'December snow.' Hand-painted watercolor calendar for December 1917 by Schima Martos. Particulates from a smoking kerosene lamp overspread the days of December, and are labeled 'December höra,' 'December snow.' The first five days or nights of the month show a couple at, sitting down to, or rising from a lamp-lit table. The rest of the month the nights are dark, other than four in which the quarter of the moon shows through a window, or Christmas, when the couple stands in the light of a Christmas tree.
December höraDecember snow2½ liter petroleum.
"It is Monday, but the atmosphere is that of Sunday. German weekdays now are all like Sunday. A little group of people is pressed against a big glass window. Here the latest war bulletins are posted. People always assemble at two spots — war bulletins and food shops. It is uncanny to see tragic eyes gazing into pastry shops and fruit stores. Meat is not displayed. I wondered why the butter and cheese stores are ignored. I tried gazing in one. They put up such a good appearance with their shining tinfoil packages. Then I discovered the reason. The packages are fake. Each holds a block of wood. There is no butter or cheese in window or shop. Twice a week a tiny supply arrives to be distributed to the bearers of cards, that is all."
American Madeleine Doty writing of street life — 'thin streams of people' — in Berlin on Monday, August 14, 1916. In her luxury hotel she can still get coffee, a little milk, and rolls, but no butter. Her 'delicious jam' is 'last year's jam. This year's has little sugar.' Her words presage the musical Cabaret: 'War and poverty exist outside, but here all is comfort.'
Short Rations: an American Woman in Germany 1915-1916 by Madeleine Z. Doty, pp. 118-119, copyright © 1917, by The Century Co., publisher: A. L. Burt Company, publication date: 1917
1916-08-14, 1916, August, Berlin, food, food rationing, war news, war bulletin, rationing
