Ethics (Spring 1947)

Law-Student Peter Klaus had spent a comfortable winter. Now, not even the peculiar terrors of spring could faze him. Opportunity had come to him one cold day last fall: as he was beating his way homeward from Berlin University, a coal truck (from the nearby Berlin-Zehlendorf coal yards) swung sharply around a corner and six briquettes fell at Klaus's feet. He hastily tucked away his precious find, glowing with the thought of hot soup and a heated room that night. Next morning he was back at the same corner with a burlap bag. For the rest of the winter, he gathered coal and sold it to his shivering fellow Germans.

Klaus netted an average of 150 marks a day, which might buy a pack of Luckies or all the food on his ration card for one month plus his room rent, or one term's worth of legal training at the University. When professional coal thieves moved in from Hamburg (where competition had grown too heavy and the police too strict), he had a little trouble. The newcomers, working in large groups at freight yards, netted several tons a night and sold them through a central organization at fixed prices. They disliked small-time operators like Klaus, who undersold them. But after a little rough stuff, Klaus agreed to conform to the pros' price schedule, and everything went smoothly until the first disastrous signs of spring.

As the sun shone brightly and ice melted on the Wannsee last week, the bottom fell out of the coal black market. The professionals, most of whom had saved little, tried frantically to muscle in on the vegetable business, which was already tightly organized. But Klaus, who had regularly sent money to his family, calmly prepared for his law exams. A TIME correspondent asked him how he felt about studying law half the time and breaking it the other half. Said ex-Paratrooper Klaus, with impudence but not entirely without reason:

"Now everyone is stealing things from Germany--houses, rugs, factories, cities like Koenigsberg. Perhaps by the time I finish my law course we will have a Government and can try to realize some of the principles for which you say you fought. In the meantime, I can only emulate what you do."

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