Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and HeardMcAuley, Mary Ethel
History
Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and Heard
McAuley, Mary Ethel
World War, 1914-1918 -- Germany
When I first came to Germany in October, 1915, there was only one card,
and that was the bread card. This card was divided off in sections with
the numbers 25, 50 and 100 grams. At that time the whole card was 2100
grams for each person each week. Later it was reduced to 1900 grams,
and on the first of May, 1917, to 1600 grams. This last reduction was
a courageous thing for the bread commission to do at this time--one of
the worst months of the year before the green vegetables come in--and
in Berlin a couple of thousand workers from a factory gathered on Unter
den Linden. They stayed two hours, broke two windows, and then went
home pacified at a pound of meat a week more and more wages.
On the bread card it takes a 50 gram section to buy a good-sized roll,
a whole card to buy a big loaf of black bread, and half a card to buy
a small loaf of bread. After the bread card was reduced no buns were
allowed to be made in Berlin, although in the other cities they have
them. Instead, they had what they called white bread, but it was almost
as black as the black bread, and when buying one had to ask, "Is this
white or black bread?" I thought that the bread was very good, and it
was of a much superior quality to what I got in Sweden where the bread
card is of a less number of grams than in Germany. At the bottom of the
German bread card is the flour ticket, and it allows one the choice of
either 250 grams of flour or 400 grams of bread. I came out very well
on my bread card, for even when I lived in a boarding-house I kept my
card myself and I took my bread to the table with me. When people are
invited to a meal they always take their bread and butter with them.
[Illustration: _A Store in Charlottenburg, a Suburb of Berlin._]
After the bread card the next food restriction was the two meatless and
fatless days a week. On Tuesday and Friday no butcher was allowed to
sell meat, and no restaurants or boarding-houses were allowed to serve
meat. Monday and Thursday were the fatless days. The butchers were
not allowed to sell fat, and the restaurants were not allowed to cook
anything in grease. On Wednesday no pork was allowed to be sold.
Until after Christmas there were no other cards, but along in December
the butter began to be scarce, and the stores would sell only a half
pound to each person, and the people had to stand in line to get that
half pound. These butter lines were controlled by the police, and it
was no joke standing out in the cold to get a half pound of butter.
But after Christmas came in rapid succession the butter card, the meat
card, the milk card, the egg card, the soap card and the grocery card.
These cards have regulated everything and have stopped the standing in
line for articles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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