House rent during WWII

[Frankfurter]

I wonder how the issue of house rent in Germany was handled during the war. Many men who were called to serve in the Wehrmacht suddenly didnt have the income anymore to maintain the living standard back home. What about a striving young single man in his late twenties with a good income just about to embark on a career who had an elegant flat rented in Berlin? Did he have to have his belongings packed by whomever because the soldiers pay didnt pay the rent? What about the 30 year old married director with no family money, but with a wife and two kids and a rented posh 250 sqm house in Darlem, was the family forced to move to a more modest home? Or were the house owners forced to pay their share and lower the rents for the time of war to enable the tenant to return?

[nondescript handle]

For married soldiers there was the Einsatz-Familienunterhalt (see Einsatzwehrmachtsgebührnisgesetz from 1939), which was enacted to prevent families from such fates. It was fairly generous: it topped out at 85% of his old salary and was on average ~72%. That's in addition to the military pay.
(BTW the fact that the wife's earnings would reduce the Familienunterhalt was one reason why the female workforce was so relatively under-utilized until late in the war. But the nazis thought that was a feature rather than a bug.)

I know that the Wehrmacht paid the installments for certain pre-service credits (e.g. for businesses), I would guess that mortgages would have been included in that. That would take care of home owners.

Regards and HTH
Mark

[john76]

I wonder how the issue of house rent in Germany was handled during the war. Many men who were called to serve in the Wehrmacht suddenly didnt have the income anymore to maintain the living standard back home. What about a striving young single man in his late twenties with a good income just about to embark on a career who had an elegant flat rented in Berlin? Did he have to have his belongings packed by whomever because the soldiers pay didnt pay the rent? What about the 30 year old married director with no family money, but with a wife and two kids and a rented posh 250 sqm house in Darlem, was the family forced to move to a more modest home? Or were the house owners forced to pay their share and lower the rents for the time of war to enable the tenant to return?

Hello Frankfurter,


By the time of Germany’s unconditional surrender in May 1945, 20% of Germany’s housing stock was rubble. Some 2.25 million homes were gone. Another 2 million were damaged. A 1946 census showed an additional 5.5 million housing units were needed in what would ultimately become West Germany.
Germany’s housing wasn’t the only thing in tatters. The economy was a heap. Financing was nil and the currency was virtually worthless. (People bartered.) If Germans were going to have places to live, some sort of government program was the only way to build them.
And don’t forget, the political situation in post-war Germany was still quite tense. Leaders worried about a re-radicalization of the populace, perhaps even a comeback for fascism. Communism loomed as an even larger threat, with so much unemployment.
West Germany’s first housing minister—a former Wehrmacht man by the name of Eberhard Wildermuth—once noted that “the number of communist voters in European countries stands in inverse proportion to the number of housing units per thousand inhabitants.”