Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family
Title
Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family
Creator
Bouman, Jon Anthony, 1873-1958
Identifier
WWP23085
Date
1920 March 28
Description
Letter from Jon Bouman to his family.
Source
Gift of William C. and Evelina Suhler
Subject
Germany--History--1918-1933
Correspondence
Berlin, Germany
Contributor
Rachel Dark
Denise Montgomery
Language
English
Provenance
Evelina Suhler is the granddaughter of Jon Anthony Bouman and inherited the family collection of his letters from the years of World War I. She and her husband gave the letters to the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum in 2013.
Text
Hotel Adlon, Unter der Linden, Berlin, Sunday eve
March 28, 1920
My dearest—
The crisis is pretty well over as far as Berlin is concerned. Work was gradually resumed during the week, trams and buses began to ride, and gas, water and electric light is once more available. The barbed wire barricades have been cleared away, and with them have gone the patrols and sentries, with their rifles at half cock and hand grenades ready in their belts. I don’t hear any more machine guns shooting at night either. All the trouble is now in the Ruhr district and I just got away from that before the reds started their game. Duisburg where I spent a day last Friday week is now in their hands, I hear.
This morning I went out with Edwin Wilcox for a walk in the Zoo, where we had lunch in the open – a glorious day, and indeed all this week the weather has been splendid, and the young green in the parks is making a brave show. Berlin is really a fine city but its inhabitants I do not fancy. This has been a very busy week; I have met scores of people in the government and have spent several hours daily in the Reichstag, where the various parties were incessantly conferring. The Reichstag is a magnificently equipped place; rather over-ornamented outside, but not inside, where the decorations are less blatant. The proportions are noble, and the spaces vast. I have spoken with many deputies whose names are pretty well known all over the world, but I haven’t seen one well dressed man among them. And the women members!! There are about 30 in all, and they all look like charwomen, without exaggeration. No doubt they are all very intellectual, but they certainly do look dreadful!
I have got a ticket for the press gallery of the National Assembly which opens tomorrow. I must say all officials are very ready and willing at all times to give information; they have certainly got the democratic touch in this way that you simply walk in everywhere if you belong to the press. Pipes are being smoked in the sacred precincts of the Reichstag itself, although there are still armed guards at the doors. The library there is a most splendid room, with large mural paintings of German cities; very fine.
As for this hotel, it’s Joe Lyons ten times worse; it’s simply blatant. Yet this used to be the great center for the German quality before the war. Now the nobility don’t show their faces any more; they have retired to their country estates or don’t go out. The newly rich, and foreign correspondents have taken their places. I did see tonight in the restaurant the richest man in Germany, Hugo Stinnes, the big coal and iron magnate. I am writing this after having spent 100 marks on dinner, formerly £ 5, but now about 7 shillings present value. My first weekly bill was about 800 marks which is of course very cheap, but what German can pay that now? This is of course only for the room, and a couple of breakfasts which I had served up here, and one dinner. It is a queer situation; the luxuries are cheap in comparison. I suppose I have drunk more really good wine this one week than in ten years previously; some of the finest Rhine wines that roll down your tongue like molten gold – what if they cost 75 marks a bottle? That is only about 6 shillings. But again, few Germans can afford that now.
I have been to the Palais de Danse, where the only admissible drink is champagne. It is a barbarous place, decoratively, and a lot of awful people there, war profiteers doubtless, most of them by the looks, rank outsiders. Generally speaking, one sees few human looking creatures about the streets and in hotels. To me they all have faces resembling hogs, vultures, or wolves. A good thing they didn’t win the war; I never was so certain about it as I am now. And the mutilated soldiers shuffle along the pavement while gorging and guzzling is going on at dozens of places in the centre of the town. I always wonder they don’t sack and loot them.
We have a workroom here at the hotel; the room is best described as an elegant pig-sty, and then we have Reuter’s office some distance away. Their building has undergone important structural repairs, and we are to occupy very fine and spacious, modern rooms in a couple weeks’ time. The AP, Reuter and the Havas men each to have their own set of rooms, intercommunicating. Moloney I see almost daily, and I have also met the Frenchmen of the Havas staff. These rooms I speak of are situated in the big building of the Wolff agency, the big German organisation with which we have contracts.
Moloney has had a brilliant Irish idea; he discovered a very fine apartment house in a very pleasant part of the city which he has persuaded his people and Havas to buy for joint account; a good investment of course, at the present low value of the mark. He proposes to eliminate the tenants gradually and then occupy it himself with his family, his staff and the Havas, and possibly the AP men, as a dwelling house permanently, engaging his own staff of servants – quite a good idea, so that anyone belonging to the three organizations can go and stay there instead of at an hotel.
Old Josten has also lacked for nothing. He seems to have taken lodgings with a baker who married a butcher’s daughter and with sons in the grocery and provision business! So he is as fat as ever.
The work takes me pretty well all day; I must say Enderis is no slacker. He flies about like a flea in a bottle. I imagined he would be one of those big heavy Americans; the type of a judge or an archbishop. Instead of this, he is smallish, with a large head with scrubby hair sunk into his shoulders. He is of Swiss origin; his sister is married to the Rev. Carden, English chaplain at Montreux. But he is very American, speaks perfect German and knows all the world and his wife. He, of course is a bachelor. His knowledge of German affairs is very profound; of course he has been there so long.
It seems I have been away quite a long time from home already. Tell Bill I have bought a bottle of German hairwash “Birkenwasser”; would he like some? I thought I could afford that now. Cigars I buy at 1.50 marks each – no one but a millionaire used to pay such prices, but now it’s only about one penny! I have bought a nice all plain real Malacca cane, with horn tip, for 30 marks, about half a crown; in London it would have cost half a guinea.
Yet while luxuries are cheap (from our point of view) necessaries of life are unobtainable. In this swagger hotel you don’t get butter or even margarine on your bread, nor milk in your tea. It isn’t there. The bread is very poor; I don’t like it. Enderis bought a loaf of (some) clandestinely baked bread for 20 marks, and he eats that up in his room. Dutch cheese fetches fabulous prices – if it can be had at all. In the lavatories there is no soap and there are no towels. Of course people have towels in their rooms. Curiously, there are eggs, although very dear, but no other dairy produce. The jam is awful stuff – Wilcox gave me some of Crosse & Blackwell’s marmalade this morning; how he got it I don’t know. I had some excellent suckling pig tonight for dinner, but no potatoes. There weren’t any. There are other and very elaborate dishes of course, so we don’t starve by any manner of means. But what about the poor people?
I hope it is true what the government says that the food situation is improving, for if it does not, the people will get so desperate that there will be sacking, looting, and murder.
I am writing this up in my bedroom on my luxurious writing desk of inlaid sheraton, telephone at my elbow; sofa of green velours beside me and at my back my great bronze inlaid bed which looks as though it had been made for a hero of the Valhalla.
Now I shall go down and have a cup of what is known as bean coffee (BohnenKaffee) but of what beans they make it, I don’t know. And I don’t want to know.
Goodbye dears, God bless you all and everyone. With all my love,
Thine,
Jack.
March 28, 1920
My dearest—
The crisis is pretty well over as far as Berlin is concerned. Work was gradually resumed during the week, trams and buses began to ride, and gas, water and electric light is once more available. The barbed wire barricades have been cleared away, and with them have gone the patrols and sentries, with their rifles at half cock and hand grenades ready in their belts. I don’t hear any more machine guns shooting at night either. All the trouble is now in the Ruhr district and I just got away from that before the reds started their game. Duisburg where I spent a day last Friday week is now in their hands, I hear.
This morning I went out with Edwin Wilcox for a walk in the Zoo, where we had lunch in the open – a glorious day, and indeed all this week the weather has been splendid, and the young green in the parks is making a brave show. Berlin is really a fine city but its inhabitants I do not fancy. This has been a very busy week; I have met scores of people in the government and have spent several hours daily in the Reichstag, where the various parties were incessantly conferring. The Reichstag is a magnificently equipped place; rather over-ornamented outside, but not inside, where the decorations are less blatant. The proportions are noble, and the spaces vast. I have spoken with many deputies whose names are pretty well known all over the world, but I haven’t seen one well dressed man among them. And the women members!! There are about 30 in all, and they all look like charwomen, without exaggeration. No doubt they are all very intellectual, but they certainly do look dreadful!
I have got a ticket for the press gallery of the National Assembly which opens tomorrow. I must say all officials are very ready and willing at all times to give information; they have certainly got the democratic touch in this way that you simply walk in everywhere if you belong to the press. Pipes are being smoked in the sacred precincts of the Reichstag itself, although there are still armed guards at the doors. The library there is a most splendid room, with large mural paintings of German cities; very fine.
As for this hotel, it’s Joe Lyons ten times worse; it’s simply blatant. Yet this used to be the great center for the German quality before the war. Now the nobility don’t show their faces any more; they have retired to their country estates or don’t go out. The newly rich, and foreign correspondents have taken their places. I did see tonight in the restaurant the richest man in Germany, Hugo Stinnes, the big coal and iron magnate. I am writing this after having spent 100 marks on dinner, formerly £ 5, but now about 7 shillings present value. My first weekly bill was about 800 marks which is of course very cheap, but what German can pay that now? This is of course only for the room, and a couple of breakfasts which I had served up here, and one dinner. It is a queer situation; the luxuries are cheap in comparison. I suppose I have drunk more really good wine this one week than in ten years previously; some of the finest Rhine wines that roll down your tongue like molten gold – what if they cost 75 marks a bottle? That is only about 6 shillings. But again, few Germans can afford that now.
I have been to the Palais de Danse, where the only admissible drink is champagne. It is a barbarous place, decoratively, and a lot of awful people there, war profiteers doubtless, most of them by the looks, rank outsiders. Generally speaking, one sees few human looking creatures about the streets and in hotels. To me they all have faces resembling hogs, vultures, or wolves. A good thing they didn’t win the war; I never was so certain about it as I am now. And the mutilated soldiers shuffle along the pavement while gorging and guzzling is going on at dozens of places in the centre of the town. I always wonder they don’t sack and loot them.
We have a workroom here at the hotel; the room is best described as an elegant pig-sty, and then we have Reuter’s office some distance away. Their building has undergone important structural repairs, and we are to occupy very fine and spacious, modern rooms in a couple weeks’ time. The AP, Reuter and the Havas men each to have their own set of rooms, intercommunicating. Moloney I see almost daily, and I have also met the Frenchmen of the Havas staff. These rooms I speak of are situated in the big building of the Wolff agency, the big German organisation with which we have contracts.
Moloney has had a brilliant Irish idea; he discovered a very fine apartment house in a very pleasant part of the city which he has persuaded his people and Havas to buy for joint account; a good investment of course, at the present low value of the mark. He proposes to eliminate the tenants gradually and then occupy it himself with his family, his staff and the Havas, and possibly the AP men, as a dwelling house permanently, engaging his own staff of servants – quite a good idea, so that anyone belonging to the three organizations can go and stay there instead of at an hotel.
Old Josten has also lacked for nothing. He seems to have taken lodgings with a baker who married a butcher’s daughter and with sons in the grocery and provision business! So he is as fat as ever.
The work takes me pretty well all day; I must say Enderis is no slacker. He flies about like a flea in a bottle. I imagined he would be one of those big heavy Americans; the type of a judge or an archbishop. Instead of this, he is smallish, with a large head with scrubby hair sunk into his shoulders. He is of Swiss origin; his sister is married to the Rev. Carden, English chaplain at Montreux. But he is very American, speaks perfect German and knows all the world and his wife. He, of course is a bachelor. His knowledge of German affairs is very profound; of course he has been there so long.
It seems I have been away quite a long time from home already. Tell Bill I have bought a bottle of German hairwash “Birkenwasser”; would he like some? I thought I could afford that now. Cigars I buy at 1.50 marks each – no one but a millionaire used to pay such prices, but now it’s only about one penny! I have bought a nice all plain real Malacca cane, with horn tip, for 30 marks, about half a crown; in London it would have cost half a guinea.
Yet while luxuries are cheap (from our point of view) necessaries of life are unobtainable. In this swagger hotel you don’t get butter or even margarine on your bread, nor milk in your tea. It isn’t there. The bread is very poor; I don’t like it. Enderis bought a loaf of (some) clandestinely baked bread for 20 marks, and he eats that up in his room. Dutch cheese fetches fabulous prices – if it can be had at all. In the lavatories there is no soap and there are no towels. Of course people have towels in their rooms. Curiously, there are eggs, although very dear, but no other dairy produce. The jam is awful stuff – Wilcox gave me some of Crosse & Blackwell’s marmalade this morning; how he got it I don’t know. I had some excellent suckling pig tonight for dinner, but no potatoes. There weren’t any. There are other and very elaborate dishes of course, so we don’t starve by any manner of means. But what about the poor people?
I hope it is true what the government says that the food situation is improving, for if it does not, the people will get so desperate that there will be sacking, looting, and murder.
I am writing this up in my bedroom on my luxurious writing desk of inlaid sheraton, telephone at my elbow; sofa of green velours beside me and at my back my great bronze inlaid bed which looks as though it had been made for a hero of the Valhalla.
Now I shall go down and have a cup of what is known as bean coffee (BohnenKaffee) but of what beans they make it, I don’t know. And I don’t want to know.
Goodbye dears, God bless you all and everyone. With all my love,
Thine,
Jack.
Original Format
Letter
To
Bouman Family
Files
Collection
Citation
Bouman, Jon Anthony, 1873-1958, “Jon Bouman to the Bouman Family,” 1920 March 28, WWP23085, Jon Anthony Bouman Collection, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.