Items related to Vagabonding Through Changing Germany: Travels in a...
Synopsis
Harry A. Franck was a lifelong traveler who set out during his college years to see Europe with only $3.18 in his pocket, working his way across the Atlantic on a cattle boat. He alternated traveling with teaching, publishing numerous travelogues including "A Vagabond Journey Around the World".
After serving as a lieutenant in the cavalry in World War I, Franck was able to travel for several months through hungry post-war Germany. His plainspoken, conversational writing style suited the era, and his command of the language allowed him to pass as a German, listening to the unvarnished commentary of a conquered people.
Excerpt:
When I called on Sudermann at his comfortable residence in the suburb of Grunewald he could not confine his thoughts to drama or literature, or even to the "atrocious" peace terms for more than a sentence or two before he also drifted back to the subject of food
Inside the house, particularly in the kitchen, the family had been reduced to almost as rudimentary a life as the countrymen of Venezuela, so many were the every-day appliances that had been confiscated
On top of all this came a crushing burden of taxation. When all the demands of the government were reckoned up they equaled 40 per cent of the ever-decreasing income.
Hasty visitors to Berlin, well supplied with funds, who spent a few days in the best hotels, often with the right to draw upon the American or Allied commissaries, or with supplies tucked away in their luggage, were wont to report upon their return that the hunger of Germany was "all propaganda."
The efforts of the masses to keep from being crowded over the brink into starvation had given Berlin new customs. Underfed mobs besieged the trains in their attempts to get far enough out into the country to pick up a few vegetables among the peasants.
I wonder if the American at home understands just what military occupation means. Some of our Southerners of the older generation may, but I doubt whether the average man can visualize it.
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