I am revising for a German Exam. What does Hamsterkaeufe mean in terms of the DDR?

Please help.exam is tomorrow and my german boyfriend doesn't know either.useless.Thanks in advance

Answers:
Some German words seem to have been created simply for the joy of being used in English: such as schadenfreude or weltanschauung for example. The current bird flu panic in Europe has brought about the introduction of yet another German word: hamsterkäufe. Roughly translated, it means "hamster buying." But a closer look at the Langenscheidt yields a better definition: "panic buying."
Literally, of course, Hamster cage--would it be a Trabi? (The Trabant, the much mocked DDR car). This is just a guess, though. Try the website ostalgie (I don't remember the suffix). It has a lot of things from the former DDR (like the Ampelmännchen!

ack! I looked at kaefe and saw kaefig. I'm sorry that I gave an incorrect answer. Ich weiß nicht, was "the purchase/purchasing of hamsters" bedeuten soll.
Hamsterkaeufe = the literal translation is "hamster buying"
In the former DDR it was sometimes very difficult to buy certain things. Everything used to be standardised - when things were sold out it took a long time until they were available again. In the first 10 years after the war it was worst: there was food rationing. So - always living with the fear that you can never now what will be available when and how . people bought as much as they could whenever they could - like a hamster who is building stocks for winter. Hope that makes sense to you.

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