Germany 1921

Pages For this Section

England 1921 - A summer holiday at Staines

Germany 1921

London 1922

London 1923

London 1923, continued

London 1924

London 1924, continued

Early in the year my father decided that he would like to look some of his old friends whom he had known in London before the First World War and who were now living in Hamburg and Berlin. As an afterthought, he decided to take me with him, probably to try and knock some sense into me, a typical first year student of those days. I do not remember much of the Hamburg trip but the Berlin part stands out vividly. especially when I think of the inflation that is besetting us in this country fifty years later. He gave me ?5 per day to spend. I had a suite at the Adlon Hotel on the Unter den Linden, a big Benz car with chauffeur and footman. I ate like a prince and drank all that was good for me and I still could not get rid of my money. We wore waistcoats in those days and periodically throughout the day I did some note sorting into various pockets, to empty the ones with the lowest denominations to the first beggar I saw the street. I remember fifty women outside a factory where their husbands were working, spreading out their aprons to catch their husbands' caps, containing the wages that they had just received, running to the nearest food shops to buy everything they could. if they had left it until the following day, they might only have been able to buy a box of matches. As a student I enjoyed every minute it, if I had to live through it again I should be sick.

In late summer my father's true plan was disclosed. With five 1 Pound notes sewn into the lining of my waistcoat and five ten shilling notes and a return ticket to Berlin in my hand. I was sent back again ? not to enjoy myself but to look after Herr Henschel and his wife three small children. House them, feed them, clothe them, educate them, entertain them and with what was left over, my dear father told me. I could live a riotous life. I was there for a month and I had a jolly good time. though I gave up the Benz and the caviar. Until November 1923, when the Rentenmark was introduced, my father sent Henschel a ten shilling note by registered post every week and he lived like a lord.

This explains one of the reasons for the strong anti-semitic feelings in Germany between the wars. Polish emigres with a hundred U.S. dollars from brother Jan who had emigrated to America many years before, were able to set themselves up in any business they liked, having come over the frontier with no shoes on their feet and sacks on their back. I know of one shoe shop in Berlin, as big as Lilly and Skinner's Emporium in Oxford Street that changed hands for 5 Pounds. Let us pray that it never happens here.

I may not have given the correct impression of how much father and I enjoyed that trip. The recognised expression "burning the candle at both ends" scarcely meets the occasion, because we took a blowtorch to the middle as well. When Mother and the chauffeur met us at Liverpool Street Station early that morning, she was shocked at our appearance, quite naturally and said so in no uncertain terms. Father got over it by explaining that we had had the roughest crossing that he had ever experienced. In half-an-hour we were back home in the routine of a normal English family breakfast, Mother behind the Daily Sketch, Father behind the Times and my sister and I telling each other our secrets by depressing the blade of a table knife and reading the taps in the Morse Code. Apart from Mother's occasional "Stop playing with your knives" there was silence - until Mother screamed "Listen to this!!" She quoted from the weather report on the back page of the Daily Sketch, "Channel Crossing exceptionally smooth." Doghouse for two!!