Эрзац: история и использование заменителей, особенно в военное время.

Substitute good, particularly in wartime

An ersatz good is a substitute good, especially one that is considered inferior to the good it replaces. It has particular connotations of wartime usage.

Ersatz is a German word literally meaning substitute or replacement. Although it is used as an adjective in English, it is a noun in German. In German orthography noun phrases formed are usually represented as a single word, forming compound nouns such as Ersatzteile ("spare parts") or Ersatzspieler ("substitute player"). While ersatz in English generally means that the substitution is of unsatisfactory or inferior quality compared with the "real thing", in German, there is no such implication: e. g., Ersatzteile 'spare parts' is a technical expression without any implication about quality, Kaffeeersatz 'coffee substitute' is a drink from something other than coffee beans, and Ersatzzug 'replacement train' performs a comparable service. The term for inferior substitute in German would be Surrogat, which is cognate to the English word "surrogate".

In World War II, Ersatzbrot (substitute bread) made of potato starch, frequently stretched with extenders such as sawdust, was furnished to soldiers as Kommissbrot, a dark German bread baked from rye and other flours used for military rations, and also to prisoners of war. One recipe discovered in the Food Providing Ministry in Berlin, labeled "(Top Secret) Berlin 24. X1 1941", contained 50% bruised rye grain, 20% sliced sugar beets, 20% "tree flour" (sawdust), and 10% minced leaves and straw. As a result, the word ersatz entered as a pejorative into Russian and other Slavic languages. In Britain, this was additionally popularised as an adjective from the experiences of thousands of U. S., British, and other English speaking combat personnel, primarily airmen, who were captured in the European Theater of Operations during World War II. These Allied prisoners of war were given ersatz goods such as Ersatzkaffee, an inferior Getreidekaffee or "grain coffee" as a coffee substitute by their German captors.

In the Eastern Bloc, many agricultural goods could not be produced domestically, such as tea, coffee, nuts, and citrus fruits. These were generally imported from abroad with scarce foreign currency reserves, or inferior substitutes were produced domestically. In 1977, the East German coffee crisis resulted in the introduction of many coffee substitutes, which were generally rejected by the population. Replacements for orangeat and succade were made from candied carrot and unripe tomatoes.

A study of conditions in the Southern United States during the United States Civil War is called Ersatz in the Confederacy.

When presented with a choice of ersatz, one tends to prefer the generic version of the name brand rather than an entirely different product. Specifically one that most closely resembles the original and meets the same goal. For instance, a person who desires a gourmet chocolate is more likely to choose another, less expensive chocolate as a substitute than a different kind of dessert or snack. Because such "within category" substitutes are easier to compare to the desired good, however, those that are inferior are less effective than "cross category" substitutes that fulfill the same goal. People are more able to notice their inferiority during consumption, which leads them to be less satisfying than goal derived substitutes from different taxonomic categories. During the First World War in Germany and Austria Hungary, people succumbed to sickness from the consumption of ersatz goods. In Austria, the term "Vienna sickness" was coined after malnutrition from was linked to a cause of the tuberculosis epidemic (10,000 reported cases). In Germany, Princess Blücher suffered from influenza in 1916, suggesting that she was suffering from "ersatz illness". She writes: "everyone is feeling ill from too many chemicals in the hotel food. I don't believe that Germany will ever be starved out, but she will be poisoned out first with these substitutes."