Before 1914 Germany was Europe's leading consuming country, Hamburg redistributing coffee toward Scandinavia, Finland and Russia; during the blockade, writes Ukers, the Germans fell back on substitutes, and the high prices of the postwar period prolonged their use, the imports of 1920 (90.6 million pounds) remaining far from the 371 million of 1913. People roasted whatever could be found: acorns, chestnuts, beechnuts, rye, barley, lupin; the Malzkaffee Kathreiner factory, founded in Munich in 1892, was one of the largest. The word Muckefuck designates this barley and chicory coffee; its origin is attributed to the “mocca faux” of the French in 1870, but the Duden derives it from a Rhenish dialect in which it meant the brown rot of wood, two etymologies that no source can decide between. Under the National Socialist regime the state-controlled Kaffee-Surrogat-Extrakt appeared; after 1945, Caro-Kaffee (1954), the first instant ersatz, blended barley, malt, chicory and rye. In the United States, Postum enjoyed its greatest popularity during the rationing of the Second World War.

Ukers 1922, ch. XXII, p. 289; de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ersatzkaffee and de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zichorienkaffee, accessed September 7, 2026; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postum

The German Democratic Republic offers the best-dated case, and the chain of causes there is complete, from frost to cup.

The Brazilian frost of 1976 made the cost of coffee imports jump, from about 150 to 700 million foreign-currency marks a year. Coffee is bought in foreign currency, and that is exactly what the country lacked.

On July 26, 1977, the SED Politburo decided on the Kaffee-Mix: 51% roasted coffee, the rest in peas, rye, barley or beet pulp. It was sold at 4 marks per 125 grams, when the cheap variety Kosta, withdrawn in the process, had cost 7.50. The drinker thus paid less for a product that was half coffee, and no longer had a choice.

The nickname came at once. The people baptized it Erichs Krönung, after the Jacobs Krönung brand, or Edescho, for “Erichs Devisenschoner,” Erich Honecker's currency saver.

The defeat was technical before it was political. Pea flour swells under pressure and heat, and it clogs the filters of coffee machines. Anger rose to the point of alerting the Stasi, and production ceased after more than a year.

The way out of the crisis came in two moves, both meant to bring in coffee without spending foreign currency. From September 1977 the regime lifted the limits on coffee received in parcels from West Germany: it was families that imported the coffee, and no longer the state.

Then the country looked for a source it could pay for in goods. In 1980 and 1986 it signed agreements with Vietnam exchanging machinery and a hydroelectric plant for half of the Vietnamese harvest for twenty years. That is the origin of the rise of Vietnamese canephora.

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaffeekrise_in_der_DDR, accessed September 7, 2026