The women’s cell in the Alexanderplatz police prison is completely overcrowded. When this prison was built, when the cell was finished, the air content of the cell was also painted on the green, iron-bound door: so many cubic meters were written on it, quite enough for one inmate.
It was a long time ago that a second bed had been added; two beds in the cell was normal occupancy even for the oldest officials. But then came inflation. The tide of arrests swelled and swelled. Two more beds were placed on top of the two beds, thus doubling the prison’s occupancy capacity in one fell swoop.
But even that was no longer enough. Now they were crammed randomly into the cells as they arrived day after day in the green police ‘rag collectors’ in an endless procession. In the evening you threw a couple of mattresses and a couple of blankets afterwards; now see how you arrange yourselves! (Hans Fallada, Wolf Among Wolves, 1937)
today
There are wet days just before Christmas. Three homeless people have pitched a tent under the S-Bahn bridge at Alexanderplatz. Quechua brand, keeps you warm. Their languages: Polish, sign language, English words they scribble on paper. One traffic island further on, Felix is sitting on a damp mattress. A companion next door. Leftovers in plastic bowls around them. Everything is relaxed with the Poles.
How it is in Berlin, he cannot say yet. He only came over from Hanover three weeks ago. He had met a woman while scrounging, and there was a seat in the car. Felix, twenty-seven, long dark blond beard, bleached curls, feeling the inflation. At the beginning of the year a pack of toast cost one euro, now it’s one euro and thirty. You notice that when you’re hungry and buy less.
In the early twentieth century, modernism became noticeable at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz – with all its downsides, such as the inflation of 1923.
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Image: Ullstein
economic historian
The turn of the year marks an anniversary. In 1923, the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic reached its peak. Caused by the high expenses for the First World War, it impoverished entire sections of the population. Writer Stefan Zweig was certain that nothing made them more susceptible to Hitler than the experience of devaluation and impoverishment.
“Without an enlarged monetary base, there is no possibility of inflation developing,” says economic historian Heike Knortz, who in a study disproved the thesis that the republic’s initially low unemployment rate was bought with inflation. On the other hand, it is true that price fluctuations were considered temporary and controllable until the murder of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau in June 2022.
“Was anything else going on?” he asks.
“Nothing. No customers. But I must urgently seek a raise.”
“Yet again? You only had one yesterday!”
“Not yesterday. This morning at nine. Lumpy eight thousand marks. Anyway, this morning at nine that was at least something. The new dollar rate has now come out, and instead of a new tie I can only buy a bottle of cheap wine with it.” […] “My God!” Georg sighs. “Where are the nice quiet times of 1922? The dollar went from two hundred and fifty to ten thousand in one year. Not to mention 1921 – it was a meager three hundred percent.” (Erich Maria Remarque, The Black Obelisk, 1956)
