The terms of the 1921 Reparation Act more than bankrupted the German federal treasury; it ensured the end to any hopes for a stable commercial life in the struggling Republic. Its currency would eventually become worthless. But the scope of the monetary freefall was not clear at first. Seven marks bought one American dollar in January 1921, then the rate of exchange tumbled to 550/1 in August. In the summer of 1922, a mere dollar traded for 7,500 German marks. By January 1923, the official rate was 22,400/1, then in May the mark slid further to 54,300 per dollar. An all-time low was reached on October 12, 1923 when the once-vaunted German note plummeted to the staggering equation of 4.2 billion marks to the dollar.
Germans on fixed incomes and pensioners lost everything in those years. Once again wartime barter was a favored means of livelihood. Religious charities, like the Catholic Relief and the comically American Salvation Army, fanned out across Berlin. Crank indigenous cults also dished out thin soup with apocalyptic homilies.
Most urban employees were paid by the day and scurried to exchange-banks in the morning before the value of their salaries declined by half in the late afternoon. German towns issued emergency paper scrip for its bewildered citizens; by the bitter fall of 1923, the nationwide legal tender was valued chiefly as a combustible for apartment furnaces. French newsreel-cameramen captured mustached Burgers hauling wheelbarrows of marks to pay taxes or purchase bread while their grandchildren built toy fortresses in alleyways, using stacks of the discarded bills as architectural blocks.
The Great Inflation complicated Berlin’s sexual folkways but did not really alter them. The so-called moral collapse had already occurred. Erotic amusements, prostitution, and narcotics were all readily available before the inflationary madness. But now the purveyors of commercial sex and other decadent offerings had a more acute economic incentive. Berlin was suddenly inundated with hard-currency tourists, looking for Jazz Age bargains. Swedes, Dutch, French, and detested hordes of Turks and Japanese flocked to the open city. Their modest assets in the form of kronen, guilders, francs, lira, and yen metamorphosed the plucky foreigners into multimillionaires the moment they disembarked at the Stettiner Bahnhof.
In postwar Paris, a traveler could engage the services of a streetwalker for five or six dollars; but during the Inflation in Berlin, five dollars could buy a month’s worth of carnal delights. The most exquisite blowjob or kinky dalliance with a 15-year-old never cost more than 30 cents, or 65 million 1923 marks. The widows of famous Wehrmacht generals rented their bodies and bedrooms for a few precious kronen. Even upright bourgeois couples exhibited themselves in marital embrace for a solid hour if anyone was interested in that kind of theatre.
Ilya Ehrenburg, the Russian writer, remembered going to a flat in a respectable neighborhood during the Inflation and discussing Dostoyevsky with the excited middle-class residents. After a glassful of lemonade mixed with spirits, the staid Berliners brought out their young, nubile daughters, who promptly executed a striptease before the shocked eyes of their celebrated guest. For American money, the mother proposed to the Communist ideologue, there was much more to be had that evening.
The Nachtlokals in particular teemed with non-German speaking thrill-seekers. For the newest clientele, humiliation and sexual degradation served as an equal attractant as the old Naked Dance revue itself. In one Lokal favored by Dutch vacationers, businessmen and their wives tossed foreign coins to any female German in attendance willing to strip completely nude. Outside the tourist hotels and downtown pensions, knowing gigolos and pretty boys, dolled up in rouge and mascara like wax mannequins, displayed their androgynous wares. To the merry-making Ausländer, Berlin was conducting a clearance sale in human flesh. Sex was everywhere and obtainable on the cheap. The Kaiser’s Germany, in the minds of many, was finally repaying its war debts.
On November 20th, 1923, the financial dementia lifted. The administration in Weimar introduced a new currency, the Rentenmark, which overnight stabilized the internal economy and Germany’s standing in the international marketplace. Worth about 20 cents, or one trillion marks, the Rentenmark was itself replaced by the Reichsmark in 1924. But confidence in Weimar governance, at least until 1929, was restored. The glorious period known as Germany’s “Golden Twenties” catapulted into history with champagne toasts and an intoxicating roar.■
CITY OF WHORES
Sex is the business of the town.
There were men dressed as women, women dressed as men or little school-girls, women in boots with whips (boots and whips in different colors, shapes, and sizes, promising different passive or active divertissements). […] Young, well-washed, and pretty females were abundantly available. They could be had for the asking, sometimes without asking at all, often for the mere price of a dinner or a bunch of flowers: shopgirls, secretaries, White Russian refugees, nice girls from decayed good families. Some of them pathetically wept on the rumpled bed after making love when they accepted money.
The end of the Great Inflation did not stanch the perv invasion did not stanch the perv invasion of Berlin. In fact, fascination with the amoral city intensified as soon as the Reichsmark proved a stable currency. Weimar Berlin, while shedding the scintilla of menace and social volatility, retained its transcendent reputation as Europe’s newest illicit playground. Along with cruises down the Rhine and Munich’s Oktoberfest, the Grieben guidebooks added Berlin’s Friedrichstadt at midnight as a must-see tourist adventure.
The very first thing foreigners noticed in Berlin were whores, thousands of tarted-up females on the streets, in hotel lobbies, and seated at cafés and clubs. How many Beinls made their living in Berlin during the Golden Twenties was impossible to calculate. The estimates ranged from a low of 5,000 to the oft-published figure of 120,000 (which didn’t include the 35,000 male prostitutes). It all depended on one’s definition of the term. Berlin was like no other European city when it came to the sheer magnitude of sexual possibility.
BOOT-GIRLS—Identified by their furs and calf-length, Wilhelmian-era, black-leather boots or (after 1926) in shiny, patent leather versions. Lacquered gold, cobalt blue, brick, “poisonous” green, or maroon, the iridescent footwear indicated the Girl’s specialty. Freelance Dominas, they attracted frugal provincial German Suitors, who were led to nearby pensions. Estimated numbers (in 1930): 300-350.
GRASSHOPPERS—Lowly streetwalkers without “room money,” who serviced men in the corners of the Tiergarten and around Bülowplatz. [Ironic variant name: FRESH-AIR WOMEN.] Estimated numbers: 600.