The Sklarek scandal

In episode 3 of the TV-series Babylon Berlin's season 2, a girl working at the police headquarters asks Charlotte for help. The girl has to check hundreds of invoices, all purchases of uniforms since 1924. « Good for you », says Charlotte. «You’ll earn more money ». The trouble is, the other girl cannot do sums. Charlotte agrees to help her, for 80 pfennigs an hour.

Checking invoices against delivery notes, she finds that the uniform suppliers are charging the police ten times the right amount. She mentions the fact for a boss, who dismisses it.

What Charlotte just has discovered is known in the history of the Weimar republic as « the Sklarek scandal ».

The Sklarek brothers Leo, Max and Willi, had bought the clothing company with which the city of Berlin dressed its agents. The problem was, the company presented a number of false invoices for amounts largely superior to the actually delivered goods. The losses for the city were estimated at over 10 million marks.

The scandal was a boon for the Nazis, one of whose main propaganda themes was the corruption in the republic. The jewish origin of the brothers made the affair even more alluring for the extreme right. It should however be noted that the first complaint that the Sklareks were defrauding the City Administration had been made by Councillor Perl, a Jewish member of the Berlin City Council. Moreover, one of the defenders of the Sklareks was a Nationalist member of the Council, Wilhelm Bruhn, a notorious antisemite, and publisher of a Jew-baiting paper. It was established that Bruhn was a close friend of the Sklareks, receiving from them huge sums for advertisements in his paper.

In S02 E07, Councillor Benda mentions that he himself is investigating the scandal, in which also Gustav Böss, long time mayor of Berlin, is implicated. The mayor himself is seen some minutes later, being attacked by nazis at a train station.