European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Apprenticeship, Inflation

I can’t remember when my father came back home.

When soldiers, who were demobbed, came through Tempelhof,

I always used to run there but I never saw my father with them.

One thing that just belongs to this time: 1923, the inflation.

My sister used to stand in front of the baker’s shop, me at the butcher’s

and we used to wait until my father came back from work and he had a backpack full of money.

Then he used to give us bundles of it and with them we paid for the bread or a 250 g of sausage or a 500 g of meat.

The money was worthless the next day.

During this time many sank into poverty.

A lot of people had paid war bonds

and they became invalid – were not worth anything.

So, whoever had no material goods, lost everything.

1927 I left school.

Then I tried for an apprenticeship.

I didn’t get one, although I had good school reports.

It was in this time, as well,

that the grammar school pupils were older.

There is a difference between the strength of a fourteen year old boy or a seventeen/eighteen year old young man.

I wanted to become a type setter.