuch der Stadt Berlin 5 (1929): 56.
94. Ibid., 56.
95. Ibid.
96. Spiekermann, Basis der Konsumgesellschaft.
97. LAB A Rep. 001–02, no. 2310, p. 142.
98. Spiekermann, “From Neighbour to Consumer,” 153.
99. Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen, 167.
100. Ibid.
101. Spiekermann, “From Neighbour to Consumer,” 149.
102. Ibid., 156.
103. See ibid., 138.
104. See the urban renewal program for the capital developed by Albert Speer for the
Generalbauinspektor (GBI) für die Reichshauptstadt„ which was accelerated in
1937. At first, it was supposed to be carried out without any financial constraints.
By 1941, however, it had become increasingly problematic because of labor and
material shortages. The actual expenditures of the GBI never reached the amount
planned. See Harald Engler, Die Finanzierung der Reichshauptstadt: Untersuchungen
zu den hauptstadtbedingten staatlichen Ausgaben Preußens und des Deutschen Reiches
 Notes ● 227

in Berlin vom Kaiserreich bis zum Dritten Reich (1871–1945) (Berlin, 2004),
387–430.
105. On the concept of “the masses,” see George L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the
Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic
Wars through the Third Reich (New York, 1975).
106. Large, Berlin, 255.
107. Quoted Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany
(Oxford, UK, 2001), 36.
108. Large, Berlin, 295.
109. Spiekermann, “From Neighbour to Consumer,” 157.
110. See Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen, 183. By contain-
ing street trading, the responsible agencies could calm down enraged retail business
owners. In March 1936, complaints from such businessmen even reached the state
chancellery. In an “urgent appeal,” the proprietor of a stand in the Central Market
Hall I in the Neue Friedrichstrasse expressed his displeasure. He had “attempted
since 1933 here in the Berlin market to keep his house . . . in order,” without notic-
ing “any changes hav[ing] occurred to contain or to prohibit the street trading.”
LAB A Pr. Br., Rep. 57 (Stadtpräsident der Reichshauptstadt Berlin), no. 511, letter
to State Secretary Lummers, March 30, 1936.
111. Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936, 724–28.
112. See ibid. The officially mandated levels of meat consumption sank from 71.6 kg per
capita in 1934 to 55.2 kg per capita in 1936. See Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt
Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen, 206.
113. SOPADE, 1934, pp. 179.
114. SOPADE, 1936, pp. 1405.
115. SOPADE, 1938, pp. 637.
116. Spiekermann, “From Neighbour to Consumer,” 158.
117. This was a “special case” because the rationing did not aim at a general prohi-
bition of the trade in certain goods but rather was merely supposed to organize a
reduced, controlled release of goods, that is, a “supply-reduction policy”; Thornton,
Economics, 73–77.
118. See Wilhelm Henrichsmeyer, Oskar Gans, and Ingo Evers, Einführung in die
Volkswirtschaftslehre, 10th ed. (Stuttgart, 1993), 202–203.
119. Gustavo Corni and Horst Gies, Brot, Butter, Kanonen: Die Ernährungswirtschaft in
Deutschland unter der Diktatur Hitlers (Berlin, 1997), 558.
120. Ibid., 562.
121. Jost Dülffer, Deutsche Geschichte 1933–1945: Führerglaube und Vernichtungskrieg
(Stuttgart, 1992), 139.
122. Corni and Gies, Brot, Butter, Kanonen, 581.
123. A Rep. 001–02, no. 1552, 118–19.
124. All quotes in ibid., 128.
125. Ibid., 134.
126. Davis, Home Fires Burning; Roehrkohl, Hungerblockade und Heimatfront.
127. Karl-Heinz Klüber, Gesetzliche Grundlagen zur Schwarzmarktbekämpfung, 3rd ed.
(Hamburg, 1948).
128. Ibid., 5.
129. Ibid. The list of regulations which were related at least indirectly to black marketeer-
ing offenses included a prohibition on raising prices (1936), as well as a “prohibition
of tying arrangements (Kopplungsverbot) and of price gouging by middlemen”
228 ● Notes

(1937). There were also regulations on pricing (1944) and on the maximum price
allowed for used goods (1942). On top of this there was an older regulation on the
obligation to provide information (1923) as well as seven regulations issued by the
Allied Military Government; among these were the Allied Control Council Act No.
50 from 18 December 1947.
130. See the War Economy Regulations from 4 September 1939 in the last revised
version of 25 March 1942. Reichsgesetzblatt 1: 147.
131. LAB A Rep. 358–02, 89673, 45.
132. Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier (Munich, 1979),
541.
133. Zierenberg, “Zwischen Herrschaftsfragen und Verbraucherinteressen.”
134. Deutsche Justiz (1939): 1753.
135. Ibid., 1754.
136. Ibid.
137. Deutsche Justiz (1940): 256.
138. Ibid., 1271.

Chapter 2
1. See the short introduction in Willi Boelcke, Der Schwarzmarkt: Vom Überleben
nach dem Kriege (Stuttgart, 1986); and Rainer Gries, Die Rationen-Gesellschaft:
Versorgungskampf und Vergleichsmentalität: Leipzig, München und Köln nach dem
Kriege (Münster, 1991), as well as Frank Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure: Korruption
in der NS-Zeit (Frankfurt am Main, 2001). Bajohr, however, concentrates on
corruption cases.
2. On the following analysis, see LAB A Rep. 358–02 89667.
3. Ibid., indictment from March 31, 1945 (unpaginated).
4. See Dorothea Jansen, Einführung in die Netzwerkanalyse: Grundlagen, Methoden,
Forschungsbeispiele (Opladen, 1999), 127–62 and 193–236, on the logic
behind this.
5. LAB A Rep. 358–02 89667, pp. 45ff.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., p. 86.
8. See Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen, 83.
9. LAB A Rep. 358–02 89667, p. 59.
10. Ibid., p. 46.
11. Ibid., interrogation Kuschy (unpaginated).
12. See Niklas Luhmann, Vertrauen: Ein Mechanismus der Reduktion sozialer
Komplexität, 4th ed. (Stuttgart, 2000), 23–24.
13. See Jansen, Einführung, 65.
14. For the following, see LAB A Rep. 358–02 89667, pp. 25ff.
15. Ibid., p. 32.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., p. 57.
18. On Wiggers’s professional life, see ibid., pp. 24ff.
19. A Rep. 358–02 79976.
20. Ibid., 89667, pp. 6ff.
21. The following is based on LAB A Rep. 358–02 89667, pp. 25ff.
22. The records of the Gestapo contain references to problems the police had in orga-
nizing their work. As the “police informer” (nachrichtenmäßige Verbindung) Erna
 Notes ● 229

Kuschy had also reported on the “political character” of activities taking place in
Franz Seidemann’s and Martha Rebbien’s residences (listening to “enemy radio sta-
tions” and “agitation against political institutions and personalities”), the Gestapo
took over the case. However, the Gestapo soon complained about the “inability of
the police to provide enough policemen.” (LAB A Rep. 358–02 89667, unpag-
inated, Schreiben der Geheimen Staatspolizei, Staatspolizeileitstelle Berlin, from
November 11, 1944.)
23. Jansen, Einführung, 173–75.
24. All quotes ibid., p. 175.
25. LAB A Rep. 358–02, p. 49.
26. That these groups of people were overrepresented was only in part because of
their privileged access to goods in demand and their ability to establish contacts.
The fact that the trade inspection service (Gewerbeaußendienst or GAD) of the
Berlin police, whose task was to supervise stores, bars, and restaurants, did a large
part of the investigative work, contributed to this result. See above in the section,
“Bartering Spaces and Movement Patterns.”
27. The War Economy Regulations did not formulate any concrete details. See the War
Economy Regulations from September 4, 1939 (RGBl. I. p. 1609).
28. See the example of Hermann Weese below.
29. LAB A Rep. 358–02 8443, p. 20. The market in Neukölln was so small that one wit-
ness, while visiting a restaurant, recognized a ring that had previously been offered
to her for sale on the finger of an acquaintance. See ibid., p. 28.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., p. 31.
32. See Ruth Federspiel, Soziale Mobilität im Berlin des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Frauen
und Männer in Berlin-Neukölln (Berlin, 1999), on the difficulties in analyzing social
profiles in Berlin.
33. LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 90 Nr. 7619/2, Der Leiter des GAD, Tagesbefehl Nr.
13 from July 6, 1943.
34. Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen, 16.
35. Ibid., 96.
36. Ibid., 16.
37. This is a factor that black market researchers all too often accept as given, without
reflecting sufficiently on it. See, for example, Boelcke, Schwarzmarkt, 47ff.
38. Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge, UK, 1990), 21–25.
39. See Moritz Föllmer, ed., Sehnsucht nach Nähe. Interpersonale Kommunikation in
Deutschland seit dem 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 2004), 14–15.
40. Clifford Geertz, “The Bazaar Economy: Information and Search in Peasant Mar-
keting,” American Economic Review 68, no. 2 (1978): 32.
41. See Hans Joas, “Rollen- und Interaktionstheorien in der Sozialisationsforschung,”
in Neues Handbuch der Sozialisationsforschung, ed. Klaus Hurrelmann and Dieter
Ulich, 137–52 (Weinheim, 1991), as well as Jens Asendorpf and Rainer Banse,
Psychologie der Beziehung (Bern, 2001), 7–9.
42. Ibid.
43. See here as well Erving Goffman, Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order
(Brunswick and London, 2010).
44. Asendorpf and Banse, Psychologie, 7.
45. Only after they had reached a significant degree of professionalization were brokers
able to maintain a relatively stable stock of goods and thus stabilize the supply
situation, even if it was still quite restricted.
230 ● Notes

46. LAB A Rep. 358–02 80961, p. 34.

47. That is what happened in the case of the former German wrestling champion
Werner Seelenbinder, who was caught while attempting to get some food through
“communist contacts” and handed over to the Volksgerichtshof. See LAB A Rep
358–02 91164. Jewish black market participants faced the same problem. See ibid.,
80408, p. 20.
48. See Wilhelm Henrichsmeyer, Oskar Gans, and Ingo Evers, Einführung in die
Volkswirtschaftslehre, 10th ed. (Stuttgart, 1993), 52–54.
49. Quoted in Elke Kupschinsky, “Die vernünftige Nephertete. Die Neue Frau der 20er
Jahre in Berlin,” in Die Metropole: Industriestruktur in Berlin im 20: Jahrhundert, ed.
Jochen Boberg, 164–73 (Munich, 1988), 165.
50. Viviana A. Zelizer, “Economic Sociology,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social
and Behavioral Sciences, ed. Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, 8:4131 (Oxford,
UK, 2001), argues similarly against a popular myth that suggests that business
relationships have a negative impact on “private” relationships.
51. See Susanne zur Nieden, “Erotische Fraternisierung. Der Mythos von der schnellen
Kapitulation der deutschen Frauen im Mai 1945,” in Heimat—Front. Militär
und Geschlechterverhältnisse im Zeitalter der Weltkriege, ed. Karen Hagemann and
Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, 313–25 (Frankfurt am Main, 2002).
52. “The marriage market,” according to Merith Niehuss, looking at the nineteenth
century, “at least of the bourgeoisie, was . . . influenced by a materialistic way of
thinking; what counted most was the market value of the future marriage partner.”
In the time frame under investigation here, choosing a partner followed a pattern
that did not exclude marrying for love but set limits on this practice. In general, one
can observe above all a “strong tendency to marry within the same social group.”
See Merith Niehuss, Familie, Frau und Gesellschaft. Studien zur Strukturgeschichte
der Familie in Westdeutschland 1945–1960 (Göttingen, 2001), 302–303, as well as
Peter Borscheid, “Geld und Liebe. Zu den Auswirkungen des Romantischen auf die
Partnerwahl im 19. Jahrhundert,” in Ehe, Liebe, Tod. Zum Wandel der Familie, der
Geschlechts- und Generationsbeziehungen in der Neuzeit, ed. idem and Hans-Jürgen
Teuteberg, 112–34 (Münster, 1983).
53. See Pierre Bourdieu, “Gabe und do ut des,” in Praktische Vernunft, 94–103
(Frankfurt am Main, 1998), on veiling trades by a delay in time.
54. Elizabeth Heineman, What Difference Does a Husband Make?: Women and Marital
Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany (Berkeley, 1999), 46.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. This calls into question Heineman’s assertion based on the lack of success of the
state’s efforts that women were not “worried enough” and thus hesitated to enter
into new partnerships. See ibid., 50.
58. Heterosexual trading networks were the rule. See, however, LAB A Rep 358–02,
89841, pp. 21ff., for an example of a homosexual trading network.
59. As a rule, the phrase “friendly relations” (freundschaftlicher Verkehr) suggests sexual
contacts. See ibid.
60. LAB A Rep. 358–02 80384, p. 3.
61. LAB A Rep. 358–02, 80004, p. 44.
62. Ibid., p. 42.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., p. 41.
 Notes ● 231

65. Ibid., written judgment, p. 3.

66. See Heineman, Difference, 55.
67. LAB A Rep 358–02, 80004, p. 45.
68. Ibid., pp. 44ff.
69. Ibid., p. 81.
70. Ibid., p. 45.
71. This exceptional situation ultimately disproves Luhmann’s observation that two-
person relationships “on the basis of their own terms and conditions . . . without
social networking are rare and problematic.” The demonstrative, emphatic disen-
tanglement from the social network points to the fundamental relationship to one’s
environment. See Niklas Luhmann, Liebe als Passion. Zur Codierung von Intimität
(Frankfurt am Main, 1992), 39.
72. A Rep. 358–02 80692.
73. Ibid., Report of the “Privat-Auskunftei und Detektei Herbert K. Krause” of May 12,
1943.
74. Ibid., p. 55.
75. Ibid., p. 20.
76. Ibid., p. 54.
77. On the East Prussian transactions, see ibid., pp. 101ff.; on his going into hiding,
p. 18.
78. Ibid., pp. 43–44.
79. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, ed.
Johannes Winckelmann, 5th ed. (Tübingen, 1980), 214.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid., 216.
82. See Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus, eds., Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany
(Princeton, 2001); and Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in
Nazi Germany (Oxford, UK), 2001.
83. See for example LAB A Rep. 358–02 79555.
84. LAB A Rep 358–02 89841, p. 20.
85. Ibid., p. 41. See for a further example of the acknowledged taboo ibid., 80384, p. 8.
86. See for example ibid., 89842, pp. 17–18, as well as 80067, p. 34.
87. Ibid., 80006, pp. 26–27.
88. LAB A Rep 358–02 80354–55.
89. Ibid., 80004, p. 9.
90. Ibid., 87593, p. 35.
91. Ibid., 80139, p. 47.
92. Ibid., p. 13.
93. See Jürgen Gerhards and Friedhelm Neidhardt, “Strukturen und Funktionen
moderner Öffentlichkeit: Fragestellungen und Ansätze,” in Öffentlichkeit, Kultur,
Massenkommunikation: Beiträge zur Medien- und Kommunikationssoziologie, ed.
Stefan Müller-Doohm, 31–88 (Oldenburg, 1991).
94. The police viewed spaces where a limited “meeting public” came together with mis-
trust. See the interesting reference to a store as a “substitute public sphere” in the
verdict against a person accused (and later convicted) of offenses against War Econ-
omy Regulations, who in this case was also accused of making “malicious remarks.”
The judges explained: “To be sure, he did not make his remarks publicly. How-
ever, he did make them in front of people he had to know did not agree with these
remarks. Therefore, he had to assume that these people would bring his remarks
232 ● Notes

into the substitute public sphere (Ersatzöffentlichkeit).” LAB A Rep. 358–02 89673,
p. 45. Businesses and restaurants were thus especially suspicious “substitute public
spheres,” attracting the attention not only of prosecuting authorities. Such busi-
nesses and restaurants could also become the subject of broad generalizations;
certain occupations such as waiting on tables and retailing were broadly discredited
as spheres of “hustling.” See Malte Zierenberg, “Berlin tauscht. Schwarzmärkte in
Berlin 1939–1950,” Informationen zur modernen Stadtgeschichte 2 (2004): 45–53;
Adelheid von Saldern, “Stadt und Öffentlichkeit in urbanisierten Gesellschaften.
Neue Zugänge zu einem alten Thema,” Informationen zur modernen Stadtgeschichte
2 (2000): 3–15, has suggested the term “informal public spheres” for such spaces,
which—as she herself admits—would exclude a broad range of rather different sorts
of public spheres.
95. Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen, 222.
96. Erich Giese, Das zukünftige Schnellbahnnetz für Groß-Berlin (Berlin, 1919), 71–75.
See Thomas Lindenberger, Straßenpolitik: Zur Sozialgeschichte der öffentlichen
Ordnung in Berlin 1900–1914 (Bonn, 1995), 43–45.
97. See, for example, the interrogation on November 18, 1944, LAB A Rep. 358–02
89667, pp. 45ff. Even after the end of the war people walked to the vast majority of
their black market sites. This had to do above all with the destruction of the trans-
portation infrastructure and the need to reappropriate the city after the “bunker
era.”. See below, Chapter 3.
98. LAB A Rep. 358–02 89667, p. 10 and unpaginated, interrogation by the Geheime
Staatspolizei on December 12, 1944. The Berlin telephone network remained rel-
atively insignificant in the everyday life of Berliners for a long time. To be sure,
the number of public phones within the city more than doubled between 1925
and 1930 from around 234,395–524,627. However, most of the new phones were
intended for the public authorities. After this infrastructure had been created, the
further expansion of the telephone network was slow. Between 1930 and 1940
only about 100,000 new public phones were added. The number of local calls
increased within the same period of time by only about 10 percent. Public tele-
phones remained rare. If in 1930 there were only 5,586 public telephones, ten
years later their number had increased by only 30. Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt
Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen, 243.
99. See for example LAB A Rep. 358–02 89667, pp. 57, 70.
100. Viviana A. Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief,
and Other Currencies (London, 1994).
101. For one of the few exceptions, see LAB A Rep. 358–02 79783. It seems that
long-term, successful, and stable network relationships depended especially on the
familiarity of the participants and spatial considerations.
102. Andreas Gestrich, “Neuzeit,” in Geschichte der Familie, ed. Andreas Gestrich, Jens-
Uwe Krause, and Michael Mitterauer, 364–652 (Stuttgart: Kröner, 2003), 643.
103. Ibid., 644.
104. LAB A Rep. 358–02 80139, p. 8. See also ibid., 89659, p. 18.
105. Gestrich, “Neuzeit,” 463.
106. Ibid.
107. Ibid., 469.
108. Ibid., 472.
109. Walter Benjamin, Das Passagen-Werk. Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1991), 6.1:53. On the “need for closure,” see Gert Selle, Die
 Notes ● 233

eigenen vier Wände. Zur verborgenen Geschichte des Wohnens (Frankfurt am Main,
1993), 13.
110. Ibid., 21.
111. See Ralf Blank, “Kriegsalltag und Luftkrieg an der Heimatfront,” in Das Deutsche
Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 9/2, Die Deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939
bis 1945. Ausbeutung, Deutungen, Ausgrenzung, ed. Jörg Echternkamp, 357–461
(Munich, 2005), 419.
112. Richard Bessel, “ ‘Leben nach dem Tod’. Vom Zweiten Weltkrieg zur zweiten
Nachkriegszeit,” in Wie Kriege enden, ed. Wegner, 239–58 (Paderborn, 2002), 252.
113. Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen, 145.
114. Ibid., 137.
115. Ibid., 139.
116. Bodenschatz, Harald. “Altstadt und Mietskasernenstadt. Felder der Stadterneuerung
zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen am Beispiel Berlin,” in Stadterneuerung in der
Weimarer Republik und im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Christian Kopetzki, 252–43
(Kassel, 1987); and SOPADE, 1938, p. 1109.
117. David Clay Large, Berlin: A Modern History (New York, 2001), 313. The build-
ings erected in the second “construction boom” between 1937 and 1940 often had
significant defects. There were repeated complaints concerning the quality of the
buildings, which were too quickly built and badly conceived. Furthermore, the rents
were too high. For a one-room apartment in the suburbs one paid 75 marks in 1938;
for an apartment in a new building in Lichtenberg in an area that shortly before had
still been garden allotments, one still paid 40 marks a month. See SOPADE, 1938,
pp. 1126–28.
118. LAB A Rep. 358–02 8933, copy of the verdict (January 3, 1945), p. 5.
119. Adelheid von Saldern, Häuserleben: zur Geschichte städtischen Arbeiterwohnens vom
Kaiserreich bis heute (Bonn, 1995). See also the works of Schmiechen-Ackermann
on the significance of the block warden.
120. This could include hanging up portraits of Hitler in one’s apartment to assuage a
suspicious block warden. See SOPADE, 1940, 16.
121. See Gellately, Backing Hitler, 256–57.
122. Ibid., 261.
123. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 252.
124. See ibid.
125. Trading also took place in air-raid shelters. See LAB A Rep. 358–02 80562, p. 15.
However, there is little archival evidence of such trading, which suggests that the
lack of the necessary trust and privacy in them inhibited trading. Traders probably
feared that “unreliable elements” would inform on them.
126. LAB A Rep. 358–02 89667, p. 46.
127. Ibid., 79932, p. 1.
128. Ibid., 89667, pp. 12–13.
129. Ibid., 80099, p. 6.
130. See, for example, ibid., 79946, p. 13.
131. See LAB A Rep. 358–02 89842, p. 17; ibid., 80067, p. 34.
132. See, for example, LAB A Rep. 358–02 79946, p. 30; ibid., 87908, p. 1.
133. LAB A Rep. 358–02 79946, p. 1.
134. LAB A Rep. 358–02 80067, p. 1.
135. Ibid., p. 28.
136. Ibid., p. 62.
234 ● Notes

137. Ibid., p. 63.

138. LAB A Rep358–02 79946, p. 5.
139. LAB ARep358–02 80408, p. 27.
140. See for an example of a description of the Alexanderplatz LAB A Rep. 358–02
79813, p. 1.
141. LAB ARep358–02 80407, p. 9.
142. Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen, 180–83.
143. Ibid., p. 245. Aschinger provides an example of a firm that profited from this devel-
opment. Aschinger had started in 1892 as a bar in the Leipziger Straße. In the
1930s, the business had grown into one of Europe’s largest hotel and restaurant
concerns. The government supported the business with orders for the May 1 cele-
brations and the Olympic Games. In 1937, as a result of the “Aryanization” of its
competitor Kempinski, Aschinger took over Kempinski and integrated it. As the
firm was able, with the approval of the National Socialist leadership, to continue to
offer its “basic meal without a ration card” in its restaurants and snack bars in the
center of the city during the war, Aschinger must have profited considerably from
the rationing. See Allen, pp. 107ff. At any rate, given the number of customers at
Aschinger, it is not at all surprising that the Aschinger branches soon developed into
prominent sites for black market trading. See LAB A Rep. 358–02 3016; 79976;
80099, p. 11; 80408, p. 28.
144. Ibid., p. 169.
145. See Christian Engeli and Wolfgang Ribbe, “Berlin in der NS-Zeit,” in Geschichte
Berlins, vol. 2, Von der Märzrevolution bis zur Gegenwart, ed. idem (Berlin, 1989),
24–44, 982; as well as Alfred Zimm, Die Entwicklung des Industriestandortes Berlin.
Tendenzen der geographischen Lokalisation bei den Berliner Industriezweigen von
überörtlicher Bedeutung sowie die territoriale Stadtentwicklung bis 1945 (Berlin,
1959).
146. Bodenschatz, Altstadt, 67.
147. Gustav Böß, Die Not in Berlin: Tatsachen und Zahlen (Berlin, 1923), 115.
148. LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 90 Nr. 7619/2, Der Leiter des GAD, Entwurf
Sonderbefehl, July 1942.
149. See, for example, ibid., Tagesbefehl Nr. 3, January 20, 1943, as well as Tagesbefehl
Nr. 13, July 6, 1943.
150. LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 90 Nr. 7619/2, Der Leiter des GAD, Tagesbefehl Nr.
13, July 6, 1943.
151. Lindenberger, Straßenpolitik, 105–106. On ethnomethodology, see Sacks, Notes.
See Annette F. Timm, “The Ambivalent Outsider: Prostitution, Promiscuity, and
VD Control in Nazi Berlin,” in Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany, ed. Robert
Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus, 192–211 (Princeton, 2001), 200, for the distri-
bution of the prostitute milieu in certain bars in the “problem districts.”
152. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Berlin Jews had settled in the northern
section of the district Mitte. In 1866 the huge New Synagogue was built here in the
Oranienburger Strasse. In 1925, 30,000 Jews lived in Mitte. See Richarz, Monika.
“Jüdisches Berlin und seine Vernichtung,” in Die Metropole. Industriekultur in Berlin
im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Boberg, 216–25.
153. Bodenschatz, Altstadt, 73.
154. Grüneberg, Ernst. Die Reichshauptstadt Berlin. Eine Heimatkunde für Berliner
Schulen (Breslau, 1938).
155. See Large, Berlin, 103–105.
 Notes ● 235

156. Ernst Engelbrecht and Leo Heller, Berliner Razzien (Neu-Finkenkrug, 1924).
157. Ibid., 43–46.
158. Even if there were no exact information, the Berlin police adopted the hint from
a “confidential source” that goods were being “delivered to the Kurfürstendamm.”
See LAB A Rep. 358–02 89798, p. 1.
159. Edition from November 9, 1947.
160. Alfred Kerr, Mein Berlin. Schauplätze einer Metropole (Berlin, 1999).
161. Richarz, Jüdisches Berlin, 217–18.
162. This was one way that the space of possible consumption was limited; aspects
of this limitation remained in place until 1951. See Thomas Scholze, “Zur
Ernährungssituation der Berliner nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Ein Beitrag zur
Erfahrung des Großstadtalltags (1945–1952),” Jahrbuch für Geschichte 35 (1987):
539–64.
163. See, for example, LAB PR. Br. Rep. 57, Nr. 365, transcript from January 21, 1942,
“Regelung über Versand und Mitnahme von Waren aus den besetzten französischen,
belgischen und niederländischen Gebieten durch Wehrmachtangehörige usw.”
164. Ibid.
165. All quotes ibid.
166. Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure, 88–90.
167. See, for example, LAB A Rep 358–02 89962; ibid., 79932, 79809, 79946, 87970,
as well as 80164, p. 3, 80429, p. 3, 80342, p. 10.
168. Ibid., 89667, p. 59.
169. Ibid., 88234, p. 22.
170. Especially at the beginning of Nazi rule in 1933, just before the opening of the
Olympic Games in 1936, and at the beginning of the war, prostitutes fell vic-
tim to ideologically motivated campaigns. See Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilisation im
Nationalsozialismus. Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik (Opladen, 1986),
417.
171. Timm, “Outsider,” 192.
172. LAB Pr. Br. Rep 57, Nr. 365, p. 6.
173. Timm, “Outsider,” 201.
174. LAB A Rep. 358–02 80384, 7/2.
175. “Being served”(Bedienung) was the customary euphemism for sex. See ibid., 15/2.
The term “monitor girls”(Kontrollmädchen) was used to designate prostitutes who
were registered and who underwent a regular health check. See Timm, “Out-
sider.” The term was already common during the Weimar era. The Statistisches
Jahrbuch der Stadt Berlin noted in volume 5 in 1929 (257) for the period
from December 1926 to August 1927 that there was a slight decrease in the
number of women registered as Kontrollmädchen, from 7,113 to 6,267. In Septem-
ber 1927, the law to combat the spread of STDs was modified (the law was
passed on February 18, 1927), and this changed the way the data was collected.
See ibid.
176. LAB A Rep. 358–02 80384, p. 21.
177. See Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure.
178. For an example of discrimination, see the case of Elisabeth Hanke, LAB
A Rep. 358–02 80004.
179. Saldern, Stadt.
180. Karl Marx, The Power of Money: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,
trans. Martin Mulligan (Moscow, 1959), 42.
236 ● Notes

181. Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, 3rd exp. ed., ed. David Frisby, trans. Tom
Bottomore and David Frisby (New York, 2004), 178.
182. Zelizer, Meaning, 3, speaks, for example, of “divided economies” and “moral ear-
marking” when amounts of money are kept separate according to their source of
income and are used for different expenses.
183. Simmel, Philosophy, 126.
184. Ibid., 87908, 95.
185. See, for example, LAB A Rep 358–02 80067, p. 3.
186. See Willi Boelcke, Die Kosten von Hitlers Krieg. Kriegsfinanzierung und finanzielles
Kriegserbe in Deutschland 1933–1948 (Paderborn, 1985), 112.
187. See LAB A Rep 80139, p. 60.
188. Ibid., 80099, p. 33.
189. Ibid., 79809, p. 53.
190. This phenomenon has been observed, for example, in the earnings of “young male
prostitutes.” One young man described his earnings as being “like a hot stone that
burns a hole in your pocket.” Zelizer, Meaning, 70.
191. See, for example, LAB A Rep 358–02 80139, p. 4.
192. See F Rep 240 Acc. 2651 Nr. 4, p. 402/4. See also ibid., p. 412/4: “Christmas
and no tree . . . but a small child. What to do?” For an example of the preparations
for a marriage, see ibid., p. 364/4: “For the meal we put in front of our best man
and bridesmaid asparagus and eggs that cost 200 RM; I got that much for my old
tennis shoes.” A further postwar “festive occasion” that often prompted black market
trading was “celebrating seeing one another again.” See ibid., Nr. 3, p. 193/2.
193. LAB A Rep 358–02 80398, p. 4. See also LAB A Rep 358–02 80164, p. 5–6. It is
not clear where Martha Rebbien got her “seed money.” It is, however, very likely
that she invested a large part of the profits she made into maintaining her trading.
194. LAB A Rep 358–02 80004.
195. Ibid.
196. For a case that describes this creeping transition, see LAB A Rep. 358–02 80067,
p. 8. See also ibid., 80099, pp. 5–7 and 30–32.
197. See ibid., 80375, p. 8.
198. Ibid., 89781, p. 19.
199. The German original reads “gewissenloser Kriegshyänen,” or “unscrupulous war
hyenas.”
200. LAB A Rep 358–02 80067, p. 36.
201. LAB A Rep 358–02 80384, p. 22. See further ibid., 89717, p. 10/2.
202. LAB A Rep 358–02 80164, pp. 40–41.
203. See the extensive interrogation that Martha Rebbien’s trading partner, Wiggers, was
required to undergo because of his detailed notes, LAB A Rep 358–02 89667,
pp. 62–65.
204. LAB A Rep 358–02 89667, pp. 62/2–3.
205. See LAB A Rep. 358–02 8443.
206. LAB A Rep. 358–02 89667, unpaginated, interrogation record of the Geheime
Staatspolizei, Staatspolizeileitstelle Berlin, of December 12, 1944.
207. See the section below, in Chapter 4, “A Market of ‘Little People’: The Black Market
and the Social Question.”
208. Alfred Müller-Förster, Aufgewärmte Kartoffeln. Ein Büchlein für Politiker, Schieber
und Schornsteinfeger, für Reichspräsidenten, Schuster, Minister, Jungfrauen und solche,
die es werden wollen (Hamburg, 1926).
 Notes ● 237

209. Max Brinkmann, Kleiner Knigge für Schieber (Berlin, 1921).

210. See Achim Landwehr, Geschichte des Sagbaren: Einführung in die historische
Diskursanalyse (Tübingen, 2001), 103–106 and 130–33. Quote: Reinhart
Koselleck, “Erinnerungsschleusen und Erfahrungsschichten. Der Einfluss der bei-
den Weltkriege auf das soziale Bewusstsein,” reprinted in Zeitschichten. Studien zur
Historik, idem, 265–84 (Frankfurt am Main, 2000), 267.
211. LAB A Rep. 358–02, 80128, p. 77.
212. That legal terms were adapted to fit social reality was not a new phenomenon.
Martin H. Geyer, Verkehrte Welt: Revolution, Inflation und Moderne, Munich 1914–
1924 (Göttingen, 1998), 220, has pointed out that in the “extortion issue” of the
early 1920s, a semantic shift in the vocabulary used by judges occurred that reflected
contemporary discomfort about the divergence between the popular sense of justice
and the administration of the law.
213. Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus, eds., Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany
(Princeton, 2001).
214. Geyer, Verkehrte Welt, 180.
215. Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier (Munich, 1979), 213.
216. LAB A Rep. 358–02, 89506, p. 2.
217. All quotes from LAB A Rep. 358–02, 88105, p. 2.
218. LAB A Rep. 358–02, 88069, p. 4.
219. Ibid., 8723, copy of the judgments (unpaginated).
220. Ibid., 88446, p. 14.
221. LAB A Rep. 358–02, 88580, p. 2.
222. Perceptions have been distorted by the black market being a topic in work on
“foreign laborers,” “forced laborers,” and “displaced persons,” although, on the
whole, historians have given it little attention. These non-historical works can-
not be criticized for this, but this focus highlights foreigners when the talk is of
the black markets so that the authors only restate (involuntarily) the incorrect pic-
ture of the black market that contemporaries had. See Mark Spoerer, “Die soziale
Differenzierung der ausländischen Zivilarbeiter, Kriegsgefangenen und Häftlinge
im Deutschen Reich,” in Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 9, pt. 2,
Die deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis 1945: Ausbeutung, Deutungen, Ausgrenzung,
ed. Jörg Echternkamp, 485–576 (Munich, 2005); Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter.
Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches
(Bonn, 1985); Boelcke, Schwarzmarkt.
223. Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 4, Vom Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs
bis zur Gründung der beiden deutschen Staaten 1914–1949 (Munich, 2003), 769;
Herbert, Fremdarbeiter.
224. See above in this chapter, “Bartering Culture and the Transformation of Social Rela-
tionships.” Networks composed of foreigners formed one segment of the Berlin
black market; they functioned as “ethnic economies” yet were also intertwined with
other “native” networks. For an example of a network of Italian black marketeers
who organized their bartering networks as “paesani,” see LAB A Rep. 358–02,
80099. On the phenomenon of the “paesani,” see William Foote Whyte, Street Cor-
ner Society: Die Sozialstruktur eines Italienerviertels (Berlin, 1996); on the Italians
in Germany, see Ralf Lang, Italienische “Fremdarbeiter” im nationalsozialistischen
Deutschland 1937–1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1996).
225. On the following: LAB A Rep. 341–02 9792. Knowing quite well that being
labeled a “half-Jew” would negatively impact their sentence, individual suspects
238 ● Notes

attempted to change this classification even after their arrest. One can see this in
Ernst Abrahamson’s notes handwritten in detention awaiting trial: “1. Aryan ques-
tion. I request that I be allowed to raise the topic once again.” He further noted
that it was not fully clear who his father was and that he had already submitted a
request to the Interior Ministry to “change his name and to be rehabilitated in the
Aryan question to at least 25%.” See LAB A Rep. 358–02 89717, p. 23. Yet these
same notes sealed his fate, as they contained information on numerous black market
transactions, which prosecutors introduced as evidence. See ibid., p. 85.
226. Ibid., p. 1.
227. Ibid.
228. Ibid., p. 65.
229. LAB A Rep. 358–02, 89778, p. 3.
230. See Dorothea Schmidt, Zeitgeschichte im Mikrokosmos. Ein Gebäude in Berlin-
Schöneberg (Berlin, 2004), 11–14.
231. LAB A Rep. 358–02, 89778, p. 8.
232. Ibid., p. 9.
233. Ibid., p. 26.
234. LAB A Rep. 358–02, 80477, pp. 29, 86, 94.
235. Ibid., p. 100. The official in charge of the case spoke of Scheffler’s girlfriend as his
paramour. Ibid.
236. Street trading had been associated with fancy automobiles as early as the 1920s.
At the meeting of the Berlin City Council on May 26, 1921, the representative of
the German National People’s Party, Linke, noted,

if you look at the picture of the present street trading, you can see from the
manner in which it is conducted that many people of means are involved in
it, as the street trading is conducted from buses, cabs, etc., and you all know
exactly how much an automobile or a cab costs for half a day.

LAB A Rep. 001–02, Nr. 2310, p. 141. See Geyer, Verkehrte Welt, 244. On the
ambivalence of the concept of the “Roaring Twenties,” which also had violent and
ecstatic, orgiastic connotations, see Helmut Lethen, “Chicago und Moskau,” in Die
Metropole, ed. Boberg, 190–213 (Munich, 1988).
237. Ibid., 198. Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, In 1926: Living on the Edge of Time
(Cambridge, MA, 1998), 28, points out that driving an automobile, glamorous in
and of itself, was always simultaneously viewed as a “potentially criminal act.” This
is evident from how quickly the police arrested drivers after accidents. In a Berlin
example Gumbrecht cites, the police were barely able to stop a mob of people from
lynching a driver responsible for an accident that had killed a number of people at
the scene. In one case, which had a number of parallels to Scheffler’s example, the
interrogator noted that although the suspect had claimed to have no previous con-
victions, he had been involved in an automobile accident in 1937 and that he had
had to pay four fines for driving a “car without a light.” See LAB A Rep. 358–02,
89778, p. 3. As early as the 1930s in the “battle against asocial people,” Berlin
police had included “obstinate traffic offenders” in fringe groups that needed to be
combated by preventive action in the interest of the Volksgemeinschaft. “Traffic
offenders” were thus a focus of surveillance, like beggars, prostitutes, pimps, homo-
sexuals, psychopaths, and even “price cutters and hustlers.” See Wolfgang Dreßen,
 Notes ● 239

“Modernität und innerer Feind,” in Die Metropole, ed. Boberg, 262–81 (Munich,
1988).
238. Despite steady increases in the numbers of people driving since the 1920s,
cars remained relatively rare in Berlin. In 1929, there were 42,844 registered
automobiles. The highest number of registered cars in Berlin before the war
was 122,326 in 1939, yielding a ratio of cars to citizens of 1:35. See Hans
Stimmann“Weltstadtplätze und Massenverkehr,” in Die Metropole, ed. Boberg,
138–43 (Munich, 1988).
239. Thomas Mann, Unordnung und Frühes Leid: Die Erzählungen (Frankfurt am Main,
2005), 679.
240. Hachenburg, quoted in Geyer, Verkehrte Welt, 207.
241. Ibid., 385.
242. Ibid., 107.
243. Ibid.
244. Ibid., 107–108.
245. On the stigmatization of and discrimination against promiscuous people during the
war, see Timm, “Outsider,” 202–205.
246. Ursula von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen: 1942–1945, ed. Peter Hartl
(Munich, 1992), 137.

Chapter 3
1. Daniel Libeskind, Radix—Matrix: Architecture and Writing (Munich, 1997), 113.
2. References can be found in the reports of the Wehrmachtpropaganda (see Wolfram
Wette, ed., Das letzte halbe Jahr. Stimmungsberichte der Wehrmachtpropaganda
1944/45 [Essen, 2001], 151–55), as well as in individual police reports and court
records. See LAB A Rep. 358–02 123725; 79979, pp. 12ff.; LAB Pr. Br. Rep. 030–01
Nr. 1095, p. 5. See Adam Kendon, Conducting Interaction: Patterns of Behavior in
Focused Encounters (Cambridge, UK, 1990), on the concept of “focused gatherings.”
3. See Susanne zur Nieden, Alltag im Ausnahmezustand: Frauentagebücher im zerstörten
Deutschland 1943 bis 1945 (Berlin, 1993). On the collapse of “normal” everyday life
in Berlin during the “final battle,” see also Anthony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall
1945 (London, 2007).
4. On the acts of violence by the Gestapo and the criminal justice system, see Ralf Blank,
“Kriegsalltag und Luftkrieg an der Heimatfront,” in Das Deutsche Reich und der
Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 9/2, Die Deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis 1945. Ausbeutung,
Deutungen, Ausgrenzung, ed. Jörg Echternkamp, 386–90 (Munich, 2005).
5. On how city space and forms of consumption mutually influence each other, see Paul
Glennie, “Consumption, Consumerism and Urban Form: Historical Perspectives,”
Urban Studies 35 (1998): 927–51, 944.
6. Nobuo, 70.
7. PRO HWI/3607, Japanese Ambassador Reports on Life in Berlin, March 15, 1945.
All of the following quotations are also from ibid.
8. See Bernd Martin, “Der Schein des Bündnisses. Deutschland und Japan im Krieg
1940–1945,” in Formierung und Fall der Achse Berlin—Tokio, ed. Gerhard Krebs and
Bernd Martin, 27–53 (Munich, 1994), 31.
9. On the building’s history, see Jost Dülffer, “Die japanische Botschaft im Tiergarten
im Rahmen der nationalsozialistischen Umgestaltung der Reichshauptstadt Berlin,”
in Formierung und Fall, ed. Krebs and Martin, 75–92.
240 ● Notes

10. LAB 358–02 89781, p. 21.

11. Victor Klemperer, LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen (Leipzig, 1999), 322.
12. Martin Broszat, Klaus-Dietmar Henke, and Hans Woller, Von Stalingrad zur
Währungsreform: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Umbruchs in Deutschland, 3rd ed. (Munich,
1990).
13. This increased need for mobility is reflected in the continual increases in the use of
public transportation in the city from 1933. Indeed, between 1933 and 1943 the
number of people transported nearly doubled, to 2.27 million. In 1944, because of
the destruction, the number declined to 1.82 million. See Statistisches Landesamt
der Stadt Berlin, ed. Berlin in Zahlen (Berlin, 1947), 216–17. On the harm done to
industrial and transportation enterprises in the “last half year” of the war in Germany
as a whole, see Blank, “Kriegsalltag,” 446–48.
14. Thomas Neumann, “Der Bombenkrieg. Zur ungeschriebenen Geschichte einer
kollektiven Verletzung,” in Nachkrieg in Deutschland, ed. Klaus Naumann 319–42
(Hamburg, 2001), 324.
15. See Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of
Structuration (Cambridge, UK, 1984), 111–12.
16. Ibid., 66.
17. See the film clips that had been stored in archives in Moscow, which Irmgard von zur
Mühlen edited and made available to the public with the titles Bomben auf Berlin.
Leben zwischen Furcht und Hoffnung (Chronos Film GmbH, Kleinmachnow). One
can see the disintegration of everyday routines quite clearly in them. Goebbels kept
the film clips, which were sometimes recorded immediately after the air raids, under
wraps. The images from the second half of the war contrast sharply with the images
of largely peaceful everyday life at the beginning of the war.
18. The significance of these everyday routines for achieving stabilization has been proven
in experiments conducted by Harold Garfinkel, “A Conception of, and Experiments
with, ‘Trust’ as a Condition of Stable Concerted Actions,” in Motivation and Social
Interaction, ed. O. J. Harvey, 187–238 (New York, 1963), 198: “The critical phe-
nomenon is . . . the perceived normality of environmental events as this normality is
a function of the presuppositions that define the possible events.” This confirms the
finding in Bernd Wegner, ed., Wie Kriege enden: Wege zum Frieden von der Antike
bis zur Gegenwart (Paderborn, 2002), xxii, that “even in times of war one can find
over and over islands of peace.” Accordingly, we need to recognize that the apparent
dichotomy of war and peace, spatially and temporally, is not always so clear.
19. For example, 222 and 226 people, respectively, died in the air raids in 1940 and 1941.
David Clay Large, Berlin: A Modern History (New York, 2001), 311. By contrast,
3,758 people died, according to the official statistics, in the air raid on November 23,
1943, which lasted barely two hours. See Sven Felix Kellerhoff and Wieland Giebel,
eds., Als die Tage zu Nächten wurden. Berliner Schicksale im Luftkrieg (Berlin, 2003),
221.
20. Ursula von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen: 1942–1945, ed. Peter Hartl (Munich,
1992), 88–89.
21. Ibid., 93.
22. Ibid., 130.
23. Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM), Rep. I/ 2. Weltkrieg/ F1/ M, Deutmann’s
diary entry from September 1, 1943, No. 122 (numbered by the author). (Hereafter
cited as DHM, Deutmann diary). Deutmann’s diary is one of the best sources for the
history of everyday life in Berlin during and immediately after the war. Deutmann
exhaustively and largely objectively chronicled his observations on the effects of the
 Notes ● 241

air war on everyday life in the city. The reports are not only extraordinarily detailed,
but they also corroborate the information, such as the sites, the times, and the inten-
sity of the air raids, found in official sources, such as official statistics. See Laurenz
Demps, “Die Luftangriffe auf Berlin. Ein dokumentarischer Bericht I/II,” Jahrbuch
des Märkischen Museums 4 and 7 (1978): 27–68 and 7–44. Reprinted as a table in
Kellerhoff and Giebel, Tage zu Nächten, 216–30.
24. DHM, Deutmann diary, February 10, 1944, No. 182.
25. The War Damages Offices were increasingly overextended. Often they did not have
enough material resources, and they had no interest in providing financial compensa-
tion in part because of the danger of inflation. See Blank, “Kriegsalltag,” 425. Many
tried to circumvent the system through bribes, favors, and attractive bartering offers.
See the case of a construction manager responsible for repairing damage done by
the bombs who accepted bribes a number of times; for example, he gave preferential
treatment to repairing the “bomb damage in butcher shops.” LAB A Rep. 341–02
6475.
26. See Gert Selle, Die eigenen vier Wände. Zur verborgenen Geschichte des Wohnens
(Frankfurt am Main, 1993), 23.
27. Kardorff, Aufzeichnungen, 119–20. Even the difficulties in organizing the special
allocations after air raids were a sign of disintegration. Beginning in the middle of
September 1943, the cards, whose printing was centralized in Berlin, could no longer
be distributed immediately after air raids in Ruhr cities, for example, because of trans-
portation difficulties. This undermined the purpose of these special allocation cards,
namely, to alleviate the supply difficulties caused by the air raids and above all to
strengthen the “morale” of the urban population. To guarantee the psychologically
important effect of the “coffee or schnapps to calm one’s nerves,” the printing had to
be decentralized. See Dorothea Schmidt, Zeitgeschichte im Mikrokosmos: Ein Gebäude
in Berlin-Schöneberg (Berlin, 2004).
28. See Blank, “Kriegsalltag,” 385, and 417–32.
29. Kardorff, Aufzeichnungen, 160.
30. Ibid., 122–23. Moreover, the structure of the events of the two World Wars “cre-
ated a crack in the traditions of intimacy . . . so that the sexual behavior patterns of
bourgeois society were broken down.” Reinhart Koselleck, “Erinnerungsschleusen
und Erfahrungsschichten: Der Einfluss der beiden Weltkriege auf das soziale
Bewusstsein,” Reprinted in Zeitschichten. Studien zur Historik (Frankfurt am Main,
2000), idem, 265–84.
31. On the background, see Julia S. Torrie, “Preservation by Dispersion: Civilian Evac-
uations and the City in Germany and France 1939–1945,” in Endangered Cities:
Military Power and Urban Societies in the Era of the World Wars, ed. Marcus Funck
and Roger Chickering, 47–62 (Boston, 2004). The consequences of the evacuation
often fell on the shoulders of family fathers who earned their money combating black
market trading. For example, the policemen working for the trade inspection service
of the Berlin police were informed in March 1944 that their “holiday for 1944/45,”
including “holidays for the purpose of visiting the family that had been evacuated,”
could only be granted if the number taking leave remained beneath 15 percent of
the total force because of the tense situation. Exceptions would not be considered
“under any circumstances.” LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 90 Nr. 7619/2, Der Leiter
des GAD, Tagesbefehl Nr. 4 from March 2, 1944.
32. Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen, 58; Large, Berlin 327.
33. LAB APrBr Rep 030–01, Nr. 1095, paragraph 4.
34. Ibid., paragraph 3.
242 ● Notes

35. Ibid., paragraph 3/2.

36. Ibid., paragraph 5, report from April 9, 1945.
37. Ibid.
38. On the criminality among the youth during and immediately after the war, see
Frank Kebbedies, Außer Kontrolle. Jugendkriminalität in der NS-Zeit und der frühen
Nachkriegszeit (Essen, 2000).
39. See Patrick Wagner, Volksgemeinschaft ohne Verbrecher. Konzeption und Praxis der
Kriminalpolizei in der Weimarer Republik und des Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg,
1996), 316.
40. Hans von Hentig, “Die Kriminalität des Zusammenbruchs,” Schweizerische
Zeitschrift für Strafrecht 63 (1947): 337–41, 337.
41. Karl Bader, Soziologie der deutschen Nachkriegskriminalität (Tübingen, 1949), 1.
Numerous publications were dedicated to legal as well as sociological research into
the “steadily spreading” problem of criminality. See the bibliography in ibid.
42. Ibid., 2.
43. Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen, 144.
44. Kardorff, Aufzeichnungen, 94.
45. See Werner Schöllgen, Grenzmoral: Soziale Krisis und neuer Aufbau (Düsseldorf,
1946).
46. On this interdependence, see Jennifer Evans, Life among the Ruins: Cityscape and
Sexuality in Cold War Berlin (New York, 2011).
47. See Blank, “Kriegsalltag,” 377.
48. Ibid., 110–11.
49. Ibid., 396–97.
50. At the beginning of the war, cards assigned people to a certain bunker, seat, or cot.
On this and for the quote: ibid., 410–11.
51. Everyday life, in a sense, “ducked away” during the war. The camouflage prac-
tices developed to confuse incoming bombers also illustrate this development: for
example, the important east-west axis along the Charlottenburger Chaussee, which
bombers used for orientation, was covered over. See the pictures in Christian Engeli
and Wolfgang Ribbe, “Berlin in der NS-Zeit,” in Geschichte Berlins, vol. 2, Von der
Märzrevolution bis zur Gegenwart, ed. idem (Berlin, 1989), 999, as well as Davide
Deriu, “Between Veiling and Unveiling: Modern Camouflage and the City as a
Theater of War,” in Endangered Cities, ed. Funck and Chickering, 15–34, on the
competition between bombing and camouflage technologies.
52. See Schöllgen, Grenzmoral, 260–65.
53. See Maren Löw, Raumsoziologie (Frankfurt am Main, 2001), 161–63, referring to
Giddens, on the significance of the environment for constituting a feeling of everyday
security.
54. Kardorff, Aufzeichnungen, 122 and 133. See also ibid., 110, where she speaks of “a
herd of human animals.” The comparison of humans to animals commonly coded
the disintegration of normal life. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich wrote shortly after the end
of the war on May 12, 1945, in her diary: “We turn onto Wilhelmstrasse. Ruins and
dust. Dust and ruins. Where a basement still remained, there the collectors romp
about, wriggling up and down the steps, just like maggots on a piece of cheese.”
Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Schauplatz Berlin (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), 30.
55. Such descriptions resemble discourses of orienting oneself, in which, for example,
after (natural) catastrophes, urban dwellers, as “therapeutic communities,” develop
mechanisms of “survival” and of “carrying on.” See Andreas Ranft and Stefan Selzer,
 Notes ● 243

eds., Städte aus Trümmern. Katastrophenbewältigung zwischen Antike und Moderne

(Göttingen, 2004).
56. Kardorff, Aufzeichnungen, 309.
57. DHM, Deutmann diary, entry from March 4, 1945.
58. Ibid., entry from June 24, 1945.
59. Ibid.
60. Wette, Das letzte halbe Jahr, 127–355.
61. On such agreement even in the last phases of the war, see Robert Gellately, Backing
Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford, UK, 2001), 15 and 311.
62. See Malte Zierenberg, “The Trading City: Black Markets in Berlin During World
War II,” in Endangered Cities, ed. Funck and Chickering, 145–58.
63. They anticipated the comparison of the origins of the Weimar Republic to the origins
of the Federal Republic. Probably one of the most famous examples is the state-
ment by Theodor Heuss, Aufzeichnungen 1945–1947, ed. and with introduction by
Eberhard Pikart (Tübingen, 1966), 50, who noted in 1945 that Germans had reg-
istered their recent defeat in their consciousness “as one of the most terrible days in
German history; however, we are in a completely different moral situation than that
in which we experienced the political-military collapse of November 1918.”
64. See Zierenberg, “Trading City.”
65. Wette, Das letzte halbe Jahr, 217–18.
66. Ibid., 151 and 156.
67. Ibid.
68. Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen, 25. The official statis-
tics for 1947 give the same percentages. Given the immense destruction and the
only partly successful rebuilding measures, this seems unlikely. See “Zahlen zeigen
Zeitgeschehen: Berlin 1945–1947,” Berliner Statistik 3. special issue 1 (1947): 5.
The cleanup operations after the end of the war were among the first measures
the Soviet occupiers took up. The operations were systematically planned on “de-
rubbling maps” (Enttrümmerungskarten) (LAB LAZ Nr. 5648). Numerous photos
from the time give an idea of how much difficulty the rubble caused. See, for example,
Hans J. Reichardt, Raus aus den Trümmern. Vom Beginn des Wiederaufbaus in Berlin
1945 (Berlin, 1988); and Reinhard Rürup, ed., Berlin 1945. Eine Dokumentation
(Berlin, 1995); as well as Reinhard Rürup and Gottfried Korff, Berlin: Die Ausstellung
zur Geschichte der Stadt (Berlin, 1987), 577 and 595.
69. Large, Berlin, 348.
70. DHM, Deutmann diary, entry from February 3, 1945 (No. 314).
71. Ibid., entry from August 23, 1943 (No. 118).
72. Kardorff, Aufzeichnungen, 78.
73. Ibid., 122.
74. DHM, Deutmann diary, entry from August 23, 1943 (No. 118).
75. Ibid., entry from February 3, 1945 (No. 314).
76. Ibid., entry from March 3, 1945 (no number).
77. The attacks in November caused considerable property damage and fundamentally
changed the appearance of the city. The city “remained the main target in the win-
ter 1943/44.” At the end of the “Battle of Berlin” more than 812,000 people were
homeless and more than 9,000 were either dead or missing. See Blank, “Kriegsalltag,”
373–74.
78. Joseph Goebbels, Die Tagebücher. Sämtliche Fragmente, 15 vols., ed. Elke Fröhlich
(Munich, 1987–98), 10:238.
244 ● Notes

79. LAB A Rep 005-03-01, Nr. 149, p. 55.

80. Ibid., p. 59.
81. Train stations were particularly favored among these. See Chapter 4: “New Spaces:
Public Black Markets.”
82. “To be flexible meant everything!” Hille Ruegenberg wrote this in her memoirs of
1976. F Rep 240 Acc 2651 Nr. 2, p. 111/5.
83. According to contemporary legal experts, this was a problem because punishments no
longer were perceived as proportional to their respective crimes, especially in com-
parison with the draconian punishments of the National Socialist era. See Bader,
Soziologie, 2–3.
84. Elisabeth Noelle and Erich-Peter Neumann, eds., Jahrbuch der öffentlichen Meinung
3 (1975): 150.

Chapter 4
1. This phenomenon has been investigated for social and revolutionary move-
ments with the rational choice approach method. For a case study, see Klaus-
Dieter Opp, “DDR ’89: Zu den Ursachen einer spontanen Revolution,” in Der
Zusammenbruch der DDR, ed. Hans Joas and Martin Kohli (Frankfurt, 1994),
194–221, and the problematization of an approach influenced by Mancur Olson
in Hans Joas and Wolfgang Knöbl, Sozialtheorie: Zwanzig einführende Vorlesungen
(Frankfurt am Main, 2004), 162–64.
2. The hesitant attitude of the British agencies in the campaign against black mar-
keteering contributed to the Tiergarten remaining a popular black market trading
center. The measures to combat black marketeering remained controversial among
the occupying Allied powers, especially in the inner-city trading areas. The British
and Soviets accused each other of fostering trading in their respective zones by fail-
ing to control it vigilantly. See PRO FO 1012/175 Blackmarkets, 66. In July 1948,
the conflict came to a head, becoming the topic of a heated debate concerning police
force management within Berlin. See Norbert Steinborn and Hilmar Krüger, eds.
Die Berliner Polizei 1945–1992 (Berlin, 1993), 57–59.
3. Archiv des Deutschen Historischen Museums, Rep. I/ 2. Weltkrieg/ F1/ M,
Tagebuch Deutmann, entry from August 5, 1945.
4. LAB F Rep. 240 2651 Nr. 4, p. 370/1.
5. For an example of the application of these models to partial entities like inner-
city areas, see Michael Porter, “The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City,”
Harvard Business Review 74 (1995): 55–71, as well as idem, Competitive Advantage
(New York, 1985).
6. See Eric Sheppard, “Competition in Space and between Places,” in A Companion to
Economic Geography, ed. idem and Trevor J. Barnes, 169–86 (Oxford, 2000).
7. LAB F Rep 240 Acc. 2651, Nr. 6, p. 614/4.
8. Compare LAB F Rep. 240 Acc. 2651 Nr. 4, p. 396/3.
9. See, for example, Times [London], Thursday, April 18, 1946, p. 5; Friday,
August 20, 1948, p. 4; Wednesday, March 26, 1952, p. 5.
10. See “Black Markets Boom in Berlin,” Life, September 10, 1945, pp. 51–54, in
which there are numerous photos.
11. See Jörg Roesler, “The Black Market in Post-War Berlin and the Methods Used to
Counteract It,” German History 7 (1989): 92–107, as well as PRO FO 1012/176
Economics/Black Market, pp. 114.
 Notes ● 245

12. On the concept of the “mental map,” see Geschichte and Gesellschaft, Sonderheft
28 (2002). See, above all, the foreword by Conrad and the article by Schenk.
Fritjof B. Schenk, “Mental Maps. Die Konstruktion von geographischen Räumen in
Europa seit der Aufklärung,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 28 (2002): 493–514, out-
lines some theoretical positions before presenting his remarks on the “Konstruktion
von geographischen Räumen in Europa seit der Aufklärung,” 493–95. See further
Maren Löw, Raumsoziologie (Frankfurt am Main, 2001), 254–62.
13. See F Rep 240 Acc 2651 Nr. 5, p. 504/4; PRO FO 1012/174 Economics/Black
Market, pp. 105 and 116. Warm rooms had already been set up in the Weimar
period “for the needy.” In November 1927, there were 62 warm rooms throughout
the city, providing beds for 4,627 people. Statistisches Jahrbuch der Stadt Berlin 5
(1929): 219.
14. LAB F Rep 240 Acc. 2651, Nr. 5, p. 578/1. Names changed.
15. Schenk, Mental Maps, 494, hereafter and in the following.
16. LAB F Rep. 240 Acc. 2651 Nr. 5, p. 578/1.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., 578/2.
19. This structure of goods had its own tradition, which built on both legal and illegal
precursors. On illegal foodstuff markets during the war, for example, see LAB A Rep
358–02 80407.
20. On the regulations of the Charlottenburg district municipality, see LAB A Rep
037–08 Nr. 515b, pp. 279–80.
21. Ibid., p. 285.
22. See “Raid at Potsdamer Platz,” Telegraph, July 23, 1948.
23. “Christmas Market or Hustler’s Bazaar?,” Berlin at Midday, December 15, 1947,
p. 3. On seasonal trade overall, see LAB F Rep 240 Acc. 2651 Nr. 4, p. 402, as well
as PRO FO 1012/175, p. 53, 112, 110; and FO 1012/176, pp. 13, 119, 148, 178,
179, 187, 188.
24. LAB C Rep 303/9 81, p. 169/2, report from October 22, 1945.
25. See PRO FO 1012/175 Black Market, p. 114.
26. For an introduction to this, see Maren Lorenz, Leibhaftige Vergangenheit. Einführung
in die Körpergeschichte (Tübingen, 2000).
27. The “hunger winter” of 1946/47 provides a sad and notorious example of this.
For more on survival strategies to combat the food shortage, see Sylvia Robeck
and Gabriela Wachter, eds., Kalter Krieg und warme Küche. 200 Berliner Rezepte im
Kontext der Stadtgeschichte (Berlin, 2007).
28. Erving Goffman, Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order (New York,
1971), 28–60.
29. LAB F Rep 240, Nr. 5, p. 503/1.
30. Ibid., p. 94.
31. LAB F Rep 240, Nr. 5 p. 503/1.
32. See for example LAB A Rep 358–02, 8443.
33. LAB F Rep 240, Nr. 4, p. 302/1.
34. See LAB F Rep 240, Nr. 5, p. 504/4.
35. Goffman, Relations, 29–35.
36. On interaction theory, see Adam Kendon, “Spatial Organization in Social Encoun-
ters: The F-formation System,” in Conducting Interaction: Patterns of Behavior in
Focused Encounters, 209–37 (Cambridge, UK, 1990), who investigates “focused
encounters” in the tradition of Erving Goffman’s interaction patterns.
37. Ibid., 209.
246 ● Notes

38. For a countertrend in modernity, see Moritz Föllmer, Sehnsucht nach Nähe:
Interpersonale Kommunikation in Deutschland seit dem 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart,
2004).
39. F Rep 240 Acc 2651, Nr. 4, p. 402/2.
40. Kendon, “Spatial Organization in Social Encounters: The F-formation System,”
233–34.
41. Irwin Altman, The Environment and Social Behavior: Privacy, Personal Space,
Territory, and Crowding (Monterey, 1975).
42. LAB F Rep 240, Nr. 5, p. 503/1.
43. Ibid., Nr. 6, p. 689/2.
44. See, for example, ibid., Nr. 5, pp. 581/2.
45. Archiv des Deutschen Historischen Museums, Rep. I/ 2. Weltkrieg/ F1/ M,
Tagebuch Deutmann (unpaginated).
46. On the following, in general, see Jens Beckert, “Vertrauen und die performa-
tive Konstruktion von Märkten,” Zeitschrift für Soziologie 31, no. 1 (2002):
27–43.
47. Niklas Luhmann, Vertrauen: Ein Mechanismus der Reduktion sozialer Komplexität,
4th ed. (Stuttgart, 2000), 37–40, already discussed this.
48. Beckert, “Vertrauen”, 27, convincingly argues that the payoff situation in trust
games can motivate the trust-recipient (the buyer) to invest in the presentation of
his or her own credibility since these are “sequentially predetermined” vis-à-vis the
trust-donor (the seller), who, in turn, faces the binary decision to accept/reject the
offered good. This in turns depends on the way the trading partner presents himself
or herself.
49. On the limitations of economic trade theories, see ibid., 28.
50. Ibid., 34.
51. Ibid., 37–38.
52. See, for example, LAB F Rep 240, Nr. 5.
53. See LAB F Rep. 240 Acc 2651 Nr. 2, p. 111/2.
54. The following is based on LAB A Rep 358–02 87905, prosecutor at the regional
court, ruling of the first criminal division of the Appeals Court in Berlin of
October 6, 1959 (notarized copy) (unpaginated).
55. DRA B 203-01-01/0263.
56. On the Soviet Union, see Julie Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy,
Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917–1953 (Princeton, 2004); on the United
States, see Thomas Welskopp, “Bis an die Grenzen des Gesetzes. Die Reaktion
der legalen Alkoholwirtschaft auf die National Prohibition in den USA, 1920–
1933,” Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 52 (2007): 3–32; on Great Britain,
Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls, and Consump-
tion 1939–1955 (Oxford, 2000); and on France, Paul Sanders, Histoire du Marché
Noir 1940–1946 (Paris, 2001).
57. On this, see Paul Steege, Black Market, Cold War: Everyday Life in Berlin, 1946–
1949 (Cambridge, UK, 2007), 105–47.
58. On the Soviet policy of seeing work as a form of reparation payment, see
Sergej Mironenko, Lutz Niethammer, and Alexander von Plato, eds. Sowjetische
Speziallager in Deutschland 1945–1950, vol. 2, Sowjetische Dokumente zur
Lagerpolitik (Berlin, 1998), 30–36. This policy was adapted quickly after the Soviets
conquered Berlin.
59. See http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Enactments/06LAW49.pdf.
 Notes ● 247

60. See Petra Weber, Justiz und Diktatur. Justizverwaltung und politische Strafjustiz in
Thüringen 1945–1961 (Munich, 2000), 79–90.
61. See Roesler, “Black Market.” According to British observers, Control Council Law
No. 50 was as inefficient as the German laws. Concerning the law and the diffi-
culties in applying it, one report said that it was “primarily directed against major
offenses and, if literally interpreted, might well lead to injustices in the case of petty
offenders.” PRO FO 1012/175, p. 6.
62. LAB C Rep. 303–09 222, pp. 270–71, Der Polizeipräsident in Berlin, note from
September 18, 1945.
63. DRA, B 203-01-01/0130.
64. PRO Fo 1012/175, p. 6.
65. See below, Chapter 4, “A Market of ‘Little People’: The Black Market and the Social
Question.”
66. See ibid., as well as PRO FO 1012/175 Black Market, p. 114, and the article,
“Razzia am Potsdamer Platz,” Telegraf, July 23, 1948.
67. On the failures of criminal prosecution, among other things, see Roesler, “Black
Market.”
68. LAB C Rep. 303–09 222, p. 294, Der Polizeipräsident in Berlin, Leitworte, May 16,
1946.
69. Ibid., p. 295.
70. The following is based on DRA, B 203-01-01/0129.
71. Der Morgen, edition of January 9, 1946, p. 6. Similar events were by no means
rare. For an example, see LAB C Rep. 303–09 223, Der Polizeipräsident in Berlin,
p. 113.
72. LAB C Rep. 303–09 223, p. 201, Der Polizeipräsident in Berlin, Internes Schreiben
an die Abteilung K. of January 11, 1946.
73. Der Morgen, January 9, 1946, p. 6.
74. LAB C Rep. 303–09 223, p. 174.
75. DRA, B 202-00-07/0053.
76. DRA, B 202-00-07/0063.
77. LAB C Rep. 303–09, Der Polizeipräsident in Berlin, no. 223, p. 187.
78. See Jennifer Schevardo, Vom Wert des Notwendigen. Preispolitik und Lebensstandard
in der DDR der fünfziger Jahre (Stuttgart, 2006), and Ingo-Sascha Kowalczuk,
“Opfer der eigenen Politik? Zu den Hintergründen der Verhaftung von Min-
ister Karl Hamann (LDPD),” In Jahrbuch zur Liberalismusforschung 16 (2004):
221–271, as well as, especially, Ina Merkel, Utopie und Bedürfnis. Die Geschichte
der Konsumkultur in der DDR (Cologne, 1999), 248, who speaks of the HO shops
as promoting a “policy of two classes of goods.”
79. On the debates concerning the intensity of the efforts to control and combat the
black market, see PRO FO 1012/175 Blackmarkets, p. 66.
80. LAB C Rep. 303–09, Der Polizeipräsident in Berlin, no. 223, p. 199. See Weber,
Justiz, 90–97.
81. See Steege, Black Market, 1–17.
82. LAB C Rep. 303/9 223, p. 209.
83. See Siegfried Heimann, “Karl Heinrich und die Berliner SPD, die sowjetische
Militäradministration und die SED,” Gesprächskreis Geschichte der Friedrich-Ebert-
Stiftung 70 (2007): 1–65, on the history of the division of Berlin.
84. PRO FO 1012/175, p. 71.
85. Ibid.
248 ● Notes

86. Ibid.
87. Andreas Daum, Kennedy in Berlin. Politik, Kultur und Emotionen im Kalten Krieg
(Paderborn, 2003), 147 and 149.
88. Ibid., 39. See Gerhard Keiderling, ‘Rosinenbomber’ über Berlin. Währungsreform,
Blockade, Luftbrücke, Teilung: Die schicksalsvollen Jahre 1948/49 (Berlin, 1998),
238–55, on “everyday life in the besieged fortress” and on campaigns such as
dropping chocolates via parachutes to the children of the city during the blockade.
89. Daum, Kennedy, 162–70.
90. On the image of the United States and of Russia in National Socialism as well
as on the propaganda during wartime, see Philipp Gassert, Amerika im Dritten
Reich. Ideologie, Propaganda und Volksmeinung 1933–1945 (Stuttgart, 1997);
Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: The History of the Soviet Zone of
Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 1–8; and Hans-Erich Volkmann,
ed., Das Russlandbild im Dritten Reich (Cologne, 1994).
91. See, for example, Wolfram Wette, ed., Das letzte halbe Jahr: Stimmungsberichte der
Wehrmachtpropaganda 1944/45 (Essen, 2001), 334.
92. David Clay Large, Berlin: A Modern History (New York, 2001), 359.
93. Richard Bessel, “ ‘Leben nach dem Tod’. Vom Zweiten Weltkrieg zur zweiten
Nachkriegszeit,” in Wie Kriege enden. Wege zum Frieden von der Antike bis zur
Gegenwart, ed. Bernd Wegner, 239–58 (Paderborn, 2002) correctly notes that the
mass rapes are an “essential starting point for a serious discussion and analysis of the
history of the GDR.”
94. Telegraf, March 8, 1947, 4.
95. See Götz Aly, Hitlers Volksstaat: Raub, Rassenkrieg und nationaler Sozialismus
(Frankfurt am Main, 2005), on plundering as one of the key characteristics of
German war society.
96. Quoted in Frank Bajohr, Parvenüs und Profiteure: Korruption in der NS-Zeit
(Frankfurt am Main, 2001), 86.
97. Quoted in ibid., 87.
98. Ibid., 85.
99. LAB F Rep 240 Acc 2651 Nr. 6, 748/5.
100. See Horst Carl, “Krieg und Kriegsniederlage—historische Erfahrung und
Erinnerung,” in Kriegsniederlagen. Erfahrungen und Erinnerungen, ed. idem, Hans-
Henning Kortüm, Dieter Langewiesche, and Friedrich Lenger (Berlin, 2004), 1–11
on the history of experiencing defeat.
101. See Bessel, “Leben.”
102. Reinhart Koselleck, “Erinnerungsschleusen und Erfahrungsschichten. Der Einfluss
der beiden Weltkriege auf das soziale Bewusstsein,” reprinted in Zeitschichten.
Studien zur Historik, idem (Frankfurt am Main, 2000), 275.
103. The following is quoted in LAB F Rep 240 Acc 2651 Nr. 6, pp. 748xff.
104. On the rapes, see Naimark, Russians, 69–140.
105. On the increase in criminality as a characteristic of German postwar society, see
Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 4, Vom Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs
bis zur Gründung der beiden deutschen Staaten 1914–1949 (Munich, 2003), 953.
106. Descriptions of the black market primarily as a social and somehow entertaining
phenomenon picked up on the discourse of the Weimar years that characterized the
illegal “hustle and bustle” as part of modernity—at times with fatalistic cheerfulness.
See the development of the black market motif in cabaret, for example, in Günter
Neumann’s “Revue of the Zero Hour,” which advertised with the headline “Black
Market Fair.”
 Notes ● 249

107. LAB F Rep 240 Acc 2651 Nr. 6, p. 370/1.

108. See Richard Sennet, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization
(London, 2002), 349–54.
109. LAB F Rep 240 Acc 2651 Nr. 6, p. 689/2.
110. A compromise peace was ruled out from the very beginning because of the imperi-
alistic expansion and destructive policies of the Germans. See Jost Dülffer, “Frieden
nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg? Der Friedensschluss im Zeichen des Kalten Krieges,”
in Wie Kriege enden, ed. Wegner, 213–37, 214.
111. On the significance of everyday interaction for the relationship between
Germans and their occupiers, see the remarks in Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, “Das
Dilemma der Besatzer. Alliierte Deutschlandpolitik nach 1945: Pragmatismus vor
Rigorismus,” WZB-Mitteilungen 114 (2006): 15–17. On the occupation policies
of the US, see Uta Gerhardt, Soziologie der Stunde Null. Zur Gesellschaftskonzeption
des amerikanischen Besatzungsregimes in Deutschland 1944–1945/46 (Frankfurt am
Main, 2005).
112. Large, Berlin, 350.
113. This topic, which expressed itself in the descriptions of the Russian soldiers, can
be found, for example, in the entries in the diary of the famous “Anonyma.” See
Anonyma, Eine Frau in Berlin. Tagebuch–Aufzeichnungen vom 20. April bis 22.
Juni 1945 (Frankfurt, 2003).
114. This gesture—ultimately modified to the modern form of entering the city on a
tank—became a part of the visual imagery of Russian propaganda. See http://www.
dhm.de/ausstellungen/mythen-der-nationen/popups/bilder/h_09.jpg (last accessed
on July 20, 2007).
115. See LAB C Rep. 303/9 222, p. 270 for an overview of the problems German
(auxiliary) policemen encountered in combating and controlling the black market.
116. LAB F Rep 240 Acc 2651 Nr. 5, 462/5–6.
117. LAB F Rep 240 Acc. 2651 Nr. 4, 420.
118. Ibid.
119. DHM, Deutmann diary, June 24, 1945.
120. Quoted in Michael Bienert, Berlin wird Metropole: Fotografien aus dem Kaiser-
Panorama (Berlin, 2000), 187.
121. See the pictures in “Black Markets Boom in Berlin,” Life, September 10, 1945, 54.
122. See “Schwarze Börse entmotorisiert,” Telegraf, October 23, 1948, 6.
123. LAB F Rep 240 Acc 2651 Nr. 2, 119/2.

Auf der Straße flitzen Autos/ Fette Russen räkeln sich/ In den Polstern
uns’rer Wagen
Mir scheint sie verhöhnen mich,/ Der da vor mir geht ist trunken
Wodka! Brüllt er, lebe hoch/ Ach wie tief sind wir gesunken/
Armes Deutschland, lebst du noch?/ ( . . . ) Wünscht es wären Spukgestalten
Die an mir vorüberziehn/ Aber ach ich kanns nicht leugnen
Das ist “östliches Berlin.”

124. LAB F Rep 240 Acc 2651 Nr. 5, 462/5–6.

125. All of the following quotes are from the Telegraf, January 24, 1947.
126. See Annette Brauerhoch, Fräuleins und GIs (Frankfurt am Main, 2006); Maria
Höhn, GIs and Fräuleins: The German-American Encounter in 1950s West Germany
(Chapel Hill, 2002); Elizabeth Heineman, “The Hour of the Woman: Memories
250 ● Notes

of Germany’s ‘Crisis Years’ and West German National Identity,” in The Miracle
Years: A Cultural History of West Germany 1949–1968, ed. Hanna Schissler,
21–56 (Princeton, 2001), on women between “Trümmerfrau” and “Amiliebchen”
in postwar Germany.
127. The topic of power and helplessness played a role even in cases concerning
prominent traders. See the Telegraf from July 10, 1947, 5.
128. DHM, Deutmann diary, entry from August 5, 1945.
129. LAB F Rep 240 Nr. 2, 111/1.
130. Rainer Gries, Die Rationengesellschaft: Versorgungskampf und Vergleichsmentalität:
Leipzig, München und Köln nach dem Kriege (Münster, 1991), see subtitle.
131. Die Wirtschaft 3 (1948/4), 120. See Roesler, “Black Market,” 92.
132. Osmar White, The Conquerors’ Road (Cambridge, UK, 1996), 126.
133. LAB F Rep. 240 Acc. 2651 Nr. 5, p. 462/4.
134. See the report in the Telegraf, June 7, 1947, 3.
135. LAB F Rep. 240 Acc. 2651 Zeitgeschichtliche Sammlung Nr. 5, p. 489. The
German original reads as follows: Winternacht schneidende Kälte. Zerbombtes
Haus./Im Keller die Tanzbar der Schieber/“Mensch, Maxe, jieb noch paar Doppelte
aus/und komm mit paar Chesterfield rieba!”/In der Notwohnung Hochparterre
haust eine Frau,/krank, einsam, vom Kriegssturm vertrieben./“Wenn mein Werner
noch wäre, ja dann wär’t jut;/auch Heinz ist im Osten jeblieben!”/“Och, Oba, zwölf
Alkolat aba fix;/det Jeschäft mit’n Sprit kenn wa machen!”/Und Gläserklingen,
Tellergeklirr/Und blechernes Dirnenlachen./Die Wände zerklafft und die Fenster
verpappt,/keucht ein Mensch in den Klauen der Kälte./War das eben ein heis-
erer, hungriger Hund,/der dort oben so schwindsüchtig bellte?/Und als sie den
letzten Todesschrei schrie/aus den sinkenden, würgenden Schatten:/“Bella-Bella-
Bella-Marie!”/grölten unten im Keller die Ratten.
136. DRA, B 204-02-01/0371.
137. All quotes ibid.
138. DRA, B 204-03-02/0163.
139. Telegraf, January 5, 1947, 8.
140. See Andreas Dinter, Berlin in Trümmern. Ernährungslage und medizinische
Versorgung der Bevölkerung Berlins nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Berlin, 1999). The
whole book is dedicated to this topic on the catastrophic living conditions, above
all in regard to the food situation and the provision of medical care.
141. “Der Schwarze Markt der Armen,” Telegraf, September 3, 1948, 4.
142. Telegraf, May 1, 1947, 6. The newspaper did not describe any connection to the
May Day celebrations.
143. See Thomas Lindenberger, Straßenpolitik: Zur Sozialgeschichte der öffentlichen
Ordnung in Berlin 1900–1914 (Bonn, 1995), 114–15.
144. These records in the Berlin archive consist of a couple of hundred cartons that have
not yet been catalogued.
145. PRO FO 1012/177, Economics—Black Market, 36.
146. LAB [o. Rep.] 95 Ds 414/49, pp. 1–3.
147. Ibid., p. 11.
148. “Zahlen zeigen Zeitgeschehen,” Special issue 3, Berliner Statistik 1 (1947): 29.
This does not contradict Niethammer’s observation that the industrial workers
of the Ruhr had a comparatively good position in the black markets because
of their additional allowances. The percentage of manual workers was much
higher in the Ruhr than in Berlin, where it was on average only 3 percent.
 Notes ● 251

See Lutz Niethammer, “Privat-Wirtschaft: Erinnerungsfragmente einer anderen

Umerziehung,” in “Hinterher merkt man, dass es richtig war, dass es schiefgegangen
ist.” Nachkriegs-Erfahrungen im Ruhrgebiet, ed. idem (Berlin, 1983), 94.
149. Statistisches Landesamt der Stadt Berlin, ed., Berlin in Zahlen, 13.
150. Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 756.
151. See Klaus-Jörg Ruhl, Verordnete Unterordnung. Berufstätige Frauen zwischen
Wirtschaftswachstum und konservativer Ideologie in der Nachkriegszeit 1945–1963
(Munich, 1994), as well as Anita Pfaff, Typische Lebensläufe von Frauen der
Geburtsjahrgänge 1910–1975 (Stuttgart, 1979), and for West Berlin Edith Hinze,
Lage und Leistung erwerbstätiger Mütter: Ergebnisse einer Untersuchung in West-Berlin
(Berlin, 1960), on the “prescribed subordination” of West German women in
working society.
152. Die Wirtschaft, 1948/4, 53.
153. See LAB F Rep. 240 Acc 2651 Nr. 3, p. 237.
154. Thomas Scholze, “Zur Ernährungssituation der Berliner nach dem Zweiten
Weltkrieg. Ein Beitrag zur Erfahrung des Großstadtalltags (1945–1952),” Jahrbuch
für Geschichte 35 (1987): 522, refers to “a street in Charlottenburg . . . [where] there
was a black market only for egg yolk powder, which could only be obtained with
children’s ration cards.”
155. See PRO FO 1012/175 Economics/Black Market, pp. 20 and 67.
156. “Die ‘schwarze’ Bauwirtschaft,” Telegraf, January 23, 1948, 3.
157. See the report, “Schwarzhandelsware Opium,” Telegraf, February 25, 1948, 6.
158. New York Herald Tribune, January 4, 1947, 15.
159. Ibid., 114.
160. Ibid., 15.
161. “Schwarzhandel per Post,” Tribüne, November 10, 1947, 12.
162. See, for example, ibid., 177, 21, for an example of such a shipment from Sweden.
163. Ibid., 175, 119.
164. Ibid.
165. Ibid.
166. On the following, see PRO FO 1012/176, pp. 162–65. The manufacturers of the
(imitation) brand-name goods were also interested in the imitations. In a letter from
September 9, 1949, Cadbury Brothers Ltd. wrote to the British Military Adminis-
tration in Berlin that the firm was interested in intensifying the prosecution of the
criminals: “We are most anxious that the sale of this chocolate be stopped.” PRO
1012/177, p. 82.
167. Ibid., p. 161.
168. DMH, Deutmann diary, entry from August 5, 1945.
169. LAB F Rep. 240 Acc. 2651 Nr. 2, p. 111/2.
170. See LAB A Rep. 358–02 89681 for examples of professional counterfeit techniques
(with photographs of the tools and of the counterfeit ration cards).
171. See Rainer Gries, Produkte als Medien. Kulturgeschichte der Produktkommunikation
in der Bundesrepublik und der DDR (Leipzig, 2003), 135–38, and
570–74.
172. DHM, Deutmann diary, entry from August 6, 1945.
173. LAB F Rep. 240 Acc. 2651 Nr. 4, p. 402/2.
174. Ibid.
175. Ibid. Nr. 6, p. 698/2.
176. See the complete collection of files, LAB F Rep. 240 Acc. 2651.
252 ● Notes

177. The original poem reads as follows:

Eine Quelle des Trostes, ein Mittel gegen die Angst, eine Droge, die
Entspannung verschafft, den Hunger und die Langeweile vergessen macht, ein
Mittel, Höflichkeit zu bezeigen, eine Entscheidungshilfe, ein Wachmacher, der
Pfeil Cupidos und eine Waffe gegen die Vorgesetzten—die Zigarette, die ein
Soldat raucht, gibt ihm alles, was er braucht. Was wäre der Soldat ohne Tabak!
(Richard Klein, Schöner blauer Dunst. Ein Lob der Zigarette.
(Munich, 1992)

178. The original quotation reads as follows: “Die Gelbfärbung an den Spitzen seiner
blutleeren Finger verriet, dass er sich nicht so viel Mühe machte, Zigaretten zu
verkaufen wie zu rauchen.” Philip Kerr, Alte Freunde—neue Feinde (Reinbek, 2000),
155.
179. Günter Schmölders, “Die Zigarettenwährung,” in Sozialökonomische Verhaltensfor-
schung. Festschrift für Günter Schmölders zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Gerhard
Brinkmann, 166–71 (Berlin, 1973), 166. See as well Christoph Merki, “Die
amerikanische Zigarette, das Maß aller Dinge. Rauchen in Deutschland zur
Zeit der Zigarettenwährung 1945–1948,” in Tabakfragen: Rauchen aus kulturwis-
senschaftlicher Sicht, ed. Thomas Hengartner and Christoph Merki, 57–82 (Zurich,
1996); and Gerhard Stoltmann, “Die Zigarettenwährung,” Deutsche Tabak Zeitung
5 (1982): 10.
180. Quoted in Merki, “Die amerikanische Zigarette,” 57.
181. See “Das Tabakjahr 1946,” Telegraf, January 28, 1947, 4.
182. “Umstrittenen ‘Tabakregie’, ” Telegraf, June 10, 1947, 2.
183. See Jürgen Link,“Literaturanalyse als Interdiskursanalyse: Am Beispiel des
Ursprungs literarischer Symbolik in der Kollektivsymbolik,” in Diskurstheorien und
Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Jürgen Fohrmann and Harro Müller, 284–307 (Frankfurt
am Main, 1988), for a definition of the concept of “collective symbols.”
184. “Camel zieht nicht mehr,” Telegraf, July 2, 1948, 5.
185. “Das Mädchen mit den ‘Ami-Kippen’, ” Telegraf, August 31, 1948, 4.
186. LAB F Rep. 240 Acc. 2651 Nr. 4, pp. 396/2–4.
187. Klein, Schöner blauer Dunst, 283 and 285.
188. See Kaspar Maase, “ ‘Lässig’ kontra ‘zackig’—Nachkriegsjugend und Männlichkeiten
in geschlechtergeschichtlicher Perspektive,” in Sag mir, wo die Mädchen sind . . . .
Beiträge zur Geschlechtergeschichte der Jugend, ed. Christina Benninghaus and Kerstin
Kohtz, 79–101 (Cologne, 1999).
189. Klein, Schöner blauer Dunst, 234.
190. Ibid., 237–38.
191. See Elke Kupschinsky, “Die vernünftige Nephertete. Die Neue Frau der 20er Jahre
in Berlin,” in Die Metropole: Industriestruktur in Berlin im 20: Jahrhundert, ed.
Jochen Boberg, 167–69 (Munich, 1988).

Chapter 5
1. [No repository number] 95 Ds Akten der Abteilung 95 des Berliner Kammergerichts.
2. LAB A Rep. 358–02 80196, p. 3.
3. Ibid., 89781, pp. 20, as well as 80384, p. 8.
4. Ibid., 79809, pp. 85 and 93.
 Notes ● 253

5. LAB A Rep. 341–02 9792, letter from March 10, 1943 (unpaginated).
6. Ibid., p. 17.
7. See, for example, “Dollar und Schwarzmarkt, mit Grafiken,” Der Tag, March 20,
1949.
8. For the following, see Frank Zschaler, “Die Lösung der Währungsfrage in
Berlin 1948/49. Weichenstellungen für die Nachkriegsentwicklung der deutschen
Hauptstadt,” in Sterben für Berlin? Die Berliner Krisen 1948:1958, ed. Burghard
Ciesla, Michael Lemke, and Thomas Lindenberger, 47–58 (Berlin, 2000), as well as
idem, Öffentliche Finanzen und Finanzpolitik in Berlin 1945–1961: Eine vergleichende
Untersuchung von Ost- und West-Berlin mit Datenanhang 1945–1989 (Berlin, 1995),
15–24. For the developments in West Berlin, see Michael Wolff, Die Währungsreform
in Berlin 1948/49 (Berlin, 1991).
9. Zschaler, “Währungsfrage,” 53.
10. PRO FO 1005/862, p. 2.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., p. 4.
13. Ibid., p. 9.
14. PRO FO 1012/175, p. 138 (4).
15. See Wolfgang Benz, Geschichte des Dritten Reiches (Munich, 2000), 190–94.
16. An overview of prices is available in the Price Office of the City of Berlin, Abt.
Ernährung, Aufstellung über die Wirkung der Einführung der Westmark auf die
Preise. FO 1012/326, Allied Commandantura, Trade and Industry Committee,
Economics—Currency and Prices, unpaginated.
17. See Zschaler, “Währungsfrage,” 49–52.
18. LAB F Rep 240, Nr. 6, pp. 748x4.
19. LAB F Rep 240, Nr. 6, pp. 753x1 ff. Emphasis/italics in the original.
20. PRO FO 1056/565 Public Opinion Research Office, Notes on Currency Reform
No. 1, June 30, 48 (unpaginated.).
21. Ibid.
22. PRO FO 1012/176, p. 67.
23. See “Schwarze Börse entmotorisiert,” Telegraf, October 23, 1948, 4.
24. On the history of the radio and its political role in the Soviet zone and in the GDR,
see Klaus Arnold and Christoph Classen, eds., Zwischen Pop und Propaganda. Radio
in der DDR (Berlin, 2004); and Christoph Classen, Faschismus und Antifaschismus.
Geschichte im Radio der SBZ/DDR 1945–1953 (Cologne, 2004).
25. All quotes: DRA, B 202-00-01/0015.
26. All quotes: DRA, B 203-01-01/0261.
27. All quotes: DRA, B 202-00-07/0053.
28. All quotes: DRA, B 202-00-07/0051.
29. All quotes: DRA, B 203-01-01/0025.
30. See above, Chapter 4, the section “Criminal Prosecution and Symbolic Politics.”
31. All quotes: DRA, B 202-00-06/0347.
32. “Das UNRRA-Lager wird geräumt,” Neues Deutschland, July 23, 1948.
33. “Westpolizei schützt Schieber,” Tägliche Rundschau, August 15, 1945.
34. All quotes: DRA, B 204-02-01/321.
35. Quoted in Jörg Roesler, Die Wirtschaft der DDR. Publikation der Landeszentrale für
politische Bildung Thüringen (Erfurt, 2002), 7.
36. See André Steiner, Von Plan zu Plan: Eine Wirtschaftsgeschichte der DDR (Munich,
2004), 41.
37. On the lack of success, see ibid., 56–92.
254 ● Notes

38. Ina Merkel, Utopie und Bedürfnis: Die Geschichte der Konsumkultur in der DDR
(Cologne, 1999), 329. It was possible to have “normal” shopping experiences
after 1953 in the flourishing stores of the commission-retail trade. See Heinz
Hoffmann, Der Kommissionshandel im planwirtschaftlichen System der DDR: Eine
besondere Eigentums- und Handelsform (Leipzig, 2001). On the displacements in con-
sumer shopping brought about by 1989, see Annett Schultz, “Privathaushalte und
Haushalten in Ostdeutschland,” Discussion Paper FS III 97–405, WZB (Berlin,
1997).
39. Merkel, Utopie und Bedürfnis, 88. See also Philipp Heldmann, Herrschaft—
Wirtschaft—Anoraks. Konsumpolitik in der DDR der Sechzigerjahre (Göttingen,
2004), as well as Steiner, Plan, 7–17.
40. Joachim Starbatty, “Die Soziale Marktwirtschaft aus historisch-theoretischer Sicht,”
in Entstehung und Entwicklung der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft. Im Auftrag der
Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte, ed. Hans Pohl, 7–26 (Wiesbaden, 1986).
41. All quotes ibid., 20–22.
42. See Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Tradition,” in The Invention of
Tradition, ed. idem and Terence Ranger, 11–14 (Cambridge, 2003)
43. All editions from December 1, 1949.
44. LAB F Rep 240, Nr. 3, p. 237/2.
45. “Bewirtschaftung,” Der Tagesspiegel, August 14, 1945, 5.
46. The Ahlen Program of the CDU stated:

the capitalist economic system did not do justice to the vital interests of the
German people in regard to their state and their social order . . . . The content
and the goal (of ) social and economic restructuring can no longer be the capi-
talist pursuit of profit and power, but rather only the well-being of our people.
Through a communal design the German people are to receive an economic
and social constitution that befits the law and the dignity of man, that serves the
intellectual and material development of our people, and that establishes a secure
foundation for internal and external peace.
(Konrad Adenauer Foundation)

47. Ludwig Aderbauer, “Der Schwarze Markt als Folge der Geldunordnung” (PhD diss.,
Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, 1948), 1.
48. Irmgard Zündorf, Der Preis der Marktwirtschaft. Staatliche Preispolitik und
Lebensstandard in Westdeutschland 1948 bis 1963 (Stuttgart, 2006), 9.
49. Ibid., 305.
50. The so-called Konsumbrot was a cheap brown bread heavily subsidized by the West
German state until 1953 and in West Berlin until 1958. See the cabinet minutes of
the federal government on the issue (online): http://www.bundesarchiv.de/cocoon/
barch/11/k/k1951k/kap1_2/kap2_10/para3_18.html.
51. Zündorf, Preis der Marktwirtschaft, 306.
52. Karl Georg Zinn, Soziale Marktwirtschaft. Idee, Entwicklung und Politik der bundes-
deutschen Wirtschaftsordnung (Mannheim, 1992), 44.
53. Ludwig Erhard, Gedanken aus fünf Jahrzehnten. Reden und Schriften, ed. Karl
Hohmann (Düsseldorf, 1988), 57.
54. Ibid., 58.
55. Ibid., 55.
 Notes ● 255

56. Müller-Armack, “Soziale Marktwirtschaft,” Handwörterbuch der Sozialwissenschaften

(Stuttgart, 1956), 9:390–92.
57. Erhard, Gedanken aus fünf Jahrzehnten, 69.
58. Ibid.
59. See Jürgen Niemann, Auftakt zur Demokratie: Der Bundeswahlkampf 1949 zwischen
Improvisation und Ideologie (Bochum, 1994).
60. Michael Wildt, Am Beginn der Konsumgesellschaft: Mangelerfahrung, Lebenshaltung,
Wohlstandshoffnung in Westdeutschland in den fünfziger Jahren, 2nd ed. (Hamburg,
1995), 256. Wildt relativizes an interpretation that otherwise is still very much
in the forefront and apparently is still employed—as needed—to provide the con-
text for some arguments. See, for example Christoph Gusy, “Einleitung—Weimar:
Geschichte als Argument,” in Weimars lange Schatten, ed. idem (Baden-Baden, 2003),
16–18: Although he presents the “young Bonn Republic” as a “site of economic
growth and of stability,” thus hinting at an expansion of the paradigm of the eco-
nomic miracle, he also emphasizes the material development from which “large
sections of the population palpably profited.”
61. Müller-Armack, “Soziale Marktwirtschaft,” 392.
62. Ibid., 390.
63. Ibid.

Conclusion
1. Werner Abelshauser, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte seit 1945 (Munich, 2004), 11–12.
2. Gerold Ambrosius, “ ‘Sozialistische Planwirtschaft’ als Alternative und Variante in
der Industriegesellschaft—die Wirtschaftsordnung,” in Überholen ohne einzuholen:
Die DDR-Wirtschaft als Fußnote der deutschen Geschichte?, ed. André Steiner, 11–31
(Berlin, 2006), 26.
3. Alfred C. Mierzejewski, Erhard: A Biography (Princeton, 2005), 70.
4. Dirk Baecker, “Die Preisbildung an der Börse,” Soziale Systeme 5 (1999): 287–312,
287.
5. See André Steiner, Plan. The German title referred to here is slightly different from
that of the English translation: The Plans That Failed: An Economic History of the GDR
(New York, 2010).
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 Index

Note: The letter ‘n’ following locators refers to notes.

Abelshauser, Werner, 209 Alexanderstrasse, 69, 90, 92

Abrahamson, Ernst, 237n225 Allensbach, 126, 185–6
Adalbertstrasse, 121 Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft
Adenauer, Konrad (chancellor), 204–5 Aktiengesellschaft (AEG), 55
Aderbauer, Ludwig, 203 Allied sectors, 131
advertising, 32, 59, 67, 178 Allies, 151–2, 157–64, 174–5, 227n129
see also propaganda air raids by, 41
age, 61–2 arrival of, 188
airlift, 157–9, 174–6 in black market, 2, 4, 10, 67, 129
air raids, 41, 96–7, 111–19, 122–5 on black markets, 146–8, 154, 156,
in Born’s poem, 168 244n2
camouflage techniques for, 242n51 on consumption, 134
damage from, 49, 79, 243n68, currency reform and, 189–91
243n77 London Conference and, 190
Deutmann and, 240n23 power of, 212
shortages and, 8 rationing system of, 7–8
trading and, 187, 196–7 see also American soldier British soldiers
War Damages Office and, 241n25 allocation system, see rationing system
see also bunkers American magazines, 131
alcohol, 43, 74, 152 American soldiers, 10–11, 120, 129, 162,
advocaat, 108 175–6
at brothels, 92, 97 in black market, 199
champagne, 108, 195 evacuation of, 189–90
cognac, 92, 107 German women and, 164–6
liquor, 82, 112 see also Allies
schnapps, 178, 241n27 American zone, 176, 180
Alexanderplatz, 5, 13, 34, 77, 83 Ami cigarettes, 180
arrests at, 170 Amnesty Law (1949), 214
Aschinger on, 55 Andreaplatz, 33
brothel near, 90 Andreas-Friedrich, Ruth (diarist), 242n54
Deutmann near, 121 anonymity, 64, 83
public black markets at, 131–5, in brothels, 91
156 of public trading, 127–8
street girl from, 102 in retail shopping, 37–8
274 ● Index

anti-Semitism, 10, 22, 26, 88, 222n31 Bank Deutscher Länder (Bank of German
in cleanup policy, 39–40 States), 189
currency crisis and, 23–4 banks, 32, 95, 189, 191
economy and, 223n42 Barmet Scandal, 23
in hustler stereotype, 107 bars, 62–3, 69, 75, 81–3
in informing letters, 104–5 drug deals in, 87
in Nazi policy, 101 in Gesundbrunner network, 52, 54,
Scheunenviertel and, 86 77–8
see also Jewish people high prices in, 197
apartments, 5, 31–2, 56, 77–81, 176 hustling in, 86, 102
air raids and, 115–16, 118–19 political discussion in, 203
bartering in, 69, 76, 127, 148–9 surveillance of, 171–2
construction of, 130, 174 trading in, 5, 127–8, 150
for middle class, 86, 105 women in, 93, 122–3
Rebbien’s, 51 bartering networks, see networks
rent for, 170, 191, 233n117 Basic Principles Act (1948), 204
arbitrage, 201 battle for Berlin, 38
armaments industry, 24, 40, 162, 196 Bayerischen Platz, 88
army, see military Bayerisches Quarter, 105
Army Propaganda Division, 121–3 Beckert, Jens, 6
arrests: of bar owners, 171–2 Bellermannstrasse, 77
of black marketeers, 82, 84, 170 Bergius, Hanne, 26–7
of chocolate traders, 176 Berlin blockade, 5, 188
confiscated money from, 97 “Berlin Christmas 1918” (Klabund), 27
of Grothge, 170–1 Berlin city council, 34, 238n236
at public black markets, 128, 149 Berlin cocottes, 27–8
see also prostitution
of Rebbien, 1, 48
Berlin Court of Appeals, 145–6
of Scheffler, 106
Berliner Tageblatt (newspaper), 23
art, 9, 167
Berlinische Bodengesellschaft, 105
Aschinger (restaurant), 55, 234n143
Berlin Market Hall Association, 33
asocial tendencies, 14, 43, 86, 238n237
Berlin Police Headquarters, 148
of foreigners, 101
Berlin Radio, 168
of hustlers, 73, 88 Berlin Special Court, 19, 101, 145–6,
of women, 91, 93 170, 219n3
Asphalt (film), 223n47 Berlin summary court, 149, 151, 171–3
August-Blase AG cigarette company, Berlin Wall, 3
168–9 Bernauer Straße, 130
Auricht, Anna (black market participant), Bienert (brothel owner), 69
77, 81 billiard rooms, 59–60
automobiles, 106–8, 113, 174, 193, 199 Binder, Heinz (clerical worker), 96
as luxuries, 163–4, 222n33, 238n237 binding strategy, 144
rarity of, 239n238 Biniek, Clara (brothel owner), 91–2
street trading and, 238n236 birthday celebrations, 58, 80, 95
Awia aircraft factory, 74 birth rate, 68
Black Channel, 214
Babelsberger Street, 105 black stock exchange, 175, 211–12
backroom deals, 25 blockade, 5, 188
Bader, Karl (public prosecutor), 118 Bodenschatz, Harald, 86
Badstraße, 55, 77 bombings, see air raids
Baer, Rosa (eye witness), 160–1 Bonn, 202
 Index ● 275

bookkeeping methods, 58, 98–9 Bruselat, Erich (black market participant),

Born, Konrad, 168 72
Böß, Gustav (mayor), 85 building materials, 174
bourgeoisie, see middle class Bulgaria, 90, 175
Bradenburg Gate, 2, 13, 129, 131–4, 166 Bülow Arch, 133
brand-name items, 38, 178, 251n166 bunkers, 116, 119–20, 124–5, 232n97
bread, 118, 129, 163, 170 assignment to, 242n50
Konsumbrot, 204, 254n50 cellars, 119, 124, 160, 168
as luxury goods, 178 trading in, 233n125
prices for, 38 business licenses, 39
ration cards and, 41 butter, 40, 121, 129, 163
“Bridge at Remagen” (Guillermin), 183 at black markets, 31, 94–5
Brinkmann, Max, 1, 100 cannons instead of, 196
Brinkmann, Paul-Heinz (black market counterfeit, 179
participant), 81
British Building Industries Branch, 149 Cadbury chocolates, 176–7, 251n166
British chocolate products, 176–7 Cadet School, 70
British Criminal Investigation cafés, 32, 36, 77, 88
Department (CID), 176–7 bartering in, 31, 53–4, 69
British Economics Division, 155–6 as public spaces, 81–2
British pounds, 190 surveillance of, 171–2
British soldiers, 120, 162, 164, 251n166 women’s use of, 93, 122–3
Calic, Stevo (black market participant), 55
on black markets, 170, 174, 176,
Camel cigarettes, 165, 181
244n2
candy, 10
bombing by, 49
Capaldo (cloth merchant), 95
on Control Council Law No. 50,
capitalism, 21–2, 24, 94, 147, 224n53
247n61
black market and, 198
on currency reform, 190
CDU on, 254n46
evacuation of, 189–90
vs.communism, 16
headquarters of, 154 free market, 206
see also England Rhineland, 202, 212
British zone, 168, 174–5 see also free market economy cellars;
brokers, 57–9, 67, 83, 176 bunkers
exchange of information between, 192 central city, see city center
Frank as, 105 Central Market Halls, 69, 125, 227n110
paper currency and, 95 chain trade, 33
professionalization of, 229n45 Chambula, Irmgard (black market
strategies of, 188 participant), 142, 161
supply services for, 90 charismatic rule, 30
transregional distribution by, 89 Charlottenburg (district), 36–7, 70, 84–8,
Wiggers as, 52, 69 154, 162
Brombach (municipal authority), 44 chocolate trading in, 176
Bronnen, Arnolt (gentleman author), public black markets in, 128, 175,
106–7 251n154
Broszat, Martin, 2–3 Uhlandstrasse in, 104
brothels, 39, 69, 90–3, 97–8 Charlottenburger Chaussee, 242n51
see also prostitution Chesterfield cigarettes, 164, 181
Brunnerstraße, 77, 121, 128, 139, 152, Chicago (United States), 32
169 children, 10, 36, 68, 166–7, 181
food at, 173 ration cards for, 251n154
276 ● Index

chocolate, 35, 51, 171, 191, 248n88 collaborative city making, 47

counterfeit, 176–7 colleagues, 52, 105, 210
Christian Democratic Union (CDU), 200, supervisors, 9, 64, 67, 70, 74–5
203, 205–6, 254n46 Cologne-Riehl, 103
Christmas, 58, 75, 80, 95, 135, 236n192 Cominform, 190
cigarette factories, 168–9 command economy, 40, 203–4
cigarette stands, 132 commercial communication, 37
cigarettes and tobacco, 35, 56, 66, 102, Commissioners for the Defense of
173–7 Germany, 116
during air raids, 115–16 Commission for Prohibiting Commerce,
at black markets, 75, 99, 120–1 153
in Born’s poem, 168 communism, 16, 20, 22, 38–9, 86
at brothels, 92
commuters, 22, 78, 89, 130–1
as currency, 9, 73, 82, 154
comparing mentality, 3
vs. currency, 191–2
competence, 144
discourse on, 179–86
from German Allocations Office, 105 compliance policy, 25–6
vs. money, 94 concentration camps, 145
petty theft of, 112 confiscation, 48, 146, 148, 151
Rasno and, 154–6 of automobiles, 106, 193
in restaurants, 82–3 of canned meat, 92
as second-hand market, 62 of chocolate, 176
swap markets and, 152 of exotic goods, 174
tobacco crops, 180 of money, 97–8
as vital need, 43 congruent expectations, 144
women and, 67, 123, 164–5, 185–6 conspicuous consumption, 24, 105–8,
city center, 24, 37, 79, 84–5 165
public black markets in, 13, 128, 131, consumer protests, 102
133 consumer society, 4–5, 37, 178, 214
in rubble, 121, 125 habits in, 40, 47
city handbags, 53 metropolitan, 32
city planning, 38 shopping in, 66
civil service, 61–3, 70, 81, 105, 158 social market economy and, 207
American, 165 sovereignty in, 7, 12, 201
low-level, 172 Stiftung Warentest and, 209
see also trade inspection service urban, 26–7
Clay, Lucius D. (General), 180, 189–90 see also shopping
cleansing of Berlin, 39
consumer spaces, 31–9, 85, 95, 132
clothing, 37, 56, 70, 74
black market as, 210
on black market, 99, 129, 137, 156,
173–4 department stores, 5, 27–8, 121, 143
of black market participants, 137–8, illegal, 133, 136
143 legal, 126, 130
currency reform and, 189 consumption, 12, 27, 39–40, 213
ration cards for, 9 changes in, 111
as status symbol, 182, 195 of cigarettes, 182
suits, 74, 104, 108, 121, 152 in city center, 84
see also shoes textiles conspicuous, 24, 105–8, 165
coffee, 43, 51, 70, 112, 115–16, 175 of luxury goods, 123
as special allocation, 241n27 in peacetime, 120
Cold War, 154, 157, 189 in social market economy, 207
 Index ● 277

contacts, 6, 8, 10 cut-point positions, 57

bookkeeping and, 98–9 Cuvrystraße, 130
of brokers, 57, 90 Czech chocolate products, 176
cigarettes and, 185
establishing, 40, 47–55, 62–4 Dachgarten (restaurant), 55
schlendern and, 142 Dahlem (district), 87
secrecy of, 177 Daimler-Benz factory, 102
as social relationships, 64 dandies, 106
contractual security, 7 Danziger Street, 53, 55
cooperatives, 37 Daum, Andreas, 157
Corni, Gustavo, 41 dead bodies, 124
cosmetics, 104, 165 death penalty, 19, 43, 105, 219n3
Cottbus Gate, 83 defeat, 25–6, 28
Council Control Law No. 50, 1947), defeatism, 113
146–7, 247n61 Dehler, Thomas (Justice Minister), 26,
counterfeits, 9, 67, 176–9, 210, 251n170 202
craftsmen, 62 Denmark, 165, 174
credibility, 30, 52, 143, 156–7, 246n48 Department of the Municipal Economy,
credit rating, 55, 58 153
Criminal Investigation Department, 153 Department of Trade and Industry, 167
crisis years (early 1930s), 9 department stores, 5, 27–8, 31–4, 121,
crowding stress, 141 143
cultural exchanges, 7 vs.traditional consumer spaces, 37
culture of defeat, 25 Der Morgen, 151
curfews, 159 Deutmann, Karl, 31, 33, 114–15, 177–8,
currencies, 12, 93–9, 107, 192 240n23
in black markets, 4, 47, 56, 64 on air raids, 120–1, 124–5
crisis in, 9, 23 at Brandenburg Gate, 166
Deutsche Marks, 170, 189–90, on public black markets, 129
199–200 on Russian soldiers, 163
dollars, 155, 175, 180, 188, 190 Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (newspaper),
Eastmarks, 191–2 114
exchange rates between, 175, 188, 201 Deutsche Bank (Frankfurt), 201
foreign, 35, 107, 155, 173, 190 Deutsche Justiz (periodical), 43, 45
gold, 90, 106–7, 152, 163, 175, 190–1 Deutsche Marks, 170, 189–90, 199–200
vs. goods, 94–7 Deutschen Wohnungshilfswerks, 78
vs. ration cards, 41 Die Tat (newspaper), 164
Reichsmarks, 9, 48, 94–8, 152, 155 Die Welt, 202
Westmarks, 191–2, 200 Dietrich, Marlene (actress), 67
see also cigarettes and tobacco inflation Dircksenstrasse, 135
period disabled persons, 36, 97–8, 166
currency exchange offices, 191 discourse theory, 101
currency reform, 3, 5, 9, 17, 188–94 “Disorder and Early Sorrow” (Mann),
black markets after, 145 106–7
black markets before, 126 displaced persons, 67, 175, 199, 212,
cigarettes and, 181 237n222
in East Berlin, 199 distribution systems, 1, 9, 92, 96–7, 153
end of black market and, 187, 213 for chocolate, 176–7
frugality after, 207 for Rasno, 155
social market economy and, 201–4 divided economies, 236n182
customer lists, 40 Division IV, 153
278 ● Index

Division K, 153 Erzberger, Matthias, 21

dollars, 155, 175, 180, 188, 190 Eucken, Walter, 224n53
Dostoevsky, Fyodor (author), 116 Europe, 68, 76, 158, 189, 198
Dresdner Bank, 95 Eastern, 24, 39, 186
Drosdowska (black market participant), goods from, 89–90, 92, 174
79–80 evacuation program, 117, 241n31
drugs, 39, 87, 99, 167, 173–4 events vs. negotiations, 30
cocaine, 35, 87 Everybody Program, 204
opium, 174 exchange rates, 175, 188, 201
see also alcohol cigarettes and tobacco exchange relationships, 210
Dubtschak (black market participant), 79 extortion courts, 33

eastern worker camps, 118 F-formation systems, 139–40

Eastmarks, 191–2 Fabian (Kästner), 67
East Prussia, 72 fabric, see textiles
economic exchanges, 7 facework, 12, 30
Economic Offenses Act (1949), 146 Falckenberg (city councilman), 37
Economic Party of the German Middle family, 6, 11, 72–4, 80–1, 88
Class, 35 children, 10, 36, 68, 166–7, 181,
economic rationality, 194, 202 251n154
economy: command economy, 40, 203–4 household economy, 4, 6–7, 72–3
money economy, 94, 96, 107 love relationships, 64–5, 68–72, 106,
rearmament, 19 159, 210
regulated, 195 personal relationships, 4, 65, 68
war economy, 40, 43, 61, 96, 198–9 Fasanenstrasse, 88
see also currency reform; inflation fascism, 16, 198
period; moral economy; War fashion shops, 32
Economy Regulations fast-food stands, 32–3
eggs, 40–1, 44, 113, 236n192 fats (food group), 40–1, 68, 163
elderly, 36, 166 lard, 38
embassies, 111–13, 176 Federal Republic, 2, 202, 209–10, 212,
embeddedness, 6 214
embezzlement, 9, 15, 75, 147 vs.Weimar Republic, 243n63
of food cards, 70, 96 Feit, Hans (German citizen), 197
by hustlers, 197 festivities, 58, 236n192
of industrial oils, 106 Fetting, Anna (black market participant),
by Rebbien, 51 137, 141–2
enclosed spaces, 12, 76, 111–12 Fidelio (opera), 119
encoding machine, 111 film, 103
Engel, Margot (black market participant), fin-de-siècle, 5
62 fliegende Börsen (flying exchanges), 32
Engelbrecht, Ernst, 87 Flierl, Friedrich (editor), 168–9
England, 25–6, 112, 115, 147, 222n39 flour, 41, 56
London, 131, 145, 190 flower stands, 75
see also air raids British soldiers food, 62–3, 74, 84
entertainment facilities, 32–3 air raids and, 115–16
entrepreneurs, 23, 57, 190, 224n53 from Allies, 175
entry cycle, 137 beets, 31–2
equilibrium (economic), 6 black market for, 40, 99, 156, 162,
Erhard, Ludwig (Economics Minister), 167, 174
203–6, 210 at brothels, 92
 Index ● 279

at Brunnerstraße, 173 as stereotype of marketeer, 14–16,

canned goods, 97 102–3
cigarettes and, 181 women and, 67, 91, 165
consumption of, by Walter, 104 see also American soldiers;
currency reform and, 189 anti-Semitism; British soldiers;
Eastern currency and, 191 Jewish people; occupying soldiers;
eggs, 40–1, 44, 113, 236n192 Soviet soldiers
fast-food stands, 32–3 Förster, Ursula (black market participant),
fats, 40–1, 68, 163 53
flour, 41, 56 Four Year Plan (1936), 40
during hunger winter, 167–8 France, 70, 83, 89–90, 92, 107, 165
hustling of, 102, 146–7 rationing in, 147
lard, 38 Frank (city councilman), 35
as luxury, 178 Frank, Erwin (black market participant),
milk, 38, 40, 170 105
vs. money, 95 Frank, Heinz, 133
during occupation, 159 Frankfurt (location), 201
Parmentier on, 103 Frankfurter Allee, 128
petty theft of, 112 fraud, 9, 23
potatoes, 169, 174, 178, 197 counterfeits, 9, 67, 176–9, 210,
251n170
prices for, 197
Fräulein (stereotype), 165
producers of, 33–4
free market economy, 16, 72, 195, 198,
prostitution for, 142
204–8
in public black markets, 129–30
black markets as, 212
ration cards for, 9
Dehler on, 202
retail businesses for, 37 see also capitalism
salt, 38 Frei, Norbert, 214
Seelenbinder and, 230n47 Freiburg (location), 118
sugar, 38, 129 Freisler, Roland (Justice Minister), 44,
swap markets and, 152 225n67
tomatoes, 133 French sector, 150
trading of, 149 French soldiers, 120, 162, 176, 189–90
value of, 10 French women, 106–7
at weekly markets, 36 Friedenau (district), 84
Wiggers and, 54 Friedrich-Wilhelms University, 25
in WWI markets, 19 Friedrichsfelde (location), 91
see also bread butter meat Friedrichshain (district), 36, 79, 84, 128,
forced laborers, see foreigners 130, 153
Foreign Affair (movie), 67 Friedrichstrasse, 83, 85–6
foreign currencies, 35, 99, 107, 155, 173, friends, 52, 64
190 Fritzsche, Alfred (police officer), 148
foreign exchange, 9, 175 Frohlschläger (black market participant),
foreign goods, 89–90, 92, 99, 167 102
Foreign Letter Inspection Service, 103 fuel, 173, 189, 200
foreigners, 10–11, 39, 122, 175 coal, 42
anti-foreigner sentiment, 101, 199 gasoline, 112, 168, 190
in black market, 4, 10, 122–3, 237n224 Führer myth, 29–30
forced laborers, 67, 103, 112, 174, see also Hitler, Adolf
237n222 furniture, 115
French soldiers, 120, 162, 176, 189–90 furs, 104, 129, 165
280 ● Index

Garfinkel, Harold, 240n18 Gräber, Gertrud (black market

gasoline, 112, 168, 190 participant), 174–5
Gatow (district), 174 Granovetter, Mark, 6
Geertz, Clifford, 8, 12, 140 Gravity’s Rainbow (Pynchon), 1
Gellately, Robert, 80 Great Depression, 19, 32, 86
Gemeinschaftsfremde (aliens to the Great Disorder, 14
community), 21, 101 Grenadier Street, 35
see also Volksgemeinschaft Gries, Rainer, 3
gender roles, 4, 27, 60, 78, 183 grocery stores, 66, 191
of black market participants, 61–3, 69, Groß, Rudolf, 203
122–3 Grothge, Werner (black market
love relationships, 64–5, 68–72, 106, participant), 170–1
159, 210 group formation, 57
of new women, 67 Grunewald, 111
in response to air raids, 116 Guillermin, John, 183
sexual assaults, 91, 142, 158–61, 160 Gürtner, Franz (Justice Minister), 44
social relationships and, 9–10
space use and, 93 haggling, 31, 66, 79, 137, 211
see also prostitution; sexual Halle Gate, 124
relationships; women Hamburg, 42–3, 90, 174, 200
Generalbauinspekteur der Reichsstadt Hanffstengel, Ursula von, 179
Berlin (warehouse), 75, 226n104 Hanke, Elisabeth (black market
German Allocations Office, 105 participant), 70–1, 75, 96
German Aviation Ministry, 70 Hansaviertel, 88
German cleanliness, 39 Hausberg, Fritz (LDP representative), 35
German Democratic Republic, 200–1, Hauser, Heinrich (columnist), 164
209–10, 212 hawking, 33
German National People’s Party (DNVP), hay and straw markets, 36
25–9, 34–7, 238n236 health, 38, 82, 86, 125, 167–8
German National Railway, 81 nutrition, 41
Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte Heidelberg, Gertrud, 160
(Business History Association), 201 Henke, Klaus-Dietmar, 2–3
Gestapo, 49, 100, 145, 228n22 Henschke, Alfred “Klabund,” 27
Gesundbrunner train station network, 47, Hentig, Hans von, 118
51–3, 57, 60, 75–8, 156 Hergt, Oskar (DNVP representative), 26
Gewerbeaußendienst, 49 Hermannplatz, 59, 90
Geyer, Martin, 23–4 Heuss, Theodor, 243n63
Giddens, Anthony, 12 Himmler, Heinrich, 90
Gierschner, Emil (black market Hinoki encoding machine, 111–12
participant), 74 Hitler salute, 80
Gies, Horst, 41 Hitler, Adolf, 20–1, 38, 40, 44, 102
Giese, Erich, 76–7 Führer myth, 29–30
gift-giving, 6, 10, 29, 68–9, 95 pictures of, 173, 233n120
of cigarettes, 185 HO shops (Handelsorganisation Läden),
“Girl with the ‘American Cigs’ ” (story), 153
181 hoarding, 187–9
Goebbels, Joseph (Propaganda Minister), Hofbräuhaus, 21
38, 114, 124–5 Hoffmann, Albert (Westphalian
Goffman, 139 Gauleiter), 78
gold, 90, 106–7, 152, 163, 175, 190–1 Hohenstauffenplatz, 75
gossip, 38 homo oeconomicus, 202 (and earlier)
 Index ● 281

homosexuality, 87 industrial oils, 106

horizontal exchange relations, 31 inflation period, 5, 9, 12–17, 23–5, 28
horse markets, 36 cigarettes and, 180
Hotel Adlon, 116 consumption and, 32
Hotel Bristol, 82 currency during, 107
Hotel Imperial, 104 fear of, 95, 121
hotels, 32, 63, 69, 85, 91, 102 losses during, 188
public black markets near, 130 price standardization and, 38
household economy, 4, 6–7, 72–3 profiteers during, 101
see also family reminders of, 100
housing community, 80, 225n67 wage freezes and, 198
how-to literature, 219n49 information, 8–9, 36, 188, 227n129
humiliation, 151, 158, 166, 181, 211 exchange of, 52, 77
after defeat of Versailles, 25–6 informers, 80–1, 83, 102, 106
culture of defeat, 25 initiative Sonderkommando, 85
rationing as, 3 Institute for Demoskopie (Allensbach),
hunger, 24, 40, 100, 103, 136 126, 185–6
of children, 166 intelligence services, 112
cigarettes and, 179–80 interaction theory, 139
hunger winter (1946/47), 167–8, 206, interest rate, 201
245n27 Interior Ministry, 91, 237n225
Hustlers and Chimney Sweeps internal enemy, 26
(Müller-Förster), 100 intimate antagonists, 139–40
hustling, 44, 47–8, 74–5, 86–8, 211–14 Invalidenstrasse, 171
in 1980s, 201 Iron Cross I & II, 102
cigarettes and, 182–3
Italian black marketeers, 237n224
during currency reform, 193
itinerant traders, 36, 39
financial strength and, 166, 168–9
in free markets, 198
outward signs of, 143–4, 164 Japanese embassy, 111–13
prosecution of, 146–7, 150–2 jewelry, 9–10, 59, 99, 123, 129
public opinion on, 121–3 of black market participants, 137–8,
sexualization of, 107 143
sites for, 149 in poor markets, 173
social control of, 80 Jewish people, 39, 86, 102, 223n42,
stereotypes of, 60, 73, 100–8, 194–7, 230n47
203 accusations of, 23, 222n31
strolling and, 120 criminalization of, 87, 101
between traders and soldiers, 131, 181 in Mein Kampf, 20
transition to, 57–8 migration of, 88
hygiene, 119, 134 in Mitte, 234n152
during riots of 1923, 24
imported goods, 89–90, 92, 99, 167 as stereotype of marketeer, 14–15, 21,
income, 60–1, 68, 90 26, 35
poverty, 16, 24, 60, 166–7, 171, 180 surveillance of, 104–5
see also lower clas; middle class in Weimar system, 28
income tax, 173 Weissenberg, 145–6
Independent Social Democrats (USPD), joint transactional space, 139
34 just distribution, 7, 15, 92
individualism, 107, 123 Justice Ministry, 14, 42, 44, 100,
industrialization, 28 225n67
282 ● Index

Kaiser-Galerie, 32 languages of trust, 30

Kaiserreich, 86 Lausepark, 170
Kardorff, Ursula von (journalist), 108, Law for the Restitution of National
114–16, 118–20, 124, 241n27 Socialist Injustice, 145
Karlshorst (location), 31 Leipzigerstrasse, 85, 234n143
Kästner, Erich (novelist), 67 letter exchanges, 68
Kaufhaus des Westens (department store), Ley (director of Deutschen
32 Wohnungshilfswerks), 78
Kehler (black market participant), 75–6 Liberal Democracy Party (FDP), 35, 202
Kempinski (restaurant), 234n143 Libeskind, Daniel, 111
Kennedy, John F. (US president), 157 Lichtburg (nightclub), 72
Kerr, Alfred, 88 Lichtenburg (district), 84, 128, 153,
Kerr, Phillip, 179, 182 233n117
Khrushchev, Nikita (USSR head of state), Lichterfelde (district), 84, 87, 105
157 Liebe, Karl-Heinz (business owner),
Kierspel, Heinrich (fish merchant), 92 104–5
Klabund (Alfred Henschke), 27 Linienstrasse, 75, 82
Klein, Richard, 179, 185 Linke (DNPV representative), 238n236
Kleine Rosentaler Strasse, 75 Lipp (black market participant), 82
Kleiner Knigge für Schieber (Brinkmann), Lippert, Julius (Nazi chairman), 39
100 liquor, 82, 112
Klemperer, Viktor, 30, 113 Little Handbook for Black Marketeers
Klüber, Herbert (Oberregierungsrat), (Brinkmann), 1
42–3 Lofland, Lynette, 137
Königsheide (location), 91 loitering, 33, 142
Konsumbrot (consumption bread), 204, London Conference, 190
254n50 London, England, 131, 145
Krakow, Poland, 90 long-term bartering relationships, 7, 64
Kreuzberg (district), 79, 84, 88, 102, 121, love relationships, 64–5, 68–72, 106, 159,
170 210
public black markets in, 128, 130 see also sexual relationships
Kriegsgewinnler (war profiteer), 24 Löwenbräu (restaurant), 70
Kriegswirtschaftsverordnung (KWVO), see lower class, 36, 63, 93, 169, 173
War Economy Regulations working class, 28, 77–9, 87, 121, 172,
Krumme Lanke, 111 204
Ku’damm boulevard, 131 Lübbecke (district), 168
Kurfürstendamm (location), 27, 36, 83, Lucky Strike cigarettes, 181
87, 114, 120–1 Luhmann, Niklas, 11–12, 231n71
black market in, 122–3, 235n158 luxury, 8, 87, 168, 207
black stock exchange at, 175 automobiles as, 163–4, 222n33
chocolate trading at, 176 conspicuous consumption, 24, 105–8,
Kuschy, Erna (black market participant), 165
51–2, 55, 77, 99, 228n22 luxury goods, 89, 107, 123, 158, 166, 177
Küstriner Platz, 33 diamonds, 174
furs, 104, 129, 165
L-forms of organization, 139 mother-of-pearl, 106–7
laissez-faire policy, 208 see also jewelry
Landesarchiv Berlin, 48
landlords, 51, 77, 80 Magazinstrasse, 97
Language of the Third Reich (Klemperer), Maggi spice blend, 53
113 mail, 77, 89, 174–5
 Index ● 283

Mann, Thomas (author), 106–8 parades by, 38, 162

Mariendorf, 199 paramilitary troops, 39
Marienfelde (district), 102 self-service practices of, 10
Marietta-Bar, 197 sexual assault by, 160
market halls, 33–7, 125–6, 134 Walter and, 104–5
Central Market Halls, 69, 125, Wehrmacht, 3, 41, 157–8
227n110 milk, 38, 40, 170
market liberalization, 203 Minister Presidents’ Conference
marketplace conventions, 8 (Munich), 167
market stands, 33 Ministry for Public Food Administration,
Markgraf (police chief ), 154 42
marriage market, 68–9, 230n52 Ministry of Foreign Trade (USSR), 155
Marx, Karl, 93 mistrust, 7–8, 18, 55, 186, 231n94
Marxism, 24, 26 in bartering practice, 52
Mauss, Marcel, 6 in black market era, 209–11
meat, 41, 65, 68, 75–6 of currency, 9, 190, 212
after air raids, 115–16 due to economic crisis, 200
bacon, 129, 163, 177 of foreigners, 11
butcher shops, 40 of governing coalitions, 28
canned, 51, 92, 163 of occupying soldiers, 158, 164
goose liver, 97 of police, 151
herring, 42 of quality, 179
mandated levels of, 227n112 Mitte (district), 79, 84–5, 90, 93, 153,
pork, 96 170
ration cards for, 123
Jewish people in, 234n152
roast duck, 108
mobile trading activities, 134
salmon, 56, 170
modernity, 22, 36–9, 134, 248n106
on street markets, 121
automobiles and, 106–7
Mein Kampf (Hitler), 20
bartering culture and, 64
Menge (black market participant), 75–6
Mercedes, 106 consumption and, 32–3
metropolis, 26–8, 36–9, 143 criticism of, 26
barter culture in, 47, 64 money and, 94
consumption metropolis, 32, 131 new women, 67
see also modernity; urban spaces see also metropolis
metro stations, 131–2, 158 money, see currency
Michael’s Church Bridge, 121 money economy, 94, 96, 107
middle class, 25, 86–8, 172 Montag (newspaper), 23
bourgeois attitudes, 27, 72, 100, 105 moral debt, 6, 25–6
bourgeois order, 23, 78, 230n52, moral earmarking, 236n182
241n30 moral economy, 36, 168, 194, 202–3, 211
women of, 63, 93 of bartering culture, 16, 68
middlemen, 35, 59, 87, 90, 102, 176 Moreover, W. (landlord), 102
Mielke, Hildegard (black market Moritzplatz, 124
participant), 55–6, 58–9 Morris cigarettes, 181
Milan, 32, 104 Moscow, Soviet Union, 154–5, 161
military (German), 33, 61–2, 89–93, mother-of-pearl, 106–7
191–2 Motzstrasse, 197
bartering in, 123 movie tickets, 192
cigarettes and, 179 Müller-Armack, Alfred (economist), 201,
danger of death by, 136 205–8
284 ● Index

Müller-Förster, Alfred (pamphlet writer), theory on, 57

100 trust and, 13, 51
Müller, G. (soldier), 104, 108 of Weese, 59–60
multiplexity, 52, 54–5, 68, 98 of Wiggers, 56
Munich, 21, 167 Neue Bauwelt (newspaper), 174
Münzer (New York resident), 174–5 Neue Friedrichstasse, 34, 36, 227n110
Münzstrasse, 83, 133 Neuenburgerstrasse, 124
music halls, 36 Neues Deutschland, 199
Neue Zeitung, 206
name-brand items, 38, 178, 251n166 Neuhardenberg (location), 115
National Assembly, 25 Neukölln (district), 59–60, 84, 88, 90,
National Socialist German Workers’ Party 148, 152
(NSDAP), see National Socialists black market in, 229n29
National Socialists, 20–4, 28–31, 90–2,
price controls in, 198
145–9, 194–8
new institutional economics (NIE), 6
anti-Semitism of, 104–5
newspaper stands, 132
black market policy of, 20, 49, 100–2
command economy of, 40, 203–4 newspapers, 16, 36, 192
criticism of modernity by, 26 on black market locations, 123
vs. Dehler, 202 on cleansing of Berlin, 39
embassy district and, 112 on currency reform, 191
Eucken on, 224n53 letters to the editors of, 13, 169, 195,
family policy of, 68–9, 73 197, 202
final battle of, 13 moral discourse of, 203
food ration system by, 41–2 on police impersonation, 148
Hitler salute, 80 on public black markets, 128
just distribution of, 6–8, 15, 58 representation of profiteer in, 15, 23, 27
lack of control over black market by, on Westmarks, 200
156 see also under specific newspapers
on profiteers, 14, 17, 100 new women, 67–8, 185
propaganda of, 14, 122, 157 New York, United States, 174–5
prostitution during, 235n170 Niedhardt, Gottfried, 25
redevelopment by, 86 Niehuss, Merith, 230n52
takeover of Berlin by, 38–40, 65, 79, Niethammer (person), 250n148
86, 124 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 26
war economy and, 3, 44, 145–6 Noack (police officer), 150
National-Zeitung, 176 nonmarket coordination mechanisms, 6
Nawrocki, Josef (USPD representative), 34 normal consumer (rationing category), 3
Nazi Party, see National Socialists normalization, 3–4, 16, 120, 134,
neighbors, 12, 52, 64, 77, 210–211 159–60, 213
informing on, 80, 83, 102, 106 nouveau riche, 88, 100
neo-feudalism, 29 Nuse, Karl-Heinz (public prosecutor), 43
Netherlands, 59, 83, 89, 90, 174 nylons, see stockings
networks, 4, 8–9, 11, 47–60
Gesundbrunner, 47, 51–3, 57, 60,
75–8, 156 o-space, 139–40
in Kiez, 86–8 Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, 89
local, 84 Oberreuter, Ludwig, 152
vs. markets, 47 occasional, private traders, 57–8, 66, 83,
protagonists of, 17 177, 192–3
of Rebbien, 1, 48–55, 69, 76 occupied territories, 89–90, 92, 99, 167
 Index ● 285

occupying soldiers, 120, 147, 173–4, 211, headquarters of, 97, 148
249n111 informer letters to, 102, 104, 106
as financially secure, 166 interrogation of Stock by, 75
French soldiers, 120, 162, 176, 189–90 interrogation of Tomczak by, 73
role of, 10–11, 17, 159 investigation of Wiggers by, 55
see also Allies; American soldiers; British investigations by, 57, 60, 63, 71, 78,
soldiers; Soviet soldiers 83–4
Olympic Games, 38–9, 234n143, occupying soldiers and, 154, 162
235n170 priorities of, 85
Oranienburger Strasse, 83, 234n152 on Rebbien case, 48–9, 51–2, 77
Order 111, 189 on street trading, 33
Oshima (ambassador from Japan), 112 street trading and, 34
Osthafen, 128 trading in front of, 122
Ostrowo, Poland, 74 on trading practices, 187
outlaws, 27 as understaffed, 148, 228n22
violence by, 170
p-space, 140 Weese and, 59–60
Pankow (district), 176 see also arrests; confiscation; raids
Paris, France, 107 police reports, 48, 80–1, 96, 128–9, 135
Parmentier, Robert (Belgian worker), 103 on Grothge, 171
partnership markets, 68–9, 230n52 on prostitution, 92
patronage networks, 77 on Scheffler, 106
Paul, Emilie (washerwoman), 107 on Walter, 105
peddlers, 32 Polish markets, 3, 155, 175
Penal Code for Consumer Regulations, 3, political exchanges, 7
14, 118 Porter, Michael, 129
pensions, 24, 191 Posadowsky, Count (DNVP
performance, 143–4, 157 representative), 25
perfume, 104 possessions vs. goods, 8
personal relationships, 4, 65, 68 Potsdamer Platz (district), 36, 85, 131,
see also family; sexual relationships 133, 141–2
Petzke (city councillor), 42 poverty, 16, 24, 60, 166–7, 171, 180
Pfundt, Gerda, 162–3, 167 see also lower class
physical power, 10, 136 Power of Money (Marx), 93
Pia (prostitute), 69 Prague, Czechoslovakia, 74, 90, 104
planned economy, 16, 17, 189, 200, 204, precious metals, 152
206 Prenzlauer Berg (district), 75, 79, 84, 88,
Poelzig, Hans, 86 128, 132
Poland, 41, 89 price comparison lists, 204
Krakow, 90 price formation, 195–7, 204, 212
Ostrowo, 74 price freezes, 9, 204, 211
police, 98, 112–13, 176, 231n94 price gouging, 12, 35, 39, 150, 201,
bartering by, 123, 158 227n129
car crashes and, 238n237 price monitoring, 148, 150, 198
on city morality, 88 prices, 3, 12, 38, 198
cleansing of Berlin by, 39 bookkeeping and, 98
eavesdropping by, 82 class status and, 167
economic order and, 205 dissemination of, 83
effectiveness of, 150–1 extortionate, 33
on Frank, 105 of goods on black market, 48, 66
Gestapo, 49, 100, 145, 228n22 haggling over, 31, 66, 79, 137, 211
286 ● Index

prices—continued public spaces, 36, 147, 159–60, 185

monitoring of, 82 counter, 65
negotiation of, 8, 73 restaurants and bars as, 81–2
at swap markets, 152 trading in, 75–6, 121–2, 126
Prinzenallee Street, 77 see also public black markets; urban
prison terms, 19, 51, 149, 171, 219n3 space
under War Economy Regulations, 43 public squares, 131, 156, 196, 211–12
private detectives, 72 trading in, 5, 13, 15, 75, 122
professionalization, 17, 47, 57–8, 90, 98 public transportation, 112, 130–3
of large brokers, 59, 229n45 bartering at, 76, 85, 153
profit differentials, 201 destruction of, 112, 232n97
Prohibition (United States), 147 difficulties with, 241n27
promiscuity, 107 metro stations, 131–2, 158
propaganda, 104, 149, 197, 222n39 mobility and, 240n13
Army Propaganda Division, 121–2 subway stations, 135
on Black Channel, 214 see also train stations
of Führer myth, 29–30 pubs, 31
on housing, 79 Pynchon, Thomas, 1
increase in rations as, 41
of National Socialists, 31, 100, 157 quality standards, 7, 66–7, 178
prosperity, 209
prostitution, 10, 15–16, 27–8, 39 racism, 20, 23, 68, 101
as barter, 67–9, 90–3 see also anti-Semitism
in Born’s poem, 168 radio programs, 149, 150–2, 168–9,
brothels, 39, 69, 90–3, 97–8 195–200, 228n22
foreign men and, 123 Erhard on, 205, 210
male, 236n190 Regulations in Radio Use, 80
monitored girls, 235n175 Sender Berlin, 146, 150, 152
at public black markets, 142 radios, 107, 113, 151
public opinion on, 10–11, 101, Radix-Matrix (Libeskind), 111
235n170 Raedisch, Margot (black market
solicitation of, 142 participant), 162–3
see also sexual relationships; women raids, 128, 133–6, 139, 149–51, 154
Prussia, 26, 32 on Kurfürstendamm, 176
public black markets, 126–45, 211 on Reichtag market, 160–1
entering, 137–9 schlendern and, 142
in front of currency exchange offices, on street trading, 34
191 on underworld, 87
goods available at, 173–9 railways, 131
locations of, 128–30, 128–33 rape, 10, 158–61
normal customers at, 166–73 Rasno Export, 154–6
norms of, 134–45 ration cards, 9, 40–1, 44, 80, 170, 196
occupying soldiers at, 163–4 on black market, 55, 99, 103, 130
performance at, 143–4 children’s, 251n154
psychological experience of, 139–42 critique of, 199
public opinion on, 121–2 for food, 41
as social events, 160–1, 248n106 for furniture, 115
see also public spaces; public squares; as identification, 191
street trading for meat, 123
public health, 38, 82, 86, 125, 167–8 vs. money, 94–6
Public Opinion Research Office, 189, 191 Rationing Card Office, 70, 96
 Index ● 287

rationing system, 3, 7–8, 14, 40–2 Reports on the Mood of the Population,
in 1934, 31 121
Aschinger and, 234n143 restaurants, 32, 62–3, 69, 75, 81–3,
black market and, 21 229n29
class and, 167 construction of, 174
consumption and, 12 drug dealing at, 87
currency reform and, 202 in Gesundbrunner network, 78
end of, 187 Hanke and Von Vahl at, 70
HO shops and, 153 high prices in, 197
Japanese ambassador on, 112 illegal trading in, 102, 122, 127–8,
justice of, 19–20 130, 150
shortages and, 67, 70 in metro stations, 132
space use and, 89 political discussion in, 203
as supply-reduction policy, 227n117 vs.public black markets, 137
war economy and, 100 as substitute public spheres, 231n94
during WWI, 23, 40 surveillance of, 171–2
raw material shortages, 40, 200, 226n104 women’s use of, 93
real estate speculators, 88 retail stores, 5, 31–41, 59, 97
rearmament economy, 19 bartering in, 31, 83, 196
rearmament vs. consumer goods, 31, 40 in city center, 85
decentralization of, 37–8
Rebbien, Martha (black marketeer), 1–2,
making contacts in, 62
5, 17, 97, 228n22
in metro stations, 132
air raids and, 115, 125
vs. public black markets, 143
anticipation of, 42
as rationing profiteers, 210
bookkeeping by, 98
rationing system at, 40
contacts of, 51–5, 99
return to, 200
disappearance of, 127–8 seller’s market in, 41
investigation of, 47–51 street trading and, 35–6, 227n110
network of, 60, 69, 76, 90 revolutionary era, 23
vs. other female participants, 61–2 Rhineland capitalism, 202, 212
seed money of, 236n193 rings, 59, 121, 123, 129, 138, 229n29
as small broker, 58–9 wedding rings, 55–6
social control of, 80 riots of 1923, 24
space used by, 76–8, 81 Roaring Twenties, 19, 106
as waitress, 102 Roeder (WP representative), 35
vs. WWI marketeers, 19 role relationships, 65
red Moloch, 38 roommates, 81
regulated economy, 195 Rosentaler Platz, 75, 170
Regulation for the Temporary r-space, 140–1
Safeguarding of the Vital Needs of Rubelmaxe (location), 170
the German People, 44 Ruegenberg, Hille (black market
Regulations against Crimes Harmful to participant), 166–7
the Nation, 45 Ruhr, 241n27, 250n148
Regulations of Radio Use, 80
Reheated Potatoes (Müller-Förster), 100 sales talk, 54
Reichsmarks, 9, 48, 94–8, 152, 155 salt, 38
Reichstag, 2, 129, 131, 133–4, 160–1 samples, 59
Reinickendorf (district), 170–1 Savo, Vladimir (black market participant),
reparations, 10, 25–6, 28, 223n41 55
Young Plan, 28 Saxony, 155
288 ● Index

S-Bahn ring, 128, 192 in consumption metropolis, 32–3

Scheffler, Max (black market participant), department stores, 5, 27–8, 31–4, 37,
106–7, 164, 238n237 121, 143
Scheunenviertel, 24, 86, 87, 93 in neighborhoods, 89
public black markets at, 128, 133 schlendern and, 142
Schieber (black market trader), 13–15, 24, see also consumer society; retail stores
100–1 shopping rituals, 4, 31, 37, 66, 137
Schirmer (restaurant), 82 shortages, 8, 12, 70, 147, 156
Schleichhandel (illicit trade), 33 black markets and, 24, 67
schlendern (to loiter), 142 during currency reform, 200
Schlesische Strasse, 130 in housing, 79
Schlettow, Peter-Sven (radio reporter), 150 in marriage market, 68
Schlüterstrasse, 175 rationing and, 41
Schöneberg (district), 37, 82–4, 87–8, during turnip winter, 100
113, 133 Sicherheitsdienst (SD), 112, 121, 123
hustling near, 102, 105 Silesian Gate (location), 93, 128, 130,
Schöneberger City Hall, 82 170
Schönehauser Allee train station, 132 Simmel, Georg, 11, 93–4
Schönhauser district, 33 situational territories, 139
Schroeder, Louise (mayor), 167–8, 189 skepticism, 113
Schumann (Gierschner’s supervisor), 74 slaughterhouses, 36
Schumpeter, Joseph, 224n53 smuggling, 35, 44, 58, 103, 107, 158
Schwarz, Anita (black market participant), soap, 177, 188, 191
79–80 sociability, 16
Schwarzarbeit (illegal employment), 201 social climbers, 60
second-hand market, 62 nouveau riche, 88, 100
Seelenbinder, Werner, 230n47 social control, 52, 54, 78, 80, 91
segmented market structure, 13 Social Democrats (SPD), 23, 25, 34, 40,
Seidemann, Franz (black market 200, 206
participant), 228n22 social integration, 38, 51, 67, 73, 182
self-employment, 60–3, 171 Socialist Unity Party (SED), 153, 200
semi-professional black market social market economy, 17, 189, 194,
participants, 58 201–8
semi-public spaces, 55, 62, 81 social mobilization, 91, 214
Sender Berlin, 146, 150, 152 social relationships, 7, 17, 116, 126, 213
sexual assaults, 91, 142 changes in, 9, 47, 63–5, 74–5, 210–211
rape, 10, 158–61 in National Socialism, 30–1
sexual relationships, 11, 185, 241n30 social services, 24
as bartering, 67, 69–71 Soldiers, see Allies; American soldiers;
deviant, 107 British soldiers; military; occupying
diseases from, 91, 235n175 soldiers; Soviet soldiers
love relationships, 64–5, 68–72, 106, Sombart, Werner, 25
159, 210 SOPADE, see Social Democrats
see also prostitution Soviet soldiers, 121, 129, 137, 142, 158
shadow world, 64–5 on black market, 16, 244n2
shoes, 99, 104, 121, 163, 174, cigarettes and, 182
191 improvements to Berlin by, 167
second-hand, 152 occupation by, 26, 154, 161, 188
shopping, 37–8, 66 personalities of, 162–4
vs. allocation, 96 prisoners-of-war, 112
at Central Market Halls, 125 radio station of, 195
 Index ● 289

sexual relationships with, 11 Strassburger (Hanke’s bartering partner),

Soviet Military Administration, 175, 75
189 street battles, 38
Soviet Union, 89, 147, 190 street trading, 2, 12, 15, 32–9, 75
Moscow, 154–5, 161 vs. legal shopping, 125
Soviet zone, 147, 150, 154, 156, 174, 176 rise of, 111
tobacco in, 180 wild, 33, 39, 191
Sozialdemokrat, 202 see also public black markets; public
Space, see public spaces; urban space spaces
Spandau (district), 36, 75, 83, 87–8, 128, strolling, 120
133 Strucksberg (president of Appeals Court),
special allocations, 96–7, 187, 241n27 146–7
see also air raids Sturmabteilung (SA), 39
special courts, 44, 48–9, 58, 96 suburbs, 76–7
Berlin Special Court, 19, 101, 145–6, subway stations, 135
170, 219n3 Süddeutsche Zeitung (newspaper), 157
specialization of brokers, 59 sugar, 38, 129
speculation, 23–4, 88, 106–7, 198–200, suits, 74, 104, 108, 121, 152
214 Sundays, 135
Speer, Albert (building inspector), 119, supervisors, 9, 64, 67, 70, 74–5
226n104 supply and demand, 57, 99, 158, 203, 212
Spiegel (newspaper), 174 black markets and, 41
Spiekermann, Uwe, 37 market value and, 8, 68
spirit of 1914, 22 at swap markets, 152
Spittelmarkt, 124 supply oligopoly, 66–7, 210
spiv (term), 13–14 surveillance, 171–2
splurging, 207 of Kurfürstendamm, 176
Spoerer, Mark, 219n3–4 of traffic offenders, 238n237
Spree River, 84 surveillance culture, 40, 49, 65, 81–2,
Staaken (location), 91 101–4
Stalingrad, 3, 113 Hitler salute and, 80
Stange, Lieselotte (Scheffler’s girlfriend), swap markets, 128, 133, 135, 149, 151–3
106 Sweden, 174
Starbatty, Joachim (economist), 201–2 Swinemünde, Poland, 55
Steglitz (location), 37 Swinemünderstrasse, 51, 77, 125
Steinriede (prosecutor), 19 Switzerland, 72, 174, 176
stereotypes, 10, 13, 23, 157 sympathy, 10
anti-Semitic, 88, 222n31 systematizing techniques, 59
of hustlers, 60, 73, 100–8
of women, 123 Tagesspiegel (newspaper), 87–8, 200, 203
Sternhagen, Eduard (automobile targeted action, 54
upholsterer), 113 Tauentzienstrasse, 70
Stettin, 34, 78, 155 taxes, 36, 173, 195
Stiftung Warentest (Foundation for Telegraf, 158, 165, 169–70, 174, 200
Product Testing), 209 on cigarettes, 180–1
Stock, Otto (black market participant), 75 telephones, 77, 98, 232n98
stockbrokers, 106–7 textiles, 62, 68, 85, 99, 174
stock exchanges, 201, 212 fabric, 70, 99, 145
black stock exchange, 175, 211–12 Western currency and, 191
stockings, 67, 82–3, 121, 129, 152, 165 see also clothing
stores, see department stores; retail stores theft, 10, 117–18, 159
290 ● Index

thick description, 5 between Calic and Savo, 55

Thieß, Magda (black market participant), between colleagues, 74
139 in currencies, 191
Third Reich, see National Socialists in currency, 95
Thompson, Edward P., 219n53 establishing, 49, 51–2, 64
Thornton, Mark, 219n4 in Führer myth, 29–30
thrift, 12 during inflation, 25
Tiergarten, 84, 87, 112, 160 in just distribution, 15
public black markets in, 128–9, 131, languages of, 30
133, 162–3, 244n2 in markets, 143–4
Tietz (department store), 34 between neighbors, 77
Times (newspaper), 131 in police, 151
Timm, Annette, 90–1 of the population, 42
Tobacco, see cigarettes and tobacco in quality, 178–9
toiletries, 188 in social market economy, 207
Tokyo, Japan, 112 between Wiggers and Mielke, 56
tomatoes, 133 trust games, 246n48
Tomczak, Martha (black market turnip winter (1916/17), 100
participant), 73
total social fact, 6 Uhlandstrasse, 104
tourism, 131 Ukraine, 158
toys, 118 Ulbricht, Walter (SED leader), 200
Trade and Commerce Branch, 155–6 underground life, 119
Trade and Safety Supervision Service, 49, see also bunkers
148, 150 underground stations, 131
trade inspection service, 62–3, 81, 83, 86, unemployment, 24, 33–4, 172
91–2, 229n26 United States, 3, 49, 157–8, 174–5, 181
Commission for Prohibiting Commerce prohibition in, 147
and, 153 see also air raids; Allies; American
on confiscated goods, 97 soldiers
holiday for, 241n31 unregulated market economies, 16
trade unions, 196, 198, 203–4 Unter den Linden (district), 32, 36, 85,
tradesmen, 99 160–1
traffic problems, 34–5 Upper Tree Bridge, 128, 130
train stations, 118, 121, 170, 244n81 urban development, 38
Gesundbrunner, 47, 51–3, 57, 60, urbanization, 28
75–8, 156 urban spaces, 65, 75–86, 119–20, 123–4
Potsdamer Platz, 85 city center, 84–5
Schönehauser Allee, 132 ethnic, 88
Zoologischer Garten, 87, 131 reappropriation of, 159
transnational and transregional uses of, 47, 76
distribution, 9, 59, 89, 174–5 see also metropolis
treason, 26, 67, 122 urban studies, 129
Treaty of Versailles, 20, 24–6, 29 utility maximization, 6–7
Treptow (district), 37, 130
Tribüne, 175 Vahl, Edgar von (black market
Tributfrieden (tributary peace), 29 participant), 70–1
Trümmerzeit discourse, 134 Varnhagenstrasse, 174
trust, 7–8, 10–13, 18, 186 Veronika Thank-You, 11
body control and, 114 veterans, 166
in brothels, 91 victimization, 29, 165–6, 211
 Index ● 291

Vienna, Austria, 55, 104 Wedding (district), 36, 79, 84, 88, 128,
violence, 10, 119, 142, 154, 162 169
during arrest, 176 wedding rings, 55–6
by police, 170 weddings, 95, 236n192
vital needs, 43–4 weekly markets, 36–7, 75, 132, 134
Völkischer Beobachter (Nazi newspaper), Weese, Hermann (broker), 59, 90
21, 29 Wehrmacht, see military
Volksfremde (alien elements), 20 Weilbier, Rudolf (editor), 174
Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community), Weimar Republic, 20–5, 28–30, 86, 102,
6–7, 14–15, 39, 88, 123 248n106
in democratic state, 199 critics of, 220n11
hustlers and, 48, 100, 211 vs. Federal Republic, 243n63
vs. individualism, 107–9, 123 propaganda of, 222n39
vs. outsiders, 21, 73 prostitution during, 235n175
rationing program and, 19–20 street trading in, 34
rise of Nazi Party and, 22 Weinmeister Street, 35
surveillance by, 40, 65 Weissenberg, Leo (black market
traffic offenders and, 238n237 participant), 145
Volksgenossen (national comrades), 29, 70, welfare services, 24
80, 92, 107–8, 113 Wenzel, Harald, 30
Volksgerichtshof, 230n47 Wernicke (police trainee), 171
Volksschädlinge (human “pest” market Wertheim (department store), 34
participants), 13–14, 21 Wessel, Horst, 86
Vorwärts (newspaper), 23, 28 Westernization, 157
Westmarks, 191–2, 200
wage freezes, 9, 198 White, Harrison, 6
Wagner (police officer), 150 White, Osmar (war reporter), 167
Wagner, Lance Corporal (black market wholesalers, 36
participant), 105 whore Babylon, 27
waiters and waitresses, 82–3, 210 widows, 172
in Gesundbrunner network, 52, 58, 63 Wiggers, Friedrich (trading broker), 52–6,
Rebbien, 19, 48, 62 58–9, 69, 98
walking distance, 77 wild street trading, 33, 39, 191
Walter & Liebe (perfume company), 104 Wilder, Billy (director), 67
Walter, Ulrich (business owner), 104–5, Wildt, Michael, 207, 255n60
237n225 Wilhelmplatz, 125
War Damages Office, 241n25 Wilhelmsruh (location), 91
war economy, 40, 43, 61, 96, 198–9 Wilhelmstrasse, 85, 242n54
War Economy Regulations, 19, 43–5 Wilmersdorf (district), 84, 87–8, 128, 176
Major Crimes against, 3, 14–15, 105 Winsstrasse, 75
vs. Nazi regulations, 145–6 Wirth, Gustav (chancellor), 25
Offenses against, 60, 73, 86, 100–2, Wirtschaftspartei (WP), 35
145, 231n94 Wirtschaftszeitung (newspaper), 181
war guilt, 25–6 Wissel, Arthur (black market participant),
warm rooms, 132 74
Warsaw, Poland, 90 Wittenbergplatz, 75, 87
Warthemann (city councilman), 35 Woller, Hans, 2–3
watches, 121, 129, 138, 163, 173, 179 women, 36
weapons, 99, 173 in black markets, 61–3, 69, 122–3
Weber, Adolf, 25 in bourgeois apartments, 78
Weber, Max, 7, 72–4 as breadwinners, 166–7
292 ● Index

women—continued exchange sites before and after, 132–3

cigarette consumption by, 164–5, hustlers in, 211
185–6 mistrust and, 8
commodification for, 27–8 rationing system in, 23
foreign, 103 reminders of, 100–1
Fräulein, 165 worldliness, 106
housewives, 61 Wuchergerichte (extortion courts), 33
as luxuries, 107 Wuchergeschäft (profiteering), 33
in luxury, 195
male gaze, 28 xenophobia, 10
new, 67–8, 185
at restaurants, 93
seduction of, 107–8 Young Plan, 28
sexual assault, 10, 91, 142, 158–61 youth, 117–18, 182, 242n38
strolling by, 120–1 Yugoslavians, 175
unemployed, 172–3
widows, 172 Zabel, Hanna (Rebbien’s landlady), 51, 80
see also gender roles; prostitution; sexual Zehlendorf (district), 70, 87, 138
relationships Zeisberger, Heinz (black market
working class, 28, 77–9, 87, 121, 172, 204 participant), 99
lower class, 36, 63, 93, 169, 173 Zeitgeist, 32
workplaces, 5, 31 zero hour, 213
see also colleagues Zhukov, Georgy (Red Army General), 162
World War I, 2–3, 5, 15–17, 32–3 Zimmermann, Frank (SPD
adequate provisions and, 40 representative), 34–5
black markets during, 19–21, 42–3, Zoologischer Garten, 85, 87, 114, 119,
194 131, 175