Daniel J. Zutt letters, 1922-1923
4 items
The collection consists of four letters, dating from November 20, 1922, to June 29, 1923, that Daniel Zutt wrote to his mother Elise Hartmetz Zutt while he was studying in Berlin and traveling around Europe. The letters primarily discuss Zutt's social activities and the economic situation in the Weimar Republic.
While in Berlin, Zutt boarded with the Rehse household at Hektorstrasse 5 in Halensee. He discusses his frustration with the bureaucratic police registration process for foreigners and his difficulty in finding time to write home and keep his diary. Zutt traveled around Germany including Mainz, Worms, and Aachen to visit family as well as sight-see with another American. He celebrated Thanksgiving, visited the American embassy in Berlin, and attended a Berlin Philharmonic concert courtesy of free tickets from his landlady and her violinist daughter. Zutt intersperses German words in his letters and notes that he socialized with Germans to learn the language, including attending cabarets. Zutt comments on costs, the untenable economic situation, uncertainty over the value of the German mark, export rules, and the food shortage. Zutt later studied in Paris, France, but returned to Berlin for a stay in 1923, traveling through former WWI battle zones.