Der Niedergang der Ostseefischerei in der Zwischenkriegszeit

Abstract

There is hardly another source of income which suffered effects as comprehensively adverse at the outbreak of World War I as sea fishing. In order to guarantee the supply of the population with affordable nourishment, the "Reich Commissioner's Office for the Provision of Fish" was founded during the war as a means of regulating fishing, fish trade and the fish-processing industry. This controlled economy, with its guaranteed turnover and the granting of "suitable" prices, had the effect of an artificial economic pick-up on coastal fishing and encouraged the promotion of motor fishing through the creation of financial reserves. Fishing in the Baltic Sea was not nearly as severely disrupted by the events of the war as that in the North Sea, a circumstance which led to overfishing and the reckless exploitation of fish stocks. The revocation of the controls on 1 August 1919 was nevertheless welcomed by all involved, and followed immediately by a substantial increase in prices due to the increased demand. Only later did people realize that without state supervision there was also no longer any protection. Due to the "collapse of the mark", the value of the currency continued to deteriorate, a state of affairs that was accompanied by rises in the costs of all materials, including fuel. For these reasons, and because of the general increase in living expenses after the war, the further development of the fishing industry was severely impaired. There was a general lack of international closed seasons, but the competition of foreign fishermen with toll-free merchandise on the domestic markets had an even more devastating effect, and subjected the fishing industry to an economic situation in which its very existence was threatened. Now freely accessible capital was extremely rare, and as a result of the scarcity of money, the practitioners of this profession – especially those on the Baltic Sea – underwent general impoverishment due to debt. The fishermen incurred ever greater debts with the fish-processing plants, suppliers and cooperatives. The German states, districts and municipalities bordering the Baltic Sea thus had no choice but to help the fishermen by granting them loans or making payments of sums earmarked as "lost subsidies without repayment requirement" to prevent the members of the fishing trade from losing their livelihoods. The "death blow" to Baltic Sea fishing, however, was the harsh winter of 1929 and the accompanying ice conditions. These months without income were all the more devastating due to the fact that the fishermen had not been able to accumulate any savings in the preceding period. In this article, the example of the coastal fishermen of Warnemünde serves to illustrate the threatening state of financial distress during the era in question.