Brown Gold · 9.10.09 by joachim oster
Hidden in hearses, double floored baby strollers, left over armored Nazi vehicles, modified Porsches, even in undergarments – roasted coffee beans were once smuggled into post war Germany in ways which would put any contemporary Colombian drug lord to shame.
The corner where Germany borders Belgium and the Netherlands was a lawless region after WW2. Here, the possession of coffee meant more than having Deutschmarks or dollars. Hitler’s Westwall had fallen and many villages were still bombed out from the Battle of the Bulge. However, unexploded mines wouldn’t stop the German lads in their endeavor to supply their morally and physically beaten countrymen with cheap caffeine.
After all, the newly formed German Republic had slapped a 120% tax on roasted coffee to rebuild the infrastructure. Something even Hitler hadn’t dared to do. But then again he had wanted his people to conquer the world. That plan apparently didn’t quite work so well, caffeinated Aryans or not. And now after losing the house, brother, sister and/or father in war, the Jewish neighbors, the gypsies, the gays, many priests, the mentally disabled, plus half the countryside to the commies, how should one go on without coffee?!
In 1949 a whole village in this impoverished strip of land got arrested for smuggling coffee. Their priest held public prayers for them to be released. Sometimes hordes of children were seen running past a couple of overwhelmed custom officials, screaming and laughing and carrying bags full of the brown gold. American Sherman tanks were repaired to mow down border posts. Porsches, able to go up to 120mph on the Autobahn, were fitted with hydraulic steel brooms to sweep nails off the pavement at roadblocks. Yes, the pursuing cops were lucky to have an old VW beetle! Increasingly, Cadillacs and Buicks were bought from the American G.I.s stationed in the vicinity. Tail-finned cruisers had more horsepower, and plenty of nooks and crannies to hide coffee beans. Mostly they were left alone by the German cops anyway: thought to be driven by an occupying American officer, who was pretty much above the German law in those days.
The smugglers had the perfect training grounds right there in the country side of the Eifel: The Nürburgring, Germany’s famous car race track was sleeping deep in the woods, unscathed by American bombing raids and no Mercedes Siberpfeils ready to be tested there. Here, unemployed and willing, Germany’s fastest drivers were trained in evasive maneuvers and hi-speed escapes. Just to get coffee, although from Liege, Antwerp or Maastrich.
A typical police report mentioned i.e. a fake ambulance with 3,000 pounds of coffee ending in a ditch after a successful chase. It’s cover blown at a custom stop by a German Shepard dog trained to find roasted coffee. A four year old guiding his blind, deaf aunt across the border carrying undeclared coffee in her backpack. A coffin in a mourning parties procession not only containing a body, but a freshly roasted batch of Arabica beans as well.
Cigarettes, chocolate, nylon stockings, liquor – nothing could match the profit margin of the daily fix of caffeine. Despite being outgunned, out witted, out-driven, the German customs confiscated between 1946 – 50 more than 223 tons (450,000 LBS) of coffee in the area. How much more had made it across, one wonders. A single pound of coffee could be then sold with today’s equivalent of USD $750, if not more.
Veterans with missing limbs stuffed coffee in their hollow prosthesis; trained family dogs on covert missions appeared like strays wandering through the Ardennes forest with a pouch of FULL CITY roast strapped to their belly. A bicyclist wobbling along the country road: her legs disproportionately thickened as a result of wearing nylons filled with beans. Car tires ‘inflated’ with French roasted beans from Belgium, smelling delicious to any tailgater. Tunnels were meticulously planned, engineered, dug, discovered, destroyed and rebuilt. Obviously when a fire brigade saw a fire across the border, rushing to help and back to their station in Germany had various reasons; fighting flames being of lesser importance.
Yes, people died over coffee in that blood drenched corner of the world. Within 6 years, some 53 smugglers and 2 custom agents were killed. Hundreds of injuries occurred on both sides. Some were innocent; some were women, some teenagers, and some elderly. Children caught smuggling three times or more were put into orphanages. Border guards shot carrier pigeons that were used for airborne missions on sight. Hamas does it for arms, Mexicans for illegal immigrants, while Germans did it for coffee!
Yet the church in the totally destroyed hamlet of Schmidt was rebuilt mostly by money earned from contraband beans. Still being known as “St. Mocca”, the priest included in his sermons all the efforts of his daring parishioners. Most people living in these corners of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands endured since centuries ever-shifting borders and alliances. Speaking a mix of languages and a unique dialect, they are used to smuggle people persecuted by governments and always looked out for the next profitable tax difference on goodies.
Then, nearly overnight, 1953 the German government reduced their outlandish coffee import tax to the current level of approx $1.50 per pound. A Prussian king had established this coffee tax in 1781 out of his pure dislike of coffee. And every consecutive German government (incl. the Kaisers, the facists, the commies, the socialists, the liberals, the Christian democrats, occupying Americans, French or Brits) were not interested in changing it.
At least after these smuggling years the German rulers know now that raising the coffee tax is not on option either.
Joachim Oster’s family always had their hands in coffee. Since many generations his relatives live and farm on all sides of this border triangle. Naturally their bonds were stronger than whatever various kings, dictators, governments or even General Patton told them to do. He and his American-Hawaiian wife and daughter grow now delicious, pure Blue Horse Kona coffee in Hawaii. And a tad reluctantly of course, always pay the totally ridiculous German coffee tax when shipping their coffee to the family back home.
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Well done my brother. History in our family appears to repeat itself. You are now a farmer on Hawaii and I supply the farmers in South Africa. This clearly shows where we are coming from.
— Klaus Oster Oct 9, 10:37 pm #