Berliners paid over twice a monthly salary to see Sartre’s play

Evidence

Simone de Beauvoir heard that some people were paying 500 marks for a ticket — over twice an average monthly salary. One person even paid two geese, a high price in a city where food was still scarce. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 647

Categorization

• CANDY: The detail of paying two geese for a theatre ticket in starving Berlin is a vivid, self-contained story worth sharing.
• SHARE: The two-geese-for-a-ticket detail would delight someone interested in the economics of occupied/starving cities or theatre history.