REFLECTIONS: Sour Cream

The streets were dark because Hamburg has no coal for street lighting. In front of one house, shabby passers-by gaped up at the brightly lighted windows, listened to tinny dance music, shrill voices and the clink of glasses that drifted out into the summer night.

Inside, a British officer was throwing a party for some of his German friends; he called them “the cream of what is left of German society.” The men in black & white, the bejewelled women in long backless gowns were busy dazzling each other and particularly their British host, with Almanack de Gotha chatter about Prince this, Duke that and their big estates.

Family Seats. Said an ageing count: “I do hope those impossible Poles will see the desirability of at least having us return to manage the agriculture of the district, even if formal ownership, temporarily at least, must be withheld from us.”

An American guest was gauche enough to ask the Iron Chancellor’s youngest grandson, His Excellency Otto von Bismarck, what he did for a living. “Oh,” he said, “I manage my estate” (Friedrichsruh, the family seat near Hamburg).

A handsome German import-export banker who inherited his prosperous business thought currency restrictions silly because they interfered with some of the bigger deals.

British officers at the bar were also irked by currency control. One was setting out next day for a month in Italy. Another was off to Southern France. A third was going shooting in Austria. “Of course,” complained a greying major, “it is hard for us these days without any money. You have seen Attlee’s speech no doubt—but then one must manage as best one can.”

At mention of Attlee’s speech the other British officers pulled wry faces.

“The Government is doing everything the wrong way,” the major went on. “The secret of it is we have got to work. The coal miners have bloody well to be made to work—all this nonsense about an eight-hour day. Churchill would not coddle the miners like that.”

Family Beds. In Hamburg that night, others were also finding it hard to get along without much money. Near the station some Germans, just arrived by the last train, were shambling along between the rubble piles searching for a sheltered place to sleep a few hours. There was only a bunker—a concrete-walled, prisonlike municipal air-raid shelter. The bedraggled transients dug out their identity cards, were suspiciously eyed by a policeman at the door, then were led to their cells.

That night several hundred people slept in the bunker, whole families sprawled out on chairs and benches, grasping their luggage tightly. The British officer’s party was still in progress when the bunker closed its doors for the night.