The spring of 1920 was a rough time for Germany. On 13 March, the night had dipped below freezing and a thin drizzle made being outside a deeply unpleasant experience. And to top it all off, armed soldiers had shown up at major intersections, stopping people on their way to work and cordoning off government buildings. It looked as though the country was about to get its fourth (or fifth) new government in two years, and the grim men with swastikas crudely painted on their helmets did not inspire much confidence. Soon enough, they were moving through the streets handing out leaflets to inform the Berliners of the change in management: Their elected government had fled town. A provisional administration under a senior official named Wolfgang Kapp was taking charge. General von Lüttwitz’ troops were enforcing the law in the capital. Stay quiet, and you, law-abiding citizen, need fear nothing.
The people of Berlin were having none of it.
At the end of a disastrous war, Germany’s people had rid themselves of an emperor, several kings, and the ossified oligarchy that had gone with them. The democracy that was created in the chaotic days of 1919 in Weimar was a compromise that satisfied few. Conservatives hated a system that gave women the vote and everybody freedom of speech while many Socialist revolutionaries felt its protections of private property left the most oppressive aspects of the old order untouched. Few expected it to last long in times of unrest, with Eastern Europe descending into war and the ink on the Treaty of Versailles barely dry. Few people can have been surprised by the coup when it came.
The thing was, these people promising to put things to right were the very same people who had been running things for decades and all but destroyed the country in the process. Life might not have been easy for farm labourers and factory workers before, but their policies had inflicted famine on them while it immiserated the middle class, evaporated savings, and destroyed the stock market, not to mention losing a world war. You can see the impact in every aspect of life, from clothes to furniture, wages, architecture, and cookbooks. In the days of bourgeois complacency before 1914, cookbooks were elaborate, their recipes laden with meat, dairy, eggs, sugar, and spices. They rarely stooped to the food of the poor, and if they did, as the legendary Henriette Davidis in her Pracktisches Kochbuch in 1847, they served it in a rich, flavourful variant. Potato pancakes, a staple of northern Germany, become a genuine treat at her hands:
87 Good Potato Pancakes with Yeast
Ten to twelve raw, grated potatoes are soaked in water for one hour, then pressed out through a cloth. 1/4 Maß of milk is heated with a four-Pfennig-breadroll and 3 onions, and both are stirred into the milk. Then the potatoes are added along with 4 eggs, 2 spoonfuls of yeast, and the required salt. Everything is stirred thoroughly and left to rise. The batter must not be too thin because otherwise the watery parts descend (i.e. separate out), and you must not leave it to rise longer than until you have twice the volume that yo prepared. Yo then begin frying at a fire that is neither too strong nor too weak, because the pancakes dry out too much in the latter case. They are turned twice, and the pan is covered the first time.
88 Fine Potato Pancakes
You grate raw, peeled potatoes, leave them in cold water for 1/2 to 1 hour, then lay them on a cloth to drain, press out the water thoroughly, and add a good amount of eggs whose whites are first beaten to a froth, as much milk as necessary, sour cream, and salt. Stir everything together well and fry small pancakes in butter or lard. They must be served very hot.
Note: The potato flour that collects in the water is not added since it makes the pancakes dense. It is very good for other uses.
89 Potato Pancakes (Reibekuchen)
Large, well-flavoured potatoes are peeled, washed very clean, and grated raw on a metal grater. You add to the grated potatoes 2-3 eggs and 1-2 stirring spoons of thick sour cream for each pancake as well as the necessary salt, and quickly fry large or small pancakes in butter or bacon fat. Serve them for tea as hot as possible.
90 A different way
The grated potatoes are watered well and pressed out through a cloth so the flour is removed. Meanwhile, some white bread is cooked with milk, the pressed-out potatoes mixed with it, and salt and eggs added, also some sour cream if desired which makes the pancakes fluffier and more delicious. The batter must not be stirred too sticky, it must easily drop off the spoon.
It is a long way from here to the received wisdom of Dr. Oetker’s Schulkochbuch’s masterful 1927 edition schooling the future housewives of Germany in the art of frugal, but tasty cookery:
Potato Pancakes (aka Reibekuchen, Puffer)
For 2 1/4 – 2 1/2 kg of potatoes, you reckon 2 tablespoons of salt, 3 eggs, and barely 1/2 l of canola oil (Rüböl) or fat (coconut fat).
The potatoes are grated, mixed with the salt, and fried in the hot fat by spoonfuls. You must never fry the pancakes in too much fat (zu fett backen) or turn them over before they are brown on the bottom side, otherwise they will go soft again.
Anyone adding flour, bread soaked in milk, or grated rusk to the dough must also add eggs or Dr. Oetker’s Backin baking powder or the pancakes will become too hard. The best pancakes are made with only the addition of eggs and 1/2 sachet of Dr Oetker’s Backin. For a midday meal, you must add 3-4 eggs or the dish is not nourishing enough. Grated onions or finely cut chives can be stirred into the batter as desired.
Additions: Bean salad, boiled fruit, green lettuce salad.
Gone are the yeast, cream, fine flour, and milk, the butter or bacon fat, and the artistry of integrating beaten egg whites into a heavy potato batter. Even the eggs are casually omitted in the instructions like a pleasant, but nonessential decorative feature, required only if the dish is to make an entire meal. Davidis served her much richer ones for tea.
The thing is, this was not a polite fiction of wealth that had disappeared under the piercing eye of modernity. Middle-class people could remember when eating like this had been normal, and even workers had enjoyed these things occasionally. Both books aimed at much the same market: the instruction of bourgeois girls in cookery. It was the circumstances that had changed. The people who had to shoulder this austerity for emperor and fatherland were not asked, and they were not happy.
At the beginning of the coup, the military, protectors of lawful authority, predictably chickened out of their role. “Troops do not shoot troops.” General von Seeckt, the commander of the post-war Reichswehr, supposedly informed the ministers calling on him. The police were little better. But there were powers in Germany that did not wear uniforms, and the conspirators had badly underestimated them.
The governing Social Democrat and Zentrum (Catholic) parties, churches and labour unions may have had no armed forces, but they had an extremely high degree of organisation and discipline. Government ministers loyal to the republic called for a general strike. Handbills were printed and distributed, committee meetings called, and the next day, hundreds of thousands of people did not show up for work. Protesters crowded the streets of every city in the country while union representatives explained to deeply disappointed factory owners that no work would be done until the lawful government was restored. Even senior civil servants, sensing which way the wind was blowing, openly declared they wold not take orders from unlawful authority. Two days in, the association of civil servants joined the strike while the finance ministry refused to pay the troops. Things were not going well.
The other thing that the putschists had forgotten was that while unions and Social Democrats had no military wing, the Communist party absolutely did. A majority of workers had been content with a compromise liberal democracy with the prospect of real change for the better, but they were not going to sign up to another round of authoritarian Obrigkeitsstaat. Especially not once the army started shooting at strikers. If that was the choice, red revolution began to look a lot more appealing. Within a week, armed workers’ councils had taken effective control of the Ruhr area. At that point, the military leaders of the coup had abandoned their cause and confused negotiations were under way to end the fighting with a minimum of embarrassment. A new government was formed and new elections called. The workers had won.
Of course this would not be Weimar if they did these things thoroughly. A blanket amnesty covered most collaborators, and senior leaders escaped to Bavaria, where a complicit state government protected them from prosecution. But for now, democracy had prevailed, and it went on to build a country the world would marvel at.