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
One card I forgot to mention is the coal card that will be issued
for the coming winter. There is no scarcity of coal, but there are no
people or cars for delivering. The people will be given three-fourths
as much coal as they formerly consumed.
In times of peace eating in a German restaurant was notoriously cheap,
and one could get a menu of soup, meat, potatoes and dessert for 90
pfennigs, and in Munich for 80 pfennigs. Now these same restaurants
charge 1.75 marks, that is, twice as much; but even then food is
cheaper than in America. Before the war some of the restaurants charged
extra if you did not order anything to drink, but this is now done away
with.
Anything can be bought without a card if you know how to do it. The
government tries in every way to stop this selling, and although
the fine is very heavy for selling _ohne Karte_, it goes on just the
same. We always managed to get things without a card. Our janitress
got coffee for us at 9.25 marks a pound, our vegetable woman gave us
extra potatoes, and we could always get eggs. On the card an egg cost
30 pfennigs and without a card we paid anywhere from 50 pfennigs to 1
mark. The hardest thing to get without a card was sugar, for the food
commission has an iron hand on the sugar, but we got it for 2.50 marks
a pound. On the card it was 30 pfennigs a pound. It is said that butter
could be bought for nine marks a pound without the card, but we never
tried to get it.
The police sees that every one gets his share of food. If a woman holds
a servant girl's rations from her, the girl can report it to the police
and the woman is fined. In a boarding-house when the potatoes are
passed around the landlady tells you whether you can take two or three
potatoes, or one big potato and one small potato. The food conditions
are not always comfortable, but the food commission has the things
divided off so they will last for years.
WHAT WE ATE IN GERMANY.
Reading over the food restrictions, one does not get a very clear
idea of what we really ate in Germany, so I have made out a menu that
was possible in the month of April, 1917. April is, of course, one of
the hardest months of the year because it is just before the green
vegetables come in and the winter supplies are gone. In this month,
however, we could buy canned goods which were forbidden during the
winter months, and each person was allowed two and one-half pounds of
canned goods a week.
The menu as I have written it includes only things which are bought on
a card or without a card, but no restricted food that has been bought
underhand without a card as everybody does. It does not include any
of the expensive articles like chicken, goose, or fresh vegetables
which the better middle class have, and it does not include the canned
vegetables, fruit and meat which all German families have in their
supply cupboard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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