Winter food shortages, refugee misery, black market trading

The end of Nazi rule and WW II did not put an end to the troubles of Hamburg's population. Homecoming soldiers, refugees from the east and homeless people moved into and through the city, where there was a housing shortage and where supplies of food and fuel had collapsed. As a major transport intersection in northern Germany, Hamburg was particularly affected by population movements. Between 1945 and the end of 1947, immigration pushed the city's population from 500,000 to 1.5 million. In 1948, around 200,000 people were living in emergency accommodation, many of them in prefabricated corrugated iron shelters.

Those with tradable goods visited the surrounding countryside in attempts to accumulate private food supplies. The suffering was particularly hard among the elderly and the dispossessed, made worse still by extremely cold winters. At the same time, a flourishing black market sprang up, and was rigorously combated by the police and the occupying authorities. In these hard times, theft increased and even children were involved in stealing coal to enable their families to cook and keep warm.

Teaching in schools recommenced in August 1945, and from spring 1947, school children received daily meals funded by England, the United States, Sweden and Denmark.

The hardship of the immediate postwar years was not due exclusively to bomb damage. In the port, the motor of Hamburg's economy, imports and exports were suspended and the shipyards were not permitted to build ships until 1951. The situation was aggravated by inadequate means of transport, insufficient supplies of coal, and administrative difficulties in the Western occupied zones.
The currency reform of June 20, 1948, introducing the deutsche mark, led overnight to the availability of a broad range of goods which had been hoarded until then. This was followed by economic recovery, putting an end to material deprivation.


Hamburg in the 20th. century (2)
-    Winter food shortages, refugee misery, black market trading
-    From occupied city to federal state
-    The modern metropolis
-    The exhileration of the consumer Society
-    The ups and downs of the Economic Miracle
-    Social policy and alternative politics
-    The limits of growth
-    Cultural city Hamburg
-    At the end of the Millennium

Hamburg in the 20th. century (1)