POTSDAM MONTE CARLO.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 236, 2 October 1920, Page 17

POTSDAM MONTE CARLO.

DEMORALISED BERLIN'S GAMBLING. Sixty thousand grateful citizens of Potsdam want to raiee a statue to exWar Minister Nosfce in recognition of the fact that he has restored to it the glory which Wilhelm the Unforgotten'fi ignominious flight had dimmed. He hae turned the once militarist city into "Monte" Potsdam, Germany's greatest centre of gambling. No afternoon train leaves Berlin for Potsdam without carrying a hundred well-fed, noisy war profiteers off for a fling at some of the seven gambling clubs of first rank or the seventy of second and third rate rank. After the revolution, demoralised Berlin gambled. Except for fox-trotting it did little but gamble. It playod baccarat, ecarte, roulette, poiker, and "tdurnant."

It wasted electric light; it caused street scandals: it kept men from honest work. So 'Herr Xoske, then super-auto-orat of Berlin, banished the clubs, using his authority as military commander in a city under martial law.

Happy Potsdam, however, wae not under martial law, i=o thither the gamblers flrel. Dens from other cities of Germany followed them, and at last -Potsdam, which was threatened with Vuin through the loss of the Court and the guards' garrison, found itself saved, renovated, regenerated, and enriched by the man with the cards and the dice. LORDLY 34D CLUB. Potsdam's seven-and-scventy gambling dens respect the German law that you may only gamble in a club. Every den in Potsdam ie a "club," and to gamble you must be a member. The formality ie slight.

You stride up to the much bcmcdallpd and iron-crossed janitor at the door, hand him a couple of marks, which at present exchange are worth about one penny, and obtain a membership card. That ie all.

Some exclusive Potsdam gambling clubs make their members pay twopence-half-penny entrance fee; and some even stretch it to threepenec-lialt-penny.

Payment of the latter sum will make yon a member of the most exclusive i these clubs in all the city, where you can loi=e your money to counts, barons, and ex-guarde' officers, and flirt with Potsdam's female aristocracy.

The biggest, formed in Berlin immediately after the re-volution, is a club under the innocent title, "Association of German and Austrian Merchants.'' It removed to Potedam and rented a whole floor of the- first-claee Hotel Einsiedler. No women are allowed here, but you are compensated by meeting, not merchants, but titled aristocrats. i A PRIXCE'S RESORT. | The big Potsdam Hotel Stadt Koenigs-' berg, formerly a highly decent and tedious family hotel, harbour*. two. gambling clubs. One ie "the Berlin Association for Theatre Archives," supposed to cherish theatre history. .The other flourishes under the title of "The Lawrri Tennis Olub," and its particular charm j 'is that it accepts lady membere and; strips them of their money, and, ifi scandal is truthful, also of their clothes. Smartest of all is the "Society of the West." Situated in the modeet Palace] Hotel, it teems with counts, barens, and "vons," and sometimes enjoye the patronage of the ex-Kaiser's eon Prince August Wilhelm. When he is there only poker is played, and outsiders are not allowed in, even if they pay a3 much as sixpence. In the Hotel Central close by ie the "Club Harmonia," which held private orchestral concerts in Berlin until Xoeke's raiders discovered that cards, dice, and Reichsbank notes were hidden in every violin. Only one dingy room, with beer-spat-tered red velve: settees, is occupied, but only eolid citizens whose minimum stake is a thousand-mark note are allowed to play. At present it is -under a cloud. A war profiteer named Weidemann gambled

away 2,750,000 marks in three evenings, and then vanished. A week later a certain "Weidemann, supposed to be the same man, blew out his brains in the Vienna Imperial Hotel. '"CONSCIENCE" MONEY. Potsdam's authorities wink at the gambling; it Iβ good for trade, but after the Weidemann scandal and when the "German and Austrian Merchants" dipped a card crook in the Havel the citizens were troubled by eonsci-entiems soruplee and the clubs took fright. Potsdam's poor, it was discovered, were in a lamentable plight, and the clubs collected 150.000 marks ac an offering. Pot6dam municipality said No! It could not toirch tainted money, and the gambling hells trembled. Next morning, however, to the "German and Austrian Merchants" came a nrJd municipal councillor, who explained that though the municipality would demean itself by taking 50,000 marks, still if, in view of the enormous wealth of the gamblers, cay a couple of million marks were subscribed, well then. . . The money was paid.