The Coffee Tax — and the Sniffers
Not everyone was happy about coffee’s popularity. Frederick the Great of Prussia was furious that ordinary people were spending money on coffee instead of beer — which was taxed and profitable for the state. His solution? He imposed crippling coffee taxes, gave the government a monopoly on roasting, and banned peasants from roasting their own beans.
When a black market predictably emerged, Frederick hired 400 retired soldiers and sent them onto the streets of Berlin with one job: sniff out anyone illegally roasting coffee at home. The “Kaffeeschnüffler” — Coffee Sniffers — were paid a quarter of every fine they collected, which made them extremely motivated and universally hated. Think of them as the parking enforcement officers of 18th-century Prussia. Frederick died in 1785, and his Coffee Sniffers were disbanded shortly after. Nobody missed them.
The East German Coffee Crisis
Fast forward to the 1970s. East Germany was gripped by a coffee shortage so severe it threatened social order — East Germans reportedly spent three times more on coffee than on shoes. With real coffee unaffordable and in short supply, many East Germans turned to coffee substitutes — coffee substitutes made from roasted chicory, barley, or rye. It tasted nothing like the real thing, and everyone knew it, and the government knew it too.
Their emergency solution was extraordinary: they struck a deal with the newly communist government of Vietnam and set up an entire coffee plantation there. The first harvest was due in 1990. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. East Germany got its coffee just in time for reunification — and Vietnam went on to become the world’s second-largest coffee producer.
