The Black Market in History and Memory: German Perceptions of Victimhood from 1945 to 1948

Abstract

Using recent scholarship on memory and German identity formation as a springboard, this article examines the illicit trade that flourished in the immediate postwar period to probe the creation of a community of fate, one that emphasized its victimhood. It explores both contemporary perceptions and the memory of the black market from multiple viewpoints, the occupiers, the Germans and the Displaced Persons (DPs). Rather than treating the illicit trade as solely one activity, it explains its gradations, in terms of what was exchanged, by whom, and the perceived morality of the exchange. This approach highlights the disconnection between ubiquitous participation by Germans in illicit trade and their memories of it as primarily a foreign phenomenon. In other words, Germans saw their trading outside of official channels as necessary and moral, whereas the trade by foreigners, either DPs or occupation troops, was seen as both exploitative and immoral. Given the high visibility of Jews among the DPs, it also provides a window into the continuation of antisemitism in the immediate postwar period. It argues that the conjunction in 1948 of the currency reform, the noticeable drop in black market activity, and the emigration of Jewish DPs have cemented two of the prevailing myths of the postwar period: the economic miracle and Jews as black marketers.