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• 1 2018-05-24T15:37:56+00:00 Gluttony/"Overwrought Nerves" 2 plain 2018-05-24T15:51:42+00:00 Friedrich Kroner’s essay “Overwrought Nerves”  casts a harsh light on the inflation period, indicating the inextricable link between hunger, fear and gluttony Dramatically rising prices, —Kroner cites butter costing 1,400,000 marks — accompanied by a depreciation of paper money value, led to panic and uproar at the very height of the inflation in late 1923 (Kaes et al. 1994, 63; Widdig 2001). With nearly worthless paper money, food suppliers and farmers became more and more unwilling to exchange money for goods. Thus, a bartering system began to emerge and people experienced increased uncertainty as food became scarcer. The fear and uncertainty that Kroner discusses in his essay are intrinsically linked to knowing when food will come and how people are able to access their food. Kroner highlights this relationship between fear, uncertainty and gluttony when he discusses people lining up outside the door of. Will there be anything left for them by the time they reach the front of the line? As Kroner writes, “the insanity of numbers, the uncertain future, today, and tomorrow become doubtful once more overnight” (Kaes et al. 1994, 63). Kroner describes the experience of a woman who asks when she will get her butter. The shopkeeper responds, “Your butter? It is not your butter by a long shot. By the time you get to the front of the line, your butter will be all gone” (Kaes et al. 1994, 64).
  
  Even though the woman had expected to buy butter, the scarcity of food at the time removed the option.  The grasping for food that Kroner depicts reveals how he understand the inflation to be a catalyst for a kind of moral degradation in which gluttony is its noteworthy, ironic, consequence.
  
  Bibliography:
  
  Widdig, Bernd. Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
  
  Kroner, Friedrich. “Overwrought Nerves.” In The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, edited by Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, 63-64. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.