All Unquiet

Just how tight money is in Germany today the Government rashly advertised last week by seizing the Berlin bank account of famed Erich Maria (All Quiet on the Western Front) Remarque and accusing him: 1) of having established a residence in the Netherlands and 2) of banking outside Germany his dollar, pound, franc, lira and other royalties.

Under iron fiscal decrees, sanctioned by President von Hindenburg, a German citizen receiving income from abroad today must exchange all his foreign money into marks. Author Remarque, who founded and heads a writers' colony at Monte Verita, Switzerland, kept mum there last week when told of the seizure of his 20,000 mark ($4,760) Berlin account.

Authoress Vicki (Grand Hotel) Baum entered the U. S. under the immigrant quota fortnight ago, plans to become a naturalized U. S. citizen, thus solving her German money problems.

In Berlin the currency question rages so hot that last week Economist Dr. Max Roosen, who differs violently from the Government's fiscal theories, went down to the Potsdammer Station with his friend Herr Werner Kertscher, an expert on scientific farming. Both were well dressed and one or the other had a pistol. Unnoticed they strolled up to within twelve feet of Dr. Hans Luther, President of the Reichsbank, who was stamping up & down outside a sleeping car that was to carry him to Basle for a conference with the Bank for International Settlements.

Bang! -- went the pistol. Dr Luther shouted, "Somebody has shot me!" as Dr. Roosen and Herr Kertscher bolted. Caught by policemen they made no resistance, Economist Roosen announcing with dignity, "We will explain our motives fully -- but only to the Supreme Court at Leipzig."

Meanwhile Dr. Luther was showing his friends a bullet hole through his clothing. "I'm not wounded at all!" he insisted, but friends forced him to undress. On the skin of the President of the Reichsbank they found a light red bullet crease, painted it with iodine as the train pulled out for Basle.

When Berlin police persisted in questioning Economist Roosen, they got more than they bargained for. "The great Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg in 1517," said Dr. Roosen, "and I had in tended in 1932 to nail upon the door of Dr. Luther's Reichsbank my theses of how the financial problems of Germany can best be met. I had intended to do that, but was dissuaded from my course by friends who urged me to do what I did."

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