The Hamburg Gold Mark, as they say, rolls almost as well as the Soviet rouble, and a lot better than the old Czarist one. It appears that forces unknown are competing over the lumpenproletariat of port cities. Nowhere is the propaganda of left and right more virulent than in Hamburg and Bremen. Odd that these are two cities with a particularly conservative middle class. One might have supposed that looking out every day at so much water would have broadened their intellectual horizons and their sense of the political necessities of the fatherland. But it is in these places that social progress encounters the toughest resistance. The contradictions are unbridgeable. Nationalist propaganda appeals to the irate middle class, which one wouldn’t have thought so absurdly susceptible. Communist propaganda is favoured by the stiff necks of the merely rich middle class. In no German city is there such fierce hatred of the poor. Nowhere is the obstinacy of the propertied classes stronger.

For the time being, the Hamburg Gold Mark has calmed people down. In the long run, though, no unemployed man can take comfort from the fact that his fellow in work can now afford to buy butter. Without the free food he gets in assembly halls he would starve to death. And in these assembly halls, where people used to go to smooch and drink, they are now daubing swastikas and Soviet stars on the grimy walls.

Prager Tagblatt, 6 January 1924

7. Baltic Tour

The “season”—it’s a technical term—has begun very auspiciously on the Baltic coast. Here too, as in watering places the world over, there is early, late and high season. High is just beginning now, in July, late won’t start till the end of August. Both have so many subscribers already that most hotels, villas and B&Bs are booked up. This summer promises to be exceptionally profitable for the leisure industry and the local inhabitants of the Baltic beaches. They deserve it. The summer visitor, who only sees the sea and the coast by sunshine, or at worst, in wretched squalls lasting several days, has of course no notion of the difficulties faced by the locals in autumn, winter and early spring. The Baltic is not always as clement as it is during the “season”. When tourists are a distant twinkle, the coast often plays host to a primal struggle between inhabitants and elements. What these not overly well-off little communities spend a deal of money and patience building, in the way of bridges, beach huts and little wooden towers, can quite easily be destroyed by a storm in the course of one spring night. The first and most important prerequisite for living here is a basic toughness. I have talked to locals, they have told me about the harsh, white, unending winters, winters in which no one goes out of doors, in which the snow buries the buildings, the electricity and gas don’t work, water freezes in the wells, and the onshore gale blows with such merciless force that no living being can stand up to it. Summer means more to the residents than recovery, or getting well or resurrection. In the course of those cruel winters they have learned to be tight-lipped, tough, suspicious, stubborn. Even so, a generous humanity stirs in them, their hospitality is sincere, their expressions simple, their greetings curt but friendly. In our many-faceted, tribal Germany this is one of the most interesting populations.