Witness to the German Revolution (25 page)

So citizens Robert Schmidt, Radbruch and Sollmann are unceremoniously sacked from the Reich government. It would be the right time for the SPD to draw up a balance sheet of its collaboration with the bourgeois parties, which has cost working-class Germany the incredible poverty of recent days, the dollar at one and a half trillion marks, the dictatorship of the generals, the daily murder of workers, some two to three hundred corpses of those who have died of hunger piled up at the feet of Ebert's presidential chair. But in the drab manifesto published in
Vorwärts
on November 4, the SPD blames the Communists for the bloodshed—in Hamburg—in order once more
to reject their proposal for a united front… And without containing a single robust word, this document ends with an appeal to the unity and steadfastness of the party, powerful guarantees of the security of the German republic, the only ground on which the struggle for socialism is possible.

The same issue of
Vorwärts
comments on strange rumors emanating from Munich. On Saturday, November 3, a fresh coup was reported in Bavaria, the removal of the Knilling government by von Kahr—though it had caused so little trouble—and the sending of an ultimatum to Berlin demanding the immediate establishment of a right wing dictatorship. If this did not happen, Bavarian troops would march on the capital. This news is now denied, but in a confused manner, accepted as half or two-thirds true.

The DNVP and the Bavarian minister of justice, Doctor Gürtner, have in fact voted a resolution in this sense, and have, moreover, demanded Ebert's resignation. On the borders of Thuringia, fascist troops continue to mass, not without incidents; several times in the last few days the Thuringian police have been shot at… Hitler, in hysterical speeches, is telling his people to be ready to march on Berlin (Munich, October 31) in order to “raise the old black, white and red flag over the imperial palace.” Ludendorff, who writes leading articles for the
Völkischer Beobachter
, is currently named as one of the leaders called on to direct the coming military operations.

For a long time there has been the greatest confusion as far as information is concerned: there is no serious news item which is not successively announced off the record, then denied, restated, modified and finally confirmed. Lies, false information, the official denial of true facts, and false “off the record statements” are the means used daily and methodically by the mainstream press and by the state to prepare public opinion, to deceive it, mislead it, or surprise it, as the situation requires. The military offensive against Saxony was announced by Stinnes' newspaper eight days
before it officially began. General von Lossow's revolt was kept silent for three days before being made public. Bavaria's categorical refusal to dismiss von Lossow and put the Reichswehr back under the command of Herr Gessler was almost completely ignored. The “denials” made today do not explain why, on Saturday, November 3, Herr Stresemann, after a discussion with the Bavarian ambassador von Preger, hurriedly left the cabinet during a meeting in order to confer with the president of the Republic and the Reichswehr minister.

Fascist Bavaria is strong and armed. The Reich government is weak and disarmed. In Berlin, even von Kahr has the unconditional support of the landowners' German National People's Party and of heavy industry. Either he will dictate his will or he will try to impose it by force. Besides, German fascism is in a dilemma: the fact that it is now fully armed, its political successes, the weakness of the social democracy, repeated promises of a prompt liquidation of the regime born on November 9, 1918, and finally the interests of the capitalist groups which are financing it—but don't intend to finance it indefinitely without visible results—everything is pushing it to take action in order not to be discredited.

In the last days of October, when the attack on the workers' government in Dresden was beginning, other significant rumors were circulating in “informed circles.” There was talk of a reconciliation between von Kahr, Ludendorff and Hitler: it was announced that a Reich government would be proclaimed in Munich… Let's remember this idea at a time when a nationalist campaign is being launched against Ebert “under whose presidency one cannot imagine a national government” according to the
Deutsche Zeitung,
whose sentiments are endorsed by the
Kreuzzeitung
(Gazette of the Cross) and by the landowners'
Deutsche Tageszeitung.

We should take satisfaction in this vigorous clarity of the reactionary offensive. We need even more to shake social democracy
from its unbelievable inertia. On the day when a man like von Kahr finally decides go beyond threats and to take action, it may well be that all the working masses and a good half of the ruined middle classes will stand up against him, led by the party of the revolutionary proletariat.

(A detail, indicative of the impotence of Herr Stresemann and Herr Gessler towards the Bavarians. A decree issued by Herr Gessler, dated October 30 and published after five days delay, has just banned until further notice the
Völkischer Beobachter
on all the territory of the Reich, except Bavaria…)

I would say that the “financial chaos has reached its peak,” but the old cliché would be inaccurate: every day, in the endless realm of bankruptcy, new records are set in order to be broken the following day.

We have, or are on the point of having, in circulation ten different sorts of paper money, of which four apparently have no real value, since the other six are called “real value.”

Who profits from this variety of paper money? It serves only the speculation of financiers, who have all become very questionable.
And at whose expense does this profitable speculation take place? At that of the state and the mass of workers.

The gold loan is the object of scandalous gambling made even easier by the official—and artificial—rate of the dollar on the Berlin Stock Exchange and by the conspicuous ineptitude of the Reichsbank. On the one hand, they have striven to give the gold loan a rate higher than that of the dollar; on the other hand, they haven't been able to satisfy the demands of the public to whom the possession of any foreign currency remains forbidden. The result is a further fall in value of the paper mark—which we suggest should be called the
wages-mark
—scandalous losses for the Reichsbank, scandalous gains for a few profiteers. Here are the details, according to
Vorwärts
:

A shrewd banker has bought 2,000 “German dollars” at the rate of 65 billion marks, that is, for 130 trillion. The Reichsbank delivers the notes to him only after a long delay; it remains understood that the banker should pay the
Goldanleihe
on the day of delivery at the rate of the day when he subscribed. The Reichsbank, in exchange for its 2,000 German dollars, receives in paper marks only the value of 200 dollars. The banker has gained 1,800 dollars; the Reichsbank has lost them. These abuses have been widespread for weeks. There is now talk of remedying the situation by making people pay for the gold loan at the rate of the delivery date… “This scandal,” says the social democratic paper, “goes far beyond that of credits in paper marks…” Worse and worse, isn't it?

But since the gold loan has no real backing, it will be subsequently exchanged for Rentenmarks. The new bank issuing Rentenmarks opens a credit of 900 million for the Reich this year, well below the real needs of the nation. If the 500 million of the gold loan have to be deducted from this credit, what will remain for the state? The gold loan will have brought it nothing but losses; the Rentenmark will just slip through its fingers. The state will
have submitted itself to the financial control of big capitalism without deriving the slightest profit.

Another disastrous aspect of things. The rates quoted on the New York Stock Exchange in some sense regularize those of the black market in Berlin itself. At New York, on November 2, the dollar was quoted at 1,428 billion marks. The same day, in Berlin, the dollar and the gold loan were officially worth 625 billion. On November 3, the dollar was worth 1,219 billion at New York and only 418 billion at Berlin. The unconvertible rate of the paper mark is decreed at the rate of a billion for a gold pfennig. Germany has become the country where the dollar can be bought most cheaply. Will not international speculators take substantial advantage of this in order to siphon off what real values are left in the country?

Prices in Germany are fixed by the rates on the New York Stock Exchange, so that the artificial fall in the dollar, solely profitable to international gamblers, is achieved at the expense of the masses of consumers.

The purchasing power of the gold pfennig has fallen in staggering proportions. In 1914 a rye loaf cost 14 gold pfennigs; on October 31, 1923 it cost 18; likewise, rice has gone from 25 to 32 pfennigs; sauerkraut from 8 to 13; beans, from 20 to 38; beef, from 85 to 142; pork, from 75 to 330; bacon, from 95 to 464; butter, from 125 to 181; sugar, from 25 to 40; fish, from 30 to 90; an egg, from 7 to 19; coal (a hundred bricks of compressed coal) from 100 to 178.5. These figures give us a simplified measure of the cost of living. We should recall these facts, while the representatives of workers and employers are discussing (since October 31), in meetings chaired by the labor minister Brauns, the fixing of wages to gold values. The invariable argument of the employers is that there can be no question of a return to peace-time wages; “current wages
must be in proportion to general impoverishment.” Herr Brauns adds that they could not be paid in real values except “to some extent” and “after some time.”

Last week, on October 31, Berliners paid 64 billion for a pound of smoked sausage, with the dollar at a rate of 65 billion. Meanwhile, at a meeting held in the town hall, the mayor of Berlin said that “more than 300,000 Berlin workers are unemployed.” A report by Frau Weil made known the destitution of twelve thousand orphans sheltered and nourished by the city, which has accommodation equipped to take only 4,000 children. Often up to three abandoned children have to sleep in the same bed…

I met a doctor from a poor area, one of those who, a few months ago, had to go on strike to obtain a very modest salary from the sickness insurance fund. “Since the onset of autumn,” he told me, “we are all seeing a sudden development of illnesses caused by hunger. Scrofula is normal among infants in working-class districts. Dropsy occurs frequently. There has been a reappearance of the ‘hunger sickness' which we saw at the worst times during the war: the flesh swells, goes dull and offers no resistance to the touch. Bone decay, forms of enteritis and all the varieties of tuberculosis in the long run gnaw away the organism which has been enfeebled by starvation. Have you noticed the complexion of faces you see, for example, near the Silesia station?
¹⁶⁷
This greyish, yellowish, discolored hue puts the brand of hunger on people's foreheads. A diet which is inadequate in fat, sugar and meat exhausts all the reserves
of the organism whose capacity for work rapidly diminishes. Are you surprised that these people are slow to awaken to revolutionary consciousness? Remember that their vital energies have been undermined by famine…”

“Do you know what is going on in the schools? A rapid survey, carried out on October 27 in nine school districts of Berlin has recorded the presence in class of 470 children who had not eaten anything all day! The parents warn the teachers: if the child faints, don't be surprised! And then, ‘don't be too hard on her: she's hungry.'”

We arrived at the Alexanderplatz—one of the busiest squares in Berlin; comparable to the Place de la République in Paris—to find a long queue of old men and women, of people of no discernible age, of children with poor little wizened faces. “Look! They're waiting for the soup kitchen.”

I bought a paper for 10 billion and found the new prices: milk, 20 billion for a litre; gas and water, 21 billion for a cubic meter, tram ticket 10 billion; loaf (four pounds), 25 billion… My paper also told me that on the other hand: “Before the war Herr Hugo Stinnes' fortune was already estimated at 100 million gold marks, and like all the big industrialists he was able to multiply it several times during the war. The Montan factories and the electricity works, in which Herr Stinnes possesses the majority of shares, his shipping companies, his coal marketing company at Mülheim and his transatlantic shipping firm in Hamburg are each worth about a hundred million gold marks. To this must be added his involvement in business abroad, in the mining industry, oil shares, banking, shipping, his various possessions in Germany itself: newspapers, printing presses, paper-works, forestry—the whole constituting a fortune which doubtless rises to billions in gold marks and could be expressed in paper marks only by using astronomical figures… Only posterity will know the truth about a
financial power which, exceeding that of the likes of Morgan, Rockefeller, Cecil Rhodes, Harriman, Carnegie, Rothschild, Vanderbilt, has reached legendary proportions and given birth to a sort of myth…”
¹⁶⁸

The death of a people, the end of a culture; what an inexhaustible source of wealth!

Will the suicide of the German republic be consummated for its fifth anniversary? Fearful gatherings of people are arguing passionately outside newsagents' shops. Papers are too dear; people come to read the headlines and what can be seen of the front pages in the shop windows. Then they discuss with their neighbors, creating curious little open-air meetings.