Witness to the German Revolution Read Online Free
Author: Victor Serge
Tags: History, Germany, 20th Century, Europe, Political Science, Political Ideologies, Modern, Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, Former Soviet Republics
and no shirts, but who nonetheless read the papers.
For its part the Dresdner Bank is only paying 200 percent dividends for 1922. Its profit and loss account is closed with a net profit of 18,227,522,795 marks.
Inflation caused by lack of confidence in paper money has obviously swollen all these figures, which, if they were reduced to 1914 proportions, would still be very respectable. Above all, in a land with tubercular children, with the most wretched wages, and where begging and prostitution are very widespread.
Here we have merely set out figures, well known facts that have been published and are unquestioned. They will show you, comrade, what a capitalist society looks like when it is breaking down on the eve of some formidable crisis⦠They explain why the German Communists, the only ones to look reality in the face amid the shipwreck, are using the determined language quoted above while demanding the seizure of the real values 72 of the bourgeoisie.
By mid-July the crisis was leading to polarization of left and right. Hermann Ehrhardt, one of the leaders of the Kapp putsch and involved in the murder of moderate Jewish cabinet minister Rathenau in 1922, had escaped from jail with official complicity. The KPD moved onto the offensive with the call for a national Anti-Fascist Day on July 29.
Reports from Germany
Disturbances at Wroclaw and Frankfurt Correspondance internationale , July 28, 1923
In the course of the last month, the situation in Germany has become more tense to an unimaginable degree. And for a very simple reason: no wage any longer enables you to stay alive. You know in the morning that the dollar will certainly be worth 50,000 marks more by the evening. There is now no brake or limitation on rising prices; the cost of living goes up by the hour, and often by 20 to 30 percent in the course of 24 hours, while the slightest increases in wages and salaries must be negotiated over a week. Housewives are driven crazy and retailers are beginning to be afraid. The population is trying to lay in stocks, foreseeing that âsomethingâ is coming; the shopkeepers are rationing them. Sometimes the insane rise in prices prevents them from restocking their shops. Others, knowing very well that one day they will be looted and strung up, are hiding their stocks and fitting iron bars on their doors.
Eight days ago hunger riots suddenly broke out in Wroclaw, 73 sparked off, it seems, by young fascists who called on the crowd to loot Jewish shops. The police intervened brutally, supported by the reformist trade union leaders.â Order must come first! âThe result: six dead, 15 wounded, 150 proletarians in jail, 750 billion marks of material damage. For the hungry crowd had nonetheless given a good lesson to some vicious grocers.
On July 23, at Frankfurt-am-Main, a large anti-fascist demonstration, organized jointly by the SPD and the KPD, mobilized all the hungry in the city. On the route of the march was the home of the public prosecutor Haas, who ran out with his revolver in his hand to shut the iron gate to his garden. The appearance of this armed bourgeois in the street was enough to unleash the terrible latent anger of thousands of people. In a few moments prosecutor Haas was knocked down, stabbed and his house completely ransacked. Remember the anger in the streets in Paris in 1789 and the fate of those who caused starvation, Foulon and Berthier 74 â¦
Yesterday (July 25) at the Berlin food markets, housewives were queuing up at the stall of a potato seller.âFor there is a spud crisis: you canât find them anywhere, speculators are hiding them. Think about it! Theyâll be worth twice as much tomorrow. The first women to arrive got them at 5,000 marks a pound. Those who arrived half an hour later were already paying 6,000 marks a pound. To those who came last the worthy trader offered his potatoes for 7,000. They nearly beat him up. The municipal policeâin green uniforms
For its part the Dresdner Bank is only paying 200 percent dividends for 1922. Its profit and loss account is closed with a net profit of 18,227,522,795 marks.
Inflation caused by lack of confidence in paper money has obviously swollen all these figures, which, if they were reduced to 1914 proportions, would still be very respectable. Above all, in a land with tubercular children, with the most wretched wages, and where begging and prostitution are very widespread.
Here we have merely set out figures, well known facts that have been published and are unquestioned. They will show you, comrade, what a capitalist society looks like when it is breaking down on the eve of some formidable crisis⦠They explain why the German Communists, the only ones to look reality in the face amid the shipwreck, are using the determined language quoted above while demanding the seizure of the real values 72 of the bourgeoisie.
By mid-July the crisis was leading to polarization of left and right. Hermann Ehrhardt, one of the leaders of the Kapp putsch and involved in the murder of moderate Jewish cabinet minister Rathenau in 1922, had escaped from jail with official complicity. The KPD moved onto the offensive with the call for a national Anti-Fascist Day on July 29.
Reports from Germany
Disturbances at Wroclaw and Frankfurt Correspondance internationale , July 28, 1923
In the course of the last month, the situation in Germany has become more tense to an unimaginable degree. And for a very simple reason: no wage any longer enables you to stay alive. You know in the morning that the dollar will certainly be worth 50,000 marks more by the evening. There is now no brake or limitation on rising prices; the cost of living goes up by the hour, and often by 20 to 30 percent in the course of 24 hours, while the slightest increases in wages and salaries must be negotiated over a week. Housewives are driven crazy and retailers are beginning to be afraid. The population is trying to lay in stocks, foreseeing that âsomethingâ is coming; the shopkeepers are rationing them. Sometimes the insane rise in prices prevents them from restocking their shops. Others, knowing very well that one day they will be looted and strung up, are hiding their stocks and fitting iron bars on their doors.
Eight days ago hunger riots suddenly broke out in Wroclaw, 73 sparked off, it seems, by young fascists who called on the crowd to loot Jewish shops. The police intervened brutally, supported by the reformist trade union leaders.â Order must come first! âThe result: six dead, 15 wounded, 150 proletarians in jail, 750 billion marks of material damage. For the hungry crowd had nonetheless given a good lesson to some vicious grocers.
On July 23, at Frankfurt-am-Main, a large anti-fascist demonstration, organized jointly by the SPD and the KPD, mobilized all the hungry in the city. On the route of the march was the home of the public prosecutor Haas, who ran out with his revolver in his hand to shut the iron gate to his garden. The appearance of this armed bourgeois in the street was enough to unleash the terrible latent anger of thousands of people. In a few moments prosecutor Haas was knocked down, stabbed and his house completely ransacked. Remember the anger in the streets in Paris in 1789 and the fate of those who caused starvation, Foulon and Berthier 74 â¦
Yesterday (July 25) at the Berlin food markets, housewives were queuing up at the stall of a potato seller.âFor there is a spud crisis: you canât find them anywhere, speculators are hiding them. Think about it! Theyâll be worth twice as much tomorrow. The first women to arrive got them at 5,000 marks a pound. Those who arrived half an hour later were already paying 6,000 marks a pound. To those who came last the worthy trader offered his potatoes for 7,000. They nearly beat him up. The municipal policeâin green uniforms
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