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Alas, so soon !
Opposite the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, where the Gloriapalast
and the Marmorhaus salute each other like proud castles on the Dardanelles,4
there recently stood a man who had hung a plaque around
his own neck. The man made a pitiful impression, the plaque told
fragments of his autobiography. From the text written in bold characters
passers-by could discover that the man was a 25-year-old unemployed
salesman who was seeking work on the open market - no matter what
kind. Hopefully he has found some - but it does not seem likely. The
key question: was the man young or old? To judge by a newspaper
advertisement quoted in the GdA journal, he is already to be classified
as an older employee. For in the advertisement a menswear store wants
an older salesman of twenty-five or twenty-six. If it goes on like this,
babies will soon be included among the younger ones. But even if the
menswear store may cultivate an exaggerated notion of youth, the age
limit in business life today really has moved sharply downwards, and al
forty many who still think themselves hale and hearty are, alas, ecolIomically
already dead.
Retrenchment has put a premature end to them. 'Typical of our age '
writes the aforementioned GdA journal (no. 5, 1929) , which generally
stands up in particular for older employees, 'are the very frequently
recurring reports that only younger staff is being taken on and all older
employees are being got rid of. The reports come precisely to a
large extent from younger employees. Or, as is explained in the
recently published memorandum of the Union of German Employer
Associations on 'The labour market situation of older employees':
The readjustment of individual firms, and the reorganization of firms'
management structure in connection with rationalization measures, have
4. Berlin picture palaces among those celebrated in Kracauer's 1926 essay 'Cult of
I )istraction' , see The Mass Ornament, pp. 323-8.