Trams or Tailfins?: Public and Private Prosperity in Postwar West Germany and the United States 9780226491523

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Trams or Tailfins?

Trams or Tailfins? Public and Private Prosperity in Postwar West Germany and the United States ja n l . l o g e m a n n

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

Jan L. Logemann is the editor of The Development of Consumer Credit in Global Perspective. A research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., he is also the director of its Transatlantic Perspectives project. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2012 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2012. Printed in the United States of America 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-49149-3 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-49152-3 ISBN-10: 0-226-49149-8 ISBN-10: 0-226-49152-8

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(cloth) (e-book) (cloth) (e-book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Logemann, Jan L., author. Trams or tailfins? : public and private prosperity in postwar West Germany and the United States / Jan L. Logemann. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-49149-3 (cloth : alkaline paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-49149-8 (cloth : alkaline paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-226-49152-3 (e-book) ISBN-10: 0-226-49152-8 (e-book) 1. Consumer behavior—United States— History—20th century. 2. Consumer behavior—Germany (West)—History. 3. United States—Economic conditions—1945– 4. Germany (West)— Economic conditions. I. Title. hf5415.33.u6l64 2013 339.4'7094309044—dc23 2012004827 o This paper meets the requirements of ANSI / NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Contents

List of Figures vii List of Tables ix Abbreviations xi Acknowledgments xiii

introduction Divergent Paths to Mass Consumer Modernity: Comparing West Germany and the United States 1 p a r t 1 State—Private Consumption and the Framework of Public Policy

1 2

Introduction to Part One

13

The Politics of Mass Consumption: Balancing Public and Private Consumption in Postwar West Germany and the United States

21

Public and Private Consumption in Affluent Societies: Divergent Approaches to Consumer Policy during the 1960s

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p a r t 2 Society—The Social Significance of Consumption Introduction to Part Two

69

What the People Want: Consumer Aspirations and the Social Meaning of Consumption

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4 Menace or Promise? Credit Financing in Two Postwar Consumer Societies

107

3

p a r t 3 Space—Urban and Suburban Spaces of Consumption

5

Introduction to Part Three

131

Urban and Suburban Living: Public Development and Private Consumption

139

6 Shaping the Postwar Consumer City: Urban and Suburban Patterns of Postwar Retailing

185

conclusion 219 Notes 227 Index 295

Figures

1 Publicly planned West German consumption spaces 5 2 American automobilized shopping 6 3 Saturday Evening Post, August 15, 1959 88 4 Phelps, Using Instalment Credit

120

5 Cheyney, Using Our Credit Intelligently 121 6 Der Spiegel, February 11, 1953

124

7 Owner-occupied housing (graph) 141 8 Levittown, Pennsylvania, 1950 148 9 Bremen, Neue Vahr, 1960 156 10 Streetcar in downtown Karlsruhe, 1961 173 11 Southdale Center, Minneapolis, 1957 196 12 Self-service store, Bremen, 1957

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13 Hohe Strasse, Cologne, 1968 214

Tables

1

Private consumption as a percentage of GNP 23

2

Public spending as a percentage of GDP 23

3

Personal consumption expenditures, United States

4

Personal consumption expenditures, West Germany 81

5

Durable goods in percentages of West German and US households 82

6

New private housing units started, United States 149

7

Passengers using public transportation, United States 167

81

Abbreviations

A F L — American Federation of Labor A g V — Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Verbraucherverbände B L S — Bureau of Labor Statistics B u A r c h — Bundesarchiv Koblenz C D U — Christliche Demokratische Union C E A — Council of Economic Advisers C I O — Congress of Industrial Organizations C I S — Congressional Information Service E C A — Economic Cooperation Administration F D A — Food and Drug Administration F H A — Federal Housing Administration F N M A — Federal National Mortgage Association F T C — Federal Trade Commission G D P — Gross Domestic Product G N P — Gross National Product HstA Köln—Historisches Archiv Stadt Köln I C C — Interstate Commerce Commission I M A — Interministerieller Ausschuss M C U S P D — Monthly Catalog of United States Public Documents N A M — National Association of Manufacturers N R A — National Recovery Administration N R P B — National Resources Planning Board N Y T — New York Times O E C D — Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development O P A — Office of Price Administration R K W — Rationalisierungs-Kuratorium der Deutschen Wirtschaft S M S A — Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area

xii

S P D — Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands VA — Veterans Administration VA T — Value Added Tax

a b b r e v i at i o n s

Acknowledgments

This book was a long time in the making and has benefited in the process from the guidance, help, and advice of many colleagues, friends, and teachers. The book has grown out of research begun at the Pennsylvania State University. I owe much to Greg Eghigian, Adam Rome, and John Christman for their insightful comments and encouraging support. Gary Cross, in particular, has helped me shape my thoughts and questions and has been a wonderful mentor, guiding me into the world of academia, a “Doktorvater” in the truest sense of the word. The Penn State academic community proved to be a tremendously nurturing environment for this project. In numerous courses and workshops, I have received valuable input and feedback from Greg Roeber, Robert Proctor, Philip Jenkins, Donna Bahry, Sophie De Schaepdrijver, Deryk Holdsworth, and many others. I am grateful to the Department of History for several research and travel grants that have allowed me to conduct and present my work. The Institute for Arts and Humanities’ generous support allowed me to begin the writing process in the reflective atmosphere of the “cottage.” Pattee Library and its helpful Interlibrary Loan Service allowed me convenient access to a vast array of sources and materials. A great community of peers in the Penn State graduate program not only made my experience there a very enjoyable one but also helped tremendously in the development of my research. Jana Byars, Robert Faber, Mary Faulkner, David Hensley, Padraigh Higgins, Matt Isham, Alexander Krivonosov, Mary Miles, Russell Spinney, and Jason Strandquist have read chapter drafts or helped me think through the project. Many others outside of Penn State had their share in the conception and development of this project. A number of interests and ideas that inform the

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acknowledgments

book first took shape during my master’s studies at Humboldt University of Berlin and the Free University–John F. Kennedy Institute. I am grateful to Hartmut Kaelble and Constantin Goschler for guiding me early in my studies toward questions of consumption. Many of my peers from Humboldt have remained good friends and much-appreciated sounding boards for my work, including Tillmann Lohse, Sebastian Ullrich, Gordon Lemm, Stefan Uhlmann, and Gregor Rinn. During conferences, workshops, and the like, I have greatly benefited from conversations and exchanges with Marten Barfuss, Arndt Bauernkämper, Andrew Bergerson, Lizabeth Cohen, Matthew Hilton, Kathy Pence, and Adelheid von Saldern. Since I left Penn State, the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, has provided me with an ideal intellectual environment and set of resources for anyone completing a manuscript dealing with the history of mass consumption from a comparative transatlantic perspective. I am especially grateful to Hartmut Berghoff and Uwe Spiekermann for their interest in my project and to the many colleagues and friends who have commented on my work in the context of the institute’s research seminar. My time at the GHI began in November 2008, when I was able to present, at the Decoding Consumption workshop, portions of my work to an audience of specialized consumer historians for the first time. This book has also benefited from the questions, suggestions, and interest of many current and former fellows and coworkers, including Uta Balbier, Carola Dietze, Philipp Gassert, Heather Hester, David Kuchenbuch, Christina Lubinski, Ines Prodoehl, Jonas Scherner, Mark Stoneman, Sebastian Teupe, Corinna Unger, and others. David Lazar has been of particular help as I began to navigate my way through the world of American academic publishing. Of course, my editorial team at the University of Chicago Press—Douglas Mitchell, Margaret Mahan, and Tim McGovern—as well as two anonymous reviewers contributed tremendously to the successful transformation of my manuscript into a more readable and polished book. Some portions of the research and ideas contained in this book have already been published elsewhere. Aspects of chapter 2 are—in a revised form—contained in “Is It in the Interest of the Consumer to Pay Taxes? Transatlantic Differences in Postwar Approaches to Public Consumption,” Journal of Consumer Culture 11 (2011): 339-65. Chapter 4 appeared in revised form in “Different Paths to Mass Consumption: Consumer Credit in the United States and West Germany during the 1950s and ’60s,” Journal of Social History 41 (2008): 525–59. The section on pedestrian malls in Chapter 6 was published in German in a different form as “Einkaufsparadies und ‘Gute Stube’: Fußgängerzonen in Westdeutschen Innenstädten der 1950er bis 1970er

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Jahre,” in Stadt und Kommunikation in bundesrepublikanischen Umbruchszeiten, edited by Adelheid v. Saldern (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner 2006), 103–22. Some parts of chapter 6, finally, have also appeared in “Where to Shop? The Geography of Consumption in the Twentieth Century Atlantic World,” GHI Bulletin 45 (Fall 2009): 55–68, and in “Consumption and Space: Inner-City Pedestrian Malls and the Consequences of Changing Consumer Geographies,” in Decoding Modern Consumer Societies, edited by Hartmut Berghoff and Uwe Spiekermann (New York: Palgrave, 2012). There are many institutions to which I would like to express my gratitude because they have enabled me to conduct or present my research. The Bundesarchiv in Koblenz (especially Barbara Limberg), the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, the Stadtarchiv Kassel, the Stadtarchiv Köln (which unfortunately no longer exists), the Bremer Zentrum für Baukultur (especially Eberhard Syring), the Otto-Suhr-Institute’s Pressearchiv, the Historische Komission Bremen Niedersachsen, and the Library of Congress need to be mentioned in particular. While I benefited greatly from the help of colleagues, friends, and teachers, my family has been the most reliable source of support in this long process. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my parents Fritz and Gisela, my brother Hans, and my wife Beth. I dedicate this book to my children Sebastian Louis and Eva Marie, who have grown up so unbelievably much while this book was being conceived and written.

introduction

Divergent Paths to Mass Consumer Modernity: Comparing West Germany and the United States

Over the course of the postwar “boom era,” mass consumer affluence transformed Western societies in Europe and North America alike. By the mid1970s, after nearly thirty years of sustained growth, West Germany had become an affluent consumer society. The deprivation of the war and postwar years was an increasingly distant memory among German consumers, as was the nationalist drive for autarchy of the National Socialist era. West Germans, much like their contemporaries elsewhere in Western Europe and North America, were increasingly enmeshed in a transnational consumer marketplace with globally advertised brands, multinational corporations, and seemingly ubiquitous mass-market retailers such as supermarkets and shopping centers. By some accounts West Germans had become part of America’s “irresistible empire” of consumer goods, whose twentieth-century success story had been aided by its cold war influence on Western Europe during the 1950s and ’60s.1 Following an American model, the consumerist wave of the future would entail a global convergence of lifestyles centered on the suburban home, automobiles, durable goods, and shopping on credit. This midcentury “globalization” or “Americanization” of consumption had clear limits, however. The newly affluent West Germans of the 1970s hardly conformed to any globalized consumer standard.2 For all the talk about single-family homes, many of them lived in apartments and seemed to enjoy it. While stories about suburbs filled the pages of news magazines across the Atlantic world, a substantial portion of West German consumers expressed a preference for urban living. If household appliances and the latest consumer electronics occupied the minds of postwar shoppers, Germans refused to go to great lengths—let alone into debt—to obtain them. Whereas supermarkets and shopping centers were hailed as the latest innovation in retailing, the cor-

2

introduction

ner grocery and the downtown specialty store remained central to German neighborhoods and towns. More important than what one possessed, consumer surveys suggested, was the quality of one’s living environment: shops within walking distance, public and cultural facilities nearby, and—of central importance—proximity to public transportation.3 Despite West Germans’ clear fascination with cars, their postwar standard of living had more to do with trams and trolleys than with chrome and tailfins. In this respect, their contrast to American consumers was glaring. In postwar America, the pursuit of the suburban American dream and a standard package of consumer goods had become widely accepted as a marker of middle-class respectability and a good life.4 During the 1950s and ’60s, the United States appeared to embody modern consumerism, producing a plethora of affordable goods offered conveniently at new mass retailing outlets. West German consumers, retailers, and policy makers followed American developments closely and with fascination. Yet they did not import or copy the American model of mass consumption wholesale. In tackling the question of why these two countries pursued different paths to consumerist modernity, I trace the influence of three factors—the state, society, and space— on twentieth-century mass consumption in West Germany and the United States.5 How did public policy frame consumption patterns? In what ways did social and cultural norms shape consumer behavior and expectations? How were consumption and shopping geographically embedded within the metropolitan landscape? By emphasizing differences, a structural comparison of two Western mass consumer societies serves to question popular narratives about a global homogenization of consumption. Mass consumption certainly has become a global phenomenon today that transcends national boundaries. Multinational corporations such as Daimler produce their goods for international markets. A German advertising agency developed the latest global marketing campaign for American fast-food giant McDonald’s. Teenage consumers across the continents aspire to the same brands and shop at the same—or at least very similar—retail outlets.6 Recently, historians have rightfully emphasized the transnational nature of consumer markets, product communication, and even consumer organizations.7 Mass consumption has become a phenomenon that defies national borders and often the regulatory power of the state as well. And this is by no means a recent phenomenon; marketing and advertising as well as new consumer trends have criss-crossed the Atlantic world since the late nineteenth century or even earlier.8 Such transnational connections are an important part of the story in this book: both Germans

introduction

3

and Americans have crossed the Atlantic on study trips and trade missions, as consumers, retailing experts, and public planners. Still, consumer cultures have largely developed within national contexts, and only a close comparative reading can unearth the significant differences that continue to underlie these advanced consumer societies. What makes the comparison so meaningful in the case of West Germany and the United States is the mix of commonalities and differences between the two largest industrial economies of the post–World War II decades. The comparative approach highlights the social choices taken by actors in each society and elucidates the respective forms that modern consumption took in each country. For example, whereas American retailers, consumers, and policy makers collaborated in the creation of suburban shopping centers across the United States, Germans retained retailing within traditional urban centers by constructing and frequenting inner-city pedestrian shopping streets. More than a superficial difference in the geography of shopping, I argue, pedestrian malls and numerous other examples from neighborhood shopping to the use of savings loans and public transportation added up to a substantially different societal engagement with modern consumer goods. When it comes to consumption, Germans (and other Europeans) are to this day—in the words of American historian Richad Pells—“not like us.”9 The options available to business leaders, policy makers, planners, and consumers in both countries were certainly shaped by larger economic structures.10 After World War II, the United States found itself in a period of unparalleled affluence, fueled by American economic prowess worldwide and a set of economic growth policies that rested on domestic mass-market consumption. West Germany, by contrast, initially had to concentrate on reconstruction rather than consumption. Income levels did not compare to those of the United States, and recovery frequently followed existing paths of German economic development that favored exports over the mass production of consumer goods for the domestic market. Despite such constraints, however, the sustained growth of the “economic miracle” during the broader Western “boom era” (roughly from the late 1940s to the crisis of the early 1970s), which frames this study, soon did afford Germans with choices.11 Nonetheless, American and German consumer societies did not converge. German consumers shopped differently, frequently desired different goods, and financed their consumption in ways different from those of their American counterparts. Much has been written about the supposed “Americanization” of West German society, especially in the wake of World War II and the Marshall Plan recovery efforts.12 Today we find a substantial literature

4

introduction

about the “Americanization” of German business and retailing through the adoption of “modern” (i.e. “American”) management, production, and distribution methods. Similarly scholars have discussed the Americanization of German popular and youth culture as well as everyday consumption habits.13 To many contemporaries, all this suggested rationalization and increased efficiency in German business as well as the adoption of more democratic attitudes in everyday German life. Especially to bourgeois elites, by contrast, Americanized consumption also signified, in a more negative way, a debased and materialistic mass culture. But—whichever way it may have been perceived—Americanization had its limits. The term implies a unidirectional and wholesale adoption of cultural practices, which were in reality subject to much more complex processes of adaptation and appropriation. The United States was hardly the only source of influence. There was a broader Western European social convergence at the time, and some German scholars have suggested that the term “Westernization” more accurately explains German transformation.14 The comparative perspective also provides a clear understanding of the very deep-reaching transformation of American consumer society during the postwar decades. If West German consumption became “Americanized” during the 1950s and ’60s, the same could be said for consumption patterns across the United States itself. Even more important than transfers and convergence, finally, were the often vastly contrasting choices made by consumers, businesses, and policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic. Rather than transnational adaptation, the social choices made by Americans and West Germans suggest alternative and competing consumer modernities.15 The term “modern” was certainly all-pervasive in discourses surrounding consumption at the middle of the twentieth century. Its meaning remained somewhat opaque, oscillating between the simply “new” or technologically innovative and broader notions of social rationalization and efficient organization. Many commentators in the 1950s and ’60s shared in a popular view that modernization was a linear process of social, economic, and political improvement, culminating in a convergence with American conditions.16 But the historical record shows that we need a more complex understanding of social development, allowing for multiple modernities and therefore multiple manifestations of “modern” mass consumption. The emphasis on public consumption provides one of the most specific examples of West Germany’s contrast to the United States, especially in the 1970s.17 Deputy minister of economics Philip Rosenthal explained the vision of consumer policy of the then governing Social Democrats: “Consumption is not just material consumption, and consumption is not just private con-

introduction

5

f i g u r e 1 . Publicly planned West German consumption spaces, Bremen-Vahr, 1960. Small but modern shops within walking distance of publicly supported housing complexes were a typical feature of Germany’s postwar affluent society. Photo by Simon Müller. Bundesarchiv.

sumption: consumption [spans from] the car to education, from caviar to the hospital bed [. . .], and from stereo systems to the urban landscape.”18 Public consumption, the provision of publicly funded alternatives to private consumer goods and services in areas ranging from housing to transportation or entertainment, has received too little attention from historians of consumption. In part, this is due to a common perception that the American model of modern mass consumption, based on advertising, technological innovation, and private domestic goods in a free market economy is the norm. But we need to broaden our understanding of consumption, particularly for the postwar decades.19 The cold war was in large measure fought over consumption, with two political systems competing over standards of living and what constitutes the good life trying to win the hearts and minds of consumers. Especially at the European frontlines of the cold war, this fight concerned not just which system produced the most cars, kitchen appliances, or consumer gadgetry, but also which provided adequate housing and transportation, and a more broadly conceived standard of living.20 Historians of consumption during the cold war era need to correct the bias toward private consumption and recognize the role of the public sector.

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introduction

f i g u r e 2 . American automobilized shopping at suburban shopping center, Smithtown, NY, 1954. The car and spacious shopping malls became hallmarks of postwar American consumption and its sprawling suburban developments. Photo by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc.. Library of Congress.

A recent and growing literature on consumption in socialist Eastern Europe has emphasized the close interrelation between state policies and personal spending in those societies.21 West Germany’s “social market economy,” to be sure, was no planned economy, and policy makers here paid more than lip service to market-liberal ideas of consumer sovereignty. Still, even under the leadership of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), who governed for much of the 1950s and ’60s, consumer markets were much more tightly regulated than in the United States, and public funding and services became available for a growing array of consumer needs. While the American consumers’ republic was no mere market creature either, since government intervention greatly aided the middle-class consumer’s suburban dream,22 the contrast in political engagement was remarkable. Such alternative conceptions and models of mass consumption had broader implications. Public planning and differences in spatial layout, for example, led to vastly different metropolitan landscapes, with significant consequences for the social composition of cities and the relative environmental footprint of individual consumers.23 Above all, however, West Germans and

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7

Americans saw the relationship between individuals as consumers and that between individuals as citizens very differently. Much attention has recently been paid to the impact of the consumer mind-set on American politics and to the consumer as citizen. The disposable income of consumers had come to play an ever more important role in American politics over the course of the twentieth century. As Americans came to identify themselves increasingly as consumers, any tax infringement on the pay envelope seemed a threat to newly gained social status. The rise of postwar conservatism in the United States was aided by the tendency of American middle-class consumers to look to everyday low prices for consumer goods rather than to public services as a means to better their lives.24 This circumscribed notion of the consumer citizen came not only from national but also from local politics and from policies that limited government at the suburban and municipal levels. West Germany provides a telling contrast to this culture. On the one hand, middle-class German consumers were traditionally much less inclined to equate material consumption with social improvement. On the other hand, they remained much more open to the notion of supporting public consumption as they themselves were often beneficiaries of such goods and services. Middle-class consumers, not just the poor, used public transportation, moved into apartments developed with public funding, and enjoyed shopping in the downtown pedestrian zones urban planners had devised. While American subsidies for private consumption often remained hidden from public view, German consumers exerted equally high demands both on their commercially produced cars and on their public train service. Many of the features of West Germany’s model of mass consumer modernity—the emphasis on state regulation and public consumption, more socially segmented consumption patterns, and the urban setting of shopping and spending—were shared, with variations, across Western Europe. Given the growing European integration over the second half of the twentieth century, I hope to contribute to recent discussion about a “European way” and broader transatlantic differences in social models.25 Even beyond Europe, similarities between West German and Japanese consumers—when it came, for example, to financing consumption and the reluctant embrace of consumer credit—suggest that American consumer modernity was hardly irresistible worldwide. Instead of being a global model for twentieth-century consumption, the United States remained in many ways a peculiar case.26 My study shows how these differences were revealed during the boom era of 1945 to 1973. I explore them by focusing in turn on the development of consumer policy (chapters 1–2), the social meaning of consumption (chapters

8

introduction

3–4), and the geographic configuration of postwar mass consumer societies (chapters 5–6). Part I discusses the political framework of consumption in broad terms. This means more than market regulation and consumer rights and protection. It also concerns economic and social policies that shaped different patterns of production and distribution. While the “consumer citizen’s” private spending became central to postwar American conceptions of economic and social progress, an alternative conception of “social citizenship” gained more traction on the other side of the Atlantic. It posited the satisfaction of at least basic consumption needs as a social right for every citizen.27 The tension between private consumer affluence and its counterpart in public goods and social spending ran through the boom era and informed the politics of mass consumption in important ways. Chapter 1 sets out to contrast consumer politics in both countries from this perspective. In the United States, a broad political consensus—involving the state as well as unions and industry—emerged around the expansion of purchasing power during the 1940s.28 Mass consumption became an instrument of economic growth in the emerging cold war economy. This Keynesian emphasis on expanded mass consumption went hand in hand with a deregulation of the consumer marketplace in the 1950s and ’60s as shopping hours expanded and restrictions on retail pricing disappeared or were poorly enforced. A mass distribution economy emerged in postwar America, which promised abundance for most citizens at an affordable price. The contrast with the West German case reveals how central mass consumption really was to postwar American politics. While the “social market economy” set up by the West German economics minister Ludwig Erhard and other liberal modernizers after 1948 revolved around the right to free consumer choices, the politics of mass consumption took a different shape in West Germany.29 To be sure, reconstruction required government-sanctioned saving, capital buildup, and exports rather than domestic consumer spending. The social market economy too continued to remain more committed to public spending and social security than its American counterpart. The postwar expansion of the West German social-security state was owed in part to the direct competition with East Germany’s socialist economy, and public spending was an important component of the 1950’s economic miracle. Even under the conservative CDU government, “prosperity for all” included the notion that at least some access to newfound abundance would be provided by the state. Chapter 2 looks at policy responses to the debate on private affluence and public poverty. In the 1960s, American critiques of private affluence had little

introduction

9

political impact. Instead, US consumer policy during that decade remained largely limited to product safety and other consumer protection legislation. In West Germany, spending on public goods from publicly subsidized housing to public transportation and urban development remained high. This culminated in the explicit recognition of both private and public forms of consumption by the governing Social Democrats by the late 1960s and into the ’70s. As a result, each country developed a very different balance between private and public goods as well as a different means of access to the growing affluence of the boom era. Part two turns to consumers and their engagement with growing postwar affluence. In chapter 3, I take a look at the development of household spending patterns and consumer aspirations and attitudes, drawing conclusions about the contrasting social meaning of consumption, especially for middleclass Americans and West Germans.30 This analysis brings out the importance of class and status differences in the shaping of those consumer societies.31 Postwar America was marked by the widening adoption of a middle-class consumption pattern centered on the home, the durables that fill it, and the car. While the consumer market was segmented and products were offered in a growing number of variations and price gradations, postwar America was truly a mass market in that it advertised the same basic set of goods, the same “American standard” of abundance, to the vast majority of the population. The postwar “economic miracle” introduced consumer affluence to West Germany as well, but West Germans continued to spend comparatively more on food and Genussmittel (semiluxury foods), while expenses for housing, transportation, or household durable equipment never caught up to American levels. Equally important, household spending patterns continued to be more stratified by class differences. Middle-class attitudes toward consumption played a vital role in explaining these differences. Increasingly since 1900, middle-class Americans sought social distinction through the purchase of the newest and most improved goods. They also had acquired the attitude of bargain hunters, rationally searching for bargains to maximize their attainment of consumer goods. Other groups in American society followed their lead on a sliding scale of quality gradations. By contrast, middle-class West Germans remained somewhat skeptical of American styles of shopping and what they perceived as an overt American materialism. While historians have emphasized the degree to which postwar consumption challenged older cultural hierarchies, the comparative perspective underscores the continuity of what I call a bürgerlich ethos of consumption, which emphasized restraint, saving, and buying only few and high-priced but “quality” goods. Mass consumption in postwar

10

introduction

America met the promise of a more egalitarian society based on an expanding basket of durable goods (including homes). In Germany, by contrast, material consumption was a much less accepted means of climbing into the middle class, and a culture of Bürgerlichkeit perpetuated differences between the middle and the working classes into the 1960s.32 This difference in social meaning becomes especially clear when the financing of consumer goods is discussed in Chapter 4. The dramatic expansion of consumer credit in the United States after the war is a distinctive feature of the expansion of consumer culture across American society.33 In West Germany, consumer goods were more likely financed through household savings. Saving rather than spending defined Bürgerlichkeit or middle-class status in the eyes of many West Germans, separating them from the working class. The differences between the two consumer societies are to this day most palpable in their metropolitan geography. Part three explores the spatial transformation of metropolitan space through mass consumption. Chapter 5 traces the development of housing and transportation and their impact on the metropolitan landscape. As is well known, suburban home ownership became the norm in the United States, while renting and apartment housing were increasingly the exception for middle-class consumers.34 Less acknowledged is the accompanying decline in public housing and public transportation. Middle-class and increasingly working-class Americans left the cities for the suburbs in droves during the 1950s and 60s with dramatic consequences for the metropolitan balance of private and public consumption. While West Germany also saw a trend toward the detached, single-family home (Eigenheim) and the private automobile, West Germans rebuilt their cities and urban life rather than fleeing to the suburbs after World War II.35 Urban living entailed a greater acceptance of public transportation and other public goods, which faced dramatic decline in the car-dependent and socially segregated suburbs of America. The geographic development of retailing discussed in Chapter 6 mirrors the broader urban / suburban differences observed in housing and transportation. Postwar retail stores were subject to “local and national embedding.”36 American retailing shifted increasingly to the suburbs with the spread of shopping centers and large discounters.37 More urban forms of retailing prevailed in West Germany, with distinct forms of neighborhood and downtown shopping. State regulation protected smaller neighborhood retailers, and middle-class culture perpetuated a preference for quality goods at downtown specialty retailers. In the United States, municipal zoning regulations and private developers kept new suburban subdivisions almost devoid of neigh-

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borhood retailers. Urban planners in West Germany, by contrast, often constructed new housing and apartment developments around neighborhood shopping centers and supplied public transportation connections to innercity retailers. Alarmed by the decline of traditional downtowns and main streets in America, West Germans consciously tried to keep consumers within their cities. The most important example of this is the construction of Fußgängerzonen (pedestrian malls) since the 1950s. While the malls of postwar America have privatized shopping space, pedestrian malls in German inner cities have helped to conserve public space and more traditional forms of retailing. My comparative perspective shows that mass consumption was not necessarily the end of a culture of urbanity; nor did it bring about a globally uniform postmodern metropolitan space. From the West German—and, more broadly, European—perspective, the suburban pattern of living and shopping (as well as the energy-intensive and automobile-centered pattern of consumption that came with it) remained largely characteristic of the United States. All of these patterns, the political, the social, and the spatial, reveal subtle but important differences. Despite the importance of global economic trends, increased affluence does not necessarily lead to the same social or cultural model, nor to an Americanized consumer world. It may well be that the American model is the exception rather than the leading edge. We have to recognize the importance and persistence of national differences in the second half of the twentieth century.

pa rt o n e

State—Private Consumption and the Framework of Public Policy

The state has been a central force in shaping modern consumer societies: private consumption has always been framed by public policy. Since the late nineteenth century in particular, the regulation of retail and consumer goods gained in importance as consumers organized politically and the “standard of living” became a focus of wage and price policies.1 While the political debates on both sides on the Atlantic frequently dealt with similar problems, the emerging consumer societies in Germany and the United States were embedded in profoundly different political economies—revealed clearly in the years after World War I—which produced distinct patterns of consumer economic regulation and balances between private and public consumption. While the United States was increasingly geared toward competitive largescale mass production and distribution of private consumer goods, with very limited state intervention, Germany produced a more “organized” capitalism that saw a great deal of both state and corporate regulation.2 As American industry and consumers rallied around the promise of material abundance through Fordist mass production at ever lower prices, Europeans by and large held on to a consumer society that was shaped by the tastes of the bourgeois elite and centered on small shops and craft production.3 German consumers, far more than Americans, looked to the state to regulate central aspects of everyday consumption and to ensure a basic standard of living.4 During the Weimar years, the German political economy saw an expansion of public consumption in the form of increased welfare as well as expanded social security that grounded citizenship more strongly in social rights than in the United States. While its policies were neither comprehensive nor uncontroversial, the German state was more willing to address standard-of-living questions by means of public redistribution and public

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consumption.5 On the local level, “municipal socialism” did much to broaden the array of public goods available to consumers, from energy and transportation to housing and cultural entertainment.6 In 1920s America, by contrast, improving the standard of living was primarily left to market forces, while the more regulatory and interventionist state of the Progressive era gave way to welfare capitalist schemes. The privatepublic welfare state of employer-based health insurance and pension systems that would come to full fruition during the 1950s and ’60s had its roots in the rise of group insurance models during the post–World War I period.7 The American path to raising the consumer’s standard of living was centered on private disposable income. The “pocketbook” politics that emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century focused on the increasing availability of consumer goods at affordable prices.8 A plethora of brand-name goods became nationally available, and advertising copy sought to create a national consumer culture and consumer identities that revolved around the use of consumer products.9 Consumer products became not only more available but also more affordable to Americans by the 1920s. An expansion in the use consumer credit, for one, played a central role in the creation of a broad middle market, which neutralized some existing class-based differences in consumption patterns.10 More fundamentally, however, the American mass production regime, which was in many ways symbolized by Henry Ford’s assembly-line production of the low-price Model T automobile, rested on the promise of higher wages as in Ford’s introduction of the five-dollar workday in 1914. Consumer products thus grew—if unevenly—more affordable to the workers that produced them in the 1920s. While still limited, widely contested, and introduced somewhat haphazardly during the 1920s and ’30s, the postwar compromise around market-organized mass production and mass consumption was prefigured in important ways during the interwar period.11 The American economic model certainly appealed to many Europeans as a vision of cultural democratization and material improvement. Talk of “Americanisms”—the interwar equivalent of “Americanization”—was part and parcel of Weimar public discourse. Numerous aspects of an emerging consumer society could be found in 1920s Germany as well; modern retail structures such as the department store had found their way into the major urban centers of Germany as early as the end of the nineteenth century.12 To many Germans, however, from intellectuals and social elites to industrialists and the vast number of small shopkeepers, the American model also presented a severe challenge. Department stores were at the center of heated public debates—frequently infused with anti-Semitic undertones—about

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changes in retail structure and the potential consequences to traditional small shopkeepers.13 While small retailers were perhaps no match for chain stores and other American mass distribution retailers of the time, they still wielded enough political clout to challenge American-style mass distribution systems. Producers similarly were often resistant to new forms of marketing-driven strategies and price-driven competition and instead emphasized a traditional focus on quality production in a less competitive “coordinated capitalism.”14 Conservatives decried American “mass” culture as conformist and as a threat to German culture.15 Social Democrats, even if intrigued by the possibility for high wages and expanded consumption under Fordism, nonetheless rejected the limited role of unions and public consumption in the United States.16 Intellectuals on the left, finally, were critical of commercial consumption and the “culture industry,” which appeared to undercut working-class consciousness. Despite the best efforts of American advertisers venturing on the German market by the 1920s, German attitudes toward consumption did not coalesce with the American mass consumption model.17 The German path to consumer modernity that began to take shape would couch modern consumption within the interests of both social democracy and labor organizations on the left and industry and retailer concerns on the right. Both labor and management, as well as German consumers in general, were ultimately also more likely than their American counterparts to look to the state for regulation of the consumer marketplace.18 The Shared Challenge of the Great Depression The Great Depression brought questions of mass consumption to the forefront of the political agenda in Germany as in the United States. In New Deal America, the key to overcoming the Depression was eventually seen in expanding consumer purchasing power.19 While strengthening the role of the state in the consumer marketplace and connecting to regulatory traditions of the Progressive era, New Deal policies would ultimately reassert the centrality of private consumption in the American political economy. After 1933, the National Socialist regime in Germany also picked up on the promise of consumer prosperity, projecting its own model of a consumer society as a promise to overcome the social and economic strife of the depression. The American government exerted unprecedented influence on the consumer market during the New Deal. Several federal programs were aimed at widening consumer markets and ultimately laid the groundwork for the postwar mass consumer society. The New Deal, to be sure, was a disparate

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set of policies and, especially at the beginning, included a number of regulatory approaches such as restrictive NRA (National Recovery Administration) price policies and AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration) price maintenance that ran counter to ideas of promoting growth through mass consumption. What ultimately won the day was a set of policies that aimed at expanding a consumer-oriented marketplace by providing, among other things, plentiful and cheap energy and credit for future growth.20 The creation of Social Security and various public works programs are well-known New Deal efforts to foster domestic purchasing power, but just as integral to the story were agencies such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Federal Loan Administration, or the Tennessee Valley Administration, which promoted infrastructure and credit development. More than just laying the groundwork for the suburban housing boom of later decades, legislation such as the National Housing Act of 1934 provided for the modernization of homes through affordable loans for appliances. Electrification programs, furthermore, drove down utility costs and effectively created mass demand.21 While direct income redistribution (e.g., through taxation) remained limited, public spending within the framework of a capitalist economy became the hallmark of the New Deal and would be taken to new heights during World War II.22 In fighting the Depression over the course of the 1930s and especially after the American entry into the war, consumption became ever more intimately entwined with notions of Americans citizenship and patriotism.23 As purchasing power became the new consensus of liberal New Deal social and economic policy, consumers were expected to wield their power accordingly.24 At the same time, as Lizabeth Cohen contends, the late 1930s saw politically organized and empowered consumers actively engaged in shaping price policies, for example through widespread “buyer’s strikes.”25 The history of postwar mass consumption cannot be written without recourse to New Deal legacies in housing, credit, and energy policy; promoting mass consumption had become a tool of progressive politics. During the New Deal, however, mass consumption was also framed in a political context that harbored at least the possibility for more radical visions of consumer organization and more direct public regulation of the consumer marketplace. Consumer policies in the wake of the Depression in Nazi Germany have received some attention in recent years as an aspect of the “modernity” of the National Socialist regime.26 While economic policy under the Nazis was not uniformly oriented toward modern notions of economic growth, its promotion of infrastructure did have modernizing effects. Furthermore, many Nazi leaders, recognizing the importance of consumer demand, looked to the mass production of consumer goods as a means to break down social division and

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garner support among German workers.27 As much as American “materialism” was rejected, industrial leaders and policy makers looked to the United States for technical innovations in the realm of mass production.28 In its rhetoric, Nazi consumer policy had initially focused on the protection of small shopkeepers and craft producers, who counted among the core constituencies of the party. Indeed, the 1930s saw legislative restriction on modern retailing forms such as the department store and consumer cooperatives.29 Even before Hitler’s ascent to power, Nazi-led protests in 1932 had brought legislation curbing the expansion of chain stores. Now the state was stepping up regulation of advertising in an effort to make the consumer marketplace more honest and less competitive.30 These protectionist efforts culminated most dramatically in the attacks on and subsequent “aryanization” of countless Jewish-owned shops and, most importantly, department stores during and after the pogroms of November 1938. Ultimately, the hopes of the small shopkeepers were betrayed as other policies of the regime benefited the growth of ever-larger cartels and modern forms of mass production. Consumers, after all, were a broader, more attractive constituency than shopkeepers; as the economy began to rebound in the mid-1930s the promise of new forms of consumer goods began to permeate Nazi propaganda. Mass-produced items, from the Volksempfänger (people’s receiver) to the Volkswagen (people’s car), were meant to entice large parts of the population to whom such products had been unavailable before.31 The Nazi leisure organization Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) advertised vacations for working-class Germans, including cruises to such exotic places as Norway and Madeira.32 In Nuremberg, the Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung began to professionalize market research and the study of consumption.33 Housing experts and urban planners began to anticipate modern traffic demands and promoted models of rationalized mass housing production for a consumer market that would transcend the class divisions of earlier decades.34 For all these modernization efforts, the Nazi regime pursued a distinctly “German” model of a modern consumer society. Not only were the promises of consumer prosperity restricted to ethnically German members of the Volksgemeinschaft, but consumption was in many ways subordinate to political and ideological demands. Advertisers were urged to “Germanize” the language and style of their ads. To achieve greater autarchy and independence from imports, the regime pushed “patriotic” German products such as apples in favor of imported citrus fruit.35 Nazi leisure programs were less concerned with individual preferences than with organized group experiences infused with ideological subtexts. As consumer culture was politicized during the 1930s, free consumer choice was limited.

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Nazi consumer politics presented postwar West Germany with a mixed legacy. Hartmut Berghoff has aptly characterized the 1930s as an era of “enticement and deprivation.”36 No truly comprehensive program promoting a mass consumer society emerged, for elements of modern mass production were continuously countervailed by conservative protectionism. The propagandistic promises of new consumer goods often proved to be hollow as preparation for war overshadowed the production of civilian products; for example, few people ever received the cars they were encouraged to save for. Still, new consumerist aspirations were awakened in the population that West German policy makers had to contend with, and well into the 1950s the late 1930s shone bright as a time of prosperity in the popular memory.37 Material benefits promised by the Nazi regime were not limited to private consumption but also raised popular expectations toward public spending. The Nazis did not fundamentally alter the Weimar social security state—save for the introduction of numerous racial elements—and in parts even expanded it.38 Into the early years of World War II, many Germans experienced a standard of living that in their own recollections would compare favorably not only to the depravations of the Depression era but also to the shortages of the postwar years. The war and immediate postwar years mark a significant caesura in the history of consumption for both countries. Americans experienced rationing and price controls through the Office of Price Administration, which at least initially enjoyed surprisingly widespread support among consumers. The 1940s emerge as crucial period in setting the parameters for a postwar consumer society. Should the New Deal’s influence on the private marketplace through public spending, regulation, and the promotion of purchasing power be expanded? Could the erstwhile prominence of private industry in shaping visions of American abundance be restored? Mass consumption would be central to postwar American society, so much seemed apparent. But how should it be organized? Coming out of war and foreign occupation, West Germany was plagued by shortages and faced the task of building a market economy and a democratic republic. The neoliberal founders of the social-market economy defined themselves in contrast to both the protectionism and the massive cartels of the Nazi period. Free consumer choice was hoped to be a key to future success of the Federal Republic, but a wide variety of models for organizing consumption was available to policy makers. Next to the American version of a mass consumer society, Western European nations such as Britain and France developed more mixed economies with a higher degree of state con-

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trol and a more strongly developed notion of “social citizenship.”39 To the east, the German Democratic Republic began to develop its own model of a socialist consumer society.40 This is the context in which West Germany and the United States in the postwar boom era developed their own distinctive paths toward mass consumer modernity.

1

The Politics of Mass Consumption: Balancing Public and Private Consumption in Postwar West Germany and the United States

During the postwar decades, economic growth and mass consumption dominated domestic politics on both sides of the Atlantic. A sustained economic boom brought unprecedented levels of affluence to West Germany and the United States, and policy makers regarded consumption as key both for ensuring business growth and resolving social problems.1 In both countries these decades are conventionally identified with the spread of private consumer goods to ever wider segments of society. Indeed, the expanding material standard of living became central to the self-definition of both Americans and West Germans in the era of cold war competition. Just as Americans turned their attention to the Soviet Union after the 1957 Sputnik launch, even conservative Christian Democrats in West Germany framed their policies in part with an eye on the competitor state to the east and its socialist planned economy. Despite such similarities, however, both countries differed markedly with regard to the role that private mass consumption played in social and economic policy as well as in the way in which postwar affluence was allocated between private and public consumption. The following two chapters trace the politics of mass consumption in West Germany and United States from the 1940s to the early 1970s. Mass consumer policies were wide ranging, including the macroeconomic management of mass purchasing power, efforts to publicly provide such consumer goods as housing and transportation, and attempts to regulate retailing. Both West Germany and the United States witnessed a prolonged debate about the proper allocation between private and public consumption during the postwar boom, which reached a crescendo after John Kenneth Galbraith’s famous indictment of the “affluent society.” While the private consumption of goods and services has been amply studied by consumer historians, public

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consumption as a term is less well defined.2 In analyses of gross domestic product, public consumption refers to the part of the GDP made up by all government expenditures on goods and services. While the term thus defined includes a wide variety of public expenditures, two aspects of public consumption are of particular interest for the present study: first, spending on public goods from housing to health services that presented consumers with an alternative to goods available through the market; and second, social spending that provided consumers with a source of income outside the marketplace and allowed for access to consumer goods. While the development of social policy and private mass consumption are still frequently discussed as two discreet phenomena, affluence and public spending in the post–World War II decades were intimately intertwined. West Germany and the United States struck very different balances, it is true, but in both countries public policy and public spending had a significant impact on private consumer spending. A look at some aggregate statistics can give a useful first impression of the stark contrast in the allocation of postwar affluence. The economy grew dramatically in both countries. The American GDP increased by more than 200% between 1950 and 1970 (from USD 1,686.6 bn to USD 3,578.0 bn), but was still outpaced by West Germany—recovering from wartime devastation—where the GDP grew by more than 300% during roughly the same time period (1952–70: from DM 223,720 m to DM 678,750 m).3 The respective use of the national products reveals a more subtle difference with regard to the importance of private consumption for the two expanding economies (see table 1). In the years 1960–73, private consumption averaged 55.2% of the GDP in West Germany while the corresponding rate in the United States was considerably higher, at 62.7%, despite major military expenditures for the Vietnam War for much of that time period.4 Total government outlays during these years, by contrast, averaged 37.5% of GDP in West Germany as compared to only 29.1% in the United States. Social transfer payments, on average, made up 12.8% of the German GDP, as compared to 6.4% of the American (see table 2 for selected years).5 While these aggregate statistics are but a rough yardstick of social and economic developments, they do suggest that postwar affluence was distributed in significantly different ways. Underlying these statistics are two very different approaches to a mass consumer economy. In the American case, private consumption played the central role in raising the postwar standard of living. Federal policy pushed for an unbridled mass distribution economy, focused on purchasing power and full employment with an underlying democratic promise of greater equality and abundance for all. Direct social spending would play a limited role in the American “consumer’s republic” of the 1950s and ’60s. A “hidden

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t a b l e 1 Private consumption expenditures as a percentage of GNP West Germany

United States

59.3 (1952) 58.3 56.8 56.1 54.2

67.1 63.9 64.6 63.2 63.2

1950 1955 1960 1965 1970

Sources: Flora, Kraus, and Pfennig, State, Economy and Society in Western Europe –, 2:415; US Bureau of the Census, Statistical History of the United States (1976). t a b l e 2 Public spending as a percentage of GDP West Germany

1950 1960 1968 1974

United States

Total govt. outlays

Soc. Security

Total govt. outlays

Soc. Security

30.4 32.4 39.1 44.6

— 12.0 13.7 14.6

21.4 26.8 30.3 31.7

— 5.1 6.4 9.6

Sources: OECD, Economic Outlook, December 1999, table 28; OECD, Historical Statistics, –, pp. 71–72.

welfare state” of tax subsidies and government-guaranteed loans, however, significantly fostered access to a middle-class consumption model. In West Germany, by contrast, private consumption played a far less central a role as in the United States. At first, widespread shortages and major reconstruction needs after the destruction of World War II impeded personal spending, but later the expansion of private mass consumption was further hampered by competing economic policy goals and a persistence of a more traditional distribution economy. Postwar West Germany was an economy geared more toward exports than toward domestic mass markets. Through this focus, over the course of the postwar decades it increasingly challenged America’s initially dominant position in the global consumer goods market. At home, public consumption in the form of direct social spending as well as public goods and services, limited discretionary incomes for private consumption for some German consumers while providing others with increased access to consumer goods. By the late 1960s, German Social Democrats could rather effortlessly promulgate a consumer policy that equally encompassed both public and private consumption. Consumer policy thus followed quite distinct paths in the two countries. The Marshall Plan, while certainly instrumental for the speedy recovery of West Germany’s economy, was not as effective in transplanting the American model of mass consumption as is often assumed.6 Rather than an “American-

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ization” of postwar West Germany, a series of contrasts emerges when we take a comparative look at three major areas: (1) the overall importance of private consumption and purchasing power to social and economic policy; (2) the regulation of consumer markets; and (3) the degree of public consumption through direct and indirect social spending, as well as the provisioning of public goods as an alternative to the consumer marketplace.7 To trace these contrasts, I am drawing on a diverse array of primary and secondary sources, including trade journals and specialized publications by contemporary economists, sociologists, urban planners, and professionals in retailing and public administration. Media accounts in newspapers and periodicals are read against statistical material and surveys produced by state institutions and a number of national and international organizations. In the German case, the files of the federal Ministry of Economics which played a crucial role in many aspects of the postwar politics of mass consumption proved to be an invaluable resource. On the American side, consumer policy was long dispersed among a vast array of departments and agencies, and the federal role was more strongly complemented by state and local institutions. Still, a plethora of published Congressional records as well as microform records of administration documents and reports at public depositories help to provide insight into American debates and approaches regarding consumer policy and regulation. US Politics of Mass Consumption and the Purchasing Power Paradigm, 1940s–1950s Emphasizing private consumption in the free market was certainly a longstanding tradition in the United States. Still, the 1940s represent a dramatic break with regard to the role that mass consumption would play in American politics; in this period, sustained economic growth emerged as a predominant policy goal. Liberal social policy shifted from an emphasis on structural reform in the 1930s toward increased material benefits. With regard to consumer policy, as Lizabeth Cohen has recently pointed out, the New Deal notion of organized consumers as citizens participating in the political process gave way to the more modest idea of consumers elevated in—but limited to—their role as purchasers.8 This distinction between the “citizen consumer” and the “consumer as purchaser” is particularly useful from a comparative perspective when contrasted with the concept of “social citizenship”—with implicit rights to the public provision of basic goods and services—that gained in traction across Europe at this time.9 Crucially in the mid-1940s, a balance was negotiated between private and

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public consumption. While mass prosperity was widely anticipated throughout American society during the war, the ultimate balance between private and public spending was still widely contested. The “American model”— which later would become central to American self-understanding in the cold war as well as in various Americanization discourses throughout Western Europe—was not yet clearly developed. In fact, some American policy makers were still willing to look abroad, particularly to Britain and its famed Beveridge Plan, for inspiration regarding the framework for anticipated postwar affluence.10 r e j e c t i n g t h e e u r o p e a n m o d e l : p o s t wa r prosperity and the “american beveridge plan” In the midst of World War II, economist and consumer advocate Stuart Chase set forth his postwar vision of American abundance. Chase, who had risen to prominence with his 1928 Your Money’s Worth and had been affiliated as an adviser with many of Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, published Goals for America: A Budget of Our Needs and Resources in 1942. The aftermath of the war, Chase suggested, promised “a vast budget of postponed wants to be filled—houses, clothing, automobiles, tires, radios, washing machines, durable goods of all kinds. Incidentally, many consumers will have stored up purchasing power with which to buy them.”11 A lesson of the Depression, however, was that one could not leave markets to themselves: Chase saw the need for state intervention and public works to achieve full employment. American productive capacity especially after wartime expansion, he asserted, was high enough to ensure “national minimums” and to give “every family in the country enough consumers’ goods and services to provide a high standard of comfort and health.”12 In his view it was essential to balance the expansion of private consumption with public works from housing construction to transportation systems. He aimed for a “mixed economy,” in which both private and public enterprise would serve the consumer. Within the federal government, the National Resources Planning Board (NRPB) emerged as the driving force behind such thinking.13 By the early 1940s the board set its sights on issues of planning for a postwar society. Combining the social security and public works traditions of the New Deal with Keynesian ideas regarding economic growth, the board was integral in developing what has been termed the “Third” or “New” New Deal.14 The NRPB proposed a policy of “social Keynesianism,” which aimed at full employment and stable growth primarily through social spending and public works.15 Like the British Beveridge report of December 1942, it built on Roosevelt’s notion

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of “freedom from want”; but beyond remedying social ills, planners hoped for stable economic growth and a boost for the Allied cause in the war.16 In his report to the British parliament, Sir William Beveridge had proposed the creation of a comprehensive system of cradle-to-grave security for postwar Britain, which included the creation of a national health service. Full employment and at least a minimum of insurance against all major social risks and hazards were among Beveridge’s goals.17 The British plan was well received by many in the United States. The New York Times found it to contain “so many merits, and so many advances in thinking on social-security problems, that it is certain to have a profound influence on the future of social-security theory and practice.”18 In January of 1943, secretary of labor Frances Perkins publicly outlined what she termed an “American Beveridge Plan”: the expansion of social security systems and public works should function as a means to restrict purchasing power during the war, only to release it in the postwar period. Perkins emphasized that such a policy was not merely a political measure but represented a “world trend.”19 Policy suggestions included federal work and youth programs, stronger unemployment compensation, an expanded old-age insurance system to be underpinned by a “comprehensive general public-assistance program.”20 Public social services providing some minimal form of provisioning for basic consumer needs were also part of the mix, including a food stamp program and basic medical services. Beyond full employment, these social policies were billed as having a “direct economic return to the nation as a whole” by providing increased purchasing power and a more effective work force.21 Social security, NRPB economist Eveline Burns argued, no longer had the “aura of widow’s weeds,” but an “essential and constructive function in the complicated economic society of today. [. . . It assured] a minimum income to all families, and would at the same time provide a floor of purchasing power on which businessmen could count.”22 Such anticipation of dynamic economic growth truly separated the American Beveridge Plan from earlier New Deal policies. Economist Alvin Hansen, at times referred to as the American Keynes, was a key figure in developing the idea of a dynamic economy growing through expanded private consumption and compensatory government spending. His 1942 After the War—Full Employment emphasized the need for a high level of postwar purchasing power.23 To overcome the postwar reconversion from military to civilian consumption, he proposed increased wages, the liquidation of wartime savings, expanded consumer credit, the reduction of excise taxes on consumer durables and luxury goods as well as enlarged federal transfer payments. Private industry alone, Hansen believed, would not be able to produce

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the necessary levels of consumption. Government needed to “vitalize and invigorate private enterprise” by spending on urban redevelopment, low-cost housing, electrification, public health programs, and cultural facilities.24 The American Beveridge Plan failed to muster much political support in Congress, however, as Republicans and anti–New Deal Democrats had gained in political influence in the 1942 elections. Various interest groups publicly attacked plans for more social spending. The insurance industry rallied against increased social security features, while the American Bar Association denounced them as an outgrowth of totalitarian thought.25 Even John Lewis of the United Mine Workers rejected the plan as “utopian” and demanded wage increases as the more practical approach.26 Instead of acting on the proposals of the “American Beveridge Plan,” Congress moved to dissolve the NRPB.27 Public opinion, however, was not as averse to the proposals for increased public consumption as the political reaction might suggest. According to a 1942 Fortune survey, 74% of Americans were in favor of medical care for those who needed it, 74% also supported old age pensions for every citizen over sixty-five, and 58% agreed with the need for unemployment insurance.28 And while the American Beveridge plan never became reality, many of its underlying ideas would inform postwar politics for decades to come. The NRPB reports represent an important transformative stage in social policy in the context of growing affluence. More centrally, however, it was Hansen’s notion of a dynamic “high consumption economy”—albeit without increased social spending—that would carry the day in a new postwar vision of liberal social reform. consuming for growth: commercial keynesianism a n d t h e p u r c h a s i n g p o w e r pa r a d i g m The impending need for reconversion and the fear of a relapse into mass unemployment pushed private spending to the fore in the political debate. In June of 1944, secretary of labor Perkins had proposed an eighteen-point program for the reconversion to civilian goods production. Her program called for boosting sales of permanent consumer goods, from refrigerators and vacuum cleaners to furniture, kitchen utensils, and automobiles. The idea was to encourage “normal buying by the public through use of war savings.”29 Pent-up private demand and concerns about inflation fueled labor conflicts after the war. In a series of strikes, union leaders called for increased wages without increase in product prices, whereas a Republican dominated Congress, after 1946, moved to restrict union power most notably with the

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passage of the Taft-Hartley Act.30 In general, however, a broad consensus had begun to emerge, whereby unions abandoned more radical political demands in favor of increased wages in a growing economy geared at full employment.31 Keen Johnson, undersecretary of labor, called for increased mass production to allow for “both lower prices and higher incomes.” Some producers—like Ford, which cut the prices of its 1947 models—followed the administration’s call for a growth-oriented consensus.32 In this effort, the Employment Act of 1946 was a central element in laying the groundwork. Not only did it enshrine “maximum production” and “purchasing power” as goals of American economic policy, but the act also created the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), which came to play a central role in shaping postwar economic policy.33 In effect, the CEA became the center of macroeconomic steering in a Keynesian sense, with government anticipating business cycle developments and promoting stable growth through the regulation of purchasing power, production capacity and aggregate demand. In its annual reports to the president during the late 1940s, the Council of Economic Advisers outlined an agenda for economic growth based on the “foundation of mass consumption.”34 Employment, to the CEA, was less an end in itself than a means to achieving true national prosperity through purchasing power and maximum production. This ideology of purchasing power rested on the democratic promise of “passing on more goods to more people [. . .]. If we are to achieve and stabilize maximum production according to any reasonable interpretation of America’s capacity to produce, we must in the future have much higher consumption in all the lower and middle ranks.”35 To this end, the CEA’s 1947 report envisioned a “great tide” of better furniture, household appliances, automobiles, and amusement facilities moving even into rural communities.36 The key to postwar prosperity was now private enterprise meeting consumer demand. The CEA called on producers to better investigate consumer needs and desires. The automobile industry, for example, should embrace the concept of a dynamic economy and anticipate continuing growth and expansion. With the help of advertising and consumer engineering, American business eagerly followed this lead after the war.37 The residential housing industry was similarly called upon by the CEA to respond to the demand for affordable, mass-produced housing.38 There would be only limited room for public enterprise. The 1946 report had indicated profound skepticism of government spending as a means to ensure full employment; the “primary purpose of public works” was to be limited to “the provision of services that cannot otherwise be supplied.”39 Public consumption would thus be relegated to fringe areas where the market fell short of demand, and questions of un-

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equal income distribution were to become secondary. The emphasis was on price competition providing the “lowest price consistent with a fair return in a stable economy.”40 Particularly under the leadership of Leon Keyserling, the council advanced this ideology of “purchasing power” as a framework for social and economic policy. By 1949, the CEA thought that the American economy had shown its potential for growth and that “efforts to promote expansion of the total production and income are more significant than measures to ‘redistribute’ the current product.”41 Having a distaste for “social Keynesianism,” Keyserling rejected Hansen’s notion that private industry needed compensatory government spending for continued growth. In contrast to what we will see in postwar West Germany, direct controls on the economy—in the form of price controls, for example—were similarly rejected in favor of more indirect monetary and fiscal tools. While the antitrust agenda, long a hallmark of progressive economic policy, was nominally maintained, the CEA’s 1949 report was careful to point out that under changing conditions there was “room for well conducted big business.”42 Easy credit was a central element of this growth strategy under the purchasing power paradigm. As will be discussed in more detail in chapter 4, expanding opportunities for consumer and mortgage credit became a huge factor in expanding private consumption in the postwar decades. Low interest rates were a vital monetary tool in the postwar arsenal of economic steering, involving several federal agencies. Since the 1930s, the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) supported the secondary mortgage market. The Rural Electrification Administration provided loans for home electrification and electric durable goods, and the Reconstruction Finance Administration as well as the Commodity Credit Corporation increased credit availability. In 1947, Alvin Hansen summarized the social and economic impetus behind such policies as follows: “A low rate of interest tends toward a more equal distribution of income and a higher consumption economy.”43 Expanded access to credit rather than direct redistribution became a preferred social policy tool in the postwar era. Concerns about inflation, so prominent during the immediate postwar years, increasingly took a back seat to the promotion of economic growth in the United States. According to the CEA, rising prices were less problematic than a possible stagnation in purchasing power growth: “stability and growth [are] more likely to be promoted by level prices and rising money incomes than by level incomes and falling prices.” Rather than raising concerns about an inflationary price-wage spiral, the CEA for the most part looked favorably on the emerging practice in wage negotiations that provided for periodic

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“cost of living adjustments.”44 For Keyserling and others, belief in the potential for ever-growing productivity and production of civilian consumer goods trumped inflation concerns. The beginning of the Korean conflict, with the specter of a renewed increase in military spending, put the emphasis on ever expanding private consumption to the test. The CEA’s 1950 report called for some restraints in the face of the conflict, yet it opposed any significant aberration from the goal of expanded civilian consumption.45 Keyserling believed that no choice had to be made between continuously high military spending (as projected in National Security Council Report 68 of April 1950) and a growing standard of living—arguing in effect for a policy of “guns and butter” or a “military Keynesianism.”46 By the early 1950s, a new liberal agenda, emphasizing the ideology of private “purchasing power” over those elements of the American Beveridge Plan designed to bolster spending on social security and public works, had taken hold. Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s Vital Center (1949) was one of the most influential formulations of this cold war liberalism, which departed from more radical economic policies of the past. While decrying a naive belief in unregulated markets, Schlesinger argued for a mixed economy that had room for big government and big business: “Keynes, not Marx, is the prophet of the new radicalism.” Whereas social security was important in his view, it would not be at the heart of the new liberal program. “Indeed,” he warned, “an obsession with security may well contain dangers for economic progress.”47 Schlesinger and other liberals now called for the government to set the parameters for private sector growth. The consensus on expanding private consumption crossed party lines, and, under the Eisenhower administration, growth through consumption remained a central element of economic policy. Eisenhower and the Republicans of the 1950s put even greater emphasis on “free enterprise” and government-business cooperation; yet progressive business interests that influenced the politics of the administration generally shared a belief in the importance of social harmony. The ideology of private purchasing power offered an ideal basis for such politics. Eisenhower agreed with his predecessors that government had to play a role in maintaining prosperity and economic growth.48 His 1954 economic report accordingly stressed liberal credit policy and the importance of fiscal policy in the effort to increase disposable incomes and to “maintain employment and purchasing power.”49 An economic downturn during the late 1950s—featuring for the first time the anomaly of growing unemployment and concurrent inflationary prices— did arouse some criticism within Eisenhower’s administration. Concerns

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about inflation led to a monetary response by the Federal Reserve, which raised interest rates; and federal expenditures to counter failing growth were reduced.50 Conservatives increasingly attacked expansive wage agreements, pointing to the recently popularized concept of “wage-price inflation.”51 To the original proponents of the postwar purchasing power paradigm such as Hansen and Keyserling, of course, the Eisenhower administration reacted in all the wrong ways to the downturn.52 The 1957 / 58 recession proved to be short-lived, and efforts to further increase consumption ultimately prevailed over inflationary concerns. Still, the purchasing power paradigm was certainly challenged by this crisis—aggravated by developments in international trade, with countries in Western Europe and elsewhere emerging as increasingly serious rivals in the global consumer goods market—and by growing cold war tensions. As I will discuss below in chapter 2, the crisis provided the initial context for a renewed debate over the balance between public and private consumption that would extend into the 1960s. “free and unshackled” mass distribution: t h e d e r e g u l at i o n o f c o n s u m e r g o o d s r e ta i l i n g The postwar emphasis on private mass consumption found its necessary corollary in the further expansion of a mass production and—even more critically—a mass distribution economy. Thus, deregulation dominated political discourse and limited intervention in various areas from price policy and retail competition to the regulation of store hours. Surveying the situation of American retailing, a 1955 German study commission observed: “Keen competition forces industry to explore every avenue toward raising the standard of efficiency. All branches of the economy [. . .] are attempting to lower prices and make up for smaller profit margins by larger sales. [. . .] Legislation is based on the principle of keeping regulations down to the necessary minimum.”53 Indeed, during the 1940s and ’50s “the consumer” and consumer choice became central to American economic rhetoric, exerting a fictional sovereignty over the marketplace that required little government regulation.54 The increase in modern mass distribution entailed a shift during the 1950s to ever larger retailing units (discussed in more detail in chapter 6). Mergers of department store chains, which increasingly moved into suburban shopping centers, received some public attention. The growth of these shopping centers themselves as well as the proliferation of discount retailing operations threatened traditional and especially urban small businesses. An increase in price competition favored economies of scale. Overall, retailing during the

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postwar decades lost many of the constraints it had earlier faced, particularly since the New Deal era of the 1930s. The elimination of wartime price controls in 1946 was the most decisive change in the immediate postwar years. Since 1942, the Office of Price Administration (OPA) had administered prices for a variety of consumer goods to avoid inflation during the war and to ensure the necessary allocation of resources for wartime production. Compared to the situation in other countries, wartime controls and especially rationing had been relatively limited in the United States.55 While the OPA generally received credit for successfully keeping prices stable, criticism mounted as soon as the end of the war was in sight. A 1945 report on the agency to a Congressional Select Committee attacked the OPA, which “had been given a task [. . .] so foreign to the American experience,” as slow and arbitrary in its decisions.56 Without wartime conditions, the report suggested, the best defense against inflation was not price controls but “free and unshackled” productive capacities. Disliked by business interests and members of the administration eager to “modernize” distribution capacities, price controls were quickly phased out.57 The return to market prices was not unanimously hailed by consumers. The New York Times reported on “consumer resistance” to market pricing after the elimination of price controls, finding that many consumers had gotten used to production costs, rather than the market determining prices.58 And prices did not quickly “adjust,” as proponents of price liberalization had suggested, but rather increased steeply. By 1948 the “high prices of consumer goods” were the subject of a congressional report that summarized the results of hearings conducted across the country. It found that by the end of 1947 consumer prices had risen 67% over the years 1935–39. While many economists cited excessive demand rather than inadequate supply as the main cause, consumers and consumer organizations tended to look to the abolition of the OPA and “monopoly” pricing as the main culprits. Ultimately, price controls did not return, however, and, even during the Korean War, efforts to combat inflation and to direct resource allocation had little direct impact on consumer goods pricing. Across the board, public policy retreated from intervention in consumer markets. While the disappearance of price controls can reasonably be interpreted as a return to prewar “normalcy” in the consumer marketplace, in a number of other areas the 1950s truly represented a shift toward deregulation. To be sure, peacetime federal regulation of retailing had long been limited to interstate commerce and the activities of a few agencies such as the FTC and the FDA. Regulating the parameters of private consumption was largely a state and local affair. Still, in the 1950s, federal agencies and Congress were

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involved in discussions regarding several areas of retail regulation, including (1) resale price maintenance (“fair trade”), (2) mergers, and (3) store hours. Resale price maintenance, enforced by the so-called Fair Trade Laws, was one hotly contested area. Resale price maintenance allowed manufacturers of brand goods to contractually bind retailers to sell their goods at a fixed price. In many states the requirement to maintain this set resale price was legally extended even to retailers who never signed such an agreement (“non-signers”) as long as any such agreement existed within the state. The idea behind “fair trade,” which was first enacted in California in 1931, was to protect the reputation of brands and—more importantly—to protect small, independent retailers from excessive price competition by chains and larger retailers who benefited from economies of scale.59 The 1937 Miller-Tydings Act allowed “fair trade” to be regulated by federal antitrust laws, and over the course of late 1930s and early 1940s more than forty states had enacted resale price maintenance laws.60 During the 1950s, by contrast, the tide was shifting against the notion of fair trade. In 1951, the US Supreme Court struck down the so-called nonsigner clauses in various state laws as unconstitutional. Lobbied by retailing interests such as the National Association of Retail Druggists, Congress passed the 1952 McGuire Act, which amended the Federal Trade Commission Act so as to again provide for the legality of fair trade legislation. But legal action in several states resulted in state supreme courts challenging the constitutionality of their state laws. The Supreme Court further undermined resale price maintenance in 1957 when it ruled that mail-order-companies could not be forced to abide by state fair trade legislation. The real weakness of resale price maintenance, however, was its limited enforcement during the 1950s. Where legislation was still in place, state authorities seldom prosecuted offenders. More importantly, even producers of brand goods would frequently make use of discount vendors to dump excess goods on the market.61 By the late 1950s, small retailers hoped to remedy the erosion of state fair trade laws through federal legislation that would establish resale price maintenance legislation. A 1958 bill to that effect received favorable hearings in Congress, but faced stiff opposition from federal agencies, most of all the Department of Justice, which—besides pointing to the questionable constitutionality of such efforts—produced studies showing significantly higher consumer prices in areas with fair trade legislation than in those without.62 Since this and subsequent bills never made it into law, resale price maintenance practically ceased to be an impediment to economies of scale and price competition in retailing. Merger activity with regard to department stores and grocery chains also

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received attention by Congress as well as the FTC, as did the spread of discount houses and suburban shopping centers.63 But although concerns regarding the problems of small businesses in the American economy continued into the 1950s and were reflected in the creation of the Small Business Administration in 1952, public regulation proved inadequate to stem the growth of the mass distribution sector. Even the SBA was reluctant to condemn merger activity and intensified competition in any general manner.64 After all, the “stronger entities” that ensued opened at least the possibility of more efficient and cheaper consumer goods distribution. Store opening hours, particularly Sunday closing laws, were another area in which important shifts took place during the postwar decades. Lacking any federal legislation, store hours were largely subject to local and state law. Around 1950, most retail stores were open six days a week, usually from nine or nine-thirty in the morning to around five-thirty in the evening. Trends toward extending opening hours were noticeable, though not yet far-reaching. Increased employment of women during the war had led many retailers to open later and to keep stores open to 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. at least once or twice a week.65 Local business hour laws, if they existed, usually had limited reach. Typically, they were enforced only in situations of increased competition, when established retailers wanted to keep new competitors from exerting pressure to expand their evening or weekend hours.66 Most states and localities prohibited retailing on Sunday. The Supreme Court upheld the right of state and local authorities to limit Sunday retailing in the 1961 McGowan v. Maryland ruling, and by 1970 twenty-five states still had statewide “blue laws.” But with the growing popularity of weekend family shopping since the 1950s, the blue laws came under increasing pressure.67 A 1963 survey of state blue laws found enforcement to be “sporadic and inconsistent, reflecting the change in attitudes and habits since their adoption.” In the state of Washington, for example, all sales except “necessities” such as tobacco, newspapers, milk, fruit, or confectionary items were prohibited by a Sunday closing law. But “on any given Sunday,” the report noted, “one may traverse the city of Seattle, and probably most other communities of this state, and see respectable businessmen openly flouting this law.”68 All these developments favored larger retailers during the postwar decades. As discussed below, the 1960s saw some steps toward public regulation of the consumer marketplace in the interest of consumer protection. But the legislation never seriously challenged unregulated prices, mergers, and retail hours, for many postwar liberals accepted mass production and distribution as necessary means to mass consumption.69 This shift toward deregulation was not simply the result of demands for more democratic access to goods. It

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equally reflected a broader trend in American consumer culture, an abandonment of older social and moral strictures on personal consumption.70 Furthermore, many American consumers had adopted the value-oriented outlook of bargain shoppers. As the comparison with West Germany will show, the postwar deregulation of retailing in the United States resulted not simply from policy approaches but from consumer attitudes as well. the limits of public consumption a n d t h e “ h i d d e n ” w e l fa r e s tat e The vast increases in social spending and public works envisioned by the American Beveridge Plan did not come to fruition during the postwar decades. Instead, the emphasis was on private purchasing power as the key to prosperity and growth. Everyday low prices took center stage, not issues of income redistribution or the provisioning of public goods. To be sure, public consumption did increase to some degree after the war. The 1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (or GI Bill of Rights) provided housing and education opportunities to returning veterans and helped to expand the opportunities for more widespread participation in postwar affluence. Recalling “social Keynesianist” notions of the war years, Truman’s “Fair Deal” agenda proposed increases in social security benefits and unemployment insurance, federal spending for urban renewal, and public housing construction. Social security taxes were raised in 1950 from 2% to 3% with the introduction of disability benefits and were raised again in 1956 to 4%.71 Even as Republicans regained control of the White House in 1953, no serious attempt was made to dismantle the social security system established during the New Deal. In fact, Eisenhower’s 1954 economic report explicitly acknowledged the importance of social transfer payments as “built-in stabilizers” of economic growth.72 Still, public consumption lagged far behind the development of private consumption (especially as compared with other industrialized countries).73 In the United States, public consumption remained minimal and restricted mainly to the “poor.” Most “highly developed countries,” Eveline Burns observed in 1956, “socialize the costs of some items which enter into normal consumption patterns but whose incidence is experienced differently by different families. Thus many governments have aimed to protect individuals, even while they enjoy normal incomes, from a reduction in their standard of living due to the costs of medical care.”74 Despite relatively far-reaching provisions for public housing in the 1949 Housing Act, comparatively little federally funded construction took place during the 1950s.75 The 1954 Housing Act, in the words of one contemporary commentator, re-

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flected a “philosophy of as little intervention as possible in private affairs.”76 Efforts to substantially raise federal pension benefits were routinely countered by conservative attacks on what Herbert Hoover called the “siren voices” of cradle-to-grave security. Commenting in 1950, Hoover reiterated the standard conservative objection to increased public consumption: the idea of security was only tolerable for the young, the old, and the unfortunate.77 This is not to say that federal social spending did not influence or foster the postwar boom in private mass consumption. The federal government underwrote private consumption through a vast system of tax subsidies and loan guarantees. This system of indirect public spending has been termed the “hidden welfare state” by political scientist Christopher Howard. The comparatively central role of tax credits and government loans, he argues, has often been neglected in assessments of the American welfare state.78 Their impact on postwar consumption is best illustrated by the examples of housing and pensions. Alongside limited public programs, the 1950s saw a dramatic expansion of the private retirement system, which was supported by substantial tax subsidies. Social scientist Jacob Hacker has argued that the widespread notion of the “underdevelopment” of American social benefits has missed the importance of complementary private social spending such as private workplace benefits and has thus neglected a “crucial range of public policies and a massive realm of social protection.”79 Private pension plans first soared to new heights after World War II, when social security failed to adequately compensate for the effects of the postwar inflation and unions pushed to include pension benefits into collective wage bargaining.80 Pension funds had enjoyed exemptions from federal taxation since the 1920s, contributions being deductible from corporate and income taxes.81 Throughout the 1950s, “fringe benefits” and corporate contributions to private pension plans grew at an astounding rate, favored by further changes in the Internal Revenue Code.82 Tax deductions would ensure, President Dwight Eisenhower proclaimed in his 1954 report on the economy, that disposable incomes could rise despite the growing expenditures for old-age insurance.83 Thus, the indirectly state-sponsored revival of 1920s welfare capitalism in form of fringe benefits did secure the “American standard” of private mass consumption even after retirement for a large number of wageearning Americans.84 The spread of group health insurance since the interwar period had an added effect. It undermined Americans’ willingness to accept public welfare programs. By the 1960s, private employer health insurance had reached about two-thirds of American workers, who, it appeared, had “proved increasingly unwilling to support expansions of public welfare

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programs beyond supplements to their employer-provided benefits.”85 As the benefits of the privately insured grew, fewer and fewer calls were made for more direct spending on social insurance as a means to stabilize growth and widen access to affluence. The most important and best-known aspect of indirect public funding during the postwar years, of course, was the federal subsidizing of home ownership. First, mortgages were made affordable by insurance and mortgage guarantee programs through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Veterans Administration (VA) as well as the through the operation of the FNMA in the secondary mortgage market.86 Second, the possibility of deducting mortgage interest and local property taxes from federal income tax payments provided a boost for attaining home ownership. Economist Paul Merz estimated that personal deductions for housing expenses amounted to well over one billion dollars in 1954 alone and closer to three billion annually by the later 1950s.87 Not only did this preferential treatment to home owners discriminate against those who were compelled to rent, Merz pointed out, but it skewed the equity of the personal income tax, since middle and upper income groups were the main beneficiaries of these tax subsidies.88 The 1950s focus on indirect public spending through this “hidden welfare state” had several important implications for the politics of mass consumption in postwar America. One consequence was a distinct bias in public spending toward a particular model of middle-class consumption. The boom in suburban home ownership would not have been as pronounced had it not been for federal mortgage guarantees and tax subsidies as well as infrastructure spending for metropolitan highways and interstate highways. Defense spending, too, often provided incentives for regional suburban growth and affluence.89 Middle-class suburbanites and those who held relatively well-paying jobs with private insurance schemes benefited the most from the policies of the “hidden welfare state.” Indirect spending thus contributed to the continuing inequalities in the postwar “consumer’s republic” that Lizabeth Cohen has so emphatically pointed out.90 A further consequence of tax subsidies and loan guarantees rather than direct transfer payments and public works was that they masked the extent to which government spending in the United States actually contributed to private consumer affluence. In keeping with what Gösta Esping-Andersen has defined as the “liberal” model of a welfare state, direct public transfer payments as well as public housing projects remained limited to a small segment of society in the United States, the poor and the needy.91 This presents a stark contrast to the West German case, where direct public spending affected a much larger segment of society and consequently made the link between

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public spending and private affluence much more apparent to middle-class consumers. West German Politics of Consumption: Consumer Policy between Public Spending and Conservative Restraints, 1940s–1950s The 1950s in West Germany was the decade of the “economic miracle.” In popular perception of the era and to later observers it represented the unbridled embrace of private mass consumption and even Americanization.92 The increase in the standard of living and consumption seemed all the more dramatic against the postwar background of economic devastation, scarcity, rationing, and widespread black markets. Federal economic policy and the notion of a “social market economy,” spearheaded by minister of economics Ludwig Erhard, promised “prosperity for all” and a hitherto unknown age of abundance.93 Prosperity for all, however, did not mean an unqualified embrace of private mass consumption. Historian Michael Wildt has argued that a mass consumer society only began to emerge after 1957.94 Ludwig Erhard and the CDU-led government did make substantial efforts to foster private mass consumption in a competitive market economy, but private consumption did not play the overarching role in West German economic policy that it did in the United States.95 Erhard’s efforts to promote mass consumption were repeatedly counterbalanced by conservative attempts to preserve a more traditional retailing industry as well as social-democratic pressures for public consumption in form of social spending and the public provisioning of goods. Federal economic policy frequently subordinated domestic private consumption to other economic goals such as the promotion of industrial exports or the building of capital assets. the “social market economy” and the promise of “modern” consumerism Balancing private and public consumption became part of the so-called social market economy—a concept at the heart of postwar West German consumer policy and thus requiring some consideration. To its originators, neoliberal (or, as they were referred to at the time, “ordo-liberal”) economists such as Walther Eucken or Leonhard Miksch, the social market economy stood for a competitive free market ensured by government regulation. In its emphasis on competition, it was a conscious departure from a German tradition of economic trusts and cartels and certainly showed some affinity to American

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notions of free enterprise.96 The ordo-liberal approach was also a rejection of the state involvement in economic planning that was prominent during the Nazi period. While the nationalization of key industries was heavily debated during the postwar years by Social Democrats as well as some conservatives, ordo-liberal West German economic policy tended to deemphasize outright government intervention. Keynesian macroeconomic management, which was behind much of the American postwar emphasis on “purchasing power,” did not enjoy much currency in 1950s West Germany.97 This did not mean, however, that an unfettered free-market approach dominated postwar politics. Welfare payments, pensions, and other government transfers were part and parcel of the social market economy, as was public spending on housing.98 Popular understandings of the term “social market economy” often diverged dramatically from the original intentions of ordo-liberal economists. A 1950 survey revealed that 56% of Germans had no concrete notion of what the “social market economy” actually entailed; many believed it referred to a mixed economy, and 8% even identified it as a planned economy.99 To many Germans, the postwar economic order was still in flux for much of the 1950s and into the 1960s. The social market economy would only gradually acquire more concrete meaning—in part through a contentious debate over the allocation between private and public consumption. The currency reform of 1948 was the first major event in this process. It not only contributed to the cold war division of postwar Germany, but also prefigured the main current of consumer policy in West Germany. Prior to the currency reform, the western (and eastern) zones were marked by shortages, rationing, and price controls. Millions of refugees from the former eastern part of Germany as well as air raid victims lacked the most basic goods, which were in many cases available only through a vibrant black market.100 The currency reform presented a break with this culture of postwar scarcity. Ludwig Erhard, who headed the economic administration responsible for the American and British zones, had decided to eliminate most of the existing price and production controls so as to ensure proper incentives for the market to supply—not hoard—existing consumer goods. Thus, when the currency reform went into effect in June of 1948, not only did West Germans receive new money, but the windows and shelves of retail shops filled up virtually overnight. Much as in the United States, however, deregulation led to price increases and dissatisfied consumers. The months after the reform were rife with consumer protests, demonstrations, and union-organized strikes as “liberalized” prices climbed and put many goods out of reach for average consumers.101

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Still, the filled shop windows of 1948 would become somewhat of a founding myth for the Federal Republic, and Erhard’s decision to float the prices for most consumer goods set the stage for the postwar politics of mass consumption.102 In contrast to the continued scarcity of East Germany, the exercise of consumer choice during the Wirtschaftswunder came to be seen as emblematic of Western democracy by supporters of the social market economy.103 As economics minister from 1949 to 1963, Ludwig Erhard emerged as the central figure in German economic policy and a principled proponent of the ordo-liberal concept of the social market economy.104 He was heavily invested in consumer policy. An economist by training, during the 1930s Erhard had played an important role at the newly created Society for Consumer Research (Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung).105 While not a demand-side economist, Erhard felt that the economy should be influenced by the consumer’s perspective.106 To German ordo-liberals in the 1950s just as their American counterparts, the basic assumption of “consumer sovereignty” underpinned their understanding of the market. As long as adequate market competition was assured, consumers would be able to choose freely according to their needs, without much public planning or regulation.107 According to this concept, competition served the “little man” and allowed for a “democratic economy” of sovereign consumers.108 Erhard championed the ideal of an unrestricted consumer marketplace; yet West German consumer policy did not always coincide with the promotion of private consumption. Economic policy was not dominated by the “purchasing power paradigm” as in the United States, but rather by shoring up capital for rebuilding industry and fostering exports.109 Whereas Americans like Leon Keyserling would look to expanded production as a means of controlling inflation, many Germans saw excessive consumption as inflationary. As Der Spiegel summarized in 1950, “to save, to export, and to exercise efficiency will be the first responsibility of West German citizens for years to come.”110 Fiscal policy was not designed to bolster purchasing power as in the United States, but to increase household savings. As early as 1948, a reform measure sought to promote capital accumulation while diverting purchasing power from private consumption by taxing “nonessential” goods.111 Finance minister Fritz Schäffer continued to promote savings over consumer spending into the 1950s. Unwilling to incur public deficits, Schäffer pushed for plans to finance growing social expenditures through taxation of “luxury items” including expensive cars, cosmetics, and exotic fruit.112 A 1951 plan for “reconstruction saving” (Aufbausparen) similarly aimed to build up investment capital and limit “excessive consumer demand.”113

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During the early 1950s, many basic goods remained under federal price control. Despite the liberalization of 1948, the prices for grain, potatoes, and butter were fixed, and price ceilings remained in effect for other foodstuffs, coal, electricity, water, rent, train fares, and bus and tram fares.114 A federal price council (Preisrat) regulated prices of such everyday goods as rye and margarine. After the price protest of late 1948, officials controlled price development to keep union wage demands in check and consumers calm. In 1950, for example, the prices for the most popular varieties of bread in the various states were fixed for several months.115 After 1951, price regulation was increasingly relaxed, and in 1954 a criminal statute on overpricing (Preistreiberei) was eliminated.116 Still, price policy remained a hot political issue. When prices rose in early 1955, political leaders exerted substantial pressure on the ministry of economics to act promptly if necessary.117 Most notably in the areas of housing and passenger transportation, price controls persisted into the 1960s. As late as 1970, about 40% of goods in the consumer price index were still affected by some form of price regulation.118 Policy, of course, went beyond price controls and discouragement of consumer “excess.” The year 1953—officially declared the “year of the consumer”—brought the first significant federal efforts to encourage private mass consumption, especially through the sales of consumer durables.119 After the boost to German exports during the Korean War, the economics ministry turned its sights on domestic consumption. Already in 1952, economist Alfred Müller-Armack, who had been very influential in formulating the principles of the social market economy, had warned Erhard that too little had been done for the consumer as compared to the United States, where mass production of consumer durables dominated policy.120 His initial proposal to foster the production of standardized, low-cost goods was met with widespread resistance from administration officials and industry leaders. In October of 1952, however, Erhard called on Müller-Armack to head the policy department of the ministry with an increased emphasis on consumer policy.121 The goal was to push for a “mass volume economy” (Mengenkonjunktur) with heightened production of affordable consumer goods at lower prices.122 Central to this drive was a large-scale ministry-backed campaign, beginning in the spring of 1953, to promote refrigerators. Erhard publicly called on Germans to muster the “courage to consume” (Mut zum Konsum). A “refrigerator in every household” was proposed as the goal, and even consumer credit was discussed as an acceptable means of acquiring higher-priced consumer durables.123 Radio spots touted the usefulness of refrigerators and their widespread use in the United States, while lamenting the outdatedness of traditional refrigeration techniques used in Germany.124 By the end of 1953,

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ministry officials claimed that a 40% increase in the production and sales of refrigerators reflected their success in selling German consumers both the fridge, which had previously been viewed as a luxury item, and the idea of refrigeration, which was essential to the introduction of modern grocery retailing.125 Protests from other industries led the ministry to change the format of their message to more generally promote the modernization of households and the sales of consumer durables. A similar campaign in 1955, focused, though more loosely, on washing machines, was simply titled “Erhard helps the housewife.” Federal consumer policy during the 1950s received some—albeit limited— input from civil society organizations, including cooperatives, unions, churches, and the German Homemakers League (Deutscher Hausfrauenbund). Since 1953, the economics ministry regularly convened a “consumer council” (Verbraucherausschuß) to engage these groups in policy issues ranging from price regulation and store hours to housing, and consumer credit.126 The council was a disappointment, however, especially to activists in the cooperative movement.127 The most prominent consumer organization during the 1950s was the AgV (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Verbraucherverbände) which emerged in 1953 as an umbrella organization of various consumer interest groups to give consumers a voice in the political arena.128 Compared to the politically well-represented organizations of employers and employees, the AgV contended, consumers were “the forgotten social partner.” The group steered a middle path between social-democratic calls for greater planning, regulation, and Keynesian intervention in the consumer marketplace and the ordo-liberal emphasis on competition. AgV representatives would frequently acknowledge that when unions and businesses pursue their own agenda, the consumer’s best ally is competition and the general embrace of the market economy.129 While the AgV’s 1953 “Consumers’ Charter” called for freedom of consumer choice in a competitive market, it included the right of organized consumers to participate and be represented in economic policy formulation. The AgV also demanded an active consumer policy and the “maintenance of purchasing power” (i.e., no inflation, steady real incomes) as a basis for consumer sovereignty.130 Thus the AgV was at times an uneasy ally for the economics ministry in its push for modern consumer markets.131 Still, the ministry cooperated with the AgV and other consumer groups in campaigns to educate consumers about rational housekeeping and the expanded use of consumer durables.132 Yet the goal of expanding private consumption was sidelined whenever other economic goals—such as the need for capital buildup or an overarching emphasis on strengthening German exports—appeared to be threatened.

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Worries of inflation, in particular, muted the “courage to consume” rhetoric by the late 1950s. Rising prices and fears of an overheating economy led to debates about slowing down growth by cutting public and private spending to skim off purchasing power (Konsumabschöpfung). Some in the administration called for radical measures to curb private consumption, including a “temporary prohibition” of consumer credit.133 In 1956, even Erhard thought the consumer goods sector was showing symptoms of overexpansion.134 He publicly called for a slowdown of the “overburgeoning expansion of [. . .] mass demand.”135 Such concerns resembled the Eisenhower administration’s worries about the wage-price spiral at roughly the same time. The West German episode with its more radical proposals and alarmist language shows, however, how tentative the government’s commitment to expanding private mass consumption still was. In the United States, by contrast, the inflationary pressures of the late 1950s did not seriously threaten the postwar purchasing power consensus. Wage-price policy was central to the West German debate over inflationary fears. Labor ministry officials explicitly criticized Erhard’s mid-1950s campaigns for the promotion of durable goods consumption as fueling union demands for higher wages.136 While the federal government largely refrained from interfering in the bargaining process between employer organizations and unions on an industry-wide basis, wage restraint to allow for investment and to prevent inflation was the general administration position. In the early 1950s, government reports warned of the American example (e.g., at General Motors) to peg wage development automatically to a cost-of-living index, favoring instead a more loosely defined link to the development of productivity.137 In contrast to their American counterparts, West German unions were more receptive to inflation concerns and tended to agree that stable prices could be preferable to higher wages.138 Calls for economic growth and the expansion of wages, production, and mass demand—the core of the American purchasing power paradigm—were thus curtailed in West Germany because of the emphasis placed on stability. To be sure, much of the 1950s and ’60s were a period of staggering growth, but that frequently meant that federal policy would be focused on keeping the growth of private consumption in check; and such policies enjoyed much popular support. According to a 1957 survey, 36% of West Germans saw stable or decreased prices as key to their personal economic improvement. Only 28% came out in favor of higher wages or pensions; 67% thought the government should intervene to prevent price hikes; and nearly 70% agreed with calls for price controls, a number that had remained relatively steady throughout the 1950s and attests to support across the political spectrum.139 The American

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ideal of “free and unshackled” market competition was not widely embraced by West Germans. As will be discussed in the following sections, efforts to expand private mass consumption and to liberalize the consumer marketplace by the economics ministry were further restrained by the role of public consumption in the Federal Republic as well as by conservative opposition to the growth of a mass distribution economy. t r a d i t i o n a l r e t a i l i n g a n d c o n s e r va t i v e restraints to the consumer marketplace Erhard’s market liberalism was challenged not only by the German left but also by the right during the 1950s. This resulted in a consumer market much more regulated than advocates of a competitive economy had hoped. Consequently, West Germany was comparatively slower in developing the sort of mass distribution systems that allowed for the great expansion of private consumption in postwar America. American-style mass consumerism was by no means universally welcomed by conservative groups within postwar West Germany. Intellectual elites and religious traditionalists were wary of what they perceived as excessive materialism and the socially leveling impact of an American way of life. Their attitudes toward mass consumption, carried over from the interwar period, reflected what Victoria De Grazia has characterized as a “commercial civilization.” In contrast to the American focus on low-price mass distribution, in European societies a traditional bourgeois model of protectionism long prevailed, which emphasized small local retailers and class difference in consumption.140 West German retailers and industrial interests remained reluctant to embrace the competitiveness of American-style consumer markets.141 Especially members of the “old middle class” (Mittelstand) of small and midsize independent retailers and producers were concerned about their social and economic future; and they wielded considerable political clout within the governing CDU. Retail policy in 1950s West Germany to some degree overcame the overt protectionism that had been so prominent in the interwar and especially the Nazi years. Still, the Christian-Democrats had to pacify very vocal Mittelstand representatives. In the face of a coalition of big business and consumer interests in the United States, on the other hand, this social group had lost considerable political influence in the United States since the interwar years.142 In the German case, even the Board for Rationalization in the German Economy or RKW (Rationalisierungs-Kuratorium der Deutschen Wirtschaft )

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was cautious in recommending the outright adoption of American retail practices. Despite the RKW’s longstanding promotion of government and industry efforts, dating back to the 1920s, to modernize and rationalize business relations in Germany, and its sponsorship of a great number of postwar study trips to the United States, its 1955 survey of retailing trends in the United States described American developments as “too much and too stormy.” The report stated that American practices would have to be modified for a more gradual adoption in West Germany.143 Conservative moral reservations and organized business interests thus repeatedly came into conflict with the neoliberal and consumer-minded economics ministry. Clashes concerning the competition and retailing law, resale price maintenance, and store hours will serve as illustrations. Regulating competition in the retailing sector aroused major controversy in 1950s consumer politics. Much of the debate crystallized around what eventually became the 1957 law on retailing professions. The law, a clear attempt by retailers to shut themselves off from competition, regulated the conditions under which a retailing business could be opened and required retailers to submit proof of qualification to local chambers of commerce. Erhard had opposed efforts to restrict access to the retailing profession since the early 1950s, which put him at odds with many in the CDU who were politically linked with the retailers. The economics ministry wanted a more competitive retailing industry, which, they hoped, would mean lower prices for consumers, less inflation, and thus leverage against union wage demands.144 Erhard’s views were shared by economists who indicted German retailers for irrationally calculating prices and keeping too large an inventory. Economist Artur Woll, for example, accused German retailers of having a static rather than a dynamic outlook on their business. Instead of looking to expand through lower prices and increased volume, most retailers only sought to maintain their current level of sales and a “respectable” income.145 Such ossifying trends, Woll found, were abetted by a number of legal restrictions on competition that survived from the interwar and Nazi era. A 1933 law prohibiting significant rebates and discounts on cash purchases (overtly aimed at larger retailers) was reaffirmed in 1954. The law against unfair competition, which dated back to 1909 and was updated in 1957, still prohibited price dumping as well as comparative forms of advertising and all discounting sales (with exceptions for seasonal clearance promotions).146 The law on retailing professions promised to become the most restrictive legislation of all. An initial 1952 / 53 version of the bill envisioned dividing the entire retailing industry into thirty-one separate subfields, each complete with its own certification.147 Within the German Retailers Association (Hauptge-

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meinschaft des Deutschen Einzelhandels) various groups worked to develop training curricula with intensive product education (Warenkunde) for apprentices during the early 1950s.148 Specialized curricula were developed by shoe, tobacco, soap, textile, photo, radio, bicycle, stamps, and coal retailers. The association wanted to retain a “healthy mix” of store sizes to protect the small independent retailer.149 The economics ministry rejected such protectionist sentiments as symptomatic for a broader tendency within German business to secure closed markets through restrictive policies. Officials saw their ministry as the lone “bulwark of the free market economy.”150 Indeed, several other cabinet members were sympathetic to the proposed legislation.151 Consumer groups, however, rallied against such restrictive efforts, attacking so-called mittelständische policy for ignoring new, salaried middle-class consumers in favor of the old, independent middle classes. There was, they claimed, no “right to backwardness,” and they dismissed the notion of a “healthy mix” of retailers as detrimental to dynamic, modern forms of distribution. Looking to larger retailers and discounters in the United States as an example, they suggested that “the pikes in the carp pond are also friends of the consumer.”152 The 1957 version of the retail bill that eventually came into law represented a compromise. The law required only very general qualifications (Sachkundenachweis) of prospective retailers, such as a business degree or a completed apprenticeship in retailing or a retail-related craft. It did not make knowledge of retail goods themselves (Fachkundenachweis) a requirement. Still, access to the retail trade was now federally regulated. Only in 1965 did the constitutional court find the law to be in contradiction to the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of occupational choice. Proof of qualification was subsequently suspended for all retail businesses with the exception of pharmacies and groceries.153 American-style mass production and distribution were thus comparatively slow to emerge. The conflict over regulating retail jobs overlapped with a second struggle over the practice of resale price maintenance. While “fair trade” laws were eroding in the United States, the practice actually gained in importance in West Germany during the 1950s. Again, efforts by the economics ministry to promote a competitive marketplace were hampered by a coalition of traditional retailers, attempting to protect their “sinecures,”154 and a number of consumer goods producers. West German producers during the 1950s showed some degree of openness toward American business practices and mass fabrication.155 Experts traveling to the United States on behest of the RKW during the 1950s urged German companies to pay more attention to American practices. The

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American Standards Association set industrywide standards for consumer durables and thus reduced the myriad competing systems. American industry, reports noted, sought cooperation with women’s organizations and paid attention to consumer demand through the use of “home panels” run by marketing firms.156 Still, many German consumer goods producers remained rather traditional in their emphasis on diverse quality production, which did not always square with the demands of a mass consumer society.157 A multitude of models and variations as well as crafts rather than assembly-line production remained a problem for the rationalization of the German consumer goods industry. While ambivalent about concentrated mass production, consumer groups did call for an increase in standardized production to improve the standard of living.158 A study of the supply of radio receivers on the German market in 1951 / 52 serves to illustrate the problem: there were 325 different models on the market. Of these, 68 models had 63% of the market share but accounted for only 23% of items stocked. Another 137 models had 15% of the market share and still made up 22% of stock. The remaining 25 models were hardly sold at all and yet accounted for 31% of stock value. Not completely discounting demand for some high-end items, the study’s authors presented these findings as evidence for the need to make production more efficient and to eliminate much of the overhead cost involved in stocking such a large variety of models.159 The economics ministry had pushed at various points for more standardized mass production of consumer goods. The idea lay at the heart of the “collective brand” (or Gütezeichen) program that Alfred Müller-Armack proposed in 1952. “Collective brands,” the plan envisioned, were to be awarded by an independent industry consortium. The ministry hoped that this would promote serial production of refrigerators, radios, furniture, and textiles, thus leading to less variety but lower prices.160 Not surprisingly, both retailers and the consumer goods industry strongly opposed this idea, and the merely lukewarm support of the ministry itself caused the plans to be shelved.161 However, even the outright promotion of refrigerators by the ministry received a cool reception by producers. By the end of the promotional campaign in 1953, industry representatives remained skeptical that high-priced goods like refrigerators had mass-market potential in Germany. Unlike the United States, they objected, Germany had limited assembly line production, and the cost of German refrigerators was too high for average consumers at the time.162 Frustrated by the unwillingness of industry to develop a domestic mass market, Erhard resorted to easing the import of consumer goods so as to force producers to lower prices. While he failed to get parliamentary backing for lower tariffs, he introduced an “everyman import” program in 1955, whereby

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individual consumers were encouraged to buy goods (up to a limit of DM 50) abroad.163 The import of consumer goods was part of the 1956 overall program to check inflationary tendencies, and in 1957 the ministry had allowed more favorable conditions for textile imports from China and Japan to lower domestic prices. Only the ensuing “flood of cheap textiles,” which began to threaten the German textile industry in 1958, persuaded Erhard to restrict imports again.164 Resale price maintenance was a second major issue in the postwar debate over lowering consumer prices and mass distribution. Prohibited under allied decartelization efforts after the war, the practice was reintroduced in 1952.165 Price maintenance for brand goods was finally established in the 1957 competition law.166 While Erhard was publicly reluctant to attack resale price maintenance, there were many critical voices within the economics ministry who regarded it as a burden on the free market.167 Producers, organized in the “brand goods association,” had successfully fought for the provision in the 1957 law and would defend resale price maintenance for decades to come. They argued that the practice protected the value of their brands. Consumers, they claimed, wanted the security of getting the same quality at the same price at any store. Leading appliance producer Braun was especially vocal in defending traditional producer-retailer relations. Depicting itself as a champion of product quality and traditional specialty stores, Braun consciously limited domestic sales to individual retailers (including chains) to 3% or less of total sales volume. Higher prices in specialty stores, according to the company’s own trade publication in 1954, were justified because of the personal service and the greater selection they afforded.168 To underscore their position, Braun pointed to the “alarming example” of the United States, where discounters and manufacturers like General Electric increasingly infringed upon specialty stores. American retailing, the company warned, was dominated by “uninhibited price dumping.” They likened American consumers to “Maroccan rug dealers” who bargained for low prices and “spied out” (i.e., comparison shopped) different stores, presumably getting good service and advice at specialty retailers only to then buy at discount stores.169 Braun and other German producers of consumer goods thus appealed to retailers and the public in an attempt to uphold the system of small-store, quality-goods distribution with which they had fared so well. Resale price maintenance was viewed as a key policy in fending off the advances of an American-style mass distribution system. Braun’s line of argument had considerable political support and resonated with large parts of the German population. Indeed, many German consumers supported “fixed prices,” especially for smaller, everyday items; a 1962 sur-

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vey showed 60% of respondents in favor of resale price maintenance, with only 26% opposed.170 Politically, the practice of price maintenance found the backing of conservatives who vied for the support of independent businessmen. CDU representative Rudolf Meyer-Ronnenberg in 1954 argued that “unbounded cheapness” was not always in the interest of the consumer. Instead, a balance between price and quality offered by 100,000 small businesses should be the “truly desirable goal of real consumer policy.”171 Resale price maintenance became a prominent feature of the German consumer goods market throughout the 1950s and ’60s. Even after the Social Democrats—who did not have to worry about retailers and small producers as a constituency—took over the ministry of economics in the late 1960s, efforts to end resale price maintenance in 1969 were stifled in parliament and the cabinet due to the lobbying of industrial pressure groups. Only in 1973 did West Germany abandon strict resale price maintenance.172 The debate over store-hours, a third major arena of conflict concerning restrictions to the consumer marketplace, further illuminates the difficulties of postwar retail modernization. A coalition of retail interests, church groups, and unions emerged during the early 1950s to push for unified, federal legislation limiting store hours. The culmination was the 1956 store closing law (Ladenschlussgesetz), which restricted store hours from 7:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Saturdays. Historically, the regulation of store hours had been a mix of religious and labor rights concerns.173 The introduction of the eight-hour day in 1919 had limited the opening hours of most stores to the time window between 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., but a host of exceptions and local variations continued to exist. By the late 1940s, German stores had frequently more liberal hours than those in the United States, with many stores opening earlier and closing later than their 9 to 5 American counterparts.174 But while the trend in the United States was toward longer store hours and limited enforcement of regulations, West German store hours became more strongly regulated and restricted. While the economics ministry favored a unified, but relatively liberal approach to store hour regulation, the federal labor ministry emerged as a formidable rival in this area of consumer policy. Since store hours had been traditionally regarded as part of labor policy, the labor ministry was formally in charge of policy formulation. The economics ministry challenged this jurisdiction in the early 1950s, arguing that because employee work hours were regulated by a variety of other means, store hours had become primarily the subject of competition policy.175 Whereas the economics ministry feared a restriction of retail competition and an unnecessary burden on consumers if store hours were dramatically restricted, the labor ministry championed the

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concerns shared by retailers and unions for ensuring adequate leisure time of proprietors and employees on evenings and weekends. By 1956, the debate regarding the “overheated economy” and excessive private spending allowed the labor ministry to further justify the closing hour law with the positive economic effect of “limiting consumption.”176 Especially the restriction on Saturday afternoon shopping was a major impediment to the emergence of weekend family shopping patterns favoring large retailers, as seen in the United States. Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, shopping in West Germany continued to be primarily the domain of women, who shopped frequently throughout the work week. Earlier plans for the closing hour law had provisions for a “rolling” free afternoon, leaving it up to individual retailers when to shut down for half a day.177 The eventual elimination of Saturday afternoons as shopping time led department store, especially big ones, to fear for their market share (e.g., to mail-order companies).178 Most small retailers, by contrast, supported the newly restricted store hours since it offered them a measure of protection from larger competitors. In a 1961 survey among retailers, 62% of respondents called the regulation adequate, while another 21% called for even shorter hours on Saturdays.179 Both the economics ministry and consumer groups regarded the employer- and employee-driven agreement on store hours as a prime example of consumers as the “forgotten social partner” in West Germany. Consumers themselves, though, largely agreed with the limited closing hours on Saturdays.180 Most Germans during the postwar decades had no major objection to efforts to protect traditional retailing modes. Some wanted to conserve independent retailers and the specialty stores they valued; and to union advocates as well as social conservatives the limited shopping hours presented a socially just limitation on private consumption. balancing “markets” and the “so cial” in the social market economy The expansion of private mass consumption in a liberalized marketplace was also challenged from the political left. Throughout the 1950s, the Social Democratic opposition, labor unions, and even members of the governing coalition itself sought to strengthen the social aspects of the “social market economy.” This included calls for increased mass demand, increased public consumption through social spending, and state provision of public goods. Not only did the West German state inherit a strong legacy of public consumption and social spending, but postwar circumstances further necessitated substantial public consumption.181 First, wartime destruction and a

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dramatic influx of millions of refugees from the eastern parts of the former German Reich led to substantial public transfer payments (Lastenausgleich) to accommodate and integrate refugees, as well as to massive public spending to rebuild the infrastructure, from housing to transportation. Second, the existence of the German Democratic Republic forced cold war competition in the area of public spending, with both sides ensuring that at least basic needs of the population were met. During the immediate postwar years, a major reform of the German social security system along the lines of the British Beveridge Plan had been debated. After the Allies had deferred social policy to German authorities in 1948, unions and Social Democrats pushed for the adoption of a more unitary, tax-financed welfare state that would provide minimum pensions and health services to all citizens. Traditionalists within the administration and a majority of the conservative CDU rejected such proposals in favor of preserving the existing framework. By the early 1950s, the old insurance-based and fragmented structure of German social security (with separate insurance systems for workers and salaried employees) had largely survived postwar reform efforts. Still, by 1953 West Germany led the world in public social spending, which accounted for 19.4% of national income.182 Despite the restoration of the traditional social-security structures, calls for more “social Keynesian” approaches were not absent from 1950s German politics. The unions in particular argued for economic growth and “fostering mass purchasing power” by means of expanded real incomes and public transfer payments.183 Social Democratic consumer policy advocates such as Karl Schiller supported the market economy, but within limits. Consumer policy, Schiller argued in 1954, meant enabling free consumer choice. This, however, should not be limited to modernizing retailing and ensuring competition, but should include the positive enabling of consumption opportunities, especially for pensioners and those depending on social welfare. Under the headline “as much competition as possible, as much planning as necessary,” Schiller advocated a mixed economy with Keynesian elements such as macroeconomic management of purchasing power, savings, and consumption rates.184 An earlier parliamentary initiative for social reform by the Social Democrats in 1952 had envisioned social insurance not as an autonomous entity but as a way to stabilize the economy and guide it toward full employment, and to increase “purchasing power.”185 Thus, unions and the Social Democrats encouraged stronger social inclusion of all consumers in the emerging consumer society. As economics minister Ludwig Erhard proclaimed the “year of the consumer” in 1953, the CDU-led governing coalition acknowledged that the un-

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deniable successes of the social market economy had mainly been limited to those West Germans who were integrated into the labor market. Speaking before the Bundestag, Chancellor Adenauer proclaimed: “Not all groups of the population, though, have equally participated in the economic progress of the Federal Republic [. . .]. It will have to be a special concern of the federal government to integrate the unemployed and to propose measures to the Bundestag that will further improve the economic situation of pensioners, invalids, widows, and survivors.”186 Adenauer pointed to the social function of economic growth as allowing expanded social spending. The conservative federal government committed itself during the 1950s to strengthening social security and social spending under the conditions of newfound postwar affluence. In contrast to the United States, more direct public transfers, not just subsidized private purchasing power, were seen as instrumental to economic growth and a socially balanced consumer policy. “Prosperity for All,” the Christian Democrats’ famous campaign slogan of 1957, touted not only the successes of Erhard’s social market economy but also large-scale social reform. The decade saw the introduction of child allowances, efforts toward basic reform of welfare payments, and, most importantly, the landmark pension reform of 1957. While Erhard voiced stern opposition to measures geared at expanding social spending, other members of the conservative cabinet took a different view. In 1955, Chancellor Adenauer sent a note to all cabinet ministers expressing concerns about a “gradual movement toward a complete welfare state.”187 In his reply, Erhard strongly agreed with Adenauer.188 Fellow ministers, however, stressed their turf issues in their replies to Adenauer. Family minister Franz-Joseph Würmeling emphasized child allowances as a means to ensure “family-oriented incomes” and saw rent subsidies as indispensable for the preservation of large families’ social status. Housing minister Viktor-Emanuel Preusker pointed to the sheer necessity of state intervention in the housing market after wartime destruction. Minister of all-German affairs Jakob Kaiser noted the degree to which state support had helped achieve social peace, and invoked Bismarck’s efforts to bridge class divides. He further warned that the developments in East Germany, which was revamping its own social security system at the time, needed to be closely watched.189 Even prior to the shock created by the Sputnik launch, the relatively high degree of private consumption in the West was seen as a potential liability in a competition between East and West Germany over public investments.190 Thus institutional interests, conservative traditionalism, and the contexts of postwar strife and cold war competition worked to ensure strong public spending and to frustrate Erhard’s neoliberal vision of the social market economy.

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Social spending became a way of providing access to the consumer affluence of the economic miracle to various groups in society. Unlike its counterpart in the United States, it was not limited to “the poor.” Child allowances, for example, for families with more than two children were debated as a way of redistributing purchasing power.191 The 1954 act aimed to ensure the social status of large middle-class families with more than three children by providing payments relatively independent of their economic needs.192 The 1957 pension reform was certainly the most important measure, and at least some of its proponents saw it as a way to promote consumer affluence. Old-age poverty was still quite common during the early 1950s despite the already existing pension system. The reform not only dramatically increased benefits but it made pensions “dynamic,” in that they were regularly adjusted to match the dramatic increases in real wages. One goal of the dynamic reform, as labor ministry official Kurt Jantz explained in 1956, was to give pensioners adequate “consumption possibilities” during old age.193 The premise, to be sure, was that social-security payments were “not to be given out in a schematically leveling fashion but in consideration of individual life achievements.” The new benefits, which generally amounted to 70% of former wages, were no longer meant merely to subsidize care through family but to ensure the “standard of living achieved over the course of one’s life.”194 Still, Erhard and others worried that such pension plans would lead to indexed pensions and inflation.195 Fears about inflation and the potential collapse of consumption restraints as a result of the pension reform resonated with a wider audience. Using the fictional example of “Mr. Meier,” an average German citizen, Der Spiegel discussed the effects of the reform. The article suggested that because Mr. Meier “is now socially insured, he doesn’t have to save for old age or emergencies, but can give free reign to his consumerist desires.”196 Such worries reflected a traditional disdain for a consumerist life style, but they proved to be largely unfounded. Overall, consumption patterns changed only marginally in the years following the pension reform, in large part because many pensioners, rather than spending all of their increased purchasing power, continued to save.197 The German social security state retained a rather “conservative” character with little social leveling as a result of the reform.198 Still, direct public spending did affect Germans of nearly all social backgrounds. There was a growing sense in the late 1950s and early 1960s that public spending could and should provide every West German with a share of the newfound affluence. The reform of the welfare law in 1961 is a case in point. The notion of an individual “right” to welfare, as well as that of a federally standardized minimum, had gained traction over the 1950s. A 1955 minimum “basket

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of goods” (Warenkorb) still focused on “rigid” demands for nutrition rather than more “flexible” demand for textiles, shoes, or cultural expenses and made no provisions for such items as tea, coffee, or tobacco.199 This initial basket of goods was widely decried in the West German press as “too cheap”; and as the economy continued to grow during the later 1950s, the approach to social welfare changed markedly.200 The federal welfare law of 1961 changed the rationale behind welfare; rather than simply providing the “necessities of life,” the law allowed welfare recipients to lead “a life in human dignity.”201 At the same time, the statistical bureau updated the “meager basket of goods,” which had served as the basis for the consumer price index during the 1950s, to a “well-filled” one, which for average consumers now included not only items like brand-name chocolate, bananas, or meals in a restaurant, but also expenses for consumer durables, travel, public television fees, gasoline, and parking.202 This new conception was then transferred in a scaled-down version to the basket of goods for welfare recipients.203 By 1965, Der Spiegel reported on the new, “well-groomed face of poverty” in West Germany. Welfare subsidies, the report found, were no longer limited to the very poor, and public support payments were compatible with growing consumer standards.204 Again, public spending in postwar Germany afforded vast segments of society access to the emerging affluent society of the Wirtschaftswunder and was much more visible than the loans and tax subsidies that made up much of America’s hidden welfare state. Additionally, West Germany enjoyed extensive public spending in central areas of the consumer economy such as housing, transportation, and broadcast media. Publicly run rail transportation and large parts of the housing market remained untouched by efforts toward market liberalization throughout the 1950s. These areas were governed under the principles of cooperative enterprise (Gemeinwirtschaft ), which means without overt profit considerations.205 As will be explored in more detail in chapter 5, these and other goods and services were used by a wide spectrum of German consumers. Postwar West Germany also opted for a public broadcasting model. Though removed from direct state control, broadcasting institutions were publicly funded and were under the oversight of representatives from various societal groups such as political parties, labor unions, and churches.206 Furthermore, with only minimal funding through advertising, broadcast media did not play the central role in promoting private mass consumption that it did in the United States. Compared to the United States, then, the politics of mass consumption in 1950s West Germany saw a much more restrained push toward private spending and mass purchasing power. The consumer marketplace remained more tightly regulated than its American counterpart, and efforts to promote mod-

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ern mass distribution were checked by traditional retailers and producers. Public consumption in the form of direct social spending and public services was more integral to the West German path to postwar affluence. The pension reform in particular proved to be one of the most popular political undertakings of the 1950s and arguably went a long way toward filling the concept of the social market economy itself with new meaning for West Germans. This notion of the social market economy as a mix of private and public consumption became even more pronounced toward the end of the 1960s.

2

Public and Private Consumption in Affluent Societies: Divergent Approaches to Consumer Policy during the 1960s

By the 1960s, private mass consumption and the balance between private and public spending had become important issues of public debate in the United States and in West Germany. The context and the outcome of the debates, however, were dramatically different, and both reflected and perpetuated the transatlantic differences in the politics of mass consumption sketched out in the previous chapter. While public spending and consumer policy remained separate issues in the United States, by the late 1960s the German government was consciously promoting an approach to the politics of mass consumption that addressed both private and public goods and services; product labeling and subsidized housing, for example, became equally part of federal consumer policy. These differences in policy approaches were indicative of divergent conceptions of what an affluent society should look like. American Critiques of Private Mass Consumption and the Consumer Policy of the Great Society By the end of the 1950s the debate over public and private consumption in the United States was reinvigorated by several factors. The economic crisis of 1957 / 58 with simultaneous inflation and growing levels of unemployment had cast some doubts on the purchasing power model as a panacea for economic and social problems. Increasing international trade competition in the consumer goods market had made manufacturers increasingly wary of rising American labor costs. At the same time, sociological critiques of evergrowing private consumption by the middle class coalesced with exposés of wasteful and sometimes fraudulent practices in the consumer goods industry.

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By the early 1960s, finally, the image of persisting poverty in America’s affluent consumer society grew more prevalent in public debates.1 The cold war provided a broader context for critiques of private consumption. The American standard of living, represented by an abundance of consumer goods, had long been a weapon of choice in promoting American superiority in the cold war.2 In the wake of Sputnik, however, the American emphasis on private consumption came under increasing scrutiny. “Are We Americans Going Soft?” asked Edwin Dale Jr. in a December 1957 New York Times essay. Dale noted a renewed debate over the “public standard of life” and excessive spending on such “creature comforts” as tailfins for automobiles rather than on defense and education.3 Conservative columnist Walter Lippmann indicted private consumption harshly: “Our people have been led to believe in the enormous fallacy that the highest purpose of the American social order is to multiply the enjoyment of consumer goods. As a result, our public institutions, particularly those having to do with education and research, have been [. . .] scandalously starved.”4 While initial calls for more public consumption focused on education and defense, a broader debate soon emerged. The notion that an overemphasis on private consumption might prove harmful was also advanced by a number of sociologists and analysts of American middle-class life. As early as 1950, sociologist David Riesman had suggested that the affluent society gave rise to a new, “other-directed” personality type, who conformed to the prevailing opinions of peers and the mass media by emulating neighbors’ consumption habits. Anxieties and an obsession with “likeability,” Riesman felt, ultimately limited real personal freedom and autonomy.5 William Whyte similarly explored the way in which consumer credit trapped middle-class families in a consumerist life style that proved restrictive on personal development.6 These works challenged the ideal of a rational, sovereign consumer, which had underpinned the liberalization of the retail market and the purchasing power paradigm of the 1950s. Vance Packard’s popular exposés on advertising and the wastefulness of the American mass production system fused a social critique of consumerist middle-class life with warnings about a widely unregulated consumer marketplace.7 In his 1957 Hidden Persuaders, Packard followed Riesman’s analysis of anxiety-driven consumers striving for peer approval. Through the use of “depth psychology,” Packard charged, advertisers and corporations preyed on these consumer anxieties.8 Exposés on dubious marketing strategies—though often less critical than Packard’s of private mass consumption itself—had become a popular genre by the early 1960s, prefiguring the emerging consumer movement of the decade.9

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The most influential critique, however, which went right to the heart of the question of public and private spending, came from liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith. His 1958 bestseller The Affluent Society was an indictment of mainstream economic thinking. While the Keynesian theory of “consumer demand” had overcome the classic economic assumption of scarcity, the focus on production had lost none of its strength. Purchasing power now “rationalized the importance of production and the urgency of consumer need.”10 The problem, in Galbraith’s view, was that the preoccupation with production led to an abundance of private goods, while public goods and services had been neglected since the mid-1940s. Unlike the old world of scarcity, Galbraith suggested, the affluent society could afford to deemphasize the production of goods and should find a new balance between public and private goods by offering more public services like mass transportation, health, recreation, and education.11 Galbraith thus represented a growing number of American liberals who wanted to shift the emphasis from the quantitative to the qualitative dimension of economic development.12 The responses to Galbraith were varied and more partisan than much of the postwar debate on economic and social policy had been. Galbraith’s calls for increased public spending were seconded by other liberals like Arthur Schlesinger, but decried by many Republicans. Raymond Saulnier, chairman of Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisers, insisted that the private enterprise system was all about rising private consumption, and he was proud of it.13 Robert Sarnoff, chairman of the National Broadcasting Corporation, vigorously attacked those who wanted to divert funds from private to public spending. The American standard of living was a proud achievement, Sarnoff felt, and not in conflict with the public interest.14 Leading consumer researcher George Katona also criticized Galbraith’s contentions. Upholding the ideal of consumer sovereignty, Katona warned that the consumer was “not a puppet or a pawn.” The reason for lagging public consumption, he proposed, was a still limited growth rate: “only if so-called private opulence increases still further can we hope to overcome public poverty.”15 The original champions of the purchasing power paradigm weighed in on the debate by calling for growth in both public and private spending. Alvin Hansen argued that Americans needed to look to booming Europe for social and economic innovations. To keep ahead of the Soviet Union, Americans needed a tax cut to foster growth and employment, but must also increase government outlays. Increased public investment in urban communities, colleges, housing, or health care was necessary to stimulate future growth: “the marginal tax dollar has currently a much higher social utility than the marginal pay-envelope dollar. The former goes into schools; the latter into

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tailfins.”16 Leon Keyserling similarly used the Galbraith debate to promote his “sky-is-the-limit” growth strategy again. To achieve greater growth rates, he argued, more public consumption was necessary without increases in taxation.17 In fact, by the early 1960s, Keyserling and others called for a substantial income tax cut to boost private purchasing power.18 By the early 1960s there was a growing sentiment that public consumption needed to be stepped up, in order to address persistent inequities with regard to access to postwar affluence, as well as to improve the quality of life in areas where private consumption had failed to do so. The “war on poverty” and the Great Society programs of the Johnson administration were certainly the most prominent policy efforts to adjust the balance between public and private affluence during the 1960s. In 1964, Johnson had declared the need to “determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth.” The unique condition of abundance, he suggested, enabled Americans to free everyone from poverty and to emphasize the quality of their goals rather than the quantity of their goods.19 The Economic Opportunity Act and the Food Stamp Act of 1964, the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, and the 1965 Housing and Urban Development Act greatly expanded public consumption during the 1960s, even though the actual resources provided for public services were rather limited.20 This increase in public spending, however, did little to diminish the central role afforded to private consumption. The income tax cut demanded by purchasing power advocates was first submitted to Congress by Kennedy in 1962 to speed up recovery after the 1960 economic slump. Despite accelerating growth rates in subsequent years, it was enacted as part of the Revenue Act of 1964, with administration economists pressuring for lower taxes to assure a more permanent expansion of the economy. It was widely billed as the “the largest tax cut in history” and was accompanied by a sharp upturn in the demand for consumer durables and consumer credit. To Johnson, “the consumer was a bulwark in the strong economic gains of 1964 and 1965.”21 Concerns about inflationary pressures evoked by such a dramatic increase in disposable incomes once again were trumped by trust in hitherto “unused industrial capacity” that would absorb increased purchasing power.22 The postwar purchasing power paradigm was alive and well during the 1960s. More importantly, Great Society social legislation was largely treated as separate from the new wave of consumer legislation. In a 1962 message to Congress, Kennedy had laid out a consumer policy, embracing part of Packard’s indictment of deceptive “persuasion” by mass advertising, “waste” in consumer good production, and fraudulent business practices.23 In empha-

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sizing the need for effective consumer organization and federal regulation in various areas, Kennedy and subsequent administrations departed from doctrinaire notions of “consumer sovereignty” so dominant during the 1950s.24 American consumer policy during the 1960s focused on consumer rights in the marketplace and on making consumption safer. Congress created institutions for increased representation of consumers, including a Consumer Advisory Council in 1962, and a Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs as well as a President’s Committee on Consumer Interests in 1964.25 Legislative initiatives included “truth-in-lending” (full disclosure of rates and terms of consumer credit), “truth-in-packaging” (clear labeling of content and measurements to facilitate comparison shopping), food and drug safety, child safety, and wider consumer education.26 None of this, however, fundamentally challenged the postwar mass distribution economy. While administration officials during the mid-1960s at times chided retailers and producers for not living up to standards of good business, they rarely sought confrontation. Administration statements on consumer policy often stressed that private consumption accounted for roughly two-thirds of the national economy. The long-term intention of many consumer policies was not just to make consumption safer and to strengthen the rights and choices of consumers but also to expand consumption opportunities. Assistant secretary of commerce Richard Holton summarized the economic aspects of consumer protection in 1964: “If the consumer affairs program is successful, it will assure us of an even more effective market for consumer goods than we have already developed—a market which has provided Americans with the highest standard of living in the entire world.”27 Public alternatives to private consumption remained largely outside the purview of federal consumer policy, despite the ongoing debate over private affluence and public poverty. Public interests and consumer interests were kept largely apart. To Esther Peterson, special assistant for consumer affairs, it was clearly not “in the consumer’s interest to pay increased taxes,” even if these taxes were to meet, for example, growing educational needs.28 Public goods, generally speaking, were not consumer goods by the definition of 1960s American consumer policy. To be sure, there were passing references in presidential messages on consumer policy with respect to housing efforts, Medicaid, and other Great Society programs; and Kennedy’s 1962 message included a brief acknowledgment that “nearly all programs offered by this administration” from medical care and mass transit to recreation areas and low-cost power “are of direct or inherent importance to consumers.”29 This broader interpretation of consumption and the consumer interest failed to gain traction in 1960s federal policy, however. A 1966 report by the

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Council on Consumer Affairs, chaired by Richard Holton, probably went furthest in suggesting a broader perspective on consumer policy. While the report focused on problems involved with shopping for goods and services, the introduction pointed out the report’s omissions. These included “problems behind the market,” from antitrust policy to the regulation of public utilities; “problems involving the economy as a whole,” from monetary and fiscal policy to wage-price guideposts; and, finally, “problems pertaining to collective consumption of goods and services,” from national park policy to water pollution: “These are policy areas directly or indirectly involving the consumer interest. It is hoped that future Consumer Advisory Councils will turn to these policy areas as well as buyer-seller relationships.”30 This proposal, however, was never followed up. The difficulties of poor consumers did receive increased attention by the later 1960s. Popularized by studies such as David Caplovitz’s The Poor Pay More, the notion that inner-city consumers (frequently African-American) were especially disadvantaged in the consumer marketplace, gained widespread attention.31 In his 1966 consumer address, President Lyndon Johnson emphasized the need “to help the poor family”—but not the overspent American middle class.32 Policy responses were largely limited to consumer education on efficient shopping, in cooperation with the Office for Economic Opportunity.33 Rather than discussing public alternatives to the marketplace, “Project Moneywise” and similar programs were part of what Johnson had called an “all-out effort of the Federal Government to help our poorest citizens to spend their limited funds more efficiently.”34 Once again, the scope of public consumption remained limited to the “poor,” who somehow stood outside the consumer marketplace. The advent of the Nixon administration in 1969 further diminished the prospects for a federal consumer policy that would comprehensively address issues of both private and public consumption. The growing concern with inflation, however, did lead to a series of (ultimately ineffective) price freezes and the temporary installation of a “price commission” and a “cost of living council” between 1971 and 1973.35 In general, Nixon upheld the importance of consumer protection, created a statutory Office of Consumer Affairs in the White House, and proposed a Buyer’s Bill of Rights to further strengthen consumer safety, information, and possibilities of redress.36 On the whole, however, the administration’s rhetoric avoided overtly regulatory approaches. In a 1970 address, for example, secretary of commerce Maurice Stans warned against interventionist “excesses in consumer affairs” that could “hamstring the system.” “Indiscriminate criticism” of the marketplace from the consumer movement could lead to more and more government regulation and bureau-

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cracy. “The American competitive free enterprise system—and all the benefits it provides—would come to an end. If this happens, the average American consumer will fare no better than his Russian counterpart.”37 By the early 1970s, therefore, issues of public consumption rarely came up in the context of consumer policy on the federal or state level.38 The focus now was squarely on the legal protection of consumer rights (especially for middle-class consumer), ushering in the era of class action lawsuits and a heightened role of courts in the politics of consumption. Overall, the possibilities for public regulation of private consumption would be quite limited in the last quarter of the twentieth century in face of strong free-market forces. Only the appeal to protect children (and, by implication, the sanctity of the middle-class home and family), Gary Cross has argued, could muster some support for limiting alcohol or tobacco consumption.39 Instead of addressing the question of balancing private and public consumption, this consumer policy approach worked to enshrine middle-class private consumption patterns that had emerged under the postwar emphasis on purchasing power. Toward a Social Democratic Consumer Policy: Balancing Public and Private Consumption in West Germany Despite an already much higher degree of public spending, a debate about the need for more public consumption emerged in West Germany, too. In his 1959 essay “Our Consumer Society: The Glamour and Misery of the German Economic Miracle,” economist Heinz-Dietrich Ortlieb warned of a strong tendency toward private consumption to the detriment of savings. From a social-democratic perspective, Ortlieb laid out many of the central issues that would dominate the 1960s debate over private consumption: continued concern about inflation and economic stability, the need to shift private spending from consumer goods to savings and capital assets, and the desirability of a better balance between private and public goods. Echoing Galbraith, Ortlieb voiced concerns about a neglect of public responsibilities for hospitals, schools, or churches and asserted the need for an even more “mixed” economy.40 These were not merely social-democratic concerns, however. Ludwig Erhard now repeatedly emphasized the need for a balance between consumption, savings, and investments. While there could be no backing away from the “courage to consume,” he told the economic ministry’s consumer council in 1958, “consumption, savings, investments, and public spending for the fulfillment of common tasks have to be in the right ratio. That doesn’t mean cutting back on consumption but rather channeling a little less of the economic

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surplus into private consumption than before.”41 Over the course of the 1960s, West German economists and policy makers became ever more comfortable in discussing consumption within the framework of Keynesian macroeconomic management.42 Yet, concerns over inflation in a rapidly growing economy muted calls for increased purchasing power. While the United States was battling unemployment at this time, Germany experienced not only full employment but actual labor shortages.43 This situation limited the prospect of meeting growing demand with increased domestic consumer goods, as purchasing power theorists like Hansen and Keyserling were advocating in the United States. Erhard repeatedly warned of the dangers of affluent “selfindulgence” and made “calls for restraint” (Masshalteappelle) to curtail consumer demand.44 In part, such Masshalteappelle were supposed to encourage the building of capital assets across broad segments of the population—an “ownership society” rather than a “consumer society.”45 Such an effort, many felt, could only succeed if more Germans decided to forgo private consumption in favor of increased saving.46 The early 1960s saw the introduction of fiscal subsidies for savings (the first Vermögensbildungsgesetz), as well as efforts to popularize shareholding with so-called “people’s stocks” (Volksaktien) through the sale of shares from publicly owned companies like Volkswagen. Incentives to save for home ownership or by means of life insurance were also extended.47 The idea of “investment wages” (Investivlohn), which entailed the forced saving of a portion of wages and incomes, enjoyed wide currency in the popular debate during the late 1950s and 1960s.48 To Social Democrats, such efforts promised greater social equity, while many conservatives supported mass asset building as a means of imbuing wider sections of the population with a bourgeois ethos in the cold war era. Stability rather than consumption-fueled growth remained the rallying cry of economic policy during the 1960s. Unions did pressure for higher wages, pointing to the relatively restrained wage development of the 1950s and a rate of private consumption well below that of other Western countries.49 Still, unions and Social Democrats were equally concerned about rising consumer prices and frequently joined the ministry of economics in calling for measures such as the abolition of retail price maintenance, increased retail competition, and the import of consumer goods.50 Controlling prices remained a popular cause during the 1960s, and many West Germans were willing to forgo increased incomes and private consumption in favor of economic and price stability.51 The so-called “stability law” of 1967 thus emphasized a widespread consensus that “adequate” growth should only be pursued when consumer prices were stable.52 Most Germans across the political spec-

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trum remained much more reluctant than Americans to accept inflation as a price for increased private spending on consumer goods.53 It was not until Social Democrat Karl Schiller, a leading spokesman for consumer policy since the 1950s, took over the economics ministry in 1966, that West German consumer policy explicitly included Keynesian approaches to the macroeconomic management of purchasing power—balanced, however, by a commitment to economic and price stability. Opening the 1967 “Week of the Consumer and the Housewife,” Schiller lauded consumers for limiting consumption and continuing to save during the mild recession of 1965. While this may have posed some problems for economic recovery, Schiller conceded, it would be necessary to avoid excessive private demand in the anticipated period of economic expansion. Consumers, he advised, should avoid the calls of the “hidden persuaders” and the temptations of “conspicuous consumption.”54 American critiques of private consumption resonated with Social Democrats as well as social conservatives, and the traditional German concern with inflation and capital formation persisted over the American focus on purchasing power (and toleration of some price instability). Despite these differences, West Germans paid attention to American consumer legislation of the 1960s. Consumer groups such as the AgV praised US efforts toward increased consumer protection and consumer rights. The AgV’s newsletter lauded the proposals of Johnson’s 1966 consumer address as “exemplary steps of the Americans on the path toward making consumers safe and mature [. . .]. We Germans are often accused of blindly copying from the Americans. In this case it would hardly do us any harm!”55 Increased spending on consumer education and the 1964 creation of a product testing institute as a federally endowed foundation (Stiftung Warentest), with a monthly publication modeled on the American Consumer Reports, were intended to increase consumer knowledge of products on the market and thus remove some of the disadvantages of consumers vis-à-vis producers.56 By the mid-1960s, West German consumer policy had abandoned the notion of “consumer sovereignty,” which had been at the heart of ordo-liberal conceptions of the social market economy since the late 1940s. As critiques of private consumption gained further ground, consumers were viewed no longer as sovereign but as “atomized” and weak, split between their interests as consumers and as wage earners.57 Beyond these parallels to the United States, however, German consumer policy under Social Democratic auspices included explicit provisions for both private and public consumption. In a 1969 speech before the “Second Week of the Consumer,” Schiller’s deputy Klaus v. Donhanyi demanded sharper fo-

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cus on “collective consumption” and on combating prejudices toward public goods. Pointing to the importance of public services for leisure consumption (from roads to broadcasting, public swimming pools, and theaters), Donhanyi called on political consumer education to “overcome the imbalance in the supply of private and public goods.”58 Balancing public and private consumption became a staple of federal statements regarding consumer policy during the late 1960s and early 1970s. What remained largely an intellectual debate in the United States produced more concrete policy results in West Germany. Consumer policy, many in the administration felt, should be seen as an integral part of a more holistic social policy (Gesellschaftspolitik). In 1965, the economics ministry had already organized an Interministerial Committee on Consumer Affairs (IMA) to make consumer policy an “integral part of general policy.”59 Initially headed by the economics ministry, the IMA increasingly pursued the goal of a “single mold” consumer policy, bringing together the concerns of several departments including labor, agriculture, family, housing, and health. In its May 1970 session, the IMA harshly criticized definitions of consumer policy that too narrowly focused on economic issues to the neglect of its social ramifications.60 The outcome of these debates was the 1971 Federal Report on Consumer Policy. Among the eleven principal goals listed were guaranteed purchasing power and rising real wages, the “best possible supply of public goods and services to the consumer,” and affordable housing under conditions of “optimal urban planning.”61 The report also included more traditional goals such as ensuring competition, protecting consumers against health threats and unfair business practices, and improved consumer education and information. It even called for “environment friendly” products. Public consumption in the form of public goods and services, however, was now explicitly subsumed under consumer policy, prompting deputy minister Philip Rosenthal to define consumption as encompassing education, health care, and urban development, besides material goods.62 Such proclamations were more than mere rhetoric insofar as the government was willing to curb growth in private consumption and to increase taxation. Elaborating on the report, the economics ministry declared: “There is a rising demand for goods and services, which can sensibly be satisfied only in a collective fashion. Augmenting affluence and offering public services are closely connected. Individual consumers and the economy benefit from the growing supply of public infrastructure, which is a necessary condition for continued growth. We will allocate increased funds to satisfy previously neglected public needs.”63 Schiller and others believed there was a growing

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public awareness of the importance of public services, of urban development, and of public transportation, matched by a willingness to adjust spending accordingly.64 By the early 1970s, this broader consumer policy approach had widespread backing among West German consumer advocates. A 1975 study on consumer interest and consumer policy stressed self-realization and quality of life as central goals and invoked the dangers of “consumption passivism” and the “hypertrophy of material goods production.” The market, the authors argued, favored more passive forms of consumption: “It is in the interest of the consumer not to get fixated on lower levels of personal development and thus be deprived of the opportunity for self-realization. The supply of private and public consumer goods can positively or negatively influence the chances of self-realization.”65 The support for public goods, from broadcasting and cultural institutions to urban conservation, often mixed Social Democratic predilections for generally accessible public facilities and services with more traditional bürgerlich disdain for material mass consumption and paternalistic efforts to instill proper consumer behavior. Even more conservative voices in Germany rarely questioned the fundamental assumption of balancing private and public consumption. In a 1973 essay, “Quality of Life: Public Poverty—Private Affluence,” conservative journalist Gerhard Friedel emphatically rejected the notion that West Germany suffered from public poverty.66 Galbraith’s thesis, he conceded, had its justification with regard to the United States, where “public responsibilities were indeed neglected by comparison to the growth of private affluence,” and social policy was “completely underdeveloped” by European standards.67 By contrast, German state expenditures in relation to the GDP had grown from 31.5% in 1950 to 37.3 % in 1970. The state owned a considerable share of the economy; aggregate public wealth formation accounted for 9% of the national income as opposed to an average of only 2% in the United States between 1950 and 1970. The 1960s, Friedel boasted, saw growth in educational institutions, road construction, public transport investments, public housing construction, and cultural facilities (including 56 new theaters, 224 public museums, 33 public libraries). While Friedel warned of left-wing attempts to create a “nanny state,” he suggested further increases in public spending on education, environmental protection, and urban renewal as well as public transportation. In order to pay for such public consumption, he proposed increasing revenue by raising the VAT (value added tax) rate. To Friedel, this would amount to a bearable curtailment of private consumption growth and provide consumers with better public infrastructure and services in return.68 Roughly twenty-five years after its inception, the social market econ-

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omy—a blank canvass for many Germans during the early 1950s—had gained a more tangible meaning for German consumers. Beyond the vision of its ordo-liberal authors, the social market economy had come to be associated not only with freedom of consumer choice but also with a mix of public and private consumption, the regulation of the consumer marketplace, and social spending that provided vast segments of the West German society with greater access to the abundance of consumer goods of the postwar economic miracle. In this, it came remarkably close to the social Keynesian vision for an American postwar economy developed in the American Beveridge Plan. By the same token, the 1970s version of the West German social market economy stood in stark contrast to the more free-market and private consumption– centered politics of consumption in the United States at the same time. Mass consumption was undeniably a major force in postwar politics in West Germany and the United States alike. Yet these countries took quite different approaches to the politics of mass consumption during the 1950s and ’60s in several respects. First, the central role of private consumption and mass purchasing power in American postwar economic growth strategies was not matched in West Germany. Second, the consumer marketplace in West Germany remained more tightly regulated—despite “modernizing” efforts by Ludwig Erhard’s ministry of economics; in the United States, by contrast, abandoning controls over various aspects of retailing allowed a mass distribution sector with everyday low prices to flourish. Third, while public consumption and spending in West Germany were central both in assuring widespread mass purchasing power and in supplying public goods—from housing to transportation or media—as an alternative to commercial goods, Americans relied on a “hidden welfare state” to undergird private consumption, creating regulatory agencies to arbitrate conflicts between private consumers and producers but, in the process, neglecting public consumption. These differences in the politics of mass consumption had a variety of consequences for mass consumer societies in both countries, which will be explored in subsequent chapters. Consumer policies in Germany and the United States shaped consumption, but were in turn impacted by underlying differences in social and cultural attitudes toward consumption and by factors such as metropolitan geography. It is this continuous interplay of public policy with social, cultural, and economic forces in shaping mass consumption that will provide the main thread for the following chapters.

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Society—The Social Significance of Consumption

The development of mass consumption was influenced not only by state policies but also by society. Differences in the social meaning of consumption, in the social stratification of consumer spending patterns, and in attitudes toward material consumption helped structure two very different consumer societies throughout the twentieth century. In the United States, an increasingly broad middle market allowed for the emergence of an “American standard of living” as a shared social ideal (if not always a reality) based on a continuously updated and expanding set of consumer goods. No tangible German equivalent of the “American standard” emerged, for consumption patterns remained much more stratified by class differences. Part 2 of this book will focus on differences in household spending, attitudes toward goods and shopping, and the acceptance of consumer credit during the postwar decades. American shoppers, whom we might call bargain shoppers (to introduce an ideal-type for the sake of comparison), tended to acquire material goods by searching for bargains and—increasingly—by buying on credit. German middle-class consumers, by contrast, can be described as quality shoppers. They frequently emphasized the importance of quality over price, were skeptical of credit purchases, and disdained overly “materialistic” life-styles. Rejecting the promise of America’s growing middle market, many German consumers, well into the postwar decades, found that increased material consumption was not the path to self-esteem or social respect. These norms and expectations were informed by longstanding historical differences. The early twentieth century witnessed a dramatic shift in American social and cultural attitudes toward consumption. Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class, published in 1899, contained a scathing

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critique of what Veblen perceived as the “conspicuous consumption” of an affluent upper class, a practice that appeared to stand in stark contrast to the prevailing industrial ethic of nineteenth-century America.1 Many progressive era reformers were uneasy with a commercial culture and its potential vices that threatened to undermine Victorian middle-class gentility.2 By the 1920s, however, economists and home economists as well as professionals in advertising and marketing helped to assuage such concerns by promoting material consumption as a modern form of middle-class rationality that other groups in society could safely aspire to and benefit from. Affluence gradually became a marker of social improvement rather than moral corruption. Despite Veblen’s critique, keeping up with the Joneses became increasingly acceptable in American consumer culture, an expression of normal aspiration rather than obsessive materialism or social envy.3 All this produced a broader “middle market” in the interwar years. Continuous innovation in consumer goods further challenged existing social differences in consumption patterns.4 The emergence of bargain basements after World War I infused American shoppers with the ideal of attaining “good quality for less money” as they began to shed older assumptions about fair prices and class-determined standards of consumption.5 While consumer-interest advocates such as Stuart Chase and F. J. Schlink remained concerned about corporate power and wasteful materialism, they also encouraged consumers to “get their money’s worth” and conceded that “value was ultimately the province of the individual.”6 Inexpensive consumer goods provided ethnic and racial minorities with access to the mainstream American culture without necessarily denying their identities or origins.7 Commercial “middle-brow” culture challenged the dominance of genteel Victorian values.8 And mass entertainment moved from a milieu-based to a family-based orientation, which was neither Victorian nor working class but the expression of a new consumer middle class.9 The “middle market” of the 1920s, far from homogenous, was still marked by severe limitations and inequalities. Increasing market segmentation as pioneered by Alfred Sloan at General Motors meant that although more people owned cars, it still mattered what kind of car one owned. Neither was access to consumer goods as widespread as it would be in the post–World War II period. Vast segments of the population, especially those living outside of urban areas or in the South, were not yet part of the new consumer marketplace. Still, interwar America was characterized by a growing sense that consumer desires, even though not consumption, had become democratized and that there was a broad American “standard” to which most could aspire.10 The Great Depression, for all its hardship, did little to change this trend in

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American consumer culture. Rather, entrepreneurs spurred that culture on through “consumer engineering,” introducing new, improved, and more stylish products throughout the the 1930s to encourage buying.11 Even in the face of dire financial circumstances, Americans were reluctant to give up the material standard of living they had achieved. Indeed, the experience of deprivation during the Depression may have heightened desires for achieving the standard of living that would ultimately be realized during the postwar decades.12 By the early 1940s, American culture was deeply affected by the Fordist vision of consumption in which a high-modernist reverence for science and technology coalesced with an idealization of the “common man,” the “average” American consumer.13 Advertising’s promise of future prosperity and forced consumer saving during World War II paved the way for postwar renewed abundance and the notion of a standard of material consumption within the reach of just about everyone in US society. Interwar Germany presented a very different world to consumers—there was no broad middle market.14 As Klaus Tenfelde has shown, consumption patterns in imperial Germany were highly differentiated along class lines. Working-class and bourgeois consumers worked with very different household budgets, harbored disparate consumer aspirations, and adhered to fundamentally different consumer standards.15 Bourgeois Germans during the imperial era and beyond emphasized saving, production, and culture and were frequently disdainful of material consumption and indulgent “consumers.”16 There was less room for the social materialism and leveling of American society. Despite the experience of World War I, which to some degree fostered a common consumer interest and identity, particularly among urban women, prewar patterns of class-based consumption largely carried over into the Weimar Republic.17 Automobile ownership in Germany, for example, remained largely restricted to upper-middle-class urbanites and professionals.18 Weimar’s famed modernity did not reach far beneath the surface of German society. Compared to its American counterpart, Weimar consumer culture was far less focused on consumer durables and domestic consumer goods than on commercial and public entertainment, a difference that would project into the post–World War II period.19 In part, this reflected the tendency in interwar Europe to put a higher premium on leisure time than on disposable income and material consumption. From dance halls to the cinema and the radio, Weimar urban life entailed a vibrant commercial culture, which garnered much attention by contemporary commentators who were still expressing concerns about its possible Americanization.20 Yet mass production, by and large, did not succeed as an industrial or social model in 1920s and ’30s Germany. Instead, with quality emphasized rather than price, many German

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shoppers remained surprisingly loyal to traditional retailing forms despite an often very conflicted consumer-retailer relationship.21 In terms of private consumer spending and household attainment of goods, interwar Germany was less affluent than the United States. The Nazi regime’s promise to break the social barriers of material consumption by producing “people’s” cars, radios, and refrigerators remained largely unfulfilled. Indeed, from World War I right into the 1950s, the recurrent experience of deprivation (Mangelerfahrung) characterized life for a majority of German households.22 Shortages and rationing during two world wars, hyperinflation in the 1920s, the Depression of the 1930s, and, perhaps most of all, the immediate post–World War II years dramatically shaped consumer attitudes and expectations into the 1950s and even the ’60s. When American care packages began arriving in the mid-1940s, it was the abundance of Genussmittel— small luxuries such as cigarettes, coffee, chewing gum, or chocolate—that captured the imagination of German consumers, not just because of their black-market value but also because of the symbolic contrast to the everyday experience of rationed calories.23 It is little wonder then, that West German consumer imaginations differed from those of their American counterparts for decades to come. Abundant spending on food and Genussmittel, rather than on the durable goods advertised to American families, remained central to the postwar German ideal of a good life. Germans saw consumer goods in a different light, and it was this view of things—not simply less affluence— that prevented greater Americanization in West Germany during the postwar decades. Postwar shortages gave way to increasing prosperity without obvious convergence in consumption patterns.

3

What the People Want: Consumer Aspirations and the Social Meaning of Consumption

Mass consumption transformed everyday life, informing social dynamics in both West Germany and the United States. Broad access to a continuously improved standard package of goods helped define the American way of life. By the late 1950s, a growing abundance of material goods had become central to the experience of everyday life in West Germany as well. But a very different mix of goods and services prevailed there than in the United States. Fundamental differences in economic circumstances after the war, of course, partly explain this contrast. Just as significant, however, were different government incentives and divergent social meanings of consumption. In both countries, economists, policy makers, and market researchers paid attention to household spending. The wealth of data they amassed presents a picture of many parallel trends in consumer spending, which some have regarded as signs of convergence—West Germany “catching up” with the American model. Yet postwar consumption patterns were still marked by stark and persistent differences. Contrasts between German and American consumers derived from household spending patterns are necessarily somewhat reductionistic, for living standards within both countries varied dramatically, depending on household income, race, and regional or educational background. In 1964, the editors of the Wall Street Journal published Americans and Their Pocketbooks, a series of essays on the ways in which American households earned and spent their money. Helen and Bob Strozier, for example, a young Houston couple with two children, made about $8,000 a year. While they owned a car and the various household durables typical of a middle-class family, they complained that money was tight and struggled with a substantial amount of consumer debt. Henry Maxwell, by contrast, lived with his wife and three children in a

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former coal town in West Virginia. Henry was unemployed, and the family had to make do with about $1,500, leaving them partially dependent on social programs and loans to get by. Still, the family had enough to eat, and occasionally there was even money left over for a few extras such as tobacco, beer, church contributions, or a second-hand TV set. Finally, Dexter Steiger was a line worker at Ford Motors. Living with his wife and two daughters in Wayne, Michigan, Dexter exemplified working-class heads of household who were gaining access to a broader middle-class standard of living during the postwar decades. With his wife’s part-time income, the couple could afford to spend relatively freely on consumer electronics as well as on hobbies and vacations.1 These three examples alone highlight the difficulties involved with discussing the social practice and meaning of consumption for the American consumer. Obviously we encounter similar problems in the West German case, where—as we will see—differences between middle- and working-class consumers were even more pronounced between the late 1940s and the early 1970s. Still, for the purpose of comparison, “American” and “German” consumers will be contrasted as ideal-types in this chapter as far as their spending habits are concerned, in order to delineate national patterns in cultures of consumption. While we must always be mindful of the high degree of diversity within both postwar societies, this comparative approach will reveal the different social dynamics at work. Immediately after World War II, any difference in household spending between the two countries could easily be explained by the contrast between military victory and defeat and by broad disparities ranging from consumer goods production to average household incomes. Even though the economic miracle of the 1950s in West Germany reduced the disparity in GDP between the two countries, the persistent differences in the way this wealth was spent, up to the late 1960s and early 1970s, requires more than an economic explanation. Contrasts in the balance between public and private spending discussed above certainly shaped household spending. But in this chapter I focus on divergent cultural and social meanings of consumption. Disparities between West German and American attitudes toward quality and price were linked in part to the greater persistence of class differences in West Germany. They hinged on different perceptions about the way consumption patterns were related to social status and mobility. Middle-class West Germans held on to values and aspirations formed by the emerging bürgerlich consumer culture of the late nineteenth century much longer than in the United States Even after World War II, they frequently defined their status through cultural capital goods, high standards of elegance and qual-

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ity, and even older ideals of thrift and simplicity. They valued a standard of consumption to which working-class Germans often could not and would not aspire. American middle-class consumers, by contrast, tended to mark their status by the acquisition of ever more innovative goods. They displayed a standard of consumption with an emphasis on novelty, quantity, and value to which American working-class consumers—following the paradigm of expanding purchasing power—could more easily aspire by getting bargain deals on a very similar array of goods, though used or slightly dated and thus cheaper. This chapter sketches out two social models of consumption. The American model, representing a wide spectrum of society, emphasized spending on household durables, automobiles, and suburban homes. It is true that an important gap remained between a relatively broad middle class and those on the margins of the “American dream” who remained excluded from this new consumer standard of living. To many Americans, however, postwar mass consumption offered access to middle-class respectability. Many consumers, confident that they could continuously improve their standard of living over time, used innovative and increasingly affordable goods to mark personal progress. West Germans were reluctant to embrace this American brand of consumer culture. During much of the 1950s, American-style spending patterns were financially out of reach for the majority of German households. As real incomes converged, West Germans continued to spend more on food and less on transportation than Americans did. While household durable consumption increased, German purchases of kitchen equipment and consumer electronics rarely reached American levels. Greater public spending on such goods as transportation and housing reduced the need for cars and encouraged spending on vacations rather than on home improvement. More importantly, relatively few Germans thought adopting new consumption patterns a viable path to social mobility, and these attitudes persisted into the 1970s in middle-class West Germany, buttressing class distinctions. Household Spending Patterns: Convergence and Persistent Differences That household consumption across the Western world gradually shifted from fixed demand spending on food, shelter and other necessities of daily life to more flexible demand items such as appliances and furnishinigs is well established.2 However, while American consumers were certainly ahead of their European counterparts in pioneering these trends, differences persisted.3

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u n i t e d s tat e s : t h e e m e r g e n c e o f t h e h o m e - c a r - d u r a b l e pat t e r n The immediate postwar decades saw a dramatic change in the American standard of living and a shift in private spending toward consumer durables. While this process had begun to emerge during the first half of the twentieth century, it was vastly accelerated during the boom era. In 1948, Consumer Reports painted a picture of a typical urban family of four, earning from $3,004 to $3,458 annually. This household could afford meat “several times a week,” but few luxuries beyond “two ice cream cones, a candy bar, two bottles of soft drinks and a bottle of beer” each week. The husband’s clothing allowance provided for only “one heavy wool suit every two years, one light wool suit every three years, five shirts and two pairs of shoes every year,” while the wife could buy “a heavy wool coat every four years, four dresses and three pairs of shoes every year.” Recreational expenses were limited to a radio, intermittent magazine purchases, a visit to the movies once or twice a month, and a vacation away from home once every four or five years.4 While this may have been too modest a view of the typical household in the late 1940s (there was no mention of the car or home ownership), major changes occurred in the 1950s. Rising real wages and the proliferation of consumer credit brought more consumer durables and increased home and car ownership. Consequently, expenditures for items such as food and clothing made up a relatively smaller part of household budgets.5 The degree to which consumer expectations and middle-class household consumption changed is illustrated by the rise of the two-car family. A second car was still viewed in 1955 as “sheer convenience and luxury” by Consumer Reports.6 However, rising incomes and ever more affordable financing by the mid-1950s facilitated a huge increase in automobile ownership.7 By the early 1960s, Ewan Clague, commissioner of labor statistics, could speak of the United States as a “nation on wheels”; 85% of suburban families owned one or more cars.8 Indeed, two-car families had become common by the end of the ’60s, with the two-car garage symbolizing a new middle-class standard of living.9 The growth in consumer spending, however, was by no means a linear process. While purchases of new cars peaked in 1955, such booms periodically gave way to slumps, as in 1957 / 58, 1961, or the early 1970s, when far fewer new vehicles were sold.10 Consumer confidence surveys produced by the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center showed that consumer behavior was not simply a function of income but was determined by a number of factors. Concerns about shortages during the Korean War, for example, led

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to “scare buying” in 1950 / 51.11 Purchasing patterns were influenced not just by larger economic developments or political events but by changes in the demand structure as well. By the late 1950s, replacement demand had increased. Since many households already had a car and a television set, persuading them to buy new or additional ones (the latest model with newer features) became a major task for manufacturers. Consumer confidence and attitudes toward acquiring new goods now played a more vital role than real income or objective market forces. Consumer researcher George Katona observed in 1960: “Lasting prosperity calls for sustained high demand, that is, for an extended period of general striving for higher standards of living.”12 Still, despite fluctuations in demand and the growing saturation of households with durable goods, the overall demand for such items kept increasing over the postwar decades. The focus on durable goods in many consumer surveys obscured other areas of consumption, which were stagnating or in decline after the war. The shift toward durables was accompanied by a decline in per capita expenditures for services such as out-of-home laundry and domestic help, long a mainstay of middle-class budgets.13 This new model of “domestic consumption” centered on the house and the automobile. Overall, consumption and expenditures for entertainment and household services shifted increasingly from the public realm (cinemas, laundromats, etc.) to the domestic realm. Per capita expenditures for appliances, automobiles, and consumer electronics, for gas and electricity (to power the durables), and for debt interest (due to increases in credit financing) skyrocketed over the postwar years.14 The “durable stock” of American households rose from an average value of $1,500 in 1920 to $3,300 in 1960, with much of this increase attributed to the years after 1945.15 The middle-class American standard of living was increasingly defined by ownership of a plethora of consumer durables, from cars and refrigerators to air conditioners and TV sets. Many economists greeted this shift as a sign of rational home economics. The term “durable investments” enjoyed widespread popularity, signifying a new understanding of certain household consumption expenses as sensible investment on part of the consumer to curb expenses otherwise incurred through the use of services.16 The move of American consumers to suburbia (discussed in more detail in chapter 5) dramatically altered household spending preferences. As a 1955 New York Times article noted, suburban trends had a tremendous impact on the postwar consumer economy in general.17 Suburban preferences for ranch houses, casual clothes, frozen and processed foods, and do-it-yourself kits became national preferences as more and more Americans moved to the suburbs. While some household durables had already reached their prime,

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TV sets and air conditioning units were booming. The postwar increase in home ownership in many ways reinforced the shift of consumer expenditures toward the home and durable goods, away from urban services. Suburban home ownership, in particular, became the lynchpin for changing household consumption patterns and the central locus of middle-class consumer identity. A 1959 FHA brochure enthused: “Congratulations on owning a home! As President Dwight Eisenhower said recently, except for a wedding ring there is no more valuable purchase that any man can make than a home. [. . .] When you turn the key that opens your own front door for the first time, you are standing on the threshold to a new life. You have taken on new responsibilities and obligations. As a property owner you have a new standing in the community.”18 Virtually all major accounts of changes in postwar consumer habits published during the 1950s and ’60s emphasized the dramatic increase in home ownership and consequential increases for home furnishings and equipment. Most American consumers now believed that “a substantial citizen is a homeowner” with a family home and a yard.19 The late 1940s and early 1950s thus marked a watershed in the middlemarket, house-car-durable pattern of consumption that came to encapsulate the American way of life.20 Suburban life, sociologists like William Whyte noted, tended to reinforce such consumption practices. While overly conspicuous consumption (as for example the purchase of a high-end Lincoln or Cadillac) was often frowned upon in new suburban communities, strong pressures existed to conform to the new consumer standard. “Social talk, so at least it seemed to me,” Whyte wrote, “revolved very frequently around the latest purchase on the block: the new Bendix Ethel got, the new rug Mary picked up.”21 The emphasis of the new suburban consumer standard was thus less on domestic “luxury” or overt social display than on a domestic modernity shared by others of broadly middle-class status. As historian Andrew Hurley has shown, the power of the suburban middle-market ideal of the postwar years and its promise of social mobility and inclusion was underscored by such institutions as the diner, the bowling alley, and the trailer park, in which the gap between working-class culture and middle-class respectability was bridged and crossed.22 west germany: differences in scale, pa c e , a n d c o n s u m e r a s p i r at i o n s Many have suggested that German consumer culture was becoming Americanized in the 1950s and ’60s. Proof was supposedly seen in increased spending for cars and furnishings and appliances for the home indicating that West

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Germans were adopting, with some time delay, the very same consumption habits and aspirations as American consumers. According to German sociologist Werner Polster, “the American way of life, democratic mass consumption, succeeded in postwar West Germany almost continuously and was modified in a traditional German fashion only in areas of lesser importance.” Historian Wolfgang König similarly finds that “with a temporal lag but even greater dynamism West Germans followed Americans into the land of mass consumption they yearned for.”23 A careful analysis of the development of household spending in West Germany, however, casts doubt on such generalizations. First, despite the much touted “economic miracle” of the 1950s, it was not until the end of that decade that most West Germans were able to move from a mind-set of scarcity to one of affluence.24 To be sure, changes in West German consumption patterns eventually showed many of the same trends as seen in the United States. Household incomes and consumption expenditures more than doubled over the course of the 1950s. Postwar studies on consumption patterns noted a growing share of consumer spending for transportation and household equipment as well as for leisure and entertainment.25 Durable goods became more important for West German households, though at a relatively late point. An early 1960s survey among West German households showed that more than 80% of all washing machines, dish washers, TV sets, and freezers were bought after 1958.26 The annual growth rate of cars per capita in 1950s West Germany far outpaced that of other Western countries.27 Still, automobile ownership was hardly part of a widely shared consumer standard even by the early 1960s, and only by 1970 did a small majority of German households own a car. In 1955 the ratio of automobiles to inhabitants was about ten times as high in the United States as in West Germany; by 1970 it was still roughly twice as high.28 Articles of clothing as well as smaller household appliances had initially a much higher priority for most German consumers as they moved toward affluence.29 Consumption became more domestic as well. Many contemporary observers hailed the increase in expenditures for household appliances in particular as an important step toward the modernization of the German home. As in the United States, labor-saving household equipment such as washing machines and refrigerators were touted by economists and government officials alike as a boon to housewives.30 To some degree West Germans shifted away from spending on more public forms of services and entertainment, but the neue Häuslichkeit could be attributed to the adoption of “American” consumption patterns as well as to a reaction to the excessive politicization of everyday life during the Nazi era.31

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Despite rapidly rising real incomes, the aspirations of West German consumers focused on different goods—especially food, given the deprivation of the war and postwar years.32 The quantity and quality of food consumed rose greatly during the 1950s, with more money spent on fresh meat, good cheeses, and sausages. Expenditures on Genussmittel—semiluxury foodstuffs such as exotic fruits, coffee, tea, and alcohol that made up about 17% of total food expenses by 1962—saw especially sharp increases. Advocates for more “modern” and “rational” consumption patterns (such as spending on household durables) viewed this as a continuation of traditional working-class consumption habits.33 Similarly, expenditures for clothing rose, with a parallel shift toward quality, luxury, and expense. A 1955 survey asking consumers to identify the most important items for an “appropriate standard of living” did list a number of household durables: first a refrigerator, second a washing machine, and third a vacuum cleaner.34 But, as economic historian Peter Kramper has pointedly observed, it was not so much the refrigerator itself but what was in the fridge that “symbolized the beginnings of mass consumption in Germany.”35 h o u s e h o l d c o n s u m p t i o n pat t e r n s i n c o m pa r at i v e p e r s p e c t i v e A comparative look at aggregate statistics on household expenditures suggests persistent differences in what consumers spent their money on, well into the 1960s and beyond. Private consumer spending was the object of intense analysis and research during the postwar period in both West Germany and the United States, as material living standards became an important measure of national success. Annual publications such as the German Statistisches Jahrbuch and the US Statistical Abstract carried data on private consumption expenditures as well as levels of household equipment with certain durable goods. More probing government surveys produced since the 1950s in the United States and after 1960 in West Germany provided even more detailed accounts of developing consumption patterns.36 The following overview of broad national trends necessarily omits—for the sake of comparison— important differences in household income and size, as well as region, occupation, or ethnicity, and thus cannot live up to the standards of strict empirical analysis. Despite the wealth of data, comparing consumption patterns across time and between different countries remains difficult because the basis for statistical analysis varies.37 For all these limitations, the data still provide some quantitative measure of relative trends that can serve as a useful supplement to the textual sources consulted.

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t a b l e 3 Personal consumption expenditures, United States (in % distribution by goods category)

Food Clothing Personal care Housing Household (furniture, utilities) Medical care Personal business Transportation (ca. 90% automobiles) Recreation Other







30.4 12.4 1.3 11.1 15.4 4.6 3.6 12.9 5.8 2.4

26.9 10.2 1.6 14.2 14.4 5.9 4.6 13.3 5.6 3.3

23.2 10.0 1.7 14.7 14.0 7.6 5.7 12.6 6.5 3.9

Source: US Bureau of the Census, Statistical History of the United States (1976), G 416–469.

t a b l e 4 Personal consumption expenditures, West Germany (in % distribution by goods category)

Food Clothing Household (furniture, etc.) Heating, light Personal care, health Housing Transportation, commuting Entertainment, education







42.9 15.4 12.1 3.0 3.2 7.2 5.7 6.6

38.6 12.6 13.5 3.9 3.6 7.6 8.0 7.5

30.0 11.4 13.5 3.8 4.2 11.3 12.4 7.2

Sources: Statistisches Bundesamt, Statistisches Jahrbuch für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, , p. 561; ibid., , p. 528.

At first glance the trends in consumer spending in Germany and the United States appear broadly similar, with declining shares in expenditures in areas such as clothing, and growing relative spending for health and personal care (see tables 3 and 4). Relative expenditures for entertainment and recreation outside the home in West Germany are surprisingly similar to those of American consumers as early as 1950 and by the 1960s already surpass them (particularly with the added growing expense for travel). The share of food expenditures declined in both countries during the postwar decades. The initial difference of about twelve percentage points drops to about seven points twenty years later. Still, at 30%, the relative share spent on food by an average German household remained quite high as late as 1970. In part, this difference to American budgets may be explained by the continued predominance in Germany of small grocery stores, butcher shops, and bakeries, as opposed to lower-priced supermarkets in the United States. The persistently high expenditures on foodstuffs in West Germany might also suggest a stronger empha-

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sis placed on fine dining, as part of a fundamentally different understanding of what constituted a respectable standard of living. German and US consumption patterns also differed during the postwar period with regard to spending on transportation, consumer durables, and housing. American car expenses constituted nearly 90% of the significantly higher share of US household budgets spent on transportation (table 3). By the middle of the 1970s, 74% of German households (as opposed to 84 % in the United States) owned a car, but by that time many American households already owned more than one. During the 1950s, some Germans, especially among the working class, bought motorcycles rather than cars, but a significant number relied on public transportation, which was better developed than in the United States. Here again, the availability of public alternatives to private consumer spending likely impacted differences in household expenditures. Cars were merely the most prominent of durable goods. The share of household expenses devoted to domestic durable goods rose in both countries between 1960 and 1970, in the United States from 9.8% to 10.9%, and in West Germany even more—from 11.7% to 16.4%.38 Budget shares, however, may be less telling than household attainment rates of certain goods. Whereas by 1975 the average German household had caught up with its American counterpart in important respects (e.g. refrigerators), in terms of such appliances as washing machines, TV sets (especially the more advanced, color models), and telephones, German households still lagged behind (see table 5).39 Differences in both transportation and durable consumption can be linked in part to contrasting housing patterns (see chapter 5). The much higher rate of home ownership in the United States throughout the postwar decades and the growing prevalence of detached suburban houses not only affected transportation choices but encouraged Americans to channel their consumer spending toward household durables. Simply put, Americans tended to have more space in which to place durable goods and were increasingly disconnected from the urban infrastructure of leisure and public goods t a b l e 5 Durable goods in percentages of West German (middle-income) and US households, 1975

Television Color TV Refrigerator Automobile Washing machine

West Germany

United States

82.0 (black and white) 29.0 99.0 74.0 58.0

99.9 74.4 99.9 83.4 69.9

Sources: Statistisches Bundesamt, Statistisches Jahrbuch für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, , p. 496; US Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstracts of the United States (1979), pp. 788 ff.

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that provided many postwar Germans with alternatives to buying equipment for their homes. In many ways, West Germany followed a broader Western European pattern in this regard. Comparing consumer demand in the United States to that in six European countries in 1966, economists H. S. Houthakker and Lester Taylor found that American consumers spent more than twice as much per capita than Europeans (under conditions of purchasing power parity) on both consumer durables and housing expenses, and more than three times as much for transportation.40 It is true that American consumers, on average, had more money than their European counterparts. Still, since differences with regard to per capita spending were less pronounced in other areas, arguments can be made for a distinctly European pattern of consumption during the postwar decades. Historian Hartmut Kaelble has noted that full convergence of consumption patterns between Europe and the United States never occurred. Europeans by and large spent more on food and clothing, while Americans spent more on transportation, housing, and communication.41 To account for these persisting differences, Kaelble suggests a variety of factors, ranging from geography to public policy. The relatively dense settlement of many European countries has helped to reduce European expenditures for transportation and communication. More extensive European welfare states have affected relative spending on health care and retirement insurance, education and transportation. Different gender roles also had an impact: with many more married women in the labor market in the United States, the number of double-income households who had disposable income to spend on consumer goods was higher than in Europe. Finally, the persistence of traditional social distinctions in Germany continued to be expressed in a middle-class bias toward spending on high-quality clothing and particularly on good food. It is this last element in particular that I will further elaborate in this chapter. First, however, I need to discuss the degree to which transatlantic differences in consumption patterns might simply be explained by differences in economic development. economic development: j u s t a m at t e r o f “ t i m e l a g ” ? Economic historians have traditionally emphasized the high degree of convergence in living standards of modern industrialized societies. Walt Rostow’s influential Stages of Economic Growth, for example, described Western Europe during the 1950s as following the United States into the “age of high mass consumption,” which Americans had entered back in the 1920s.42 Traditional

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consumer theory long posited the existence of given tastes and a universal hierarchy of more or less essential needs. As incomes expanded, these needs would be fulfilled in sequence by consumers as rational “utility maximizers.” The “Engel curve”—named after nineteenth-century economist Ernst Engel, who pioneered the study of consumer demand—predicted that with rising incomes consumer spending would move from foodstuffs and other essentials for which a rigid demand existed to items of more flexible demand and eventually to “luxuries,” such as durable goods in the postwar period.43 From the perspective of economic growth theory, the differences in household consumption patterns between West Germany and the United States could thus be attributed to a mere transatlantic time lag in economic development. While the postwar decline in relative spending on food in all Western countries lends some credence to such assumptions, the linearity of the growth-convergence model has been called into question in recent decades. Economist Moses Abramovitz, for example, has suggested that the American development with its scale-dependent innovations has to be partially attributed to specific factors such as market size and a relatively classless market, which could not readily be transposed to Western Europe.44 Nicholas Crafts has similarly argued for a concept of “conditional convergence” and against the notion of an automatic economic catch-up process, stressing the impact of different “social capabilities” as well as of institutions such as the welfare state in determining different outcomes of economic development.45 Of course, the degree of catch-up in the crucial area of real incomes was significant during the boom era.46 Real incomes soared in postwar Germany. Incomes for industrial workers rose well over 70% during the 1950s and by another 85% from 1962 to 1970. In the United States, comparable wages grew as well, but at a somewhat slower pace.47 The tremendous income difference between American and German households that marked the 1950s was steadily decreasing.48 Between 1963 and 1970, for example, the average gross incomes of industrial workers grew by 54% in West Germany, as opposed to 30% in the United States.49 To be sure, West Germans had not fully caught up with Americans in terms of income even by the early 1970s. Still, income alone as a factor does not fully account for the persistent differences in consumer spending observed above. Price trends are another factor to consider in analyzing convergence and persisting difference in consumption patterns. Based on comparative statistical analysis of commodity consumption across eighteen OECD countries (members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), Saroja Selvanathan has suggested that differences in consumer choice could be reduced to a function of income and price differences.50 With US and Ger-

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man income levels converging by the 1970s, differences in consumer spending could then be accounted for, at least in part, by relative prices. Indeed, consumer price developments with regard to specific consumer goods differed between West Germany and the United States.51 Both countries experienced rising consumer prices during the postwar decades, sharply increasing in the late 1960s and the 1970s. While the growth rate of annual averages of the consumer price index was higher in America during the 1950s, and was surpassed by Germany during the 1960s, the differences between both aggregate numbers remained fairly small.52 The American Consumer Price Index rose by 23% between 1950 and 1960 and by 31.1% between 1960 and 1970, its German equivalent rose by 20.4% and 30.3% respectively.53 With regard to particular consumer goods, however, significant differences emerge. In the United States, key goods such as new cars or appliances became relatively or even absolutely cheaper.54 In Germany, on the other hand, prices for cars, furniture, and many appliances rose during the 1960s at least moderately.55 Even though cheaper in the United States, cars and appliances also became a bigger and growing share of American household budgets, reflecting American cultural priorities rather than just price. Moreover, these price differences reflected the American mass production / mass consumption economy and the continued reluctance of Germans to adopt discount stores, supermarkets, and the like.56 Such pricing practices certainly worked against a convergence in household spending, but they were likely a symptom rather than a root cause of transatlantic differences in consumption patterns. As we have seen, public spending and the welfare state also altered price structures and consumption incentives for consumers. Comparatively limited public consumption in the United States allowed for relatively higher rates of disposable income because expenditures for taxes and social insurance were lower.57 West German consumers, on the other hand, could save on a number of private market expenses in areas from transportation to entertainment because of public alternatives such as affordable mass transportation.58 In the United States, spending on medical expenses and higher education became increasingly prominent shares of consumer budgets by the mid-1950s.59 Differences in the public retirement systems of the two countries also had a major impact on private consumption patterns. The prospect of more limited old-age income provided a stronger incentive to young Americans to invest in goods (such as durables) that would lower their expenditures in their later years. Home ownership, in particular, often provided older American consumers with equity wealth and, when mortgages were paid off, lower housing costs than the rent payments that claimed a large share of the budget of their West German counterparts.60

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In brief, broad economic and structural factors play a part in explaining divergences in consumer spending during the postwar decades. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to empirically test the relations between economic convergence, price and income development, and household consumption patterns in West Germany and the United States. Existing comparative studies on other countries suggest that economic development alone is an insufficient explanatory variable for differences in consumer spending. Drawing on West German and British data, Peter Kramper concluded that macroeconomic convergence did not necessarily translate into a convergence of living standards or consumer expenditure patterns.61 The remarkable catch-up with respect to GDP and real income growth that West Germany achieved vis-à-vis the United States makes the persisting divergences in consumption patterns all the more glaring. Still other explanatory factors need to be considered. Bargain Shoppers and Quality Shoppers: Social and Cultural Factors Explaining Divergence Shopping habits and the social meaning of consumption play a larger role than economic factors in accounting for postwar differences. Consumers in the United States and West Germany tended to have very different expectations with regard to their personal material standard of living. For reasons rooted in social institutions and consumer culture, the American “standard package” of home, car and various durable goods had less attraction for many West German consumers during the 1950s and ’60s. Whereas middle-class Americans came to see themselves as the vanguard of the postwar consumer society, middle-class West Germans retained a more traditional ethos of consumption. t h e a m e r i c a n “ s ta n d a r d pa c k a g e ” a n d g e r m a n c o n s u m e r a s p i r at i o n s By the 1950s, a “standard package” of consumer goods, which could be constantly updated and improved, had become a norm for most middle-class and many working-class Americans.62 Surveys among consumers during the postwar decades show a widespread expectation that levels of consumption would rise steadily. George Katona and others identified a sizable and growing “discretionary income group” (about 35% of the population in 1965) of well-to-do middle-class Americans who led the way in consumer spending.63 The University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center first introduced their Index of Consumer Sentiment in the early 1950s. Despite some occa-

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sional dips, the postwar period was one of widespread optimism. In 1962, 64% of American consumers declared that they were “fully satisfied” with their standard of living.64 For those who were not, especially in the lower-income bracket, there was room for improvement; only 51% of this group considered themselves satisfied.65 As a result of such consumer expectations, spending on consumer goods was strong throughout the postwar years, while “discretionary saving” was in decline. German consumer experts traveling to the United States in the 1950s commented on what they perceived as the “tremendous willingness of Americans to improve their standard of living at all times, even if that means heavy borrowing against future income.”66 Such optimism was fueled by the desire of those down the income hierarchy to emulate the standard package of goods enjoyed by the middle market. Since World War II, American business and advertising had been encouraging visions of unbounded domestic affluence.67 A 1959 Saturday Evening Post cover captured the new American dream. A young white couple was depicted stargazing. The heavenly constellations expressed dreams of a suburban home with a pool and a two-car garage as well as the appliances that would fill it, from TV sets and record cabinets to washer-dryer combinations and power tools (see fig. 3). As the accompanying text explained, the artist wanted to express—without cynicism—the romantic visions of young couples of the day: “It takes as much moon magic to create a two-car domicile as it does to whip up an air castle. In essence, what the young romantics want is happiness [. . .]. And to whatever extent they amass worldly goods, they’ll share this happiness with the manufacturers and distributors of the same.”68 Consumer aspirations thus reinforced the postwar American linkage of economic growth and mass purchasing power. Consumer aspirations of West Germans, by contrast, were comparatively sluggish. According to a 1963 survey, 70% said they would be content if their economic situation did not change in the next ten years.69 Especially those in the middle class, such as civil servants and professionals, expressed limited aspirations; after all, the deprivations of the immediate postwar years had been overcome, and the “economic miracle” of the 1950s had brought them a modicum of affluence. While 66% of Americans who had experienced improvement in their financial situation expected continued improvement in the future, only 33% of West Germans felt the same.70 Sociologists studying comparative consumption patterns at the time were baffled: “West Germany, the country which rose to great prosperity in a period of two decades [. . .], appears to be low in consumer aspirations and in dynamic consumer behavior.”71 In this, the attitudes of German consumers mirrored their nation’s postwar politics, which showed little interest in expanding mass consumption.

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f i g u r e 3 . Envisioning the American standard. Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 15, 1959, cover image.

The acquisition of consumer durables was not as central a goal for West German consumers as frequently thought. When asked in 1958 what they would do with an extra DM 20 per month, German women listed better skin lotion, more books, and more or better food as their top three priorities. Men wanted to spend more on going to the movies, on alcohol, and on flowers.72 No mention is made of using such extra income for consumer du-

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rables (through saving or installment schemes). In responses concerning their 1959 Christmas wishes and gift plans, articles of clothing dominated the lists of both wished-for gifts and gifts to be given, followed by linens and shoes. Genussmittel (alcohol, tobacco, fruit baskets, etc.) and books were popular gifts to be given, though few people actually wished for them. The small minority who wished for TV sets or other appliances were likely disappointed come Christmas Eve, since hardly anyone indicated plans to give such items as gifts.73 Plans to make “major outlays” for consumer durables actually declined among West German households after the late 1950s, from 84% in 1956 to 69% in 1962 to 54% in 1967. When asked why they did not buy more, more than 50% stated that they already had everything, and fewer than 20% cited lack of money. Again, this was especially true of salaried employees, civil servants, and professionals and less so of working-class respondents. In the United States, by contrast, cars and new houses topped the Christmas wish lists during the 1950s, and there was “no indication of any increased feeling of saturation on the part of the American people,” as Katona and his colleagues put it.74 Contrasting the two countries in their 1970 study, these authors find that “the German and American responses to affluence stand in the sharpest contrast to each other. In Germany there is a gap between the reality of a rapidly developing mass-consumption society and its perception by the people.” Among the reasons for what they describe as a German failure to adapt to the conditions of affluence, they cite continuing fears of economic crisis and inflation, an overriding concern with preserving the status quo and an “apprehensive posture toward consumption and spending.”75 Many West Germans were indeed uneasy with what they perceived as consumerist excess as influenced by American consumer culture. According to a 1963 survey, 61% of respondents supported the notion that too much emphasis was being put on consumer durables in contemporary West German society, and believed that people were generally not living within their means. Such surveys found similar sentiments expressed in more general German attitudes toward Americans and the United States. While a majority of West Germans expressed a favorable view of Americans by the early 1960s, many continued to see them as “rather different” from Europeans. Americans were widely seen as “modern” and “progressive,” but a substantial minority of West Germans (47%) also indicated that they regarded them as “wasteful” and preoccupied with material luxuries.76 Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, American consumer culture continued to be perceived by West Germans and many other Europeans as materialistic, nonindividualistic, mass-oriented, or obsessed with technology.77

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t o wa r d r a t i o n a l s h o p p i n g : modern and traditional consumer practices What explains this difference in consumer aspirations? In part, the answer lies in a different social meaning of consumption, which can be illustrated by the persistence of more traditional shopping and consumption practices in West Germany. Government and private-sector efforts to educate German consumers in the 1950s and 1960s are instructive here. While average Germans may have distrusted American consumer culture, government officials were concerned that such skepticism was actually making West Germans unfit for the modern consumer economy. Instead of “rationally” investing in consumer durables to modernize households, consumers were spending their money on nondurables unlikely to advance their standard of living in the long run. Instead of embracing competition between retailers and new consumer goods to promote “modern” forms of mass distribution, many consumers retained shopping habits that favored an existing structure of smaller, relatively inefficient shops. Many West Germans, in the eyes of the government, in refusing to embrace comparison shopping and clinging to outmoded notions of quality, were undermining the very premise of a modern mass consumption economy.78 The ministry of economics perceived a change in consumer habits as vital for establishing a successful market economy and for creating a democratic and independent citizenry. “Consumer education,” according to a ministry memo, “is basically advertisement, advertisement for the social market economy and promotion of our own interests.”79 Many of the modernizers within the administration agreed with economist Wilhelm Röpcke, who felt the market economy was a “pedagogical challenge” of great importance in cold war days. While even first graders in East Germany knew about the premises and principles of a planned economy, claimed the president of the Federal Cartel Authority, Eberhard Günther, in 1965, many West German consumers were unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the self-reliance principles of the market and viewed the market economy as a chaotic system. “It remains apparent,” he wrote, “that the consumer has little interest in economic questions and frequently acts unreasonably.”80 Therefore public consumer education was necessary. A free and democratic market economy, Günther explained, required housewives, in particular, to make judicious use of their purchasing power.81 Consequently, the federal government sponsored research on shopping habits and promoted consumer education through the media, exhibitions, and consumer groups. Among attempts to foster modern consumption patterns, centered on durables, were the ministry’s 1953 refrigerator campaign and the promotion of washing machines in 1955 (see chapter 1).

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West German officials and businesses interested in promoting such consumption patterns frequently looked to the United States for a model.82 A 1958 government-corporate study group report was typical in its idealization of the American consumer as modern, democratic, and unaffected by traditional (class) biases. American consumers, the report found, were accessible through advertising because of the “relatively homogenous shape” of their demands. Their “rational thinking and acting” was “generally less hampered by emotion or tradition.” Such nontraditional, rational thinking, as the report saw it, was exemplified by the practice of weekly family shopping at a shopping center in the evening or during the weekend.83 The perceived “modernity” of American consumers thus lay in their openness to new products and retailing modes, which they approached without bourgeois reservations about material consumption. Consumption was seen as a family affair as well, which made it made it safe for middle-class families and put some controls on such indulgences as alcohol, long seen as a prime example of “irrational” consumption, particularly where working-class men were concerned. The 1958 report also emphasized the role of working women in the United States as contributors to greater household consumption.84 Though viewing women as the primary shoppers, the report claimed that modern consumption required participation of the whole family, with women and men sharing the role of earner and spender. And while American consumers were held to be attracted to “all things new,” they were also seen as responsible in their consumption choices. American shoppers were seen to play a more “self-disciplined” and independent role in the market economy and were less likely to call for state intervention to regulate prices or marketing methods.85 Of course, not even the modernizers within the ministry of economics went so far as to call for a complete adoption of American consumer culture. Modern, rational consumption, to these Germans, entailed a rejection of wasteful design, status-oriented spending, or deceitful advertising, all of which were frequently seen as hallmarks of the largely unregulated US consumer economy. Still, the proponents of mass consumption in postwar West Germany set out to make “traditional” West German consumers more like their more “modern” and “rational” American counterparts. c o n s u m e r a t t i t u d e s t o wa r d p r i c e a n d q u a l i t y The difference between traditional and modern consumption was especially pronounced in divergent attitudes toward price and quality. Since the Depression era, but particularly after World War II, many American consumers were becoming bargain shoppers, carefully weighing the price and quality of prod-

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ucts.86 West German shoppers, by contrast, were loath to hunt for bargains but continued to insist on what they perceived as “quality” products. During the 1950s, shopping guru Sidney Margolius urged Americans to become “value shoppers”—to get more for their money: “It’s people who seek value who help keep factory wheels turning, and men turning them. It’s the need for a bargain that has developed America’s great mass production system.”87 Rather than wasteful or indulgent, Margolius saw value shopping as a modern and efficient expression of a rational way of life. People who bought at too high a price, he maintained, understood “very little about the real technique of shopping.” His number one shopping principle was to “compare values”: bargain hunting and comparison shopping were key. Navigating the plethora of advertisements, stores, and consumer products of the postwar era demanded some skill, another shopping guide noted, but the American housewife was seen as up to the task, a “feminine computer [. . .] concerned with one thing above all others: Value.”88 Such claims were reflected in American consumer behavior, and the embrace of the growing mass retailing sector—large department stores and particularly discount stores, which competed on price. Studies emphasized the degree to which consumers tried to maximize quality and price, especially with regard to durable goods. Middle-class consumers showed a great deal of circumspection in purchasing durables; while they rarely based their purchasing decision on price alone, they frequently stuck with the mid-price ranges and exercised extensive comparison shopping.89 Most consumers interviewed in one study liked to “shop around,” and 40% said that they did so frequently. Special deals and sales were much sought after.90 Discount stores, favored for offering good bargains on a variety of goods, boomed during the postwar decades. Although some American consumers rejected bargain sales and discounters, regarding their cheapness as a sign of low quality, the majority embraced the idea of more for less.91 In a 1962 survey of American consumers, bargain hunting and comparing merchandise were cited as the top reason for enjoying shopping.92 Furthermore, to lower-income consumers the discount stores offered access to the standard package of goods at a bargain price. Many West Germans consumers, on the other hand, were somewhat suspicious of bargains and low prices during the postwar decades. Comparison shopping was unpopular, as one official in the ministry of economics observed in frustration, because many middle-class Germans feared giving the appearance that they needed to count every penny. “We need to get to a point,” he wrote in an internal memo, “where one would view it as exceptionally stupid to pay a higher price than necessary.”93 Only then could a competitive market economy truly succeed. Surveys showed that German consumers

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tended to frequent shops that were familiar and nearby, even though lower prices might have been available elsewhere. As late as 1968, 44% of consumers were unwilling to make the effort to always find the best price, and only 28% (mainly younger and more mobile consumers) showed a strong interest in bargain shopping.94 Many German shoppers admitted that they were reluctant to ask for the price of goods or to leave a store without buying anything. Economic modernizers interpreted this reluctance as a symptom of the “passivity” of German shoppers, a remnant of an “authoritarian” personality that needed to be overcome. By paying too high a price, one ministry official suggested in 1965, shoppers bowed to their fears and at the same time denied the principles of the market economy. “It is imperative,” he found, “to explain to the broadest strata of society why even everyday shopping is matter of democratic action.”95 But this is a biased viewpoint. Instead of an expression of an “authoritarian personality” or an unwillingness to embrace market principles, German consumer behavior can be more convincingly explained by a confluence of factors of a still traditional German culture of consumption. One factor was the widespread and persistent belief that the most expensive item is actually the cheapest—since better quality presumably pays for itself in the end.96 Many West German consumers further entertained the notion that the same goods should always have the same, predictable, and supposedly just price.97 Finally, Germans understood shopping as a part of a social experience. Daily shopping at neighborhood stores meant that consumers were not anonymous but were often known to the store’s proprietor and personnel as well as to other customers. Despite the (limited) expansion of self-service outfits, many German shoppers continued to value smaller specialty stores and the service and quality they offered. Again, such specialty stores presented a shopping atmosphere that was more personal than that of larger, more modern retailing establishments. Especially to middle-class Germans, surveys showed, it mattered where one shopped, and the personal relation with sales personnel was important even if it carried a higher price tag. Despite the spread of self-service stores during the 1960s, by mid-decade a majority of German consumers were still opposed to self-service merchandising, particularly when it came to clothing purchases or appliances.98 They very much preferred established specialty retailers over large department stores or discounters.99 Middle-class consumers also insisted on the importance of advice from competent sales personnel.100 In such a retail environment, consumers overly concerned with price and comparison shopping risked appearing either disloyal to their local store (Stammgeschäft ) or as too stingy or hard up to pay the “fair” price asked.

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American consumers, by contrast, were more willing to abandon specialty stores. Surveys show they perceived them as overpriced and did not value the retailer’s advice and service as highly. A 1963 study of shopper attitudes noted the intensity of unfavorable feelings toward sales personnel, who were described as “pains-in-the neck,” “slow,” “impolite” or “lousy.”101 By and large Americans preferred the lower prices at department stores or discounters and the self-service such places offered. Medium- to higher-priced specialty stores were particularly unpopular with consumers according to one 1960s survey.102 Overall, shopping became more impersonal during the postwar decades. Shopping “is not a social occasion,” a shoppers’ guide admonished. “The clerk who appreciates your casual friendliness still expects you to get to the heart of your business rapidly and efficiently.”103 American shoppers could pursue their value-maximizing agenda in a relatively guilt-free shopping environment. Different attitudes toward price were closely intertwined with different attitudes toward quality. As households became more affluent by the mid1950s, West German consumers paid even more attention to quality than to price in their decision making—often to the benefit of specialty retailers.104 The typical American bargain shopper might be compared with an equally ideal German quality shopper. Their concern to buy quality goods caused many German households during the postwar decades to limit their overall purchases, often—particularly on the part of middle-class consumers—in conscious contrast to what they perceived as an American pattern of wasteful and overindulgent mass consumption. To be sure, American consumers too were uninterested in shoddy merchandise. Shopping guides, for example, nearly always warned against “impulse buying” of “knick-knacks” urging buyers to consider the utility and practicality of goods or to be mindful of misleading advertising and marketing tricks.105 However, Americans were more likely to balance a desire for quality with an attempt to buy as many goods as possible. In his 1955 study Quality and Competition, economist Lawrence Abbott observed: “To desire fine workmanship is commendable, most of us believe; but it is also commendable to want to enrich one’s life by employing one’s limited income so as to attain the maximum volume of worth-while experiences. Which should one prefer, a high-quality watch or a cheaper watch and an etching?”106 This more relative and purpose-oriented understanding of quality was exemplified by Consumer Reports’ widely influential “best buy” label.107 As Vance Packard, in The Waste Makers, and other social commentators alleged, the American postwar consumer economy thrived on the proliferation of disposable goods and the “planned obsolescence” of annual style and

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model changes.108 Quality and durability were not an overriding concern as replacement demand became increasingly important to merchandisers by the latter half of the 1950s. The late 1950s and early ’60 were the heyday of what consumer historian Thomas Hine has called “populuxe,” an eclectic design style marked by exaggerated expressions of affluence such as the notorious tail-fins for automobiles. Consciously created to avoid market saturation and to foster replacement demand by such means as the introduction of elaborate new color schemes for durables, populuxe’s appeal rested in part in its suggestion of wealth and luxury for all. It was also, however, a celebration of the superfluous.109 Packard’s critique of consumption patterns that substituted quantity for quality was eagerly received by many West Germans. Conservative critics of modern consumer culture cited his work as evidence for cultural decline through mass consumption. Planned obsolescence was reinterpreted by German commentators as “planned quality deterioration” to create insatiable demand.110 The predominantly utilitarian design and lack of annual model changes on the European car market were cited as an example of resistance to American populuxe patterns.111 Germans pointed to the prominence of advertising in American consumer culture as one important source for the perceived American obsession with novelty goods and for the insatiable demand of American consumers. The advertising profession had long been in ill-repute in Germany, where a product-driven emphasis on quality undercut the introduction of modern marketing forms well into the postwar decades.112 Indeed, by 1962, advertising expenditures in relation to the German national income were still less than half those in the United States.113 Germans saw advertising as one factor driving the perceived “uniformity” and “mass appeal” of American consumption habits. Consumption expert Ernst Guth wrote in 1957 that from a German perspective, American consumers were oriented toward “leveling” and “typecasting”: “‘Everyone’ puts on a straw hat on May 1st, and ‘everyone’ exchanges it for a felt hat on September 15th; [etc.] For a long time, [Americans] have been concerned with rationalizing shopping, the household, themselves, all areas of life. [. . .] The attitude of the average German consumer appears in stark contrast. [. . . Here,] everyone is proud of his or her individuality, of his or her personality, even if it is not readily apparent.”114 Such ideas, of course, drew from a long tradition in bourgeois European society that perceived American mass production and consumption as a threat to essential class distinctions expressed through material goods. Emphasizing quality offered a way to retain some older distinctions and to steer clear of American-style “massification” (Vermassung). The purchase of lower-grade, mass-produced goods, critics claimed, no lon-

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ger entailed a “personal relationship” to such goods as presumably had been the case with “individually crafted pieces.” The tendency to buy new things was not just a sign of wastefulness and disrespect for resources, according to one commentator, but amounted to a devaluation of quality and culture which was ushering in an era of the ordinary.115 It was a commonplace in the postwar West German debate to bemoan the presumed fact that households no longer purchased goods to last “a lifetime,” as they had done in the “good old times.”116 Despite such laments, however, many German consumers still professed this ideal. The preference for specialty stores was linked to the notion of buying quality. Quality appeared as the number one factor in store selection.117 Surveys also showed that many young couples were buying higher-end furniture one piece at a time rather than furnishing their new apartments with lower-grade goods all at once. Goods that would last and could be repaired—from textiles to household items—were held in high esteem.118 A notion of distinctively German “quality workmanship” (Qualitätsarbeit) still permeated public debates during the 1950s—a concept around which producers, retailers, and consumers could rally. Qualitätsarbeit as a concept had emerged during the interwar period as a response to the American challenge of Taylorite mass production.119 The concept carried strong nationalist undertones and remained an export strategy for German industry into the postwar decades.120 Consumers saw the use of appropriate and high-grade materials as well as tasteful design as the mark of quality, an ideal that had been developed since the beginning of the twentieth century by groups such as the Deutscher Werkbund, an association of architects and industrial designers. In the United States, by contrast, a shift from timeless to fashiondriven furnishings had gained momentum since the 1920s. By the 1950s, German commentaries frequently contrasted Qualitätsarbeit and simple, durable, and utilitarian designs to American populuxe goods in an effort to distinguish and define German consumer culture. The “cultural task of the independent retailers,” one 1950s trade journal proclaimed, was to promote quality workmanship.121 German retailers who in the postwar decades were fighting for the protection of their traditional economic role against the forces of modern mass retailing were not the only ones to tout the importance of quality goods. State authorities concerned with promoting and protecting small and medium-sized producers chimed in. In 1951, for example, the Baden-Württemberg Landesgewerbeamt (state trade office) launched a series of publications aimed at promoting quality production and consumption. Consumers with limited incomes were urged to abstain from buying the “cheap imitations” that were occupying “the fantasy of philistines

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and Babbits as much as the mass kitsch from the movie factories.”122 In effect, the emphasis on buying only high-quality products amounted to an appeal, particularly to working-class Germans, not to imitate middle-class consumption patterns by resorting to more affordable substitutes as was common in the United States. As cultural historian Paul Betts has suggested, postwar Germans were urged to perceive of consumer goods as “cultural goods,” and utility and durability became the “aesthetic signature” of West Germany’s educated bourgeoisie.123 German “quality shoppers” were thus contrasted with American “quantity shoppers”—or bargain shoppers.124 Political scientist Gunnar Trumbull has suggested that the German preference was in part also due to German approaches to product liability, which showed comparatively little tolerance for consumer negligence. Consumers bought higher-end products in hopes that they would be safer. The strong influence of consumer product testing in West Germany after the introduction of Test in 1966 resulted in an even greater competition over quality in the German market.125 In the United States, by contrast, “buying at a lower price, or at a discount, [was] more often considered an indication of clever or successful shopping,” as sociologists George Katona and Ernest Zahn observed comparing the two consumer societies as late as 1971.126 Despite efforts by liberal modernizers in the West German economics ministry to promote an American-style shopping culture, neither German consumers nor many intellectuals abandoned traditional values, at least until after 1970. Who Is the Consuming Public? Between a Democratic Consumer Culture and Inequalities in the Sociology of Consumption Distinct social and cultural contexts explain the two different consumer cultures. In the American case, material consumption became central to achieving middle-class respectability. Built around a trinity of automobile ownership, a suburban home, and the goods that fill the home, American consumers adopted modern, value-driven attitudes toward shopping. Such an outlook certainly dovetailed with the mass production and mass retailing regime that had emerged since the beginning of the twentieth century. Continuously accumulating new goods became a widely shared standard that most consumers could aspire to. This American culture of consumption undeniably had culturally democratic aspects, which were emphasized by the proponents of mass consumption as well as by the populuxe design of many American consumer goods. Bargain prices helped put many goods—albeit at different gradations of quality—within the reach even of lower-income

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consumer households. Lacking older social strictures on buying only proper goods, consumption became comparatively less divided by notions of class. West Germany’s consumer culture during the 1950s and ’60s, continued to be heavily influenced by the persistence of what I call a bürgerlich ethos of consumption. This ethos emphasized restraint in buying and a preference for quality over quantity and functioned to uphold traditional class differences by discouraging working-class consumers from adopting middle-class life styles. Unlike the widely shared elements of the American standard of living, consumption patterns and consumer aspirations in West Germany remained much more milieu specific.127 the “middle-class” american dream a n d “ d i s a d va n t a g e d c o n s u m e r s ” The emergence of a broad “middle class” accessible to the vast majority of American families was central to the democratic promise of mass consumption in the postwar United States. Mass consumption was promoted as a great leveling force. The Bureau of Labor Statistics proclaimed: “There has been a rapid fading in the distinctive coloration of the working class [. . .]. The adoption of middle-class attitudes, the change in what workers have come to expect, even more than the greatly augmented real family income, points to the great revolution in class relations.”128 Economists during the postwar years began to recall Thorstein Veblen and his observations about how consumption reflected particularly American patterns of social status seeking.129 In his 1899 Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen had famously described what he termed the “conspicuous consumption” of a new leisure class of wealthy entrepreneurs, which incited “emulative” behavior among the middle classes. In an American society that knew no rigid class boundaries, Veblen suggested, consumption practices were driven by the attempt to emulate the practices of the next higher social group.130 While not necessarily embracing Veblen’s moral critique of conspicuous consumption, postwar economists such as James Duesenberry highlighted social context (rather than merely income) for the development of consumption patterns.131 Americans, Duesenberry found, adjusted their consumption habits to match an observed standard of living in a socially mobile society and often oriented their aspirations and behavior to match higher income groups.132 The majority of American consumers thus found themselves on a “sliding scale” within the broader paradigm of a middle-class standard of consumption.133 When asked to self-identify in terms of class, 76% of respondents to a 1953 survey identified themselves as “middle class” rather than “upper” or

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“lower” class. When the question was altered to specifically include a distinction between “middle class” and “working class,” 42% picked the former and 45% the latter. But when the question was left open, only 11% chose the “working class” label.134 Social mobility and self-identification, furthermore, shifted increasingly from the workplace into the realm of consumption. As one 1950s study of automobile workers found, “Advancement has come to mean the progressive accumulation of things as well as the increasing capacity to consume.”135 This “American culture,” the author further surmised, “encourages men to seek both occupational advancement and the acquisition of material possessions. But workers who respond to both of these admonitions use the second to rationalize their failure to achieve the first.”136 Even as social differences and inequalities persisted, many Americans at least felt they were part of the broad middle class as they strove for similar consumption standards and participated in a common consumer culture. While the “discretionary income group” acted as the vanguard of consumerist modernity, many others shared in this experience by buying cheaper or secondhand versions of the same goods.137 The movement toward a common standard of consumption had its roots in the first half of the twentieth century. As historian Marina Moskowitz has shown, that standard is traceable after 1900 in mass media publications such as the Ladies Home Journal. The middle class, though far from monolithic in terms of real economic factors, shared a broad set of aspirations.138 In 1953, commentator Hazel Kyrk described the emergence of a shared and dynamic standard of living: Some say that America is too big and too varied to admit of a characteristic American standard. It is true that each section and each class has to a degree its distinctive standard. But it is significant that modes of living of all groups tend toward a certain pattern. Given income, means of communication, and mobility, they move in a predictable direction, toward that set of values that is the peculiar American standard.139

Across social and income groups, American consumers, especially younger ones, pursued similar goods even if they varied with regard to what models they preferred or could afford.140 In this respect, as economist Moses Abramovitz has suggested, the American consumer market was “strikingly homogenous.” 141 Some class differences in consumption patterns remained. Bureau of Labor Statistics data from the early 1960s suggested, for example, that bluecollar families spent more on cars and tobacco and less on housing and cultural activities than upper-status families. While working-class women were

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more likely to favor comfort in their choice of clothing, middle-class women favored appearance.142 Discussing consumer policy approaches in 1964, assistant secretary of commerce Richard Holton admitted that “there can be little argument [. . .] that consumer behavior varies so much across our society that a problem for one group of consumers may not be a problem for another group.” Working-class consumers, he found, were more pessimistic in their overall outlook, uncertain of their own shopping abilities, and thus more likely to stick with familiar stores or brands.143 Still, differences in consumption patterns within American society can more easily be linked to income disparities than to broader notions of class. Particularly with regard to “investment goods” (cars, household durables etc.), research has suggested a significant correlation between income and purchases of such goods, with only limited deviations attributable to social class.144 A longitudinal study of household expenses for major durables during the 1960s and early ’70s concluded: “Families seem to adjust their expenditures to new income levels quickly and, on average, adopt behavior similar to other families at that income level.”145 By the 1960s, however, researchers had begun to recognize that a sizable minority of “disadvantaged consumers” was excluded from this middle-class standard of consumption.146 Consumer characteristics such as poverty, old age, or limited education coalesced with market structures such as the lack of modern retailers in inner-city areas and exploitative marketing practices (e.g. bait-and-switch schemes) to preclude access to modern consumption standards.147 The notion of “relative poverty” gained currency during the 1960s, which saw a 49% increase in “poor incomes” (which did not allow for access to a continually rising American standard), while the gap between poor and non-poor incomes increased by 84%.148 Increasingly, poverty came to be seen as “relative deprivation” and failure to achieve the new postwar standard of living; and a substantial portion of American society continued to fall into this category.149 While various Great Society programs and the “War on poverty” of the Johnson administration did include some aspects of consumer policy geared at the urban poor, the lack of substantial public consumption alternatives meant that disadvantaged consumers had to rely largely on the market. Here, certain consumers, especially African Americans, had long faced exclusionary and discriminatory practices in retail stores or in seeking mortgages and consumer credit.150 In the introduction to his 1965 reader on poverty in the United States, Ben Seligman attacked what he perceived as the misleading notion that income inequality had been eradicated in postwar America: “As we were celebrating a new class with television and tail-fin autos, we forgot that

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an old poor was living in quiet desperation in the rural slums of Appalachia and in the Negro ghettos of the city.”151 As suggested by the examples of three different consumer households discussed at the beginning of this chapter, consumption practices were hardly homogenous across the country. While auto worker Dexter Steiger and his family might best represent the degree to which postwar consumption symbolized upward social mobility and the blurring of class distinctions, poor families such as that of unemployed West Virginia miner Henry Maxwell were also part and parcel of postwar American society. Indeed, inequalities in wealth, which had decreased during the 1930s and the war years, remained largely unchanged during the postwar decades, as did the difference in earnings between whites and nonwhites.152 In its democratic aspirations, America’s postwar consumer’s republic often fell short of its own rhetoric. The very coexistence of status consumption and inequality became a defining mark of the American case, as historian Avner Offer has recently argued. For postwar Americans, he suggests, “high consumption” compensated for “low security and high inequality.”153 Economist Ruth Mack, already in 1956, observed that “social mobility has probably lessened but exposure to the possessions of others has certainly heightened,” thus causing consumption to reach an “extraordinarily high level” in America’s “thing-minded” postwar society.154 While some were left out, to many others participation in the consumer society offered at least the perception of belonging to a broad American middle class. Despite its democratic qualities, mass consumption in the United States masked continued inequalities. a leveled society? the “bourgeois consumption ethos” and working-cl ass spending in west germany Compared to the American case, consumption standards showed a high degree of differentiation along social and class lines in Germany. In the early twentieth century, the differences between working-class and bourgeois consumption patterns were rather sharp, dividing Germans into relatively homogenous cultural and social groups. Despite a lively West German debate about the supposed emergence of a “leveled middle-class society” and the “embourgeoisement” of working-class Germans by common consumption standards, class differences continued to inform consumption practices and their public perception into the postwar decades. Sociologist Helmut Schelsky’s famous proposition of the “leveled middleclass society” framed much of this debate. The rise of the industrial working

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class and the decline of the traditional bourgeoisie, he argued, had created a society in which older cultures of class had outlived their social reality. The rise of a salaried, white-collar middle class meant that the bourgeoisie adopted working-class styles in the workplace, while blue-collar workers, influenced by mass media and modern mass consumption, adopted formerly middleclass styles in their private life. Class-specific patterns in consumption were consequently in decline.155 In a way, Schelsky saw West Germany approaching what he perceived as an American ideology of classlessness based on a dominant middle class and a strong sense of social equality and mobility.156 Many other commentators noted the decline of traditional class boundaries. The term Lebenshaltung (standard of living) in the 1920s referred to standards of consumption that were defined by region and class. By the 1950s, however, that term was generally supplanted by Lebensstandard (closer to its American counterpart), implying a more general standard that consumers would aspire to.157 Economist Kurt Fiedler observed: “The modern personal attitude toward ownership and purchase does not know modesty [Sichbescheiden] in the sense of a standard of living befitting one’s social status even though one’s income allows for a higher standard of living.”158 Such observations frequently conveyed disapproval of changing consumption patterns. Georg Bergler, for example, discussed modern fashion cycles and emulative spending in the context of reduced social strictures on consumption in modern society. “Luxury” and “privilege,” he wrote, were waning concepts, and people no longer refrained from buying something because they felt “it is not proper for our class” or “we cannot afford it” (even though the money was there).159 A once dominant bourgeois culture was perceived to be in decline, along with its strictures on spending outside one’s class.160 Still, this culture survived in postwar West Germany, and Schelsky overstated the extent to which social conditions had changed.161 Many workingclass Germans during the postwar decades continued to think of themselves as set apart from other milieus, as did bourgeois-liberals who emphasized education and cultural consumption to attain social distinction.162 Class differences persisted at the very real level of everyday consumption practices. The overall catch-up masked unevenly distributed gains: durable consumption, for example, was concentrated in the upper income groups.163 West German consumers were still heavily influenced by different social and class standards.164 Consumption statistics gathered by the Statistisches Bundesamt throughout the 1960s reflected this influence by differentiating between households of workers (Arbeiter) on the one hand and, on the other, middle-class groups such as salaried employees (Angestellte), civil servants (Beamte), and self-employed business owners and professionals (Selbstän-

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dige). Irrespective of income levels, workers spent more of their budgets on food and Genussmittel and less on housing. In 1962 / 63, workers across different income groups spent 41.7 % of their total expenditures on food and Genussmittel and 9.4% on housing; white collar employees, by comparison, spent 36.1% and 11.4% respectively. Middle-class households generally spent more on durable goods as well as on educational goods and services.165 Workers not only owned considerably fewer durable goods but also made different choices. Radios and especially television sets found their way into workingclass homes earlier than many other goods. Class or occupational milieu, not just income, seemed to determine consumption patterns, belying the claim of a “leveled middle-class society” in postwar West Germany. American sociologist Richard Hamilton, in a study of West German society in the 1950s and ’60s, found that “wants will reflect the values of the primary group, and [. . .] as long as the newly opulent workers are located in working-class primary groups, affluence will have the consequence of an embellished working-class style rather than an imitation of a middle-class one.”166 Instead of a blurring of class lines, Hamilton noted that working-class households avoided buying major durables (with the exception of television sets), preferring less expensive and older products. Middleclass homes, by contrast, were found to have “the ‘best’ in household necessities and an automobile.” Overall, Hamilton concluded, in contrast to what he might have found in the United States, working-class households placed considerably less value on status symbols and more value on home entertainment.167 Postwar West German consumption patterns, then, were not clearly aligned with rising income but were milieu specific and accentuated by class differences. Unlike Veblen’s “sliding scale” of consumption, which to some degree approximated postwar American patterns, West Germany witnessed the stronger continuity of a fragmented consumer society marked by what Pierre Bourdieu has called “fine distinctions,” the practice of social differentiation.168 In his 1970 sketch of a sociology of consumption, sociologist Karl Hörnig similarly rejected Veblen’s notion of a continuum of wants as an explanation of West German consumer society; rather, he pointed to a socially sanctioned, milieu-specific box of acceptable consumption. Social groups were a better predictor of consumer spending than were gradations of income.169 As much as mass culture and modern consumption had begun to erode traditional milieus in Germany, class patterns still counted.170 Even more important was the subjective divide between working-class and middle-class consumption standards. Some middle-class consumers, particularly white-collar employees, sociologist Achim Schrader found in

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1966, were stuck in a “pseudo-bourgeois world,” which led them to desire the kind of furniture, clothing, and other goods that signified traditional bourgeois status. Many middle-class professionals and businessmen, secure in their middle-class status, showed outright disdain for goods such as electrical appliances, which were heavily desired by working-class consumers. These “sober possessors” adhered to the notion of “owning as if one did not own at all,” something that Schrader saw as a modern form of an old “bourgeois virtue.”171 This reminds us of middle-class consumers’ insistence on quality goods, part of a “bourgeois ethos of consumption.” For those adhering to this ethos, spending on education and related cultural expenses reinforced traditional social distinctions. Regardless of income, middle-class Germans spent a considerable amount on concerts, theater or books. A 1955 study found that 42% of working class households owned no books, as compared to only 19% of salaried employees and 13% of civil servants.172 Not surprisingly, a 1960s study of book ownership celebrated the book as the “the cultural achievement of the bourgeoisie.”173 Reflecting the greater relative importance of the bourgeois ethos of consumption in West Germany, per capita book consumption was considerably higher there than in the United States during the postwar decades.174 Working-class Germans often resisted attempts to uphold traditional distinctions, consciously embracing American-style mass consumption. Blue jeans, bolo ties, and rock’n’roll served as a way to create a rebellious youth identity in the urban, proletarian youth milieu during the 1950s. Especially from a working-class perspective, the “American way of life” was seen as a concrete utopia, in opposition to the predilection for avant-garde jazz and all things French (francophilia) exhibited by many educated middle-class youths at the time. Historian Kasper Maase interprets this as a form of social protest and popular modernization, an “Americanization from below” during the boom era.175 As far as the public debate on mass consumption was concerned, however, it was the middle-class perspective that prevailed during the postwar decades. While the traditional bourgeoisie may have been in decline, Bürgerlichkeit as a cultural pattern survived.176 Overtly materialist visions were not quickly embraced, and attitudes toward modern mass consumption remained ambivalent. Consumption became an important aspect in a more democratic and civilized (less militaristic) self-identification of postwar West Germans, yet middle-class consumers objected to mass production and stressed the need for social distinction.177 Support for the market economy was similarly qualified by a critique of excessive materialism, along with an emphasis on saving and respecting institutional continuity.178

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In the United States, even most religious groups took a positive view of modern mass consumption. In The American Income and Its Use in 1954 (part of a larger study by the National Council of the Churches of Christ), Elizabeth Hoyt wrote: “Some moralizers continually inveigh against the new uses to which we are putting our money. But [. . .] today we cannot condemn or repudiate our material abundance, nor do we try to escape from it.”179 In West Germany, by contrast, religious concerns continued to reinforce the bourgeois ethos of consumption. As late as the 1960s, conservative commentators warned of a “standard of living psychosis” and an empty, unrestrained adulation of material affluence.180 Others demanded self-discipline from German consumers: “affluence and prosperity can lead to the temptation of excessive consumption, at least if the individual’s way of life is not properly channeled by strict social conventions, moral or religious standards or perhaps prudent self-discipline.”181 Even more telling is historian Manfred Hettling’s observation: “Consumption alone was not enough for anyone to become a Bürger.”182 A 1959 study found widespread disdain among West Germans for the notion of “keeping up with the Joneses.” In the eyes of bourgeois elites, material consumption was not a viable path toward attaining middle-class status.183 From this perspective, it is not surprising that many West Germans were more likely to consider themselves “contented” once they had reached a certain milieu-specific consumer standard. Alongside differences in overall economic development and public consumption, divergent social contexts in West Germany and the United States explain the sharp contrast in the ways that Germans and Americans spent their money. West German consumer culture was more strongly influenced by conservative concerns to uphold traditional social distinctions than was its American counterpart. The American emphasis on the widespread accessibility of material goods after the war partially masked the continuity of social inequalities and historians; as Lizabeth Cohen has rightfully pointed out, the postwar “Consumer’s Republic” did not fully live up to its democratic promises. Yet it was more democratic and inclusionary than West Germany in its everyday consumption practices. Not until the 1980s did full access to the mass consumer society recede in West Germany as a marker of social distinction.184 On the other hand, the dramatic gap in the United States between those who were able to achieve middle-class consumer standards and the poor—a gap that became so apparent during the 1960s—was less apparent in West Germany. Public spending provided less affluent Germans with an alternative to the marketplace, which compensated to some degree for the higher degree

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of class stratification in that country. By the late 1960s, attitudes of consumer self-restraint and simplicity that had been central to the traditional bourgeois ethos of consumption reappeared in a new generation of educated middleclass Germans that expressed a postmaterialist emphasis on quality of life and environmental stewardship. These persistent differences had many implications. But one of the most telling was the contrast between German and American attitudes toward consumer credit. How and why Americans came to use credit to finance consumption, while many West German consumers remained within the bounds of a culture of thrift and savings, is the topic of my next chapter.

4

Menace or Promise? Credit Financing in Two Postwar Consumer Societies

A 1971 study on consumer behavior and aspirations in Europe and the United States found the use of consumer credit to be among the most glaring differences: “About one-half of all Americans both approve of and use installment credit. At the other extreme, only one-fourth of the Germans approve of it, and only one out of ten actually has any installment debt.”1 Well before the proliferation of credit cards that began in the late 1960s, consumer credit had become an integral part of modern consumer economies, albeit a much greater part on one side of the Atlantic than on the other. Despite some convergence in recent decades, this contrast has largely held true, up to the present day.2 Credit financing is a critical aspect of the rise of mass consumption. Pioneered in many ways by the United States, credit financing defined a particular form of consumer society that dramatically democratized access to innovative consumer goods. Differences in household consumption patterns and consumer attitudes observed in chapter 3 were both a consequence of and a reason for divergent developments of consumer credit in the two countries after the war. This chapter aims to show how differences in the way Americans and West Germans financed their consumption during the postwar decades underlines differences in social and cultural meanings of consumption. Consumer debt—from installment purchases to personal loans and mortgage obligations—rose rapidly in postwar America. Many Americans came to regard credit as a means of ensuring democratic access to the American dream and to an expanding middle class. In keeping with the broader picture of the American politics of mass consumption sketched out in chapter 1, the federal government regarded installment credit not only as a way of expanding mass purchasing power but also—at times—as a regulatory tool in Keynesian efforts of macroeconomic management. Since the late 1930s, public policy had

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been underwriting the expansion of consumer credit in order to create demand in response to the Depression-era collapse of consumer spending and to reinforce a nascent popular consumer culture built on emulative spending and the rapid diffusion of new goods.3 In West Germany, too, credit financing by private households played an important role during the economic recovery of the 1950s. As previously discussed, however, the German federal government was less concerned than its American counterpart with bolstering mass purchasing power and more committed to asset building. This stance was reinforced by postwar needs for rebuilding productive assets and a longstanding focus on exports rather than domestic markets. German retailers, too, were often less than enthusiastic about American-style mass retailing practices. While the use of consumer credit became more common, it never reached the importance it had across the Atlantic. Indeed, in a worldwide context, it was the United States which, far from being a model, stood out as a peculiar case with regard to credit financing and household savings during the postwar period.4 To explain this divergent development, several factors need to be considered. Most importantly, the respective use of consumer credit was affected by notions of social respectability and the social function of consumption. During the 1950s, vast differences between West Germany and the United States in the standard of living, as well as conservative German banking and retailing institutions, made consumer credit less attractive to German consumers. Even after the gap between US and German household incomes narrowed, financing consumer goods on credit did not become the hallmark of newfound middleclass respectability in West Germany. Rather, to many West German elites and middle-class consumers, credit financing retained the stigma of a workingclass life style. While the use of credit came to signal the economic expansion of a household in America, it remained associated much more strongly with economic marginality and even poverty in the German context. Also, there were fewer incentives for using credit in West Germany. Federal subsidies for saving and a well-developed social security net made saving for consumer goods more attractive to West Germans. Germans spent relatively less of their budgets on durables (particularly cars) than their American counterparts for most of the 1950s and ’60s. The example of consumer credit illustrates the continuity of a bürgerlich ethos of consumption into the postwar period. Consumer Credit and Mass Purchasing Power in the United States The expansion of American consumer credit was an integral part of the postwar push for a growth economy based on mass purchasing power and mass

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consumption. Despite its dramatic surge after World War II, consumer debt has received comparatively little attention by historians. The most influential recent works focus on the developments during the first half of the twentieth century or trace the growth of specific types of credit such as the credit card. This speaks to an important aspect of consumer credit in postwar America: it was already a widely accepted social and economic institution.5 After 1945, a broad consensus among political and economic actors afforded consumer credit an even more central role: it belonged to an economic growth strategy underpinned by a widely shared vision of credit as providing democratic access to middle-class mass consumption and respectability. Consumer credit had become legitimized as an institution between the 1890s and the 1930s. With the reform of usury laws in many states during the interwar years, installment credit largely overcame its initial social stigmatization. As credit became increasingly associated with the purchase of expensive durable goods, it earned middle-class respectability.6 Credit financing actually aided the shift in household consumption toward durable goods and automobiles. Showing remarkable staying power and continued popular acceptance during the Great Depression, consumer credit helped pave the way for the American mass consumer economy of the second half of the twentieth century. In part, the limited instances of loan defaults during the Depression even encouraged policy makers to foster consumer credit for economic recovery.7 After World War II, the use of consumer credit reached new heights. As early as 1945, the New York Times reported an expanded use of credit for consumer durables, due to high postwar employment and a shift in production to civilian goods.8 Over the following decades, new peaks in consumer debt were reported continuously.9 Retailers extended credit through monthly charge accounts and installment plans, and institutionally organized credit saw dramatic growth rates. Consumer finance companies specialized in extending small personal loans to consumers at fairly high interest rates. Sales finance companies engaged primarily with retailers in financing the installment purchases of automobiles and large durable goods. Federal Credit Unions extended relatively low-interest loans to their members, but the number of eligible borrowers was circumscribed. These types of consumer credit diminished in importance as nonspecialized commercial banks moved into the consumer finance sector.10 Several factors made credit more available to consumers in the postwar decades. The competition of commercial banks helped drive down the cost of credit, as sales finance companies and especially consumer finance companies had to adjust their rates. The arrival of banks in the consumer credit market had been facilitated by the Federal Housing Act of 1935—which included loan

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guarantees for home improvement—and took off after 1946, when the Consumer Credit Committee of the American Bankers Association announced the availability of bank loans for durables, automobiles, and personal loans.11 A trend toward reduced down payments and maturity rates made credit more affordable.12 The postwar expansion in car ownership in the United States was boosted dramatically by the mid-1950s relaxation of credit terms.13 Legislation in a number of states raised the ceilings on cash loans and further aided expansion by allowing banks and finance companies to lend larger sums.14 On the federal level, consumer credit became a central issue in an attempt to promote aggregate demand and economic growth through Keynesian macro-economic management.15 Credit regulation was part of a larger effort to ensure economic stability.16 In 1948–49, regulation took the form of curbing inflationary price developments by limiting purchasing power through restricted access to credit. Already in the late 1930s, a number of studies had warned that unrestricted credit growth could have a negative impact on economic development. Influential economist Rolf Nugent stated: “Since consumer credit expands with increasing incomes and contracts with declining incomes, the expansion of consumer credit accelerates and prolongs the boom, while its contraction deepens, widens, and prolongs the depression.”17 Credit policy became an integral part of American “growth liberalism” from the 1940s to the 1960s and part of a set of policies that aimed to promote economic growth and to expand mass purchasing power.18 Since the New Deal, the federal government had been working to ease consumer access to credit.19 Title I of the 1935 National Housing Act, for example, provided affordable loans for home modernization. Similarly, the Electric Home and Farm Administration promoted the purchase of electric household durables on installment credit. Such policies paved the way for a postwar era in which the FHA and the VA promoted mass home ownership by guaranteeing millions of inexpensive mortgages.20 After considerable debate, the Federal Reserve eventually lifted wartime restrictions on consumer credit—a measure known as “Regulation W.”21 The rate of consumer debt continued to grow into the 1960s, when two relatively new institutions gained huge momentum: the revolving credit account at retail stores, which guaranteed a continuous line of credit to customers, and the credit card.22 Banks, retailers, and manufacturers saw their consumer finance divisions expand into sizable parts of their business ventures.23 This further expansion of consumer credit was accompanied by a series of legislative efforts in response to calls for consumer protection. The Federal Truth in Lending Act of 1968 restricted the garnishment of wages to repay consumer debt and forced retailers and lenders to clearly state the annual

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percentage rate and full dollar amount of credit purchases. The 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act aimed to prevent discrimination in the credit industry. It was originally intended to battle discrimination on the basis of gender, but later came to include race, age, and income from public programs. In spite of the democratic rhetoric of credit proponents, access to credit during the postwar decades had been far from equal for many groups.24 The public policy efforts of the 1960s and ’70s were in part aimed at rectifying this situation. By the 1970s, as discussed in more detail below, credit had come to be regarded as a democratic right for American consumers and a key to achieving the middle-class consumer lifestyle. Limited Expansion: The Institution of Consumer Credit in West Germany A much different picture emerges when we take a look at consumer credit in West Germany following World War II. To be sure, credit financing played a sizable role in the economic recovery during the “economic miracle,” as recent historiography has reminded us.25 While this literature often focuses on the expansion in the use of credit in the decades up to the 1970s and beyond, comparison with the American case reveals the much smaller scale of the German expansion as well as differences in institutional arrangements and public policy. Postwar West Germany, as we have seen, moved toward an affluent society only in late 1950s. Furthermore, in contrast to the United States, consumer credit in postwar Germany did not have a strong history of institutional and cultural acceptance to look back on.26 But wartime destruction, postwar poverty, and the 1948 currency reform, which devalued savings and most other capital assets at a 10:1 ratio, left many people—especially the millions of refugees from the former eastern parts of the German Reich—in need of the most basic consumer goods.27 The first postwar years thus saw widespread credit financing for small durables like radios and even for semidurables such as textiles (needed for winter coats, etc.).28 But installment purchases met with structural limitations, since capital was often scarce. Retailers would frequently advertise radios and other goods for down payments as low as DM 20. If customer demand was especially great, however, they often ran out of cash and could not afford to make good on their promises for higher-end products because they were unable to restock.29 Instead, some retailers promoted savings plans in association with local savings and loan institutions, whereby the consumer would save in monthly installments up to 50% of the price of furniture and other merchandise and then pay off the rest in further installments of a lower-interest loan.30 Beyond installment schemes and informal credit from retailers, private and

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public pawnshops flourished, providing funds for immediate consumption needs.31 In November 1951, American consumer finance expert Paul Selby traveled across Europe (including West Germany) and reported: Consumer credit as we know it and use it in America is virtually unknown [in Europe . . .]. Rates for financing are higher than in the States, and not only is the higher rate or charge for financing a deterrent for buying, but the attitude of the people is such that instalment purchasing power has never been accepted as desirable in their scheme of things. [. . .] Department and appliance stores do extend some instalment credit to purchasers, but the system of cash lending as we know it in America is virtually unknown there.32

While Selby may have overstated the case, the institutional structure for organized consumer credit was slow to develop in postwar Germany. In contrast to the expanding mass-retailing industry in the United States, traditionoriented German retailers treated consumer credit with skepticism. Large department store chains like Karstadt and Kaufhof were slow to offer credit purchases and introduced installment plans only in the mid-1950s.33 Especially in the years immediately following the war, informal credit with local merchants accounted for much of the consumer borrowing in Germany.34 As late as 1952, one contemporary observer estimated, 85% of all retail purchases on credit were handled informally—for example, through periodically settled accounts at local stores.35 The financial infrastructure for consumer loans, too, was slow to develop, owing to capital restraints as well as traditionalist concerns in the banking community. Specialized installment-credit banks (Teilzahlungsbanken) had existed in Germany during the interwar years and reemerged after 1948. Most of these banks worked according to the so-called Königsberg system, issuing checks that consumers could redeem in cooperating stores. In turn, the loan was paid off to the bank in monthly installments.36 About 11% of retail sales were financed on time by 1949. By 1953, some 15% were so financed, still way below the approximately 30% of retail sales financed by consumer credit at the same time in the United States.37 Moreover, in contrast to the United States, commercial banks remained reluctant to enter the consumer credit business. Only over the course of the 1950s did the private consumer become credit-worthy in the eyes of most banks. Following the lead of public savings banks (Sparkassen), which had moved more aggressively into the field of installment financing after 1952, commercial banks began offering installment credit. But it was not until 1958—later than in almost any other Western European country—

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that German commercial banks began to extend small personal cash loans to consumers.38 The checks issued by the German installment-credit banks bore somewhat of a social stigma, which curtailed the self-confidence of many installment buyers.39 Thus, the lack of available cash loans from banks and other institutions prior to 1958 affected the public perception of consumer credit in several ways. Whereas the commercial banks’ move into the consumer loans business had helped to make such loans “respectable” for middle-class consumers in the United States, in West Germany they still carried an element of shame because they were viewed as a sign of financial destitution, lack of savings, or living beyond one’s means. For this reason, installment buying accounted for as much as 90% of purchases through newly flourishing mailorder businesses, where consumers could remain more anonymous than at the local stores they normally frequented.40 The development of consumer credit was also hampered by West German economic policy which—as discussed in chapter 1—placed far less emphasis on economic growth through mass purchasing power than did its American counterpart. While free consumer choice was emphasized by postwar economic policy, the West German model of the social market economy defined itself largely in contrast to Keynesian efforts to bolster mass purchasing power. The focus for German economic growth lay on exports rather than on domestic consumption. Furthermore, private saving rather than credit buying was promoted, especially in the late 1940s and early ’50s, for capital was scarce on the private market and investments were needed for economic growth. As in other European countries and in postwar Japan, private saving (that is, building up the capital assets of commercial banks) was viewed by economic policy makers as vital to rebuilding the German economy.41 Accordingly, any diversion of private funds into consumption by means of easy credit was viewed as problematic. While the American government sought to make mortgages and loans for home improvement more available, the West German government subsidized savings accounts, particularly those geared toward the accumulation of private capital for home construction.42 When economics minister Ludwig Erhard pushed for the expansion of domestic durable goods consumption in 1953 by promoting such items as refrigerators, he helped to fuel a growing public debate about installment credit.43 Though aware that credit financing could add to economic growth by expanding demand for the production of durable goods, he warned against the use of credit for nondurable goods and agreed with critics that credit financing was no “sorcerer’s stone” and needed to be kept below a “critical

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limit” in order to protect consumers and the economy as a whole.44 As domestic purchasing power began to expand during the mid-1950s, the West German central bank worried that aggressively advertised installment credit, with its regular payments, might bring financial disaster to small-income households living in “premature affluence.”45 Such sentiments were a far cry from American notions of credit as the “little man’s” path to the American standard of living and underscored the lack of confidence many political leaders had in German consumers.46 The regulation of consumer credit and the modernization of an existing 1894 law on installment purchases became the object of political debate throughout the 1950s. Both the ministry of economics and the Bundestag considered instituting regulations like the American Regulation W, last used during the Korean War. Despite some concerns about growing credit use, the ordo-liberal Erhard initially tried to avoid any regulation that could be associated with interventionist macroeconomic management. As credit use expanded, however, Erhard went so far as to ask, in a 1956 executive statement (Regierungserklärung), for preemptive powers to regulate installment credit.47 The opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) had already introduced several bills that called for the establishment of minimum down payments and limited maturation periods.48 In 1956, a parliamentary delegation traveled to the United States to learn more about the issue of consumer credit, but ultimately no action was taken.49 From the late 1950s through the 1960s, the administration and the governing CDU felt that the comparatively low rate of consumer credit purchases did not warrant regulatory action.50 In 1961, the economics ministry set up another working group to look into the possibility of regulating installment credit for macroeconomic steering, but this time even the Bundesbank thought the relatively low rate of organized installment credit purchases (8% of total retail sales in Germany as compared to 17–18% in the United States in 1959) would render the tool ineffective.51 The 1950s anticredit rhetoric had abated somewhat by the 1960s. Installment buying, which peaked during the mid-1950s, remained between 13% and 14% of retail sales well into the 1960s.52 In the late 1950s, department stores noticed the percentage of installment sales taper off, as more and more consumers paid cash for larger purchases.53 In part this can be explained by the advent and rising popularity of cash loans offered through banks.54 Reporting on this development in 1965, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung spoke of Wohlstandskredite (prosperity loans), suggesting that consumer debt had lost at least some of its negative connotation with poverty and need.55 Yet old concerns had not disappeared. In 1966, that newspaper identified a growing desire among miners for “luxury goods” such as cars and consumer electron-

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ics as the reason for growing indebtedness and failure to make installment payments.56 The notion that consumer credit was associated with workingclass consumers living beyond their means was still very much alive in West German public discourse. West Germany continued to lag behind the United States in credit use despite rapidly rising real incomes and a modern institutional structure of consumer credit after the late 1950s. The credit card did not gain nearly as much importance in Germany during the 1960s as it did in the United States. When Diners Club had expanded its operation across the Atlantic in 1955, it struggled in Germany as in much of the rest of continental Europe.57 In 1966, the Bundesbank issued a comparative report, which showed that despite the dramatic increase in the use of consumer credit since 1948, consumer debt with banks totaled only about DM 8.9 billion in West Germany, or DM 150 per capita (compared to DM 1,400.- per capita in the United States), roughly 2% of the GDP (compared to 9% in the United States).58 By the late 1960s, Americans and West Germans were still financing their consumption in very different ways. The Use of Credit: Differences in Household Financing and Spending Contrasting economic situations in the postwar decade, as well as different historical development and regulation of credit financing, explain much of the divergence in consumer credit. We still need to explain, however, why the difference in credit use in West Germany and the United States continued during the 1960s and early 1970s, while the availability of consumer credit and disposable incomes became increasingly similar. Two factors observed in chapter 3 account in part for this abiding contrast: first, the overall structure of household consumption, which included different means of financing purchases as well as different patterns of household spending; second, persistent cultural attitudes of German and American social elites and consumers toward credit, revealing very different roles envisioned for credit financing by middle-class bargain shoppers in the United States and by bürgerlich consumers in West Germany. West German households were more likely to save for their consumer expenditures. As scarcity increasingly gave way to affluence during the postwar decades, households gained multiple means of financing consumer goods. Not only did rising real incomes make consumer debt more calculable, but saving for consumer purchases became easier as well. With respect to private household saving, a significant difference emerged between Germany and the United States. Especially after the late 1950s, private savings expanded dra-

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matically in Germany. Between 1960 and 1973, German households saved, on average, 11.7% of their disposable income (as against 9.6% in the United States).59 The marginal savings rate, which measures savings in relation to growth of income, was growing and was well above 20% for much of the 1960s.60 Despite two devastating blows to private savings accounts during the interwar inflation and the postwar currency reform, and despite the comparatively generous public pension and health insurance system, German households—even at old age and in lower income groups—saved at unprecedented rates. They were less eager to spend on consumer goods than were Americans, who were likely to take a comparable growth in income as permission to buy more on credit. Several factors explain the Germans’ enthusiasm for saving.61 First: public policy, such as the subsidies for Bausparen (savings intended for housing) and the provisions of the 1961 and 1965 laws promoting employee saving, made the practice fairly lucrative for many private households.62 Second: saving enjoyed strong cultural esteem across West German society. Views on saving were often the mirror image of views on debt financing. Surveys done during the 1960s showed an overwhelming support for notions of thrift and financial conservatism, even though the willingness to make large sacrifices in order to accumulate savings capital was declining with younger respondents.63 Third, and a consequence of the second factor: saving with a view to consumption gained traction. Especially for younger Germans, saving was no longer equated merely with frugality; instead of forgoing consumption, saving often meant to anticipate it. Saving for consumer goods played a much larger role in West Germany than it did in the United States, and for many households it presented a viable alternative to consumer credit. According to a 1967 survey, 59% of German respondents stated that the purchase of large consumer items was an important reason for their savings activity. Another 23% said they were saving for vacation or travel, while 44% said they were saving for emergencies or for the sake of security.64 Similarly, a 1959 survey among holders of savings accounts at Sparkassen and at commercial or postal banks showed that savers contemplated using savings foremost for consumption purposes, followed by financial security and the accumulation of capital.65 American households, though also maintaining a considerable savings rate,66 regarded their savings rather differently. Asked in 1966 about the purpose of saving, 45% stated they saved for a “rainy day” (emergency, illness, unemployment, etc.), 31% for retirement or old age, and 22% for education. In the absence of a more elaborate social welfare system, Americans saw a greater need to set aside funds for these contingencies. While down payments

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for larger credit purchases were often made from savings, many Americans were hesitant to use their savings for consumption. Only 7% cited the purchase of durable goods as a purpose for saving; another 8% saved in order to buy a house.67 Unlike West Germans, American consumers thought saving for consumer goods an unattractive alternative to buying on credit. Contrasting spending patterns also influenced German and American approaches to consumer credit. The mass consumption of durable goods was central for the development of consumer credit. Indeed, much of the growth in American consumer credit during the postwar decades can be attributed to greater consumption of durables. By contrast, many Germans in the years immediately following the war could not conceive of purchasing a refrigerator—let alone a car—even if an installment plan was was available. As observed in chapter 3, expenditures for food, shelter, and clothing were relatively much more important for West Germans than for their American counterparts into the 1960s. Contemporary sociologists noted that German workingclass households avoided purchasing major durable goods and preferred less expensive or secondhand products, while middle-class homes demanded a limited number of high-quality goods. Even in the early 1970s, when the two countries were closer in income levels, American households continued to spend more on durable goods, which lent themselves to credit financing, than did their more class-segmented West German counterparts.68 Differing credit use reflected differing social situations and attitudes. In the postwar United States, consumer credit was very much a middle-class phenomenon. Typical households using installment plans and other forms of credit were young, suburban, and striving for what was considered a middleclass life style.69 To many Americans, a depiction of credit as democratic access to a consumer society would have corresponded to their own experience. To be sure, as much as credit helped many American families to attain a middle-class standard of life, it remained out of reach for many minority groups and poor households. For them, credit discrimination was often another form of social exclusion.70 In West Germany, the use of credit was influenced by class biases that reflected the continued stratification of consumption patterns. Especially during the early 1950s, installment credit was most frequently used in the urban and industrial areas of northwestern Germany. Workers as well as lowerincome salaried employees were the primary users.71 As we have seen, conservative elites voiced concern during the 1950s that the expansion of credit might threaten bourgeois culture. By the mid-1960s, when income levels had risen and the differences between social milieus had narrowed somewhat, the social structure of consumer credit use in West Germany became more

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similar to its American counterpart. Still, a certain sociocultural bias against using credit lingered; credit-financed consumption was not a viable path toward attaining middle-class status. Contemporary observers of the American case often pointed to credit as a means for social climbing. Consumers would use credit to access the world of middle-class respectability and to continuously improve their material standard of life. In the still more class-divided West German society, by contrast, fewer consumers used credit to imitate the bourgeois life style. Instead, many consumers aspired to reach a milieu-specific life style of working-class or middle-class consumption, adhering to a paradigm that put less emphasis on continuous social mobility.72 This difference informed both public debate and consumer attitudes toward credit Access to the American Dream or “Unbourgeois” Way of Life? Social Attitudes toward Credit Financing In the first half of the twentieth century, the notion of an “American standard” of material living had emerged, largely through advertising. Consumer credit now promised to put that standard in reach of the majority of the population.73 Alfred Dietz, president of the CIT Financial Corporation explained that consumer credit, if unregulated, “will enable millions of families in lower income brackets to satisfy their needs for new products as these become available.”74 Critics attacked Regulation W wartime restrictions as a “gross discrimination among the American people, [. . .] excluding millions from access to the American products which they need and to which they have a right.”75 The charge that credit regulation was discriminatory because it effectively raised the price of credit reverberated with unions as well. In 1952, during the reinstatement of credit restrictions due to the Korean War, James Carey, secretary-treasurer of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), told the House Banking and Currency Committee that curbs on installment buying “discriminate against small wage-earners” and that Congress should disregard a request by the Truman administration to toughen restrictions and should do away with Regulation W altogether.76 By the early 1950s, a broad political consensus regarding the desirability of consumer credit had formed. The credit industry, in particular, increasingly framed consumer credit as central to an “American standard of living” defined by the acquisition of durable goods. In a Commercial Credit Company publication, economist Clyde Phelps argued that installment buying was “one of the significant factors which influence the American standard of living, level of living, and plane of consumption, which are, in material terms,

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quantitatively the highest in the world.” Phelps then cited a British finding that installment buying (or “hire purchase”) is “one of the main reasons why American workers produce more and live more comfortably than those in Britain.”77 Critics of credit regulation such as Milton Friedman managed to portray Regulation W as an arbitrary and discriminatory tax conceived of by elitist administrators.78 Beyond attacking government regulation, the consumer credit lobby worked in numerous ways to expand the use of consumer credit and bolster its image during the 1950s. Educational publications promoted an image of consumer credit as an integral part of the modern American consumer lifestyle—beneficial, if used “wisely.” Phelps’ 1955 Using Instalment Credit was addressed to high school students. It was prefaced by the assertion that consumer credit “has moved into the stage of respectability” (fig. 4).79 The sketch shows a group of apparently rural, ill-clad and impoverished men who are smoking and idling in front of a primitive cabin. The caption makes clear that these men are poorly educated and no installment buyers. The backwardness associated with the cash-buyer in this image can be usefully contrasted with the title page of a similar publication, William Cheyney’s 1956 Using Our Credit Intelligently (fig. 5).80 Here a sun is rising, shedding light on the new American dream. In the background rural and urban as well as industrial America are stylized, but a moving van points the viewer into the direction where the light of consumer credit shines most brightly: suburbia with its new Ranch houses and automobiles. The depression era invoked by the first image is safely left behind. Traditional notions concerning the value of thrift had not disappeared from textbooks by the early 1950s.81 Some, educational publications, especially earlier ones, gave more balanced assessments of the advantages and disadvantages of paying cash for purchases (and, by implication, saving for consumption) and buying on credit.82 Most textbooks, however, attempted to discredit consumer saving. The credit industry and many 1950s economists disagreed with older notions stressing the financial benefits of thrift and buying only for cash.83 Economist Carl Dauten declared that saving for a house or even consumer durables was “not feasible”: “Most consumers would take several years to save enough to buy an automobile, furniture and other major durable goods [. . .]. In the meantime, they would have to do without these services, and the price of waiting would be very high or even prohibitive.”84 Advocates of consumer credit sought to change the underlying semantics. Consumer credit, they argued, could no longer be viewed as “consumptive” but should now be seen as “productive,” since durable goods improved the productivity of the households that acquired them.85 Playing with the title of a well-known work of Eugene O’Neill’s, a 1957 New York Times article pro-

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f i g u r e 4 . Depicting cash as backward. From Clyde Phelps, Using Instalment Credit (Baltimore: Commercial Credit Co. 1955), p. iv.

claimed, “The Iceman Cometh Not—Refrigerator Cometh Instead on Time Payments,” and went on to describe the dramatic shift from services (such as public transportation, laundromats, etc.) to durables facilitated by credit financing.86 This shift, many economists argued, allowed consumers to save by postponing certain expenses. The durables themselves were increasingly reclassified by economists as household capital assets and included in the

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f i g u r e 5 . Credit and the promise of suburban affluence. From William Cheyney, Using Our Credit Intelligently (Washington: National Foundation for Consumer Credit, 1956), cover image.

category of household savings.87 Cheyney and others further expanded on the virtue of rational “budgeting,” whereby households paid regular monthly installments to obtain the “product packages” of the modern American life style.88 Viewed from this perspective, the use of consumer credit became “the modern way of exercising thrift,” replacing “the older method of accumulating money and then buying for cash.”89 The ideal of deferred gratification appeared no longer compatible with the demands of an economy fueled by ever increasing purchasing power. Modern, middle-class citizenship now found

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its expression in “rational” consumption and participation in the expanding consumer economy. Not that the institution of consumer credit was without its critics in postwar America, despite its important role in the purchasing power consensus that business, unions, and the federal government rallied around. The rate of credit expansion aroused recurrent concern, ranging from credit as a possible source of inflation and a destabilizing force in economic growth, to the question whether consumers had overextended themselves by going deeply into debt.90 The spike in credit and the subsequent recession of the mid-1950s moved Fortune magazine in 1956 to publish a series on consumer credit. The editors surveyed the “abnormally fast rate” of credit expansion and the “danger in mortgage debt,” concluding that “there is a possibility that debt may continue for a time to mount furiously, until it has reached a level where it has heavily overloaded consumers with fixed debt payments and over-expanded the industries depending on these consumers.”91 Aside from economic considerations, however, the Fortune series also contributed to a cultural critique of credit financing exemplified by William Whyte’s essay “Budgetism: The Opiate of the Middle Classes.”92 Thrift, Whyte argued in 1956, had become “un-American.”93 Gone were the times of Benjamin Franklin’s maxims; suburban, middle-class families were now acquiring the “packages” of a consumer life style by burdening themselves with mortgage payments and short-term debt. Optimistic about their future, attracted by the middle-class respectability of bank loans (as opposed to loans from finance companies), and uninterested in the actual price of credit financing, young couples enjoyed the regularity of monthly payments. This regulated “budgetism,” Whyte contended, gave a false sense of security while actually leading suburbanites to compound their debts. As an alternative to the familiar “Joneses,” Whyte introduced the model of the “Frugals,” who saved for their consumer purchases and—he calculated—were financially better off for it.94 Whyte’s critique of consumer credit harked back to moral admonitions against credit buying, but it was also a poignant example of a broader critique of middle-class consumerism during the later 1950s found in the works of such authors as Vance Packard, David Riesman, and Kenneth Galbraith. To the critics, the focus on a credit-fueled material standard of life not only eclipsed public goods and a broader quality of life but also threatened an older ethics of individualism. By the 1960s, however, the critique of consumer credit and much of the public debate on this issue shifted from such fundamental concerns to the question of consumer protection. Hillel Black’s 1961 exposé of the credit industry, Buy Now, Pay Later, exemplifies this transfor-

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mation rather well.95 His critique was directed toward fraudulent practices of the credit industry, but Black never doubted the value of the institution of consumer credit itself, calling it a “democratic force.”96 He offered no alternatives to credit financing; his call—as in much of the debate throughout the 1960s—was rather for regulation to make the institution safe for consumers. Despite the much smaller scale of credit buying in West Germany, opposition was a great deal more vocal and organized than in the United States. Whereas American unions and the American retailing industry had come to accept consumer credit as part of a larger consensus on growth through purchasing power, their West German counterparts offered strong dissent. Some observers close to the labor unions condemned the notion of increased purchasing power through consumer credit as misguided, calling instead for wage increases as well as lower prices as a way of raising the standard of living.97 Perhaps surprisingly, many retailers, especially those fearing a shift toward durable goods consumption through consumer credit, were wary of extending installment credit.98 In 1953, the large textile retailer C&A Brenninkmeyer, which had traditionally conducted business on a cash-only basis, launched a campaign against installment credit practices, claiming that credit sales hurt cash-paying customers who indirectly financed cheap credit through higher retail prices. The ad campaign featured a menacing figure called Ratenschreck (installment devil) greedily extending its paw over the earnings of a consumer household on the first of the month (fig. 6). The caption admonished that buying clothes on installment plans also meant “purchasing” the worries involved with paying monthly rates. For good measure, a credit-extending furniture retailer countered the ad with a cheerful garden gnome (representing solid credit) spearing the credit devil. The dark tone of both advertisements provides a striking contrast to the optimistic images appearing at roughly the same time in the United States.99 That tone, moreover, reflected the broader public debate on installment credit, especially during the early 1950s, when consumer credit was frequently discussed in terms of its harmful “excrescences” or its potential to “endanger” consumers.100 Many prominent German economists voiced skepticism about consumer credit. Several of them were organized in the Arbeitskreis für Absatzfragen (working group for marketing issues), which was financed by C&A and other companies opposed to installment credit.101 The Arbeitskreis included such renowned economists as Friedrich Lutz and Wilhelm Röpke.102 In 1954, Lutz published Der Konsumentenkredit, in which he warned against an Americanstyle expansion of credit in Germany. He believed that “a consumer who buys an item on installments could certainly save first and buy later.”103 Deferred gratification and budgetary discipline with regard to consumer aspirations

f i g u r e 6 . German Fears of the Credit Devil. Source: Der Spiegel, February 11, 1953.

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were still highly revered by Lutz. The careless use of credit—induced by advertising—for semi- and nondurable goods in Germany, Lutz observed, called for regulation. To discipline consumers (especially working-class consumers) and retailers, employers should be able to fire employees whose wages were garnished and to refuse to garnish wages for petty loans.104 Lutz was especially concerned about working-class use of credit. Unlike American economists (who celebrated credit buying as the “little man’s” path to a middle-class lifestyle), Lutz pointed to a German preference for more frugal patterns of consumption. He also suggested differences in the social meaning of credit in Germany and the United States, particularly during the early part of the postwar era (to which we will return). Conservative undertones marked the writings of many German critics of consumer credit, reverberating with conservative bourgeois elites, who viewed American-style mass consumption in general as a social and cultural threat. For the bourgeois members of the Arbeitskreis, consumer credit was above all an ethical problem. The group’s primary organizer, attorney Curt Bley, described credit as a threat to the dignity and liberty of man, as it brought consumers, struggling to make payments, out of their social milieu, and contradicted the “Christian values” of property ownership and saving.105 In this same vein, economist Wilhelm Röpke formulated an influential critique of installment purchases (which he derisively referred to as Borgkauf or “borrowed purchase”). The recent expansion of credit use, he asserted, was “frightening,” for it indicated a fundamental change in the economic ethics of the “masses.” They had lost the willpower to save because “inflaming” advertisements and the credit lobby had falsely promised an increasing material welfare—an American materialist “standard-of-life-ism” falsely portrayed as progress106—through credit.107 Just like alcohol and tobacco, Röpke asserted as a self-styled economic “social hygienist,” credit fulfilled no vital function. While it may add “flavor” to life, overindulgence could mar life and shorten it.108 Such critiques were far more influential in Germany than in the United States. West German efforts to promote modern consumption specifically targeted women.109 Hoping to educate housewives to be rational consumers who supported the nascent market economy, liberal modernizers urged them to buy modern appliances or to become price-conscious comparison shoppers, as had been the case a generation earlier in the United States. Conservative commentators, however, challenged these ideas with their concern about the emerging consumer society’s impact on gender relations; fearing a potential breakdown of the family due to consumerist “materialism,” they opposed advancing credit to feed “feminine” spending.110 The gender issue, however, was

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less relevant to the debate about consumer credit, since store credit cards were not widely accessible and men were generally held to be involved in household decisions regarding credit and other significant financial matters.111 In the United States, by contrast, public discourse during the postwar years was generally more relaxed about shifting gender relations. Even though some critics blamed credit problems on the insatiable demands of middleclass housewives,112 household credit was far more accepted in American society in the 1950s (though largely controlled by husbands, housewives having little direct access to it).113 Consumer engineering and advertising in the United States aggressively fostered a new ideal of domesticity, which included a plethora of household items available on the installment plan and marketed primarily to women.114 Appeals to female consumers had a considerable impact in the United States, with respect to both spending and the use of credit. To West German critics such as Röpke, installment buying presented a more urgent problem, a social and political one. It threatened to undermine society itself—a charge taken very seriously at a time when West Germany saw itself at the front lines of the cold war and of upholding traditional bourgeois society. The upheaval that civil society had undergone during the Nazi era lent even greater urgency to calls for the traditional values of the “good old days” prior to 1933 to be reasserted.115 Credit purchases, Röpke claimed, were characteristic of an “unbürgerliche Lebensführung” (unbourgeois way of life), because they promoted “unrooted” consumption geared toward instant gratification. Such a life style lacked continuity and long-term planning, trusting instead to the security of the welfare state. The “humus layer of the bourgeois way of life” had eroded and was replaced either by communist ideology or by a consumption-oriented lifestyle. Both, to Röpke, were indicative of a “proletarian way of life.”116 The promotion of Bürgerlichkeit (a bourgeois culture that uplifted the working class and served as a bulwark against communist advances) was seen as central to the postwar economic order in West Germany. The alleged threat of consumer credit to a bürgerlich economic ethos was complemented by an emphasis on the “bourgeois virtues” of buying by cash (Barkauf ) and saving. Röpke was not the only one to lament the decline of Barkauf. A 1953 memo from the ministry of economics affirmed that “maintaining the advantages of the cash-purchase” was the key to a controlled development of consumer credit.117 Virtually every initiative to reform the legal framework for installment buying called for a distinction between cash and credit prices so as to ensure that the cost of credit purchasing would be clear and would be borne only by those customers who made use of it. Equally germane to this debate was the question whether consumer credit led to a decline in the culture of saving. Although household savings were grow-

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ing, many public savings banks, which themselves participated in consumer lending, were concerned about the expansion of the credit industry. In 1954, Fritz Butschkau, president of the German savings banks association, spoke out publicly against installment credit and a debt-centered lifestyle, which he too regarded as “unbourgeois.” “Prussia,” he proclaimed, “grew through saving and not through consumer credit.”118 By invoking the language of PrussoGerman nationalism in the era of the Wilhelmine empire, this statement suggest that not only class but also national identity was seen as being threatened by the expansion of consumer credit. For many middle-class Germans, credit financing carried the notion of being something foreign, something “American.”119 Of course, those German economists, retailers, and financiers who were proponents of the expansion of organized consumer credit greeted the connection between credit and the American model as something largely positive. Their favorite platform was the periodical Die Teilzahlungswirtschaft, first published in 1954. If installment credit was described as “American” to its German proponents (just as it was to their American colleagues), this meant that it was the expression of a modern and rationalized economy.120 With much glee, the Teilzahlungswirtschaft reported the findings of a 1956 parliamentary study group’s visit to the United States. “Surprised” by the overwhelmingly positive view of consumer credit presented to them by various American officials and interest groups (including unions), the study group concluded that virtually no one in the United States questioned the positive nature of the institution of consumer credit.121 Overall, however, the debate over consumer credit and consumption— especially during the 1950s—revealed fundamental differences between the views of a large section of the German elite—who saw Bürgerlichkeit expressed in frugality, budget discipline, and saving—and the widespread American notion of respectable middle-class living that was increasingly expressed through a consumer life style centered on durable goods and suburban homes. While credit did little to promote Bürgerlichkeit in West Germany, it was a viable agent of embourgeoisement in the United States. This difference was reflected in consumer attitudes toward credit. Germans were overwhelmingly skeptical of installment credit: 64% of respondents to a 1958 survey disapproved of installment plans, and only 32% favored them.122 The opposition to debt financing was especially high among older people, rural dwellers, and the upper middle class. On the other hand, younger Germans as well as workers in urban areas, who were generally more open to the promises of American-style consumerism, increasingly considered credit financing an acceptable option.123

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Popular sentiments on credit were often belied by the actual expansion in the use of it during the postwar era. Yet the 1958 survey also indicated that about 20% of those opposed to installment credit were still using it, which suggests that many credit users were genuinely uneasy with their consumer debt.124 Throughout the 1960s, surveys continued to find high rates of opposition to debt financing.125 Günter Schmölders’ 1966 Psychologie des Geldes stressed that the self-ascribed personal characteristics of those who used credit freely often included negative adjectives such as “extravagant,” “sloppy,” and “unpunctual.”126 The cultural attitudes reflected in these surveys as well as in the public criticisms by economists like Röpke would only gradually be counterweighed by more accepting trends in a younger generation of German consumers. Attitudes toward credit in the United States, on the other hand, were vastly more positive. The University of Michigan’s 1954 Survey of Consumer Finances found that 50% of American households regarded installment buying as a good idea, while only 37% opposed it. As in West Germany, the strongest opposition came from farmers and retired persons. Only 10% indicated a general “dislike of debt,” while most opponents of consumer credit cited high interest costs as the reason for their unfavorable view.127 Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, Americans were more optimistic than their German counterparts about economic developments in general and their personal household finances in particular, and they adjusted their views on credit accordingly. Installment credit gained respectability through its association with the durable goods of a middle-class lifestyle, an association with deep roots in twentiethcentury consumer culture. Moreover, the widespread affluence of the postwar decades led more and more American households to take on consumer debt without seeing it as a problem, for most of them expected their household incomes to grow as well.128 In West Germany, by contrast, credit financing long retained an association with poverty and financial destitution. In the immediate postwar years, as mentioned above, debt financing through installments and pawn shops was frequently used to obtain household necessities. Consumer credit had lost this function by the 1960s, as a substantial pension reform as well as an overhaul of the welfare system afforded vast segments of society increased access to the affluent society of the “economic miracle.” The system now provided for such contingencies as unemployment, sickness, and old age by guaranteeing at least a minimum consumer living standard.129 Still, debt was slow to lose its negative connotation. The practice of credit financing illustrates differences in the consumer societies of West Germany and the United States during the postwar decades

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sketched out in the previous chapters. Despite some converging trends, German consumers used credit to a lesser degree and with different objectives than their American counterparts, in part because of economic circumstances and degrees of affluence, particularly during the late 1940s and early 1950s. More importantly, the two countries pursued different postwar growth strategies. American public policy generally viewed consumer credit as a vital tool in promoting mass purchasing power and a middle-class life style. Several legislative efforts focused on making credit more accessible and “safe” for consumer use. German federal policy, by contrast, was marked by benign neglect as well as skepticism. Little effort was made either to regulate consumer credit or to promote it as a tool of social policy. As important as public policy in explaining the relatively small role of consumer credit in the German case during the 1950s was the institutional development of credit financing and the public debate that surrounded it. While the United States had an established system for organized installment credit and legitimate cash loans at the outset of the 1950s, many German retailers as well as public savings and commercial banks continued to adhere to more traditional views of consumption and retailing. Only by the late 1950s did the socially stigmatized Königsberg check system begin to give way to cash loans offered through “respectable” banks. Public debate in Germany long focused on the dangers inherent in installment buying and chided it for its supposedly unbourgeois character. In the United States, the credit industry and others promoted an image of consumer credit as modern thrift and as access to a middle-class life style. While most Americans had accepted credit financing as part of a modern consumer culture, the attitudes of many Germans remained reserved well into the 1960s and early 1970s. The case of consumer credit shows that structural and institutional differences as well as public policy and the interests and cultural attitudes of consumers all have to be taken into account to properly understand the different shapes of mass consumption in the two countries. It is tempting to focus on cultural differences and bemoan for example a decline of “thrift” in America exemplified by credit financing,130 but such a generalization not only loses sight of the disciplining forces entailed in the practice of “budgetism,” as Lendol Calder has pointed out; it also ignores the economic reality of postwar affluence, which made some level of consumer debt less problematic in the United States than in West Germany.131 The comparative perspective reminds us, as well, that the proponents of thrift and saving in West Germany often argued from a conservative perspective intent on preserving social distinctions threatened by mass consumption. It is inappropriate to chide German consumers—as George Katona did—as “maladapted” to the realities of mod-

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ern affluent society.132 Economic, institutional, and political circumstances often provided strong incentives to prefer consumer saving to credit financing. Furthermore, the expectations of German consumers during the 1950s and ’60s differed from those of Americans. The credit-financed acquisition of household durables and automobiles had a lower priority for Germans. For a variety of reasons, middle-class West Germans held on to the bourgeois ideals of saving and restraint in consumption much longer than their American counterparts. A comparative perspective helps to counterbalance historical accounts that emphasize the expansion of consumer credit in postwar West Germany. As West Germany moved toward affluence in the postwar decades, it struck a balance—like many other European and Asian countries—between elements of modern consumption and older notions of restraint and saving.133 For the American case, the comparative view reminds us of the importance of placing the expansion of consumer credit within a broader context of economic and social policy since the New Deal. Democratic access to the “American standard of living” was to be achieved less through redistributive measures than through the availability of credit, necessarily backed by an expectation of continuous economic growth. What Calder has called the “myth of credit as the great democratizer”134 appears less glamorous, though, when we consider that many Americans relied on credit for their consumption needs because the lack of a more comfortable social safety net (enjoyed by German consumers) provided a psychological barrier against using their savings for this purpose. We must also remember the peculiar importance that credit financing had in shaping the private consumption patterns. Without consumer credit, the postwar American model of mass consumption would have been virtually inconceivable. The same cannot be said of West Germany. This chapter’s focus on installment and personal credit obscures to some degree the role played by another, arguably even more important, form of consumer credit during the postwar era: mortgage credit. Increasingly affordable mortgages as well as car loans played a vital role in transforming American cities after World War II in ways unparalleled in West Germany. The geography of mass consumption (housing, transportation, and retailing), which was shaped by public policies and social dynamics unique to each country, will be the focus of part three.

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Space—Urban and Suburban Spaces of Consumption

Changes in consumption reconfigured space, especially metropolitan space, throughout the twentieth century. New housing patterns, new modes of transportations and new shopping habits transformed cities and changed the relationship between urban areas, growing suburbs, and the surrounding countryside. In turn, the geographic layout of modern consumer societies itself shaped practices of consumption, the social composition of consuming publics, and the balance between public and private spending.1 The United States and West Germany developed their consumer societies under very different spatial circumstances. Part three of this book will detail the ways in which these differences grew even wider over the course of the twentieth century. Each of the two chapters that follow focuses on the chasm between an increasingly suburbanized consumer society in the United States and a German model that preserved greater continuities to the urban forms of the nineteenth century. While the majority of American consumers now live and shop in sprawling suburban areas, urban development in Germany kept shoppers and residents, especially those in the middle class, somewhat closer to traditional urban centers. While Germany was always more densely populated, this development was not determined entirely by geography. Differences in urban planning, in public housing construction, and in the transportation and housing choices made by consumers were major contributing factors. The spatial contrast between the two consumer societies became prominent in the postwar decades, but they are part of broader trends in metropolitan housing, transportation, and shopping patterns.2 Historians looking at urban development in the United States during the twentieth century and particularly during the postwar era pay increasing at-

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tention to the interrelations between urban development and the rise of the mass consumer society. Suburbanization has been a central theme in this literature, which addresses the expansion of individual car ownership and the highway system, as well as the emerging tract housing industry at the “crabgrass frontier.”3 In what has become more than just urban sprawl with the rise of independent “technoburbs” located along expressways, American core cities have largely lost their central function.4 Mass motorization after World War II contributed to this development, but this new consumer technology was only one of the factors that account for America’s increasingly individualized housing patterns and suburban growth in the twentieth century.5 The roots of the American move to suburbia reach well into the nineteenth century. At issue is the complicated relationship between middle-class Americans and urban living, as well as the largely unrestrained market forces shaping the American urban landscape. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, private developers from individual entrepreneurs to electric companies catered to the ambivalence of many middle-class Americans about the potential dangers of growing cities. Advertising and mail-order blueprints helped make individual home ownership more accessible by the turn of the century. Even as it became increasingly commercialized, the family home came to be seen as a private sanctuary from public life in the city.6 During the interwar years, spatial consumption patterns continued to become more individualized, and American municipalities did little to impede this process. Efforts in publicly funded home construction were marginal. While the spread of the automobile received support in form of publicly financed highways, mass transit systems that had been the backbone of many cities were left to decay.7 The New Deal did see growing public involvement in metropolitan planning during the 1930s, but most programs were focused on private, individualized home ownership. The home owner became a central figure in a decades-long process of “Keynesian suburbanization”—largely at the expense of inner-city development and public housing.8 By contrast, the German middle class traditionally placed a high value on urban living.9 Such consumer attitudes, along with the much smaller role played by individually owned cars and the greater role of public planning, meant that the push toward suburbia was nowhere near as strong in interwar Germany as in the United States. To be sure, in Germany too, various architectural traditions had envisioned urban dwelling beyond the traditional urban centers. As early as the turn of the century, the garden-city movement dreamed of greener cities that would merge urban and rural living in spacious settings. During the politicized 1920s, planners on both the left and the right shared a rejection of traditional urban living characterized by densely

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settled quarters. Progressive architects, such as Ernst May in Frankfurt, built modern “worker colonies” with row houses and apartment buildings outside the urban core. Projects such as May’s in Frankfurt, however, speak to the strong involvement of German state and municipal institutions in urban development and to a public commitment to support the creation of modern housing. Professional city planning had emerged in Germany at the close of the nineteenth century largely in reaction to the rapid industrialization and urbanization of the preceding decades. Most German cities of the Wilhelmine era were financially well endowed, and municipal bureaucracies burgeoned. Urban reform movements envisioned greener, spatially and functionally segregated cities, thus triggering professional occupation with urban construction and renewal. Comprehensive urban planning and modern apartment housing played a major role in both the interwar and post–World War II years. During the interwar period, the term Stadtplanung (city planning) began to gain currency. Numerous German cities created specialized departments and agencies (Stadtbaudezernate or Stadtbauämter) to deal with questions of urban development.10 While some of these agencies designed modern workers’ colonies in close proximity to—but functionally separated from—industrial areas of employment, more conservative planners focused on “organic” models of the city. The living conditions and (potentially radical) workingclass milieus of industrial cities elicited strong antiurban sentiments, especially among the German bourgeoisie. Conservative critics of the city favored traditional-looking architecture of the Heimatschutz style and small settlements of single-family houses.11 This “settlement movement” found strong support under the Nazi regime, whose propaganda idealized “self-sufficiency” through ownership of house and garden.12 Hostile to traditional big-city growth, such “organic” visions often entailed the dissolution of the city into numerous cells of smaller settlements (like those promoted by the settlement movement). Unlike American suburbanization, however, this was not to be urban “sprawl” but a tightly planned and coordinated urban entity. The language of such plans was fraught with metaphors likening the city to a living organism: streets and roadways, for example, were seen as vessels in the circulatory system. In spite of such rhetoric, even the Nazi regime helped to prepare the way for the modern, mass-apartment housing of the postwar period, as urban historians have emphasized.13 The widespread destruction of World War II presented German planners with the possibilities of a Stunde Null, or tabula rasa. As urban planning ex-

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pert Gerd Albers recalls, in the first years after the war the future of German cities was the subject of lively debate, with some voices advocating the abandonment of the old cities altogether. The concepts debated were heavily influenced by continuities from the Weimar and Nazi periods. Organic visions of the city and garden-city ideas could be found next to modernist conceptions of functionally organized space.14 While sharing a critical view of the densely constructed urban centers of the Gründerzeit of the late nineteenth century, postwar designers also shared a commitment to public planning that was much stronger than in the more individualist and unregulated American tradition. The Dual Pattern of Traditional Urban Retailing This commitment to planning extended to the development of retail facilities. Drawing on consumer research conducted after 1935 by the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung (a national study group for spatial planning), German postwar planners called for an inclusive approach to city planning that took consumption into account and would ensure a “healthy” retail structure.15 Such efforts helped to preserve an existing dual pattern of urban retailing. This dual pattern provided for neighborhood stores on the one hand and a specialized downtown retailing district, dominated by department stores and specialty retailers, on the other. The traditional dual pattern was largely a creation of the late nineteenth century in Germany as well as in the United States. It was a result of traffic and residential patterns brought on by industrialization and urban growth. While retailing and commerce had long been a central function of cities, the “city” district as a new commercial and administrative space was a function of tremendous urban growth and the centralization of traffic patterns in the urban core through new means of public transportation.16 Emerging in Berlin, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Essen, and Kiel during the 1870s, in Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne during the 1880s, and in Bremen, Frankfurt, and Stuttgart during the 1890s, the rise of the “city” districts frequently went hand in hand with the depopulation of the cities’ core areas. Often, but not always, these new districts included the old city centers and transformed them into specialized retailing districts. The number of retailers in urban areas rose by an estimated 170% between 1875 and 1925. Designated shopping streets proliferated, often centered on such traffic magnets as train stations and department stores; some of the old Torstrassen, which connected the historic marketplace to the city gates, became shopping streets.17 Distinctions could be made between those streets that focused on luxury goods such as fashion or cars

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and were supplied with lavish restaurants and cafés (such as the Jungfernstieg in Hamburg, Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm, or the Hohe Strasse in Cologne) and those that mainly included department stores (such as the Leipziger Platz in Berlin, or “die Zeil” in Frankfurt / Main).18 American “downtown” districts, too, reached their zenith in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.19 A bustling center for work, business, shopping, and entertainment, the downtown model spread from Manhattan to other American cities during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Even more dramatically than European city centers, the urban cores of American cities became almost devoid of residents. While in some ways uniquely American, downtowns were not unlike German and other European “city” districts of the same era. With regard to retailing, this similarity had to do mainly with new department stores. The rise of the department store since the 1850s in Europe and the United States depended on the concentration of the urban population as well as the introduction of street cars.20 Rising downtown rents favored the construction of multistory stores. Early department stores consisted of various specialty stores gathered under one roof. In the United States, they initially catered to the wealthy. German department stores by contrast, tended to have a more popular clientele and focused on goods with rapid turnover, while specialty stores competed with wider assortments, particularly for middle-class consumers.21 In both countries, though, department stores played an important role in promoting a new consumer culture. Free entrance policies made stores accessible for consumers from various social backgrounds, and lavish window and interior displays fostered what historian William Leach has called the “democratization of desire.”22 These new “cathedrals of consumption,”23 furthermore, formed strong alliances with other urban institutions, from museums to city governments, to create a municipal infrastructure with public transportation and zoning regulations suiting commercial demands.24 Department stores were at the heart of a modern consumer culture emerging on both sides of the Atlantic. The vast majority of new stores emerging in Germany, however, were small shops, located in urban neighborhoods. These had played a significant role in modernizing retailing since the nineteenth century.25 Specializing in groceries, hardware, fruit, or baked goods, they provided goods for everyday consumption. In the United States, too, urban neighborhoods featured a variety of small shops, often run by immigrants. In 1937, urban planner Saco de Boer gave this description of a typical pre-World War II shopping street: “The motley array of business houses runs from the grocery store with a false front above the first floor [. . .], the chili restaurant, the shoe shop in an old

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shack, and the clothing stores with dressed up windows. [. . .] A grocery store extends over the sidewalk and uses the public space for boxes and supplies; a fruit store uses the space for sales purposes. The red and yellow fruit, however, affords a bright spot in the drab street picture.”26 As de Boer’s account suggests, neighborhood stores were often disdained by planners. Consumers, too, were not always happy with the powerful position of small shopkeepers in their communities. Still, such stores satisfied most everyday consumer needs and performed a vital complementary function to downtown retailing in the dual system of urban distribution. While it would last into the postwar era, the dual pattern began to face serious challenges in the United States, beginning in the 1920s. Downtowns increasingly lost their role as the sole business districts in American cities.27 Subcenter shopping districts began to emerge, which included banks and a variety of retailers beyond corner grocers and drugstores. Inner cities suffered from growing traffic congestion. While the construction of subways around the turn of the century was fostered in part by retailers’ fears of outlying competition, falling ridership and, in many cities, a failure to counteract that decline by improving rapid transit systems began to hurt downtown businesses in the 1920s.28 American central business districts took an especially hard hit during the Depression, with declining retail sales and a rising number of vacancies. Real estate values became uncertain as parking lots sprouted and the need for resources during World War II made new building more difficult. The coalition of retail, real-estate, and municipal interests that had long supported downtowns out of a common concern for maintaining high land values and property taxes finally crumbled during the 1940s. Subsequent efforts to build freeways with new money from federal sources furthered urban decentralization and hurt inner-city neighborhoods,29 thus providing an opening for other forms of retail spaces. By the mid-twentieth century, a new geographic pattern of distribution in American retailing had largely obliterated the split between the concentration of “periodic” or “shopping” goods in department stores and downtown specialty shops on one hand and, on the other, the distribution of “everyday” or “convenience” goods through neighborhood retailers. Fueled by suburban population growth and the proliferation of automobiles, downtowns lost their role in supplying shopping goods to regional shopping centers, while the retailing of convenience goods shifted to ever larger discounters and supermarkets. By 1959, 55% of these huge stores would be opened in or near shopping centers, outside of established urban neighborhoods.30 As postwar American retailing modernized, it moved increasingly to the suburbs and encouraged one-stop shopping.

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In postwar Germany, by contrast, there had been no comparable decline of inner cities during the interwar years, and the automobile still led a fringe existence. During the Nazi period, neighborhood stores and downtown specialty retailers had enjoyed some legal protection from larger retailers and chain stores. But even as such overt forms of protectionism had gone out of favor by the 1950s, the dual system of urban retailing was still alive and well in West Germany.31 The postwar period thus saw an increasing divergence between West Germany and the United States in the spatial configuration of shopping, housing, and other forms of consumption along an urban / suburban divide.

5

Urban and Suburban Living: Public Development and Private Consumption

In its first issue of 1968, the German weekly Der Spiegel chronicled the growing international debate about the crisis of the city. The metropolitan environment was suffering from urban sprawl and the overwhelming burden of traffic. In the United States, President Johnson had just reiterated to Congress his warning about the imminent decline of urban centers and issued an urgent call for action. In Germany, the mayor of Munich, Hans-Jochen Vogel, demanded increased emphasis on urban research and planning to avoid a similar demise of German cities. The problems that haunted metropolitan areas on both sides of the Atlantic were similar, and yet, Der Spiegel noted, America had already sunk “one step deeper into the morass of poor planning.”1 American consumers had moved in large numbers to the suburbs after the war. A majority of West Germans still lived in more densely populated urban areas. Postwar mass consumption transformed metropolitan space. The spread of detached, single-family homes and of private automobiles had a tremendous impact on life and physical space in the metropolitan areas of both countries. The story of sprawling suburbs and ever-growing traffic congestion after World War II is well known, as are the major factors that contributed to it. A comparative look at urban development in West Germany and the United States from the 1950s to the early 1970s, however, reveals significant differences, which were deeply embedded in the consumer politics, attitudes, expectations sketched out in the previous chapters.2 The advent of mass consumption entailed no global homogenization of housing and residential patterns.3 This chapter will look at home ownership and the automobile, two pillars of the standard “American package” discussed in part two. Their differ-

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ing significance in the two postwar societies impacted both the metropolitan geography of mass consumption and the balance between public and private goods. While suburbia became the principal locus of American middle-class consumption, West German cities continued to play a major role for this crucial consumer demographic. Although the rise of the detached, single-family home occupies a central role in most accounts of postwar German society, it never acquired the importance of its American counterpart, since Germans generally remained a nation of urban renters. Automobile ownership, too, grew at staggering rates in 1950s and ’60s West Germany, but trains, streetcars, and other forms of public transportation continued to serve German consumers in ways unparalleled in most US cities. Metropolitan sprawl in the United States was more than just the inevitable outcome of a rising standard of living and technological development; it was to an important degree the result of different choices made by policy makers and planners as well as by consumers. Postwar planning has been subject to justifiable criticism for its sometimes grandiose “high modernist” schemes.4 But this does not mean that all efforts by urban planners were a failure, nor that the collective choices of consumers were inherently better. More than any other area of postwar consumer society, urban living and planning became the focus of the debate over the imbalance between private affluence and public poverty, discussed in chapter 2. The crisis of the cities pointed to a paradoxical aspect of affluent societies with a rising standard of living and a simultaneously declining quality of life. It became clear during the 1960s that private consumer choices for suburban life and automobility could have dire effects on urban public life and on those excluded from suburban society. Middle-class consumers became the central figures in the story of the urban crisis. Where, as happened in America, they abandoned the urban core as residents, customers, and taxpayers, the infrastructure of public goods suffered. Where they remained committed to the central city, their growing affluence could more easily be made amenable to improving the overall quality of urban life, with public goods benefiting city dwellers with less access to private consumer goods. More direct public involvement in the housing market, I will show, swayed many middle-class Germans to retain a more urban-centered pattern of living. The availability and attractiveness of urban public goods have too often been overlooked as factors determining people’s choice of residence. Such public goods include services as basic as sewage disposal and street cleaning, as well as amenities from theaters and libraries to public pools and parks. I will highlight the impact of public transportation. American middle-class consumers made extensive use of private automobile ownership to escape

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declining urban centers. By offering attractive public alternatives to private consumption, I argue, many German cities fared better than American cities in retaining middle-class consumers and, in turn, were somewhat more successful in retaining the revenue necessary to offer such public amenities. Urban and Suburban Housing Policy in the Postwar Decades Comparing the development of housing policy is essential for understanding the divergent metropolitan landscapes of consumption in West Germany and the United States. Well into the twentieth century, urbanization patterns in both countries were fueled by industrialization, migration, and new transportation technologies. Differences began to emerge during the 1920s and ’30s, with the advent of the automobile and early trends toward mass motorization and suburbanization in the United States.5 World War II presented an even more dramatic break, for it created a massive demand for housing in both countries, followed by large-scale construction efforts—albeit for different reasons and with very different results: suburban home ownership became the norm in the United States, while urban apartment living remained the reality for many middle-class Germans. Among the sharpest differences with regard to housing in Germany and the United States are the respective rates of home ownership. Between 1950 and 1970, the share of owner-occupied housing in the United States increased from 55.0% to 62.9%.6 In West Germany, by contrast, home ownership remained at a much lower rate despite rising real incomes: in 1949, the rate was 31.9%, and by 1972 it had risen only to about 36 % (see fig. 7).7 Not only were

f i g u r e 7 . Owner-occupied housing. Data from Bundesminister für Raumordnung, Bauwesen und Städtebau (ed.), Wohnen in der Bundesrepublik (1975), pp. 10–11; and from Statistical Abstract of the United States (Historical Statistics HS-27, 2003) http: // www.census.gov / statab / hist / HS-27.pdf.

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German consumers more likely to rent; they also tended to live in apartments and multifamily housing rather than in detached, single-family homes. Closely related to the popularity of home ownership in the United States was the population shift to the suburbs, the single most important trend in metropolitan development after World War II. The proportion of Americans living within a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) increased from 52.6% to 62 % between 1940 and 1960. Yet core cities actually saw a slight decline in their share of the population (from 32.9% to 32.3%), while the outlying suburban areas of the SMSAs almost doubled theirs, from 16.7% in 1940 to 30.6% in 1960, a trend that would continue during the following decades.8 In West Germany, “suburbanization” was a very different phenomenon during the time period under consideration. Metropolitan expansion frequently took the form of newly built neighborhoods on the urban fringes with apartment housing. Although suburbanization with detached housing did occur, it was on a far smaller scale than in the United States, at least until the 1970s.9 German cities remained much more compact and densely settled than their American counterparts. subsidizing the suburban home: american housing policy Reporting on a March 1944 Chicago conference on postwar housing, Loula Lasker said of American cities: “Blockbusters have not devastated them. Nor have bombs gutted their homes and factories. But we shall need every ounce of initiative and team play to win them back as sites for The American Way of Life.”10 The urgency of this call was reflective of the debate on housing at the close of the war. Housing would clearly be a central demand of postwar consumers and a driving element of postwar economic prosperity. But would the postwar American way of life be embodied by urban rental apartments or suburban home ownership? Key decisions needed to be made regarding the role of government intervention in the housing market on the one hand and the role of central cities as a place of residence for American consumers on the other. Historians have given ample treatment to the American preference for the individual family home as well as to the move to the suburbs, both trends that emerged well before the mid-twentieth century.11 These trends not only continued after the war but were accelerated by growing affluence. The decision against widespread and direct public funding for housing in the United States during the postwar era has—by contrast—received comparatively little

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attention by consumer historians.12 It was in this regard that the United States proved a glaring exception among Western developed nations. Public spending, it is true, did play a major role in bringing about the suburban pattern of housing in the postwar decades—albeit through state subsidies and public guarantees of the “hidden welfare state” discussed in chapter 1, which did so much to shape middle-class consumption patterns. By 1956, 68% of American homes were single-family dwellings, another 12.3% were two-family houses, while units with three or more families accounted for only 17.1%.13 Ten years earlier, the direction that postwar housing should take had still been far from settled. In 1944 and 1945, the Senate Special Committee on Postwar Economic Policy and Planning launched a broad inquiry into inadequate and substandard housing. National Housing Administration (NHA) administrator John Blandford laid out the agency’s goals with a strong commitment to public intervention: “We must help communities to provide decent housing for all our citizens. [. . .] Public aid should supplement private enterprise to ensure that slums are cleared and that families in the lowest income group receive decent housing.” Even within the agency, however, rifts existed between those who favored publicly subsidized housing and those who called for incentives for private construction—through mortgage guarantees, for example—as the most suitable strategy for encouraging housing development.14 The understanding that improved housing and new construction would be central to the postwar economy was widely shared. Like few other industries, housing was linked to Keynesian visions of mass consumption and full employment. “No economist believes,” claimed Herbert Nelson of the National Association of Real Estate Boards in 1944, “that we can have postwar prosperity through manufacture of automobiles and consumer goods. Only a large scale activity in durable goods has ever been able to give full employment. Buildings are the most important of durable goods.”15 The AFL, too, believed that “home reconstruction provides the broadest single base for production and re-employment in major industries. In keeping with other plans for an economy of abundance, we should carry on slum clearance and rehousing of families whose incomes keep them out of reach of the private building markets.”16 To many, housing would be accompanied by a general expansion of mass consumption. FHA administrators envisioned housing as an area in which public and private interests could come together to supply a major outlet for industrial goods and consumer products.17 Since the 1930s, home modernization loans extended through the FHA and other government agencies enabled

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homes to be equipped with refrigerators and other household durables.18 The postwar home was to become the prime locus of an economy driven by mass consumption. the limited reach of public h o u s i n g i n t h e u n i t e d s tat e s In the 1940s debate over postwar housing there was vigorous opposition to public intervention in the housing market in general and public housing in particular. A conservative Congress looking to curb public spending, and a private sector looking to recover lost ground, challenged plans for greater public involvement. Even during the war, the National Association of Real Estate Boards urged the federal government to stress private construction, castigating the government intervention in housing that had followed the Housing Act of 1937 as “a failure and a mistake.”19 While President Harry S. Truman was pushing for the passage of the Wagner-Ellender-Taft bill in 1947, which proposed more public intervention, critics called the bill “socialistic” and denounced similar European models of social housing: “With private enterprise ‘virtually liquidated’ in Europe, the people [there] have lost almost all hope of ever regaining a semblance of decent living accommodations.”20 Realtors called for the abolition of all remaining forms of rent control after the war. From their perspective, private industry and the market alone were to shape postwar housing consumption. The American public, on the other hand, was by no means averse to public intervention in the housing market. A 1946 Fortune survey found that “the U.S. people are strikingly in favor of positive government action to end the severe shortage”; 48.1% of the respondents thought the government should start building homes for rent or sale on a large scale, and over 80% believed that rent ceilings should be kept in place at least for a while.21 But most supporters of public housing agreed that its scope should be limited to low-income consumers, the “deserving poor,” whose needs the market was unable to provide for adequately. According to one public housing administrator, the families for whom government enterprise should provide houses “are those known generally as ‘the lowest income group.’” The National Housing Agency’s 1944 “housing principles for America” envisioned the federal role in housing as purely “supplementary”: “It should do what cannot be done otherwise. [. . .] Public agencies must be ready to withdraw from any area, when better incomes and lower costs enable individuals, cooperatives, labor groups or business organizations to pick up the responsibility and carry it forward.”22 To ensure noninterference with private enterprise, the Federal Public Housing

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Authority had always planned a “gap” in supply.23 Officials were well aware that this left many families “stranded in the middle—the ‘no man’s land of housing production.”24 Still, the 1949 Housing Act did provide for a range of possibilities for public intervention in the housing market. Passed in part because of the support of prominent Republicans such as Robert Taft, the legislation aimed to employ both public and private means to achieve the goal of “a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family.” In face of continuing shortages, even Senator Taft had underscored the importance of public intervention in the months leading up to the passage of the act: “We have long recognized the duty of the state to give relief and free medical care to those unable to pay for it, and I think shelter is just as important [. . .].”25 The housing act authorized 810,000 new units of public housing over a period of six years and opened up broad possibilities for urban redevelopment and planning under federal leadership.26 By the early 1950s, however, and particularly with the advent of the Eisenhower administration, the federal government made little use of its powers, and Congress frequently limited appropriations to public housing programs.27 In 1951 the New Republic ran a series of articles chronicling the travails of postwar public housing. The defeat of local public housing referendums in California and others places, the delay in appropriations for public housing staff, and effective opposition by the real estate lobby were cited as explanations for the loss of momentum. Hostile public relations campaigns further weakened the standing of public housing by scaring wage earners and home owners with slogans such as “Can you afford to pay somebody else’s rent?” (used in Little Rock, Arkansas) and “when Socialism moves in, things get tough for the homeowner.”28 In 1954, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that prohibited segregation in publicly supported housing, causing many Southern Democratic senators to withdraw their support for public housing provisions.29 On the local level as well, race became an important factor in the debate when housing programs came to be seen as geared mainly toward minorities. By the late 1950s, it was not just the conservative House Appropriations Committee and real-estate interests that slowed down public housing efforts. Plans for low-rent public housing were increasingly blocked by local opposition to what came to be called “transferred slums.”30 Public housing was limited in scope and suffered from a negative public perception. In 1950, only about 3% of all new housing units under construction were publicly owned. The “slum clearance” projects that predominated in the 1950s were targeted almost exclusively at inner cities and the urban poor. The apartments that were created rarely came close to middle-class

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housing standards. In a 1957 essay, sociologist William Whyte described the typical public housing developments of the era as “poor farms”: “Most publichousing experts now agree that the ‘self-contained’ neighborhood that turns its back on the surrounding streets, far from improving the neighborhood around it, depresses the whole area; [. . .] the institutional design with its lack of stores and small amenities, is a design that does not encourage normal neighborhood life; [. . .] the high-rise buildings are not suited to family needs.”31 Such negative perceptions further stigmatized publicly funded housing in the eyes of middle-class consumers and undermined support for public housing.32 Still, planners and advocates saw their efforts as part of a larger effort to redevelop and revitalize urban neighborhoods. Planned decentralization, improved building codes, zoning ordinances, and master plans were seen as ways to improve outlying neighborhoods and urban centers. “With cheap land in the outskirts beckoning to postwar development,” Loula Lasker had warned during the war, “the disease of blight will spread while swollen land values hold the central areas in a vise.”33 In a 1948 message, President Truman similarly emphasized the need to see public housing within a broader metropolitan context: “Public housing is an essential element in our total program. [. . .] Housing does not exist in a vacuum. In planning residential areas, consideration must be given to such items as transportation, shopping centers, schools and play grounds.”34 But while the neighborhood ideal looked back on a long-standing tradition among progressive American planners, dating back to the garden city movement of the early part of the twentieth century, and enjoyed much currency in postwar debates as well, new neighborhoods—with the exception of a very few “new towns”—rarely became a reality.35 Postwar public housing efforts often lacked a comprehensive approach and provided little in terms of community or shopping facilities. In their exclusive focus on low-income groups, such efforts exacerbated metropolitan segregation and did little to prevent the exodus of middle-class residents to the suburbs. subsidizing the suburban home Instead, the main focus of American postwar housing construction was on suburban communities, where the private housing industry was now producing sprawling subdivisions. In 1956, for example, 68.5% of all new housing units were being built in suburban areas. Moreover, 74% of new single family homes were going up in the suburbs, and 69.4% of new dwellings for five or more families were being constructed in the urban centers.36 Conse-

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quently, the ratio of owner-occupied to rented housing units, 41.1% to 58.9% in 1940, was 53.4% to 46.4% by 1950.37 A federally underwritten suburbangrowth complex became one of the engines driving the American consumer economy.38 The massive private housing industry that emerged after the war managed to produce relatively affordable units due to mass production standards and the use of cost-efficient materials such as wood.39 Even in the 1920s, progressive businessmen like Edward Filene had argued for the social benefits of mass production and the building of “houses like Fords.”40 After the war, the promise of “luxury homes at the price of cottages” seemed within reach, as demand for mass-produced homes skyrocketed thanks to a boom in marriages and the domestic migration of defense workers.41 Still, the private building industry initially fell short of rising expectations and was criticized across the political spectrum. Fortune ran a series of articles in 1946 attacking private enterprise for its failure to meet demand.42 The Nation complained about the lack of efficiency in the building industry, an “unplanned amalgamation of many trades and tradesmen.”43 Fortune went so far as to label construction “the industry that Capitalism forgot,” and sent a warning message to the industry that the only way to avoid socialized housing was to step up to the plate.44 By the early 1950s, the mass production of suburban housing commonly associated with the postwar era truly took off—exemplified by the success of Levitt & Sons, which had become the largest builder in the United States and gave its name to Levittown, on Long Island, New York (fig. 8). Nineteen fifty saw a first peak in production, with 1.7 million single family homes built. According to a Time cover story that year, “Levittown [is] known for one reason: it epitomizes the revolution which has brought mass production to the housing industry.” While the houses that sold for an affordable $7,900 were not large, they came equipped with a stove, a refrigerator, a Bendix washer, and an Admiral television set. They exemplified the way in which the postwar suburban home became the focal point for the accumulation of consumer durables. Furthermore, Levittown represented a new type of community that would be paradigmatic for many suburban subdivisions to follow. As Time observed, Levittown was initially unincorporated; it had no movies, no night clubs, and only three bars (all in the shopping center). There were few old people and many young children. “The community” the writers observed, “has an almost anti-septic air.”45 Such suburban subdivisions also had—at their inception— little room for public forms of consumption. While suburban home ownership became more affordable for middleincome American families, it was by no means universally available.46 By 1960, only 38% of nonwhite households owned their own home in the United

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f i g u r e 8 . Aerial view of a planned prefabricated housing development in Levittown, Pennsylvania (the second Levittown). Library of Congress.

States (as opposed to 64% of white households).47 Low-income and especially African-American consumers were considerably disadvantaged in the booming postwar housing market. In a 1955 congressional hearing, William Levitt frankly admitted that the private building industry at the time did not furnish minorities with good houses. Davis McEntire’s report Residence and Race, published in 1960, painted a bleak picture of increased segregation due to suburbanization, despite the Supreme Court’s 1948 ruling (Shelley v. Kraemer), which prohibited restrictive covenants.48 Still, the suburban boom was widely underwritten by the federal government. The Eisenhower administration’s centrist approach to government intervention was exemplified by the 1956 Housing Act, which further slowed down public housing. Instead, the act increased public support for private building by making home improvement loans more easily available and by further relaxing loan requirements for private builders.49 As early as the 1930s, the FHA had insured long-term mortgages, which had driven down mortgage costs considerably. Following the 1944 Service Men Readjustment Act, the VA similarly guaranteed and partially supplied mortgages to veterans for a duration of up to thirty years. By 1954, the VA had guaranteed 3.7 million

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t a b l e 6 New private housing units started, United States (in thousands)

1950 1960 1970

FHA-insured mortgage

VA-guaranteed mortgage

Total

506 422 716

498 145 168

1,434 1,252 1,908

Source: US Bureau of the Census, Statistical History of the United States (1976), p. 641

mortgages; roughly one in five veterans had made use of this opportunity.50 In 1950, 35% of all new privately built housing units were enjoying FHA mortgage insurance, and another 35% had VA mortgage guarantees. Twenty years later, with 38% of new mortgages insured by the FHA, suburban home construction was still benefiting greatly from public guarantees (table 6).51 Public policy thus encouraged a credit-based pattern of housing consumption. If consumer credit became one of the engines that fueled postwar mass consumption in general, cheap mortgages fueled the suburban housing boom. The FHA guarantees allowed for the construction or purchase of homes with limited down payments (or even none) and extensive primary mortgages, fundamentally altering the mortgage system in the United States by eliminating the split between first (up to two-thirds of the value) and second mortgages. By the early 1950s, the thirty-year mortgage had become increasingly common and easily obtainable.52 While savings and loan associations (S&Ls) supplied 31.3% of all mortgages, their share continually diminished in favor of commercial banks and other private lenders. Unlike their German equivalents, the Bausparkassen (see below), American S&Ls had to be prepared to pay out loans to consumers immediately, but the accumulated savings of members were often insufficient to cover loans.53 Federal programs prevented the boom in mortgages from being hampered by a lack of capital. Following the 1932 Home Loan Act, Federal Home Loan Banks ensured the liquidity of S&Ls. And from 1938 on, the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) ensured an ample capital supply for mortgages in general through the secondary mortgage market.54 While suburban single-family home construction was soaring, apartment construction was limited during the 1950s and mainly restricted to urban areas. Because of zoning regulations in many suburban communities, singlefamily homes predominated. Minimum plot requirements as well as zoning regulations helped new suburban neighborhoods to prevent high-density development, multifamily dwellings, and low-income housing. At the end of the decade, William Whyte wondered whether apartment living (and urban life in general) had somehow become “un-American.” For the typical middleclass family, Whyte found, apartment living in the city was either beyond

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their means or below their accepted standards of housing.55 While living in upscale apartments had been quite popular and even fashionable during the 1920s, postwar middle-class consumers had few incentives to do so. In the 1960s, when the split between middle-class suburban housing and low-income urban housing was obviously widening, the federal government did show some concern. The housing and urban development policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations were part of a larger effort to revitalize American cities and to eradicate continuing inequalities in America’s affluent society. In their appeals, both administrations harkened back to the Housing Act of 1949 and its goal of “a decent home in a decent neighborhood for every American family.” Increased funding for public housing and a new rent-supplement program were designed to improve the housing of low- and middle-income families. Community development and the revitalization of existing urban neighborhoods supplanted more invasive “slum clearance” measures with their large-scale, segregated projects. The Department of Housing and Urban Development was created to coordinate various efforts to improve urban neighborhoods, while the Urban Institute was responsible for furthering research into the problems of metropolitan development.56 Still, the total number of publicly funded housing units remained small. By 1968, about 680,000 publicly funded housing units existed in the United States (with another 55,000 under construction), but they accounted for less than 2% of the total housing stock in the country.57 Most American housing policy in the postwar period encouraged consumers to choose suburban single-family homes. Planners and policy makers hoping for urban renewal were stymied by the attitudes of consumers themselves. As conservative writer Nathan Glazer observed in a 1965 New York Times essay, “the individual’s desire for a privately owned automobile and a privately owned house and plot is an enormously powerful fact—not only in the United States—and it plays havoc with the best laid plans. [. . .] When [people] have choices, they create Los Angeles.”58 A comparative look at West Germany, however, suggests that housing policy could have provided consumers with different incentives. Los Angeles was not an inevitable outcome. west german housing policy: social housing versus the eigenheim “To each inhabitant of the Federal Republic his own home” was the goal espoused by Eberhard Wildermuth, federal minister of reconstruction, when the 1950 housing act became law.59 On the surface, this sentiment recalls the

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US Housing Act of 1949, but the West German act was in fact a very different piece of legislation. It envisioned the construction of 1.8 million housing units over six years with the aid of massive federal subsidies. It provided for direct loans and subsidies for “social housing apartments” (Soziale Wohnungen), 350–700 square feet in size, that would be rented through housing offices (Wohnungsämter). New apartments of up to 860 square feet would be supported by reduced property taxes, as long as tenants enjoyed privileged legal protection and rents were capped at a modest DM 1.50 per square meter (or DM 0.14 per square foot). Privately financed housing units that could be rented out without special restriction were to fill the remaining demand. In contrast to the United States, postwar West Germany initially saw a broad consensus on the need for public regulation of and intervention in the housing market. Passed by the conservative CDU majority in the Bundestag but supported by the SPD as “an example of Social Democratic housing policy,” the housing act of 1950 would set the tone for housing construction in West Germany for much of the postwar era. The situation in West Germany immediately after the war was, it is true, very different. “To each his own home” did not yet refer to the construction of individual family homes but rather a massive public effort to make housing available in the face of dramatic shortages and to do so quickly—largely by means of constructing urban apartment buildings. As late as 1949, wartime destruction had left numerous households without their own accommodations; 38% of all housing units in Western Germany had been either damaged or destroyed.60 Into the 1960s, housing would be a commodity largely outside the market economy, with controlled rents in all older and most newly constructed apartments. The Wohnungsämter survived into the 1950s and retained their power to put bombed-out or refugee families into homes with surplus space.61 Housing policy in postwar Germany was intimately tied to social policy.62 To remedy shortages, a massive boom in housing construction occurred in the 1950s. By 1957, the immediate crisis had been overcome: 3.8 million housing units had been built since 1950, and about 25% of all West-German apartments were Neubau, that is, had been built after the war.63 Of the roughly 500,000 units built annually, between 50% and 60% were “social housing” in accordance with the act of 1950. The decade also witnessed a dramatic modernization in existing housing stock. Average floor space rose from 594 square feet in 1952 to 780 in 1961. As of 1959, 95.2% of newly constructed housing units now had a full bath.64 Postwar West German consumers saw changes and improvements in their domestic living space, but public policy incentives differed significantly from those offered to their American counterparts.

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the limited reach of the eigenheim during the 1950s and ’60s Although a number of German policy makers touted the virtues of the detached, single-family home, the Eigenheim never became the dominant building pattern. A discrepancy between the rhetorical embrace of the Eigenheim on the one hand and the construction of urban apartments on the other characterized much of the 1950s.65 The second housing law, in 1956, did put stronger emphasis on detached housing by forcing states to comply with federal preferences for individual family homes. Conservatives envisioned the widespread construction of small homes as a countervailing force to the “massification” tendencies of large cities.66 The Eigenheim movement remained central to notions of fighting totalitarianism by breaking up traditional urban structures; it speaks to the continuity of a strand of conservative antiurbanism in postwar West Germany. The promotion of the Eigenheim was a response to the challenge posed by the East German competitor state, which preached the virtues of urban working-class apartment housing.67 Widespread property ownership among working-class citizens was seen by many in the governing coalition of conservatives and market liberals as crucial to stabilizing West German society.68 In 1960, minister of housing Paul Lücke wrote: “It is the fundamental position of the federal government that private ownership, especially in its original form as ownership of home and land, gives the citizen a healthy sense of self and strengthens his sense of initiative and responsibility [. . .]. Only the broad dispersion of property guarantees over the long run [. . .] our inner defenses against the political threat posed by the collective forces of the East.”69 The Eigenheim policy was thus geared toward bringing bourgeois values to wider segments of the population. Unlike the US policy of guaranteed mortgages aimed at providing access to suburban middle-class status, West German policy once again emphasized the bürgerlich value of saving. Accordingly, one of the most important features of the 1956 housing law promoting Eigenheim construction was a public subsidy for Bausparen (saving plans). Whereas mortgages promoted the construction of suburban homes in the United States, saving plans with Bausparkassen (the equivalent of S&Ls) were the most common way to the Eigenheim in West Germany. Public and private Bausparkassen, which emerged as a driving force for the construction of single family homes during the 1950s and ’60s, had their roots in the interwar period.70 In principle they were credit unions: mem-

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bers paid into a savings account so that the Bausparkasse could pay out an affordable loan several years later that functioned as a secondary mortgage. Whereas Americans had moved toward a single mortgage system, with public guarantees and ample capital supply, Germans typically had to secure a primary mortgage through a specialized mortgage bank, which covered up to 40% of construction costs at 8%–10% interest for twenty to thirty-five years.71 Over the 1950s, the number of West Germans using Bausparkassen increased hugely, especially after the federal government subsidized this form of accumulation through premiums and tax deductions of up to DM 400 per year and account. By 1957, when some two million Germans had Bauspar accounts, the influx of capital allowed Bausparkassen to greatly reduce waiting periods. Still, savers had to wait a minimum of eighteen months and had to have saved 40% of the total sum before they could receive their loans. With many savers paying only the required monthly minimum and a high existing demand for loans, the average waiting period toward the end of the 1950s was as much as eight years.72 In line with state efforts to promote saving rather than consumption, publicly subsidized Bausparen was a major contributor to the high savings rate in postwar Germany and a damper on consumer spending.73 It took a lot more money to build a single-family home in Germany than in the United States. In the August 1960 edition of the trade journal Der Wiederaufbau, Hans Budde reported that an astounding 60% of Americans lived in an Eigenheim (which accounted for about 90% of all new construction in their country) as opposed to fewer than 40% of West Germans. While American houses were much larger than German houses (1130 square feet versus 700 square feet), Budde cited an average cost of $16,000 (at an average annual income of $6,000) versus DM 30,000 (or roughly $7,850) in West Germany (at an average income of only DM 7,000 or $1,667). Even more significant, Budde noted, was the fact that many American households could finance their homes through a single mortgage, which would cover up to 92% of construction costs with a twenty-year maturation—a mortgage, Budde stressed, that could be given with only a few screenings in as little as two days. Pointing out what he perceived as the downside of American housing, he not only found little in the way of social housing but also believed that US homes were consciously designed to last only a limited time. While continuous “upgrades” in homes, coinciding with a changing standard of living, were appropriate for a highly mobile US society, Budde and other German observers doubted that the concept of planned obsolescence should be transferred to the German housing market, where houses usually

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lasted about 2.5 times as long.74 As with other consumer goods, Germans were eager to stress quality and durability and were quick to condemn planned obsolescence in American products (ignoring the fact that American consumer households often considered their houses an appreciating investment). Overall, American housing models received a mixed reception in Germany.75 After observing the continued importance of traditional brickbuilding methods in German construction, American James Butler, head of the housing department of the Marshall Plan’s Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), initiated a competition among architects in 1951 to design modern houses. While American construction methods were not necessarily to be duplicated, the goal was to innovate. The winning design was a small, affordable home (580 square feet) with kitchen, built-in stove, and bath for DM 7,800 in building cost. Subsequently ECA settlements with a total of 3,300 housing units were built in fifteen cities. The settlements were not a huge success, however, as many residents soon complained about leaking roofs and cracking walls. By 1956, a significant portion of the ECA units had become housing for refugees and other war victims.76 Despite interest in industrially mass-produced housing, skepticism about nontraditional building methods was widespread. When Henri Nannen, editor of the popular weekly Stern, initiated an exhibition of ready-made houses (including American-style ranch houses), its express purpose was to assess whether these would turn out to be “real houses or mere barracks.”77 Though the exhibition was widely hailed, the construction of these model homes encountered sustained resistance by local building authorities concerned about code violations. Throughout the 1960s, homes built from prefabricated parts were regarded as inferior; traditional brick was greatly preferred by builders.78 Public offices as well as the building trade undermined trends toward a more affordable Eigenheim. To counter the advances of poured-concrete construction (especially for multistory apartment buildings), the brick-building trade organized a competition in the city of Essen to show that traditional construction could be as quick and as inexpensive as its modern competitors.79 Whereas American trade unions waned in importance in the housing industry after the late 1940s, the traditional building trade in West Germany held on to its influential role throughout the postwar decades because code regulations required that many construction tasks had to be overseen by recognized master craftsmen.80 Thus, despite modernization efforts, construction of single-family homes remained comparatively expensive in postwar Germany, and no commercial counterpart emerged to the American suburban subdivision.

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building new neighborhoods: “ s o c i a l h o u s i n g ” a n d u r b a n a pa rt m e n t l i v i n g While the initial reconstruction effort was widely supported by the major German political parties, by the mid-1950s the shape of postwar housing had become ideologically charged and politically contested. The Eigenheim was the darling of conservatives in the CDU-led federal government, yet urban apartment construction still thrived. In 1959, apartments in multifamily buildings accounted for 50% of new publicly funded housing units.81 Many proponents of the Eigenheim acknowledged that economic necessity demanded the construction of apartment units.82 Social housing had a viable lobby of its own. Social Democrats vehemently opposed the increased Eigenheim provisions of the 1956 law, regarding them as discriminatory against rental housing. States and municipalities too, many with Social Democratic administrations, were unenthusiastic about Eigenheim development because new subdivisions had high infrastructure costs and land was scarce.83 Many urban administrations chose instead to build apartment complexes on bombed-out city properties that were already connected to gas and sewage systems. During the late 1950s, urban planners voiced concern about sprawl and suggested that younger people were well aware of the benefits of urban living. Eigenheim construction as a whole, according to one planner cited in Der Spiegel in 1958, “is a crassly misguided development from the perspective of settlement policy, urban planning, and architecture.”84 Conservative federal efforts to encourage family homes were met with strong opposition in a coalition of SPD-led state governments, municipalities, and large, nonprofit building companies. While the Eigenheim appealed to cold war concerns about the radicalizing effects of overcrowded working-class neighborhoods, the immediate competition with the German Democratic Republic also required the West to showcase its ability to construct affordable mass housing. The 1957 Interbau exhibition in Berlin was a case in point, ostensibly creating a counterpoint to the East German Stalin-Allee. In order to demonstrate the compatibility of construction under social housing regulations with attractive modern architecture, several internationally renowned architects had been invited to redesign an entire neighborhood, the Hansa quarter in Berlin.85 Architects like Oscar Niemeyer, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Walther Gropius constructed apartment buildings, most of them high-rise, with modern closets, electric stoves, and refrigerators in the individual apartments but also community rooms and shared facilities. This highly publicized Western

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answer to the problem of modern housing thus focused on urban apartment living and not the Eigenheim. Nonprofit building companies, many affiliated with the labor unions, played a central role in promoting a more urban model of modern housing. In 1953, for example, 41.9% of all housing units were constructed by these Wohnungsbaugesellschaften, and by 1972, 14% of all housing units were owned by such companies.86 Most notable among them was the Hamburg-based Neue Heimat. In 1954, architect Ernst May, who during the interwar period had made a name for himself designing working-class housing in Frankfurt as well as in the Soviet Union, became the Neue Heimat’s planning chief. He played a major role in the move toward designing entirely new neighborhoods in many German cities. The “neighborhood” idea took a more concrete form in postwar West Germany than in the United States. May’s vision for developments such as Bremen’s Neue Vahr (fig. 9), with 10,000 units for 30,000 residents, was based on the concept of the “neighborhood” as a “basic sociological unit,” which would be organized architecturally around a school, a church, and a small shopping street with a bank, a cinema, and branches of the public administration. Such neighborhoods—similar to those envisioned but seldom realized by American planners—would border inner-city areas; by entering into an

f i g u r e 9 . Postwar publicly supported housing development (Bremen, Neue Vahr, 1960). Photo by Simon Müller. Bundesarchiv.

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organic relationship with the urban core they would combine a sense of home (Heimatgefühl) with the “mentality of the urban resident.” Intellectuals, May believed, put too much emphasis on urban residents’ desire for individuality, when most citizens were happy to live in close-knit communities, especially in an age of increasing mobility.87 By the same token, May criticized public subsidies for suburban construction: “We are overdoing the construction of Eigenheime; through financial incentives we are forcing countless people into single-family homes who don’t really want them.”88 In further contrast to the United States, publicly subsidized apartment construction was geared not only to low-income groups but to better-off working-class and middle-class Germans as well. There was little direct public ownership, and publicly subsidized apartment housing was generally not looked down upon as a form of “welfare” as it tended to be in the United States. Central to May’s vision, for example, was the social mixture of residents in new neighborhoods constructed with the help of social housing subsidies. “Every neighborhood [should] mirror on a small scale the social layers of the city as a whole,” he believed.89 City planners such as Düsseldorf ’s Friedrich Tamm thought that modern rental apartments were much more suited to needs of middle-class Germans than detached suburban homes: “Who wants to wade through the mud in evening dress when heading to the opera?”90 Indeed, postwar apartment developments would frequently attract young, upwardly mobile households and families with children.91 With social housing construction and widely capped rents, urban rental living had remained relatively inexpensive in postwar Germany.92 When the most immediate housing shortages had been overcome by 1957, public subsidies for housing construction came under increased attack.93 While housing interests ensured that construction would continue at a brisk pace into the 1960s, when work on many of the larger projects as in Bremen-Vahr was only just beginning, the liberalization of the rental market took shape during this decade. In 1960, the federal government laid out its plan to end rent freezes completely, to abolish most housing offices, and to decrease restrictive tenant protection by 1966.94 By 1963, rent control had been discontinued in 397 counties and cities where housing shortages were deemed to be below a maximum determined by federal authorities.95 How wide a segment of the West German population benefited from the subsidized and regulated housing market became clear in the debates about rent increases that followed the liberalization. Rents had not reflected the overall rise in the income and standard of living since the late 1950s.96 Even Social Democrats noted that the postwar housing policy had paid more attention to acute need than to income in granting access to social housing and

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rent-controlled apartments. Now many relatively affluent tenants were enjoying a system of fixed rents while some low-income families could not even find adequate housing.97 Speaking before the council for consumer affairs (Verbraucherausschuß), a ministry of economics official noted the political sensitivity of housing market liberalization but concluded: “The social facade of the controlled economy partially hides gross injustices.”98 A public rent subsidy (Wohngeld) was introduced in 1963 to alleviate hardships for low-income families. Shortages remained a problem for low-income renters in many cities, and some landlords initially made ample use of newfound opportunities to evict tenants. Overall, however, the liberalization of the housing market did not significantly detract from the attractiveness of urban renting.99 The Wohngeld, administered by revamped housing offices, was available to a relatively wide segment of the population, at least partially counterweighing the potentially segregating effects of a free rental market. By 1970, roughly 4% of German households received housing subsidies averaging between DM 20 and DM 30 per month. The majority of recipients were retirees, but subsidies were not limited to “the poor,” for 17% of households receiving subsidies had monthly incomes above DM 800.100 Policies promoting home ownership also did not preclude urban living. To a fairly high degree, ownership of housing included row houses and condominiums, which were more suited to city life. The condominium was touted to middle-class professionals as an “often overlooked” way to combine the advantages of home ownership with those of urban living and transportation.101 A 1966 ministry of housing brochure proclaimed the advantages of condominiums in “good, central locations” (in close proximity to cinemas, theaters, city hall, and the neighborhood retailer). “In the cities, scarcity of land and high property prices often preclude the construction of Eigenheime in good locations. Construction on the urban fringe is consequently on the rise, causing urban sprawl with many problems for urban planning. The condominium offers an ideal solution [. . .] and can be more easily integrated into urban conceptions than a plethora of individually designed Eigenheime.”102 Row houses were similarly seen as a way of combining the advantages of the Eigenheim (for example, in raising a family) with urban planning, by offering opportunities to link residents to public utilities such as “transportation services, shopping, educational and cultural facilities.”103 At the same time, by the 1960s there was a slight retreat from the policy of promoting Eigenheim construction through Bausparen as part of anticyclical economic policy and because reports were surfacing of widespread abuses in premium saving.104 After some restrictions on public subsidies were introduced, GdF Wüstenrot,

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a leading Bausparkasse, announced in 1968 that the number of new contracts was stagnant for the first time since World War II.105 Though public expenditures for housing decreased during the 1960s, some of the most ambitious publicly supported housing projects, predominantly focused on rental housing, were only beginning to take off.106 When minister of housing Lauritz Lauritzen (the first Social Democrat to hold this office) presented the results of a recent housing census in 1968, he found that quality had now replaced quantity as the most urgent problem. Setting his sights onto the 1970s, he saw a need to continue constructing modern apartments as long as TV sets outnumbered bathtubs and many apartments still had coal heating. Albert Vietor, head of the Neue Heimat, seconded this assessment, estimating an annual demand of 450,000 new apartments per year.107 As much as liberalization and the construction of individual family homes permeated the rhetoric of the 1950s and 1960s, there was little doubt that public intervention in housing and urban planning would continue to play a legitimate role in Western Germany. Even a hardened conservative proponent of the individual family home like Paul Lücke stressed the importance of the social housing programs.108 Social Democrats like Julius Brecht emphasized the need to make an improved standard of living and quality of life accessible to all, through urban planning and public action within the framework of the social market economy: “The most basic justification for public intervention,” Brecht believed, was “the right of all people to be able to attain a good culturally acceptable level of housing consumption [“Wohnkonsum”] commensurate with the affluent state of our economy.” The ruthless pursuit of individual interests in housing construction in the era of liberalism prior to 1910, Brecht asserted, was responsible for the lack of playgrounds, recreational areas, and commercial and cultural facilities in many urban neighborhoods.109 By the 1960s, this emphasis on public goods increasingly marked social-democratic visions of urban living and was contrasted favorably to the market-driven model of suburban housing in the United States. As late as 1975, urban housing and renting still predominated in West Germany. Looking back on twenty-five years of postwar housing policy, a survey by the federal ministry of housing found that 14.1 million housing units (56% of all housing stock) had been constructed between 1948 and 1974, 6.1 million of which had received some form of public subsidy. Especially between 1949 and 1960, new construction was highest in major cities; thereafter, the emphasis shifted somewhat in favor of smaller (in part suburban) communities. Still, most households resided within the network of urban infrastructures: 82% percent lived close to public transportation, 88% could satisfy their

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daily shopping needs within walking distance, and 44% lived close to urban cultural facilities. While several million Eigenheime were built between 1950 and the early 1970s, only 36% of all housing units were owner-occupied by 1972. Renting remained comparatively cheap, with 50% of all tenant households spending less than 15% of their household income on rent (even among relatively low-income working-class households). More importantly, of those households that were planning to change their living arrangements within the next five or six years, 67% intended to continue renting. Of the 27% planning to move into owner-occupied housing, 16% had condominiums in mind.110 The incentives of postwar housing policy, it appears, bore fruit among West German consumers. Renters and Owners—City and Suburbia: Consumer Preferences and Housing Choice Postwar patterns of housing consumption were clearly influenced by consumer preference. In the United States, much more than in West Germany, home ownership was a central pillar of the postwar consumer imagination. Comparing consumer choices in America and West Germany as late as the 1980s, economist Axel Börsch-Supan found that “Americans have a strong preference for large single-family homes [ . . .]. For the most part, West Germans do not share this dream, they [may] prefer owning to renting, but they consider large rental units as well.”111 Whereas the suburban home became a defining feature of a broad middle class of American consumers, many middle-class West Germans remained comfortable renting. a t t i t u d e s t o wa r d o w n e r s h i p a n d r e n t i n g : the home as a consumer good During the immediate postwar years, economic circumstances certainly played a significant role in housing preferences. For most German consumers, with dramatically lower median incomes, home ownership in the city or the suburb seemed an unlikely goal. Both German and American consumers shared a common interest in finding roomier, more modern accommodations, but housing standards differed significantly.112 Whereas running water was found in virtually all housing units in both countries by the late 1960s, only 51.9% of German homes had full baths, as compared to 88.1% in the United States. Space too remained more important to American consumers. By 1966, American homes averaged 4.9 rooms per unit and 0.7 persons per room, as compared to 4.1 rooms and 0.9 persons in West Germany.113

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In the United States, owning a new house was very much the expectation among American consumers after World War II. A 1945 Saturday Evening Post survey found that only 14% of Americans would be satisfied to live in an apartment or a “used house.”114 With a hint of surprise, Otto Kämpe, a German housing expert studying the United States during the early 1950s, noted that it was “regarded as almost prestigious to be a suburbanite.”115 Indeed, a 1966 Survey Research Center study found that 85% of American families preferred to live in single-family homes situated away from the centers of metropolitan development.116 Since the 1930s, home ownership had allowed many working-class Americans to identify themselves as “middle-class,” but for a large number this would remain a credit-financed and precarious social status.117 Suburban homes in the United States, like other consumer goods during the 1950s, underwent frequent changes in fashion. Defying the image of identical “cracker boxes,” new developments featured a variety of styles from “Cape Cods” and ranch houses to split-levels. Consumers sought distinguishing features and novelties or expanded their homes according to their own needs and life styles.118 More than their German counterparts, American home owners in the postwar era were ready to upgrade by trading in their house and moving to a different house or neighborhood. In many ways, the novelty-oriented outlook of American bargain shoppers discussed in chapter 3 was reflected in attitudes toward home ownership. As with other consumer goods, homes allowed for differentiation within a broad middle market. How powerful the ideal of home ownership was in the United States is attested to by the spread of trailer parks after the war. The trailer (even though it never fully attained middle-class respectability) emerged as a transitional institution at the lower end of the American middle market and offered working-class consumers a promise of social mobility and an affordable alternative to rental apartments.119 German consumers, by contrast, were more likely to upgrade by moving to a different or larger apartment. As the look at the Eigenheim has already suggested, home ownership was an important ideal for many postwar West Germans as well. Its significance, however, was tempered by different views of renting and of the role of the Eigenheim. Americans, according to German observers such as Kämpe, treated their homes more like cars and other consumer goods. German home buyers, he claimed, were more likely to see it as an asset that they could pass on to their children. Consequently, even welloff American consumers, Kämpe noted, were contend to buy houses “off the rack,” while German houses of the same kind would be individually designed by architects.120 While somewhat overdrawn here, the German attitudes were

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due in part to a limited sense of geographic mobility; people were reluctant to move into different neighborhoods, let alone different cities.121 More importantly, they reflected the bürgerlich consumer ethos. Many middle-class Germans would rather rent than buy a house (a trailer was out of the question) that did not live up to accepted notions of quality and durability. Particularly during the 1950s in West Germany, renting and apartment living were quite compatible with common notions of middle-class living and were especially acceptable for young, upwardly mobile couples. Middle-class apartment dwellers could look back on a long tradition of urban renting, with its “relatively good image.”122 To be sure, when asked for their housing preference in 1955, a sizable majority of German households (76%) chose a singlefamily residence and only 24% a multifamily dwelling. Yet housing preferences were a little more complex than these numbers suggest. To begin with, only 46% indicated a preference for detached single-family houses. Asked more specifically for their personal aims, only 54% indicated they would consider ownership, while 45% stated that they planned to rent—even if their future household incomes would improve slightly. Furthermore, as incomes rose and the standards of apartment housing improved over the following decades, preferences changed in unexpected ways. By 1974, the number of Germans favoring single-family housing had declined to 72% and the number favoring detached housing to 40%. By 1970, nearly 10% of Germans stated a general preference for high-rise apartment housing.123 Surveys of tenants in postwar West German housing developments usually showed a high level of consumer satisfaction.124 A 1954 Allensbach survey for the federal housing ministry found 66% content with their housing, without plans to move. Of those planning to move, the vast majority aimed at a (mostly larger) rental unit; only a third planned to move into an Eigenheim.125 The standards found in postwar apartment buildings were attractive to many German consumers. A 1960s survey of urban residential neighborhoods found those living in postwar housing (with an ownership rate of only 21%) to be the most content (70.8%), especially if compared to neighborhoods with older rental housing.126 While it became a commonplace in 1960s debates about urban planning in Germany to critique the monotony and grayness of many postwar apartment buildings, many residents appreciated their advantages. Dwellers in new high-rise developments, regardless of social background, frequently praised their modern amenities and the anonymity afforded by the large buildings. They vastly preferred them to older buildings with fewer residents.127 Many expressed a high degree of satisfaction with the layout of their apartments, while occupants of single family dwellings would frequently complain about stairs making housework more ardu-

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ous and a lack of privacy due to more open views for the neighbors.128 West German views on apartment living, then, were largely positive. Overall, West German consumers, whether renters (the majority of whom lived in urban apartments) or owners, may have been slightly more satisfied with their housing situation than their American counterparts. Since the late 1950s, according to surveys, satisfaction hovered around 80% for West Germans, while the rate fluctuated between 75% and 80% for white Americans, many of whom had left the city to become suburban home owners. African Americans, on the other hand, many of whom rented within or near the urban core, showed extreme dissatisfaction with their housing. Only 54% indicated a level of satisfaction in 1963, a share that had dropped to 46% by 1971.129 The American numbers reflect owner / renter differences as well as the location. Seen side-by-side with the German numbers, however, they suggest that ownership and suburban living were not universally a precondition for housing satisfaction as many proponents of suburban housing had argued during the postwar decades. l o c at i o n , l o c at i o n , l o c at i o n : urban and suburban consumer preferences The choice of neighborhood had less meaning for consumers in West Germany than in the United States. An early 1970s study in the United States indicated that neighborhood satisfaction depended primarily on factors such as the upkeep of housing structures, safety, and—most significantly—the neighbors. The social and racial composition of neighborhoods emerged as the strongest predictor of how residents rated their neighborhood, with residents showing a high level of awareness and agreement as to how their neighborhood was composed, especially with regard to race.130 While federal housing policy, real estate practices, and biased local zoning contributed to residential segregation in the United States, consumer preferences further contributed to this process. Consumer attitudes were certainly fueled by racial prejudice. In part however, they reflected more pragmatic concerns—though still based on racism—about the decline in property values that the arrival of minority residents might bring. Many new suburbanites viewed this possibility as a threat to the precarious middle-class status their families had recently attained.131 In postwar West Germany, by contrast, race was a negligible factor with regard to consumer housing choices, since there were few ethnic or racial minorities to speak of during the 1950s and ’60s. Furthermore, most urban neighborhoods and even those postwar developments that featured predominantly apartment housing retained a relatively mixed social composition.

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While class did impact residential structure, an early 1970s survey of eighteen predominately rental neighborhoods in six German cities still found variation with regard to income and occupation. The more modern and recent in construction a neighborhood was, the higher was the average income of residents and the higher the percentage of white-collar employees. No matter when a neighborhood was built, however, at least 12% of its residents, on average, belonged to the highest and lowest income brackets.132 Among home-owners in West Germany, class differences still prevailed into the 1970s; and professionals, the self-employed, and white-collar employees were significantly overrepresented, while working class households were clearly underrepresented.133 This mirrored the generally more class-differentiated consumption patterns in postwar West Germany discussed in chapter 3. Since many middle-class households still chose apartment living, class was not reflected in neighborhood composition as strongly as it was in many American cities.134 Differences between West Germany and the United States in neighborhood composition affected consumer attitudes toward the metropolitan community as a whole. General cultural attitudes were more decidedly antiurban in Germany during the interwar years than in the United States, where urban luxury apartments were booming in the 1920s. After World War II, this balance appears to have shifted.135 American consumers in the postwar decades showed considerable aversion toward urban life. According to a 1971 national survey concerning residential choices by the US Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, although 69% of Americans lived in urban areas (including inner cities and suburbs), 53% indicated a preference for life in rural or small-town communities. Only 13% chose large urban areas.136 In contrast to continental Europe, middle- and upper-class Americans had been moving from the city to the suburbs since the nineteenth century, partly because racial and ethnic diversity became more pronounced with the New Immigration in the late 1800s and the African-American migration to urban centers during the twentieth century.137 After World War II, the middle-class move to the suburbs took on a new dimension, as growing affluence opened offered more and more consumers the option of suburban living. When West German consumers were surveyed in 1971, 50% indicated they would prefer to live in a “green” suburb, a small town, or a rural community. A substantial 48%, however, expressed preference for some form of urban living. Of these, about 10% wanted to live directly within an urban center; the majority wanted to live in somewhat less densely built neighborhoods on the fringe of a larger city. Roughly 80% of all respondents thought a doctor and a pharmacy should be within walking distance of their ideal home, as should a bus or streetcar stop.138 A 1975 study on postwar housing developments found that

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“it has become an increasingly commonplace realization that the ‘quality of housing’ is determined by several environmental factors.”139 For many postwar American consumers, by contrast, suburban home ownership was a natural choice. Public subsidies and cheap mortgages had made it affordable, and urban apartment living was less attractive, since much of the new construction consisted of low-income public housing. Owning one’s own home was a major goal for the great number of young families in the United States following the baby boom of the 1950s.140 From the German perspective, suburban living—despite the “green” and the gardens it offered— seemed to offer an inferior quality of life with regard to access to urban and public services. What would consumers see as the “good life”—suburban bliss or city life? In a 1971 US News & World Report interview, George Sternlieb, director of the Center for Policy Research at Rutgers University, predicted a bleak future for American cities, which were undergoing a “crisis of function”: city living had priced itself out of the market. Referring to schools, hospitals, and other services, Sternlieb contented that “the level of amenities that the city once could offer just isn’t there anymore.” Inner-city living, while acceptable to Europeans, was not compatible with American standards of acceptable housing. Even the “slum kid” in a good public housing apartment, according to Sternlieb, saw the suburban house with a two-car garage as the embodiment of the “good life.” He added, “anything less than that is simply not regarded as a good life.”141 Cars or Streetcars? Private and Public Transportation In analyses of postwar consumer choices, public services are often overlooked. Of particular importance in this respect was public transportation. Urban mass transportation offered an alternative to the private automobile and influenced choices of housing and where to live—more so in West Germany, however, than in the United States. While the rise of the automobile has been a major element in the historiography of twentieth-century mass consumption, the concurrent development of public modes of transportation has received much less attention. Yet it provides a more complex understanding of the role of public goods in the two consumer societies and further explains differences in housing choices. In the United States, urban mass transportation declined drastically during the postwar decades, with severe consequences for downtown centers and the attractiveness of inner-city areas as residential and consumer space. While American planners and policy makers were slow to react to this shift, West

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Germany witnessed a substantially different development. Here, too, the automobile was on the rise, but public demand for and commitment to mass transit remained strong enough to preserve a viable alternative to the automobile for middle-class consumers. Policy decisions, consumer attitudes, and historical contingencies between 1950 and 1970 have to be taken into account to explain the growing divergence.142 t h e d e c l i n e o f m e t r o p o l i ta n m a s s t r a n s i t i n t h e u n i t e d s t a t e s a f t e r w o r l d wa r i i Automobile ownership had become a mass phenomenon in the United States by the 1950s. Like home ownership, it was central to a middle-class lifestyle. Affordable car loans and a burgeoning used-car market had brought the automobile within reach of the vast majority of American families. Annual model changes with a plethora of style and color variations as well as price-differentiated model lines enhanced the automobile’s role as a marker of status and fashion and encouraged frequency of purchases.143 By the 1960s, many households owned a second car. In 1965 the United States counted 75.2 million automobiles (one for every 2.6 Americans); while 21.3 % of families remained without a car, a stunning 24.3% of families owned two or more.144 Automobility shaped postwar consumption patterns and altered the layout of American cities. American public policy generally encouraged automobile usage and thus individualized modes of transportation. The automobile industry was vital for US economic growth during the 1950s. Urban expressways sprouted across the nation’s cities, making suburbia accessible to the urban core and vice versa.145 The Federal Highway Aid Act of 1956. which secured funds for the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, was certainly the most expansive step in a national transportation policy. By the late 1960s, a Department of Transportation report projected that 91% of all American passenger transport would be conveyed by roads by the end of that decade.146 Public transportation, on the other hand, faced a serious challenge. It had long played a vital role in the growth of American cities, allowing for urban concentration as well as the construction of early suburbs reachable by train or streetcar.147 By the 1920s, however, mass transportation systems across the United States had begun to decline, and by the end of the Depression a once vast network of interurban railways had nearly disappeared. The spread of automobile usage and the advent of the motor bus made traditional rail-based transportation less economical.148 Still, the gradual loss of urban rail systems during the interwar period was not inevitable but rather the consequence

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of public choice. As the notion that mass transit ridership must pay for itself gained traction, cities were reluctant to institute operating subsidies. The negative image of private mass transportation companies as profit-making and expanding giants further diminished their ability to muster public support.149 Railroads had few friends in interwar America. Since the Progressive Era, private railroads had come to be seen as corrupt, old-fashioned, and undemocratic. The automobile, by contrast, was hailed as individualistic, modern, and democratic. As Congress tried to adapt transportation policy to a new age of multiple transportation modes, few were willing to protect railroads from new competitors. The bias against railroads lingered well into the postwar decades, even into the 1960s, giving individualized motor transportation a competitive edge.150 Though public transportation ridership had rebounded somewhat during the war years, the 1950s and ’60s became the era of major decline. By 1964, urban mass transit use had dropped to roughly 50% of its previous peacetime high.151 Between 1950 and 1970, the number of fare-paying passengers sank from 4,903 million to 1,746 million for trains, from 1,261 to 128 million for streetcars, and from 7,681 to 4,058 million for buses.152 This decline, of course, did not go unnoticed by transportation experts. Already in 1952, Carl Chatters of the American Municipal Association had suggested that “mass public transportation in large cities may be on the way out.”153 For most of the 1950s, however, such warnings were of little consequence. Not all systems were affected equally. While streetcar lines virtually disappeared after World War II in all but a few American cities, rapid transit as well as buses fared slightly better (see table 7). Any expansions on mass transit systems that were undertaken during the 1950s and ’60s focused on rapid rail services to suburban areas (as in San Francisco, Washington, Baltimore, Atlanta, and Seattle) or on express buses (as the “free-way flyer” service in Milwaukee). But the density of transportation networks decreased, and many new suburban neighborhoods lacked public transportation altogether.154 t a b l e 7 Passengers using public transportation, United States (in millions)

Subway, rapid transit Streetcar Trolleybus Bus Total







2.25 5.15 0.08 2.30 9.78

2.11 2.79 1.26 7.68 13.82

1.68 0.20 0.18 4.73 6.80

Source: Huber and Rothschuh, Generalplanung im Straßenbau der USA, p. 18.

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The use of public transportation declined in almost all cities. In Chicago, it dropped from 24.3% in 1956 to 9.2% in 1970 for all trips made in the metropolitan area. Trips downtown (which declined sharply in the postwar decades) were still frequently made by mass transit (from 54.9% in 1956 down to 51.8% in 1970), especially because commuters still used public transportation, though to a lesser degree (32.7% down to 18.1%). For all non-work-related purposes, however, such as shopping, entertainment, and so forth, public transportation nearly ceased to be of relevance (from 22.2% down to 7.5%).155 Thus, to Americans as consumers, mass transit no longer appeared a viable mode of transportation.156 The travails of public transportation across the United States can only be understood in the context of metropolitan development and suburbanization. A 1970 report by German transportation experts visiting the United States took Oklahoma City as an example. The geographic expansiveness of the city, the authors suggested, had brought public transportation virtually to a standstill: If residents of outlying areas wanted to take [the bus], they would need to walk one or two hours, not to mention the time spent waiting. [. . .] The transit companies in Oklahoma City were privately owned until 1966. Now completely unprofitable, they have since been run by the city as a kind of charity. They are used almost entirely by the poorer sections of the population living in the inner city or adjacent areas. One can observe a relatively high number of black people, even though only a few of them live in the state of Oklahoma.157

Public transport systems were frequently criticized by postwar consumers for being slow and inconvenient, problems which could be fixed by extended service. In a 1958 Fortune survey among Los Angeles commuters, 66% stated that new rapid transit systems would be the best solution to the city’s traffic problems. Only 34%, however, said that they would almost certainly switch to rail if the service were good, while another 32% said they would only consider switching to “first class” mass transit. A Los Angeles Times survey several years later highlighted some of the underlying discrepancies suggested by these numbers. This time, 86.8% declared that the area needed a rapid transit system, but a full 50% also said that they would not use it even if it were available.158 Many seem to have thought that rapid transit was a good idea—but for others, not for themselves. Aside from inconvenience and inadequate service, there is some evidence to suggest that public transportation’s image suffered from the fact that it was increasingly used by people who did not own cars. This, economist Edgar Hoover suggested in 1965, “plus the fairly common physical deterioration of facilities and a lingering manifestation of the social status distinction that car

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ownership once conveyed, even produces in many people a kind of snobbery that impels them to avoid using public transportation.”159 Indeed, on buses and the few remaining streetcars, lower-income travelers were overrepresented while upper- or middle-income travelers were significantly underrepresented, according to one 1969 study.160 By the early 1970s, mass transit was no longer a determining factor to most Americans in deciding where to live. Another study ranked public transportation as lowest among ten predictors for overall community satisfaction; many suburban residents interviewed did not even have public transportation in their communities.161 Given these developments, the notion that mass transit ridership should support itself became increasingly untenable. By one estimate, the average operating expense per passenger rose by a whopping 323% between 1950 and 1972.162 The decline in passengers and the competition from urban freeways made service even on once lucrative mass transit routes unsustainable.163 In 1969, only 114 out of 1,094 urban transit systems in the United States, mostly in large cities, were in public ownership. In the majority of medium-sized and small cities, buses were operated by private corporations.164 During the 1950s in particular, many transit operators suffered from high franchise costs that had been negotiated while mass transit was still profitable, but their requests to curtail unprofitable routes were frequently denied.165 By the end of the decade, it was clear that mass transit could not survive without considerable public subsidies, which would allow new investments counterbalance operating deficits.166 “It is abundantly clear that as consumers we choose the automobile,” transit expert Edwin Haefele stated in 1965. To him the more pressing issue was what we choose “as citizens.”167 Public policy toward urban mass transportation gradually became more concerted.168 Some cities attempted to stem the tide, and the American Municipal Association emerged as a strong force in calling for public support for mass transit.169 During the 1960s, federal policy as well took note of the problem. In a 1962 address to Congress, President John Kennedy called for improving the competitiveness of public transportation: The ways that people and goods can be moved in [large urban areas] will have a major influence on their structure, on the efficiency of their economy, and on the availability of social and cultural opportunities they can offer their citizens. Our national welfare therefore requires the provision of good urban transportation, with the properly balanced use of private vehicles and modern mass transport to help shape as well as serve urban growth.170

Although some funding for urban mass transit had already been earmarked in the 1961 Housing Act and the Federal Highway Aid Act of 1962, the 1964

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Urban Mass Transportation Act gave cities needed financial incentives to improve and expand their systems. By 1968, the Urban Mass Transit Administration within the Department of Transportation, in close cooperation with the Department for Housing and Urban Development, was overseeing the funding of various demonstration projects in urban public transportation.171 Still, a year earlier, only 3% of Federal expenditures for urban transportation was going into mass transit.172 Some of the federal initiatives to improve public transportation during the 1960s were meant to address a group of consumers referred to as the “transportation disadvantaged.” This group included those unable to drive or without access to automobiles, the poor, the elderly, and the handicapped.173 Furthermore, improving public transportation was seen as a way of decreasing ethnic and racial tensions in America’s urban centers. After the Watts riot of 1964 in Los Angeles, for example, the McCone Commission report on the origins of the riots put part of the blame on insufficient public transportation, which made traveling to work (and thus getting jobs) more difficult for the predominantly African-American residents of Watts.174 As with public housing, therefore, funding for public transportation in the United States was frequently targeted at minorities and low-income groups, while the majority of middle-class consumers used their cars to get around. The best hope for solving urban transportation problems, urban economist Harry Richardson concluded in 1971, was to tax inner-city motorists. In face of already declining inner cities and limited mass transit alternatives, this was hardly a politically viable choice.175 By the early 1970s, improving public transportation did little to alter transportation choice or choice of residence for most American consumers. The role that mass transit could have played for urban development in the postwar decades becomes clearer when looking at West Germany. t h e v i rt u e o f b e i n g l at e : t h e r e l at i v e c o n t i n u i t y o f m a s s t r a n s p o rtat i o n i n w e s t g e r m a n y While automobile congestion in cities became an issue during the 1960s, cars in West Germany were still far less numerous than in the United States. Many consumers continued to rely on public transportation, and most middle-class Germans remained committed to mass transit systems. Car use was promoted to some degree by public policy during the postwar decades, though it never entailed the abandonment of public support for rail transportation. West Germany’s time lag in mass motorization helped preserve a mixed transportation

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market. When turning their attention to the urban mass transit problem in the 1960s, German policy makers found themselves in a more acceptable position vis-à-vis the public than did their American counterparts. The automobile was certainly central to German economic recovery after World War II both as a symbol and as an increasingly widespread consumer good.176 While in 1949 there were only 7 cars to every 1,000 inhabitants in West Germany (as against 240 per 1,000 in the United States), this number had risen to 69 in 1959 and to 207 in 1969.177 Initially, automobiles in West Germany were considered luxury goods, so that only higher income groups could afford their purchase and maintenance, often for professional purposes. Until 1959, motorcycles were the most common form of individualized transportation.178 Still, a variety of small cars with very basic designs did provide a broader segment of the population with some access to car ownership by the mid-1950s. By the end of the decade, car ownership was rising more rapidly than in any other Western country.179 German public policy during the 1950s and ’60s was not as unequivocally pro-automobile as has often been alleged. To be sure, both minister of economics Ludwig Erhard and minister of transportation Hans-Christoph Seebohm viewed cars as an essential part of stable modern democracies and market economies. The automobile lobby, along with influential economists such as Wilhelm Röpcke, promoted an ideology of “auto-individualism,” which was seen as a safeguard against the totalitarian evils of collective transportation.180 The Kilometerpauschale, a tax deductible mileage allowance generously set at DM 0.50 per kilometer, which took effect in 1955, was ostensibly aimed at making car ownership more affordable to average wage earners. A 20% reduction of the vehicle tax that same year contributed to this goal. The 1960 highway construction act (Strassenbaufinanzierungsgesetz) earmarked a substantial portion of gasoline tax revenues for highway construction. Between 1949 and 1966, the federal Autobahn system grew by 1379 kilometers, or 65%.181 Despite these developments, especially during the early 1950s, fiscal policy hampered growth in automobile ownership. In the eyes of finance minister Fritz Schäffer and many others in the administration, the automobile long remained a luxury good that could be heavily taxed (via gasoline and vehicle taxes, etc.), while mass transit was the “proper” form of transportation for the majority of German commuters.182 Postwar road construction was balanced by a continuing commitment to rail and mass transit. On the federal level, the state-owned railroad system continued to play a major role. The 1950 federal railroad act (Bundesbahngesetz) provided that the rail system was to adhere to the principles of Gemeinwirtschaft, meaning it should balance social and economic aspects. Regardless

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of revenue considerations, the Bundesbahn would continue to offer “social fares,” for example to students, commuting workers, or members of large families (the so-called Würmeling-Pass). Political considerations influenced Bundesbahn decision making with regard to management and pricing, which were regarded as symbolically important for a broad segment of the German population.183 The parliamentary debates leading up to the act showed that even conservative politicians did not regard the privatization of railways as a viable option for West Germany. Free market competition following the American model, they felt, would conflict with social responsibility and regional planning principles that demanded rail coverage for all areas.184 Although transportation policy was eased somewhat by the early 1960s, so that highly unprofitable rail lines could be abandoned, federal investment in railroad modernization still allowed for the electrification of 22% of the entire rail system by 1966.185 In contrast to the dramatic decline in the United States, West German railroad ridership in terms of passenger kilometers grew from 30,264 million in 1950 to 38,129 million in 1970.186 The Bundesbahn, of course, accounted only for a small part of metropolitan mass transportation. Urban public transportation systems had to recover from wartime damages, but fared relatively well throughout the 1950s and ’60s. In the meantime, automobile use grew steadily. In the city of Hamburg, for example, 73% of commuters used public transportation, 19.1% a motorcycle, and only 7.8% a car in 1956. By 1961, public transportation’s share had declined to 62%, while that of automobiles had risen to 19%.187 Nationally, the ratio of public to private transportation modes was roughly 70% to 30% in 1963; and it was not until the early 1970s that it tipped in favor of the automobile.188 In terms of passenger kilometers, the use of subways, streetcars, and buses remained largely steady.189 As in the United States, the number of streetcars declined, as twenty-two cities shifted to buses between 1950 and 1956 alone.190 Not only were buses less capital intensive, they also fit the belief among traffic planners that road and rail systems should be separated to reduce traffic congestion. Similarly, many German cities began to plan for subway systems in the late 1950s. Yet by 1964, streetcars still managed the bulk of public transportation passengers (roughly 70%) in most cities of more than 300,000 inhabitants, and several cities extended their streetcar systems into newly constructed neighborhoods.191 The streetcar, which enjoyed its heyday in the postwar decades, remained the dominant form of public transportation in West Germany into the 1970s.192 Nonetheless, even before cars were more widely used, German transportation providers and experts began to worry, particularly when they looked across the Atlantic. Pointing to the decline of American core cities,

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f i g u r e 1 0 . Streetcar in Karlsruhe, 1961. Photo by Rolf Unterberg. Bundesarchiv.

transportation expert Karl Leibbrandt warned in 1953 that the lesson from American experience was to cut back on individual transport.193 As to what should receive preferential treatment, Leibbrandt averred that “from technical and social considerations it can only be public transportation, which is available to everybody. The question, whether this should be bus or streetcar, is secondary.”194 By the mid-1960s, from the perspective of many German planners, American transportation policy appeared a failure: “In the United States, which is twenty-five years ahead of us in terms of motorization,” wrote Friedrich Lehner, it was long believed that more roads and expressways were the answer. “Everything was done for the automobile, and space-saving public transportation was neglected in a way that is incomprehensible.”195 West German urban planners incorporated public transportation more strongly into metropolitan planning. The extensiveness of US metropolitan areas and the low density of new suburbs without centers were considered a problem for public transport: “It is nearly impossible to think of connecting such areas to core cities by rail transportation. Even with buses it is difficult to establish attractive and economically sustainable transit routes.”196 In West Germany, by contrast, the typical new neighborhood development was so designed that shops could be reached largely on foot; and it was densely enough populated that public transportation could be employed efficiently for trips

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to the city center.197 Indeed, most neighborhoods built during the 1950s were provided with connections to the public transportation system.198 State-level development plans called for denser settlement and the “vigorous expansion of public transportation” so as to sustain public transport and avoid the depopulation of core urban areas.199 The notion that a certain density in housing was necessary to allow for public transportation and an urban quality of life had become widespread by the early 1970s.200 Partly in reaction to American developments, efforts abounded in 1960s West Germany to ensure that urban mass transit would remain an important alternative to the automobile.201 Public transit companies had been financially burdened by the cost of reconstruction after the war and, like their American counterparts, were often bound by franchise obligations that stemmed from the prewar era.202 Municipalities not only bore deficits in operating budgets but invested in modernization of the systems.203 In 1964, West German transportation minister Seebohm called on municipalities to expand public transportation even if that meant incurring deficits, because any notion that mass transit should pay for itself was no longer realistic.204 Not only transport associations stressed the public function of mass transit, but politicians and commentators across the political spectrum argued for the necessity of public intervention to keep mass transit viable.205 While the West German government had already exempted communal buses from the gasoline tax in 1960, there was little direct federal funding for urban mass transit until 1967, when part of the tax was earmarked for urban transport with 40% of that revenue destined for mass transit.206 A turning point in federal policy toward local mass transit occurred in 1965, when a commission report on the traffic problems of local authorities called for the expansion of public transportation, particularly of subways and rapid transit systems in larger cities.207 Many municipalities attempted to improve mass transit services by pushing for the separation of road and rail, establishing separate bus lanes, offering reduced fares to students or senior citizens, and coordinating prices and networks of various public transport services within the metropolitan area, a development known as the Verkehrsverbund. The consumers’ view of mass transit, according to many observers in West Germany during the 1960s, was not especially favorable. Riders often complained about slow, unpunctual, unreliable, and inconvenient service.208 Gerhard Kienbaum, minister of transportation for North Rhine–Westphalia, pointed out in 1964 that it was difficult for public transportation to attract consumers in an affluent society in which social status (Sozialprestige) was connected to the automobile. People would travel by car even if it was “irrational.” Kienbaum saw a need to advertise public transportation: “The speed

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of public transport needs to be sold to the customer as an advantage. In the long run, public relations must promote a new consumer ideology with regard to transportation which will take the automobile out of the realm of status consumption.”He suggested the slogan “the smart man—or, even better, the smart woman—is taking the streetcar again.”209 The gender emphasis of the slogan indicated that policy makers hoped mass transit would be used not just for commuting to work but for recreational activities and shopping trips, which were still predominantly done by women. In contrast to what happened in the United States, growing automobile use and critical attitudes toward mass transit caused no major decline in ridership. In 1965, between 55% and 65% of the inhabitants of large urban areas used public transportation on a daily basis.210 Throughout the 1960s, more Germans went to work by train, streetcar, or bus than by car.211 Whereas mass transit in the United States lost its importance for consumption-oriented travel, a majority of department store shoppers in West Germany continued to use public transportation throughout the postwar period.212 Similarly, greater weight was given to public transit connections in choosing a place of residence. As we have seen, Americans downplayed public transport in assessing community satisfaction in the early 1970s, whereas nearly 80% of Germans considered close proximity to public transport a necessity. Widespread commitment to public transportation within German society became evident in the late 1960s, when mass transit emerged as one hotly contested issue in the student protest movement. Violent demonstrations erupted in the city of Hannover in 1969 because the local transit company, Uestra, had announced a raise in fares. Demonstrators organized a boycott of streetcars and instituted a car-pooling system. Participating drivers put a red dot on their vehicle to indicate their willingness to take in extra passengers. Though the protests in Hannover, Heidelberg, and other cities were usually organized by radical student organizations who called for—among other demands—a “zero fare” (Nulltarif ) and total public funding of mass transit, public opinion was frequently sympathetic to their cause. Not surprisingly, the call for a “zero-fare” went largely unheard. Commentators and policy makers attacked the notion that there was a class divide between car and streetcar users and that public transportation should be considered a free public service to the poor, pointing out that many well-off consumers used the streetcar as well. Abolishing fares, many feared, would kill respect for public transportation.213 The protests had some tangible results, however. Across the political divide, policy makers voiced their commitment to public transportation. The city of Hannover purchased the Uestra and soon improved service by networking metropolitan transit and introducing a single fare for all distances.214

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Perhaps more importantly, the student-led protests sensitized a new generation of middle-class Germans to the value of public transportation, putting it firmly on the map in discussions about the quality of urban life in an age of mass consumption. By 1972, Frankfurt mayor Rudi Arndt predicted that public transportation would have the “right of way” in the future. He saw it as crucial to a reorientation of urban planning, which must focus on human needs in an environment that would mix workplace and residence, stores, cafés, restaurants, and schools.215 While public transport had largely fallen out of the purview of American consumers, it remained vital to a metropolitan infrastructure of public goods that continued to inform West German consumer life.

Public and Private Goods: Middle-Class Consumers and Metropolitan Spending The woes of public transportation were indicative of urban public goods in general in postwar affluent societies. When Julian Orr, a city manager from Portland, Maine, toured several West German cities in the summer of 1960 as part of a group of American municipal administrators, he found more similarities to the United States than he had anticipated. He did, however, notice important differences, including the creation of large parks and open areas during postwar reconstruction, the successful installation of downtown pedestrian malls, and, perhaps most important, sizable budgets for cultural institutions: Every [German] city of any consequence has its own theatre, opera, orchestras, and other activities. Ulm, with a population of 93,000, offers a good example. A glance at the Ulm budget for cultural activity reveals some items which would not be found in a comparable American city: city theatre $664,325, [. . .] art museum $52,175, [. . .] preservation of old traditions $79,275, [. . .] popular library $60,275, technical library $54,750.216

Cultural spending is just one example of differences in the infrastructure of public goods offered by German and American cities. While one should beware of generalizing from such observations as those cited above, the availability of various public goods certainly influenced consumer choices with respect to spending on recreation, transportation, and ultimately housing and residence. These choices went to the heart of what Kenneth Galbraith had identified as a core dilemma of the postwar “affluent society,” the discrepancy between private wealth and public poverty. Though debates about this problem permeated the transatlantic world, it took on rather different dimensions

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from the perspective of both consumers and policy makers in West Germany and the United States. To Galbraith, “affluent societies” had failed to equitably distribute “the supply of privately produced goods and services and those of the state.” This inequity affected a variety of urban goods, from public transit to parks.217 The growth in private consumption, it seemed to observers on both sides of the Atlantic, was not met by an adequate growth in public consumption, and at times it even hampered the development of public goods. Galbraith’s concerns resonated especially with urban planners, who were increasingly attuned to changes in residential and traffic patterns.218 American observers commented on important divergences between their own country and Western Europe. While work, leisure, and shopping became increasingly privatized in the United States, “public space [was] of course not only more abundant in Europe but also more utilized.”219 Urban public goods presented the most concrete example of differences in the balance between private and public consumption, discussed in chapter 2 above. In the United States, the “metropolitan problem” became a prominent feature of public debate during the 1950s.220 A patchwork of suburban local governments and a growing divide between cities and their suburbs stymied effective public services and efficient land use. Having left the city behind, suburbanites frequently voted against more comprehensive forms of metropolitan government or taxes to support public infrastructure for the metropolitan area as a whole. Studying the suburban newspaper as expressing the perspective of suburban taxpayers, one sociologist found it “parochial in its interests, reporting almost exclusively upon local happenings, translating metropolitan events into their effects on the local area.”221 The urban-suburban split became increasingly severe in the United States as the postwar decades progressed. In part, this split was defined by race and ethnicity. Between 1960 and 1970, the white residential population in inner cities declined on average by 18%, while the nonwhite population grew by 45%.222 Urban scholar John Meyer speculated on the effect of race on US housing and urban development: If there were no large minority groups in the city, it seems highly likely that the future residential pattern would be one of very high-value (and probably highrise) residences close to the city center, and a gradual tapering off in values with distance from the city center, stabilizing eventually at the point where the general mass of lower-income housing begins. This neat pattern may be made impossible, however, by the entrapment of new immigrant and minority groups in areas of high residential density [. . .] near the core.

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Minority group residences, in Meyer’s view, “forced” lower-paid white-collar workers “farther out than they might otherwise choose to live.”223 The “entrapment” of minorities in the declining urban centers increasingly corresponded to disparities in standard of living. A 1969 study of eighteen metropolitan areas found an average poverty rate in central cities of 17.5% as opposed to only 9.8% in suburban areas.224 This split drastically affected the level of public spending and taxation. Thanks to welfare spending and a variety of other urban services, inner cities in 1968 had annual per capita expenditures of $408, as opposed to $332 in the suburbs. With regard to educational expenses, however, suburban areas topped the inner city by an average of $41 per capita annually. Local taxes, by contrast, accounted for 6.3% of the median annual income in inner city and only for 4.2% of median incomes in suburbs.225 By the early 1970s, critics observed that “suburban residents are subsidized at the expense of city residents.” Not only did they receive federal mortgage subsidies, but by zoning out the poor they did not need to provide services for them.226 In the metropolitan area, it was city residents who bore the brunt of an imbalanced distribution of public services and taxation.227 Suburbanites, however, lacked a considerable array of public goods as well. Not only was public transportation rarely provided but other services were unavailable, due to inadequate planning as subdivisions sprang up in the postwar decades. As one contributor to the New York Times remarked in 1972 of his experiences living outside the city, residing in suburbia was a delight for “anyone who is nostalgic for cesspools, sidewalk-less streets, volunteer fire-departments, inadequate public transportation and archaic local government.”228 City dwellers expressed frustration with suburban residents taking advantage of public goods they did not pay for. Reviewing proposals for taxing nonresidents who work in New York City, New York Times commentator Fred Prowledge suggested an urban “passport”: “Residents with passports could enter, free of charge or for a small admission price, city parks, libraries, museums, and concerts—all forms of recreation, entertainment, and cultural enlightenment partly or wholly financed by the city,” as some suburbs were doing with limited-access beaches. “A passport would allow the resident to ride the subway and other forms of public transportation free.”229 While Prowledge’s suggestion was certainly tongue-in-cheek, it did highlight the growing problem of publicly maintaining urban services when middleclass consumers were leaving for the suburbs; taxation for public services they rarely or no longer needed must have played a role in their decision to leave. Indeed, subsequent empirical studies found considerable correlations

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between tax rates, public spending of certain types (especially education), and property values.230 Middle-class consumers who could afford to move to the suburbs were given strong incentives to do so by lower tax rates in communities that did not (have to) support a wide array of public services. For most middle-class American consumers the desire for home ownership and for more space and privacy outweighed their interest in public goods. As home ownership and related costs added financial strains on the budgets of middle-class households, their inclination to spend on public services waned. Facilities such as public pools, which had enjoyed widespread popularity in the 1920s to 1940s, for example, became less frequented and had often disappeared by the late 1950s as more and more suburban residences and private developments began to include their own, private pools.231 “In American society,” wrote suburban sociologist Herbert Gans in 1963, “private expenditures have traditionally had higher priority than public ones. As the former rise, people try to reduce their financial problems by demanding reductions in public expenditures. This hampers the provision of needed community services, especially in a new community.”232 Gans doubted that the planning of more urban and densely populated neighborhoods could help. “It is not at all certain that this will solve the problem. Most suburbanites I interviewed have little interest in using downtown facilities. [. . .] Urban sprawl and the decline of the downtown can be halted only if more people want to make greater use of the city.”233 American policy makers and urban renewal advocates who wanted to “attract more middle-class families back to the central cities and slow down the exodus of the middle-class family from the in-lying areas,” 234 were presented with a conundrum during the postwar decades. On the one hand, declining public services in urban areas, as well as rising tax rates, were pushing consumers into the suburbs. On the other hand, merely improving public services (as in the case of transportation) seldom swayed consumers, who generally were more inclined to budget for private rather than public consumption (especially as they were still able to receive some public goods as “free-riders” in the central city). At times, established downtown interests and inner-city merchants favored annexation of new suburban communities to minimize impact of white, middle-class out-migration on the metropolitan community. But middle-class “consumer-taxpayers” had little interest in the provisioning of public goods in the United States. Furthermore, if their middle-class status was precarious, many suburban home owners who once might have supported the New Deal (which had, after all, in many cases enabled their move to the suburbs in the first place) grew weary of a federal government that

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appeared to threaten their social position through taxation and racial integration.235 The grassroots conservatism that would come to the fore during the 1970s and ’80s was to a significant degree rooted in the postwar suburbs.236 By the mid 1960s, American planners were looking to Europe for solutions to their metropolitan problems. Reporting in the New York Times on a tour of Britain, Scandinavia, and Germany in 1965 by twenty builders, planners, and investors, Ada Louise Huxtable discussed the “European answer to American suburban sprawl.” In European communities the group found organized land use, integrated low- and middle-income housing, and coordinated transportation. By contrast, Huxtable indicted the American free-enterprise record as chaotic, wasteful, and uneven in socio-economic terms. A different attitude to public regulation prevailed in Europe, she maintained: “It becomes quite clear that the new and sometimes startlingly successful European housing and planning have grown out of a political, sociological, and cultural base that has no parallel in the United States.”237 Faced with an adverse political culture on the local level and antiurban consumer attitudes, federal policies addressing the metropolitan problem had limited success in the United States.238 Yet “quality of life” (which usually implied public goods and urban development) became ever more central to the American debate at the end of the 1960s.239 In 1968, President Johnson emphasized the need to “improve planning for the orderly development of public facilities in urban areas” and to offer the American family “an alternative to crowded cities and sprawling suburbs, through a program to build new communities. [. . .] In America—where the question is not so much the standard of living, but the quality of life—these communities are worth the help the government can give.”240 His call was reminiscent of discussions on urban revitalization during and immediately after the war. Twenty years later, though, public programs could do little—for the time being, at least—to reverse the trends toward suburbanization and inner-city residential decline. Johnson’s words, however, reverberated across the Atlantic.241 While several of the problems described for the American case surfaced in West Germany as well, the situation there presented itself quite differently. Particularly for middle-class Germans, public goods contributed to consumers’ decisions to remain within the urban setting and, in turn, to their greater willingness to support public spending for urban public goods. The number of publicly sponsored “city theaters,” for example, rose from 114 in 1954 to 194 in 1970; museums increased from 306 to 501 in the same time span. The number of public indoor pools rose from 198 in 1955 to 2,713 in 1976, and that of public playgrounds from 6,628 to 42,806.242 As already seen with respect to mass

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transportation, urban public goods in general were not facing decline to the extent witnessed in the United States during the 1950s and ’60s. German consumer-taxpayers were presented with different incentives with regard to taxation and the distribution of public goods. First of all, many public services, notably education and police protection, were supplied not locally but by the governments of the various federal states. Such services therefore exhibited a much lower degree of local variation, making the difference in public goods between urban and suburban communities much less visible. Communal tax rates also presented German consumer-taxpayers with a different set of calculations. The level of property taxes did vary somewhat between municipalities. While basic tax rates were set federally at a uniform level, municipalities applied specific collection rates (Hebesatz) that tended to be higher for large cities than for smaller, suburban communities. Whereas property taxes in the United States accounted for an average of 60% to 70% of local tax revenues between 1950 and 1970, residential property taxes in West Germany accounted for a comparatively much smaller percentage of municipal income, which was mainly derived from business taxes.243 Moreover, communal reorganization (kommunale Neugliederung) throughout the 1960s and ’70s ameliorated social disparities caused by suburbanization more effectively than in the United States.244 By and large, postwar German consumers living in cities—even in the newly constructed neighborhoods on the urban fringes—continued to feel as part of a larger urban community and showed a higher interest in public services. Many residents of newly developed neighborhoods continued to hold the city as a whole in higher esteem than their own neighborhood. While they might have moved to the fringes, they continued to see themselves as part of the city and frequently demanded public goods ranging from increased public housing to the building of roads, mass transit, schools, and public recreation facilities.245 As noted above, German consumers put a premium on the availability of urban services close to their place of residence, such services including train stations and public pools. Although only a minority of German consumers (14.5%) felt it necessary to have a theater within walking distance of their home,246 this minority represented those well-educated middle-class consumers (Bildungsbürgertum) who remained more committed than their American counterparts to urban living and to sustaining the public goods that it entailed. The greater willingness of German middle-class consumers to support public services through higher tax rates may well have resulted from the fact that they themselves were beneficiaries of these services. On the federal level, the Social Democratic–led government in power

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since 1969 capitalized on such sentiments and attempted to reinforce them. In 1972, Hans-Jochen Vogel, then Social Democratic mayor of Munich, would find widespread support for publicly decrying the impact of rising private consumption on the quality of life: The crisis is most severe where output, gross national product and consumption per capita is highest: in the United States. [. . .] I am unequivocally calling for limiting the growth in consumption and for a better financial endowment of our community, which means a higher tax rate. [. . .] We must decide on our priorities: [do we want] the continued rapid growth of private consumption or the expansion of our educational system, of public transportation, of hospitals, retirement homes and kindergartens?247

One year later, in 1973, Vogel—now federal minister of urban development— emphasized that “quality of living has to replace a purely material standard of living.”248 As cities in affluent societies were dealing with economic decline, sprawling suburbs, and overflowing traffic, the federal minister proposed contended that public services needed preferential treatment. The suburban home and the private automobile were more than symbols of postwar mass consumption. From the 1960s on, they were also at the center of a debate about private affluence and public poverty. In an age of mass affluence, the “private vices” of car and home ownership led not only to “public benefits” such as continued economic growth (an assumption that guided American postwar economic planning, as discussed in chapters 1 and 2) but also to a host of urban problems.249 By the early 1970s, urban planners and public policy makers both in Germany and the United States thus faced a largely unanticipated conundrum: how to guide consumer decision making in a free, democratic society. Despite moves toward liberalization by the 1960s, West German government policy with regard to the housing and transportation markets was characterized by a high level of intervention. Social Democrats as well as many conservatives remained dedicated to the provision of public goods and to the principle of Gemeinwirtschaft, which partially excluded transportation and housing markets from the realm of purely economic considerations. In the United States, by contrast, a more market-oriented approach prevailed, and direct public intervention was limited. Through the “hidden welfare state” of mortgage guarantees and infrastructure policy, however, public policy promoted a particular model of suburban middle-class consumption. Also, American consumers were more open to change and mobility than were their German counterparts, which was reflected in their consumption patterns.

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While many German consumers continued to prize urban life, middle-class Americans were less enthusiastic and favored the more private consumption involved in owning a home and driving a car. Finally, more pronounced than in any other area of postwar consumption, racial divisions in American society were a major factor driving segregated suburbanization and undercutting (white) middle-class support for many public goods.250 In the United States, the limited funding for public housing and public transportation relegated these services mainly to low-income consumers. In general, American middle-class consumers became increasingly less committed to supporting public goods in an era of widespread affluence, and Americans in general were growing weary of city life. Home ownership and the use of automobiles, as markers of a respectable middle-class lifestyle, reinforced the move of consumers out of the urban core. In many ways, the Great Society programs of the 1960s were designed to address exactly these shortcomings of the American consumer society. The creation of federal departments for housing and urban development and for transportation, with their respective demonstration programs and an increase in federal funding, reflected the recognition that urban (frequently minority) consumers had become increasingly disadvantaged. These departments also aimed, if indirectly, to get middle-class consumers back into the cities. By the late 1960s, however, most American consumers had shifted their priorities away from public goods and were unimpressed by the call from urban planners to “revitalize” inner cities. West German planners too, by the early 1970s, were emphasizing the need to revitalize urban centers. Federal incentives to this end were created by the urban development act (Städtebauförderungsgesetz) of 1971. German cities, however, found themselves in a slightly better position than American cities. Although suburban home ownership and automobile use were on the rise in West Germany, publicly subsidized housing construction as well as differences in consumer attitudes toward home ownership caused a much larger share of German consumers to remain renters. Residents of newly constructed neighborhoods at the urban fringes continued to feel part of the central city as consumers and taxpayers. Urban public goods were thus more sustainable in Germany, where services such as public mass transportation continued to be used by middle-class consumers. It was not that difficult in the 1970s to convince West German consumers that “quality of life” in an affluent society entailed urban public services—and the tax rates that supported them. Some historians have argued that postwar mass consumption spelled an end to “urbanity,” a culture of cosmopolitan, urban public life that had emerged during the nineteenth century.251 While the contemporary debate

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about the crisis of the city discussed at the beginning of this chapter made similar arguments on both sides of the Atlantic, a closer look at postwar housing and transportation suggests that the “death of the city” was not a necessary consequence of postwar mass consumption as long as consumers and public policy remained committed to providing a modicum of public goods. Focusing on the geography of shopping, the following chapter will look at another area in which mass consumption could either dissolve the traditional city or reinvigorate urban life in a new form. For many cities in the 1970s, inner-city restoration (and urban gentrification) would provide a key answer in pursuit of middle-class consumers. While many German cities stood a fighting chance, it would be an uphill battle in the United States, where most cities had lost the middle class not only as residents but also as shoppers.

6

Shaping the Postwar Consumer City: Urban and Suburban Patterns of Postwar Retailing

On January 27, 1966, at 6:30 p.m., the city center of Dortmund went dark. No window displays or neon signs helped to illuminate the shopping streets, which had been busy all day. The blackout was an act of protest by downtown retailers and department stores against a planned suburban shopping center outside the city limits. While such centers were already commonplace in the United States, traditional urban retailing in Germany declared war on what it saw as a threat to its very existence.1 For a short time in 1968, Düsseldorf retailers even offered free streetcar rides with complimentary beer to draw shoppers downtown.2 In time, the efforts of retailers and others would prove relatively successful, for by the early 1970s another significant difference between the German and American consumer societies had emerged: the geography of metropolitan retailing. In retailing—as in housing and transportation—West Germany retained a pattern of “urban consumption.” Most postwar Germans, like many other Europeans, did not regard their city centers as dangerous or crime-ridden, but often spent leisure time there. Whereas many American consumers today seek the shelter of their private home or the suburban shopping mall, Germans are more likely to frequent downtown cafés and pubs or to stroll along urban shopping streets even after shops have closed for the day.3 This difference has a history. In the postwar decades, both Germany and the United States witnessed major modernization in retailing. Self-service became common; brand-name products lined the shelves of spacious stores; and many sectors of retailing saw the emergence of national or even international chains. Still, the landscape of retailing retained stark differences in the two countries. While supermarkets, large discounters, and suburban shopping

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centers came to dominate the American scene, downtown shops and small neighborhood retailers still played a significant role in 1970s Germany. Imported forms of retailing did not lead to Americanized spaces of consumption in West Germany but, rather, became embedded in national and local contexts.4 In its focus on retailing, this chapter traces the urban-suburban contrast that we have already observed with regard to housing and transportation. Why did suburban shopping centers and automobile accessible retailers succeed in the United States? What accounts for the continuity of a more urban-centered pattern of retailing in West Germany, despite alleged trends toward Americanization? What were the consequences of these geographic differences for the two consumer societies in terms of shopping habits and experiences as well as the role of consumption within the public sphere? The “dual system of urban retailing” sketched out in the introduction to part three characterized both societies prior to World War II. Small neighborhood stores that supplied everyday goods were complemented by specialized downtown retailers and department stores. While in 1945 the United States still adhered to this model, shopping had become largely suburbanized by 1970. Most non-food shopping was now done in the regional shopping center, or mall, and supermarkets were often close by. The success of shopping centers can be explained not only by the automobile and the shift to suburban housing, but also by a combination of commercial strategies, public policies, and consumer attitudes. Among these were market and tax incentives, zoning regulations, and an ever more negative view of urban public space among American consumers concerned about race, family, and individual convenience. As I will show, a major problem in American retailing in the postwar decades was the failure to integrate retailing facilities into the framework of new, fast-growing neighborhoods. West German cities, by contrast, attempted to adapt the retailing demands of the consumer society to the structure of existing as well as emerging urban neighborhoods and traditional city centers. More than just a continued commitment to urban living and public transportation, this development was brought on by a series of conscious choices made by urban planners and retailers. On the one hand, it arose from conservative efforts to preserve existing urban and retail structures. On the other hand, it was a response by progressives to a perceived threat of an American model of mass consumption to urban public space. Thus, the geography of retailing provides an illustrative case for the broader pattern of West German politics of mass consumption: it was marked by a greater emphasis on public regulation of the consumer marketplace as a consequence of efforts from both the right and the left: to preserve traditional structures and to further public goods. As suggested

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in chapter 3, where the bürgerlich quality shoppers in West Germany were contrasted to the bargain shoppers in the United States, consumers in each country made significantly different choices, which also helped to shape the landscape of retailing. The Emergence of Suburban Retailing in Postwar America Suburban retailing largely supplanted the traditional dual system of urban retailing in the United States after the war. Retailing had gained a foothold outside of American towns and urban centers as early as the 1920s, when roadside shopping strips emerged as part of the growing automobile culture. The Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri, is often cited as one of the first retail developments to pave the way for the suburban shopping center. What set this upscale Spanish-themed open-air shopping plaza apart was its comprehensive design promoted by a single developer.5 Another major actor during the 1920s in the move to suburban shopping was Sears, Roebuck & Co., which sought to expand from its core mail-order business by means of outlying stores with ample parking space.6 The city of Los Angeles, urban historian Richard Longstreth has suggested, often acted as an incubator of new developments and trends in retailing during the decades between 1920 and 1950. Urban decentralization and a high level of automobile ownership there had given rise to a host of modestsized, locally oriented shopping centers. The 1930s development of the “Miracle Mile” on Wilshire Boulevard was soon seen nationally as a paradigm for any outlying shopping district challenging the hegemony of downtown. Los Angeles, however, would not be the major test ground for malls after all. Large-scale regional shopping centers met with relatively strong resistance in southern California, where many communities continued to prefer a traditional street-front orientation and were disdainful of conspicuous parking lots. The “Miracle Mile” was in many respects unique; it was a new downtown with ample parking space located at the rear of the stores.7 The decentralized layout of Los Angeles, moreover, was unusual and not yet reflective of American cities in general at the end of the 1940s. Across the country, an urban retail structure was still the norm. It was only during the 1950s that the concept of the automobile-accessible shopping center really took hold. According to the 1964 “directory of shopping centers,” seventy-five such developments existed in 1949. By 1955, that number had risen to about 1,000, with another 2,000 under construction. Shopping center construction reached a first peak in 1961, and by 1963 / 64 the directory counted nearly 8,000. By 1969, some 12,000 shopping centers existed in the

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United States and were responsible for 41% of the total retail sales volume.8 In looking at these numbers, we must distinguish between different types of shopping centers. While medium-sized “neighborhood centers” catered to a variety of everyday needs, presenting a challenge to traditional neighborhood retailers, it was the large “regional shopping centers” that posed the greatest threat to downtowns. By 1958, about fifty such centers had been built in the United States. How can we account for this dramatic shift in US retailing patterns? The rise of suburban retailing after World War II involves not only residential patterns and transportation but also commercial strategies, public policy, and consumer choices. t r e n d s i n t h e r e ta i l i n g i n d u s t ry Since the 1920s, the entire system of retailing in the United States had begun to shift to mass distribution. Chain stores such as the A&P pushed retailing toward economies of scale with high volume and low prices.9 Especially since the Depression era, as historian Gary Cross has observed, “price, not service, quality, or status, became the key in American consumerism,” challenging the role of more traditional retailers.10 The competition from variety chain stores led some downtown department stores to “trade up”; by catering to higher- income customers they could increase the mark-up and keep up with rising costs of rents and wages.11 Department stores themselves began to merge into chains, such as Allied Stores and Federated Department Stores. Unlike German department store chains, which remained concentrated in urban centers, American stores like Macy’s and Marshall Field’s opened more and more suburban branches. While the shopping center was crucial in the postwar shift toward ever more volume-oriented mass distribution, established urban department stores played a major role in shopping center development.12 As they began to open suburban branches, many department stores realized that these new branches would only be successful if accompanied by other stores. As anchor tenants in shopping centers, they had considerable leverage vis-à-vis the developers, usually helping to select those stores that best complemented their own inventory. As sales of branch department stores soared, their power was increased by waves of mergers during the 1950s and ’60s. Only the new specialty chains (such as The Gap) and discount chains (such as Kmart, Dayton’s, Target, and Wal-Mart), which began to appear in the late 1960s, would eventually share or supplant the dominant role of branch department stores in suburban retailing.13 The suburban shopping center promoted a concentration in retailing that

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challenged central business districts and traditional neighborhood retailers alike. In 1956, 85% of all new shoe stores, 70% of new variety stores, 60% of new clothing stores, and 47% of all new supermarkets opened within a shopping center. Since the centers favored large retailers, chain stores were preferred tenants because they were more likely to stay in business and to draw customers.14 A 1959 Senate hearing on alleged discriminatory practices against small independent retailers seeking rental space in shopping centers shed light on this issue. Of all new chain store outlets that year, 58% were being built in shopping centers (including the retail giants A&P, Sears, Safeway, Kroger, and J. C. Penney). Center operators admitted to giving tenants with a net worth of at least $1 million preferential treatment over independent retailers, frequently charging them less in rent. They did so in part because recognized national chains had significant leverage as tenants and also because the corporations financing the centers required that at least 80% of the sales area be rented out to “triple-A” tenants.15 A subsequent report by the committee recognized that shopping centers certainly contributed to the growing concentration of retail sales but considered this a normal part of the free-enterprise system and a problem to be resolved “by the private business interests involved without government intervention.”16 The shift to suburban retailing was thus part of the larger postwar trend toward deregulation and concentration of the consumer marketplace, discussed in chapter 1. As census records show, the number of small stores plummeted: between 1939 and 1967, the number of grocery stores nationwide declined by 44%, fruit and vegetable stores by 68%, and hardware stores and drugstores by 7%.17 A 1960 report on the status of small business found that although the retail trade still represented “one of the last strongholds of small business,” the number of single-unit department stores had shrunk by 22.4% between 1948 and 1958, shoe stores by 8%, grocery stores by 11.7%, and women’s clothing stores by 6.4%.18 The trend toward concentration was particularly visible in food retailing. Supermarket chains succeeded with ever larger stores, low prices (especially on advertised loss-leader items), and an expanding inventory. Between 1955 and 1958, mergers abounded, a few medium-sized chains purchasing smaller local chains to stay competitive.19 This “unprecedented deluge of mergers” alarmed independent grocers as well as the Federal Trade Commission.20 Some independent retailers survived by joining voluntary chains such as the Independent Grocer’s Association (IGA), which provided centralized purchasing, merchandising, and store brands in up-to-date supermarkets (“foodliners”). Founded in 1926, IGA had grown to 5,300 members by 1953.21 These voluntary chains, however, tended to be “aggregations of the more efficient

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and the larger ones among the independent retailers” and did not take in the “great majority of truly small retailers.”22 In contrast to their more successful German counterparts, to be discussed below, they did not represent a corrective to the emerging one-stop shopping pattern of other, mostly suburban, supermarkets. The growing efficiency of larger retailers and the rising cost of distribution put smaller stores in a difficult position both toward manufacturers of brand-name goods and toward consumers, who frequently demanded the extension of consumer credit. Transcripts of a 1958 Senate hearing on discount house operations note with “grave concern” the growing rate of small business “mortalities” and the “elephantiasis of retail units,” particularly in suburban areas and shopping centers.23 It was outlying neighborhoods (often along newly constructed highways) where lower land prices made this expansion of retail and parking space economically feasible. The decline in smaller retailers affected large sections of the traditional middle class and almost obliterated certain occupational groups. Despite an overall population increase of 54% between 1940 and 1970, the number of managers or proprietors of food and dairy stores declined by 46%, of hardware stores by 15%, of apparel stores by 17%, and bakeries by 42%.24 In view of the decline of small businesses in Baltimore and the economic deterioration of older shopping areas there, Herman Katkow (president of Affiliated Merchants Inc.) warned in 1964: “we have lost sight of our own people, the small businessman, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. [. . .] The middle class, which has been the backbone of American life is disappearing.”25 Employment in retailing was similarly changing. Supermarkets tended to hire on a part-time basis with limited pay or fringe benefits.26 As early as 1952, a Business Week report on the annual meeting of the National Dry Goods Retailers Association noted that “one of the major concerns in retailing in postwar years has been the deterioration of salesmanship in stores” brought on by self-service, a lack of training, and a “lack of devotion” on part of the employees.27 While overall consumer spending was mounting in postwar America, traditional retailing and its occupations were in decline. Some efforts were made to aid small businesses through public policy. The Small Business Administration (SBA), established in 1953, furnished or guaranteed loans to small retailers. Its Limited Loan Participation Program, for example, was “designed to meet the credit needs of small retail, wholesale and service firms.”28 The SBA’s first “Progress Report” in 1956 called for closer federal scrutiny of retail mergers. Indeed, the Federal Trade Commission repeatedly issued reports throughout the 1950s and ’60s, criticizing merger tendencies in retailing, attempting to limit acquisitions by department store chains, and rebuking supermarket chains for price-fixing.29 Such efforts, how-

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ever, achieved little success in halting the trend toward retail concentration in the United States. The erosion of resale price maintenance during the 1950s, discussed in chapter 1, attested to the growing power of large retailing interests. Introduced as “fair trade laws” in over forty states during the early 1940s, resale price maintenance was designed to give small businesses a chance to compete on equal terms with larger competitors by allowing manufacturers to set fixed retail prices, thus preventing price undercutting by large retailers. Though Congress had reiterated the legality of this practice in the 1952 McGuire-Keogh Fair Trade Enabling Act, state courts overturned fair trade legislation as an impediment to the free market. More importantly, discounters and chains pressured manufacturers into abandoning price-setting policies. By the late 1950s, fair trade laws were rarely enforced and abandoned by most states.30 As the sales volume of large suburban retail chains continued to grow, their sway over the producers of consumer goods increased. The shift to suburban shopping centers and supermarkets did encounter resistance from some quarters. Opposition came mainly from merchants and interests associated with the traditional urban retail centers. Downtown merchants started fighting back in the 1950s by extending their opening hours, modernizing their stores, or expanding their advertising budgets.31 Some new shopping centers had difficulty advertising in local newspapers, which traditionally depended for their ad business on downtown retailers; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was a case in point.32 Merchants in New Brunswick, New Jersey, protested a proposed suburban development in 1955 by appealing to citizens’ civic pride and financial interests. The new shopping plaza, they claimed, would “make second and third class shopping areas out of the city’s present business districts,” and financial liability for the project would likely fall on the taxpayer.33 The Urban Land Institute and the International Downtown Executives’ Association, formed in 1954, represented a growing number of organizations devoted to protecting the interests of central business districts.34 Such efforts, however, failed to stem the tide during much of the 1950s and ’60s. c o n s u m e r at t i t u d e s a n d p r e f e r e n c e s Not only did the prevailing mindset of price-conscious bargain shoppers favor mass distribution outlets, as discussed in Chapter 3; suburban retailers were also helped by changing consumer attitudes toward inner cities. Consumer surveys from the early 1950s show that downtowns at that time were still the preferred shopping location for many goods. Many consumers

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were using public transportation to reach the city. A 1953 Boston University study found that Boston’s downtown was “still showing tremendous drawing power,” thanks to the variety, styles, and delivery services it offered.35 Over the course of the decade, however, nationwide attitudes shifted, and the perceived disadvantages of downtowns, their crowdedness and lack of available parking spaces, began to outweigh their advantages in the minds of many consumers. The new suburban shopping centers were seen in an increasingly positive light especially by the parents of the baby-boom generation. They offered convenience as they were close to suburban homes and required little walking because of ample parking facilities. By the end of the 1950s, an average of only 2.5% of shopping center patrons arrived by public transportation.36 The shopping environment of the new centers was widely hailed by consumers as family friendly and “good for kids.” Respondents admitted to a sense that “the right people shop there” (though many felt uneasy about this claim, since it was seen as undemocratic).37 The decline of inner-city shopping in postwar America corresponded to growing perceptions of downtowns as “déclassé, even disreputable.”38 The crowds, congestion, and grunginess that had helped drive the middle class away as residents of the urban core drove them out as consumers, too. Retreat to the suburbs and detached housing was fueled also by race.39 By the 1960s, the notion of an “urban crisis” of crime, poverty, and segregation and racial strife was a commonplace in American public debate. By contrast, the new suburbanites often attempted to construct new forms of community life, and shopping centers were hailed as welcome additions in this context.40 A 1953 New York Times essay, for example, celebrated the new type of the regional shopping center as “something like a woman’s dream world: an isolated, welldesigned, comfortable arrangement of nothing but shops and service.”41 The bottom line of the author’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek assessment was clear: the new shopping centers were informal, neighborly, family friendly, and safe for predominantly female middle-class shoppers. Changing shopping habits reinforced the shift to suburban shopping. The automobile enabled the practice of one-stop shopping.42 Shopping centers became a “night and weekend business,” with many locations open six nights a week and sales peaking on Saturdays.43 Sunday shopping, too, grew more widespread from the 1950s onward, despite some opposition by small retailers and religious groups.44 By 1970, Sundays had become the day for family shopping, especially in large suburban stores.45 The new suburban shoppers prized both convenience and proximity to their favorite store.46 Suburban consumers were predominantly middle-class. A 1969 study for the planning board of Tenafly, New Jersey, found that the tra-

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ditional shopping district had lost the allegiance of customers in “the middle ranges of $3000–$10,000 in family income.” Unlike poor consumers, who often lacked cars, and the very wealthy, who did not need to watch prices, the study suggested, the growing middle classes sought the goods offered at department and discount stores outside the city limits.47 The American middleclass bargain-shoppers found their home at the suburban shopping center during the postwar decades. urban planning and public policy The shift to suburban shopping was not merely a “natural” development but was fueled by public policy incentives, from tax breaks to liberal zoning policies. Zoning regulations, which were locally administered and enforced, frequently permitted “zone ribbons” for commercial use along major suburban roads.48 Many suburban communities lacked zoning master plans altogether, so that shopping center developers often managed to change existing zoning regulations through public hearings and appeals processes.49 Center developers benefited from competition among municipalities as towns attempted to enhance their tax and parking bases.50 During the 1950s, a growing number of cities adopted zoning ordinances pertaining to shopping centers. However, they were often limited to ensuring unobstructed traffic flow and adequate parking facilities.51 Since zoning ordinances were routinely struck down by courts if they were explicitly designed to protect existing retailers from competition, municipal planners faced severe limitations. If, for example, a municipality received six proposals for shopping centers in a market area that could support only three, it still needed to zone for six as long as traffic standards were met. During the 1960s, Robert Leary, planning director of Ann Arbor, Michigan, attested to the limited power of urban planners: “We believe that shopping centers are pretty much in the category of death and taxes—they’re inevitable.”52 Unlike residential communities, existing retail structures could not count on zoning laws to protect them from the “intrusion” of new suburban competition, from which, in fact, many municipalities stood to gain financially. If local governments failed to protect downtowns, federal tax incentives played a major role in fueling the boom in suburban shopping centers; such incentives were part of the “hidden” state spending that helped shape the postwar consumer society. An “accelerated depreciation” program introduced in 1954 allowed developers to write off the construction costs of new business buildings and to claim them as losses against unrelated income. Shopping centers, according to historian Thomas Hanchett, “became a lucrative

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tax shelter for investors.”53 Full-blown suburban shopping centers, which required a big chunk of up-front capital, had rarely been economically feasible before the 1950s. Following the changes in the tax code, shopping centers boomed even in smaller markets and in areas with a declining population (such as Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania). The number of large, regional centers skyrocketed as developers caught on to the possibility of a tax write-off.54 Planners and policy makers did little to ensure an adequate retailing infrastructure in all neighborhoods. While many new suburban subdivisions did receive shopping centers in their vicinities, small individual retailers could rarely be found within new residential areas themselves.55 Here retail businesses were often zoned out, hampering the development of smaller stores in new neighborhoods. FHA regulations, which required the construction of retail centers in new subdivisions that the agency helped to develop, also functioned to promote the construction of major shopping centers.56 The corner store had no place in suburbia. Low-income urban neighborhoods, on the other hand, faced a different set of problems. By the 1960s, it was clear that the new geography of retailing disadvantaged the remaining urban consumers. The observation that “the poor pay more”57 was partially based in the reluctance of modern supermarkets and other chain retailers to open stores in urban areas.58 Studies suggested that those stores that did locate within cities tended to charge more and for lower-quality goods because of limited competition.59 Consumer advocate Frederick Sturdivant saw racial conflicts such as the 1965 Watts riots as partially rooted in the “presence of an inefficient, unethical business community in ghetto areas,” dominated by “inefficient Mom & Pop stores.”60 A 1957 New York Times article described a recent rise of peddlers, who, in the absence of an adequate retail infrastructure in the city’s inner-city housing projects, succeeded in selling goods for high prices and employing usurious debt schemes. Many traditional neighborhood retailers had left, or their buildings had been demolished in the process of “slum clearance” for new public housing.61 The city of Baltimore illustrates the problems encountered by traditional retailing districts in urban areas during the 1950s and ’60s. Between 1948 and 1958, fifty-seven new shopping centers emerged in the Baltimore metropolitan area. While the retail sales share of downtown and other urban business districts declined, outlying counties saw their share rise from 17% to 29% during that time period. A 1965 study identified eighteen older community shopping districts, which “were dependent on nearby high-density residential areas and on large volumes of traffic to provide markets for their goods.” The postwar years saw a deep decline in most of these areas, yet “almost noth-

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ing is being done to better the older shopping districts that developed years ago [. . .]. There still is a need for these older centers, for they provide goods and services to residents of surrounding neighborhoods, many of whom have no other convenient places to shop.”62 In a 1964 hearing, city officials complained of the lack in federal aid, as neither the SBA, nor the FHA, nor urban renewal programs felt responsible for intervening. A consequence of suburban shopping centers, declared Richard Steiner, director of the Baltimore Urban Renewal and Housing Association, was the “increase in physical blight, obsolescence, and economic deterioration of the older neighborhood retail areas within the city proper.”63 Still, for many American planners during the postwar decades the shift toward suburban retailing signaled anything but decline. On the contrary, high hopes were connected with the new shopping centers. Loftily invoking European traditions, designers and developers envisioned their centers as new suburban main streets.64 The downtown, some observers felt, had reached its limits; city centers had become “the centralization of confusion and inefficiency.”65 Old-style urban retailing was seen as lacking a community aspect, and planners hoped that neighborliness might be regained in suburban shopping.66 The “human scale” in marketplaces, others thought, had been lost as a result of industrialization and the automobile; well-designed shopping centers could be a means to remedy this.67 Foster Winter of the Urban Land Institute wrote in 1954: “Modern, responsible merchants have taken the lead in developing shopping towns containing not only shops and stores but, beyond that, offering places for meetings, for recreation and entertainment, thus making them focal points for community life in the suburban areas.”68 Planning for a “modern” relationship between retailing and community life thus revolved almost solely around the suburban shopping center during the 1950s.69 One of the most prominent visionaries of suburban retailing was architect Victor Gruen, who had played a significant role in establishing the regional mall as a nationwide retailing model.70 Gruen’s architectural firm had made a name for itself with the Northland Center, which opened in 1954 in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan. Gruen had convinced the Hudson department store, which dominated downtown Detroit retailing, to open a suburban branch in a shopping center of unparalleled dimensions. Two years later the Southdale Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina, Minnesota, was completed (fig. 11). Gruen’s firm had designed the first fully enclosed shopping center, which was also the first to contain two competing department stores. To Gruen, Northland and Southdale were more than just retail centers. In his 1960 Shopping Towns USA he described their larger purpose:

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f i g u r e 1 1 . Interior of Southdale Shopping Center, Minneapolis, 1957. Library of Congress.

By affording opportunities for social life and recreation in a protected pedestrian environment, by incorporating civic and educational facilities, shopping centers can fill an existing void. [. . .] They can provide the needed place and opportunity for participation in modern community life that the ancient Greek Agora, the medieval marketplace and our own town squares have provided in the past.71

Done right, Gruen explained further, “shopping centers have taken on the characteristics of urban organisms serving a multitude of human needs and activities, thus justifying the designation: SHOPPING TOWNS.”72 Gruen criticized booming suburbia for its social environment, which he perceived as “strictly compartmentalized by family income, social, religious, and racial background.” The planning of shopping centers, Gruen and others hoped, would create places in which retailers could flourish—by including community rooms, for example—and a genuine suburban community life could be fostered.73 Such visions often clashed with economic realities, however. Although many shopping centers included rooms for clubs and dances, auditoriums for lectures and meetings; recreational areas with benches and cafés, and even—in a few—libraries, galleries, or swimming pools, such noncommercial activities were often opposed by shopping center owners, to Gruen’s dis-

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appointment.74 Shopping centers routinely controlled access to their facilities (in efforts to eliminate “loitering,” etc.) or attempted to limit the exercise of free speech.75 The new retailing space was, after all, private space and was intended to be part of a commercial environment in which sales volume trumped all other considerations. Still, leaving the development of retailing space largely to the market had obvious shortcomings, and by the mid-1960s even leading developers were calling for more state and community oversight over land development.76

1970s america: the suburban g e o g r a p h y o f r e ta i l i n g By 1970, a suburban pattern of distribution had come to dominate the American metropolitan landscape. Inner-city retailing was in decline. Just before Christmas 1970, Time ran a story headed “Down and Out Downtown”: At stores along the main streets of the nation’s cities [. . .] the mood of the merchants was anything but festive. [. . .] The downtown merchants—who have to cope with crime, grime and the transport snarls of the central city—are being hurt the worst. [. . .] Suburban branches have begun to stay open on Sundays to accommodate a rush of shoppers.77

Traditional specialty stores and department stores were closing all over the country, from Manhattan to San Francisco, from Dallas to Detroit. Neighborhood retailing had declined as well. In a 1969 essay in McCall’s, writer Elinor Lander Horwitz wrote: “The grocer as a well-known personage has virtually disappeared from the American scene. And the neighborhood store—only yesterday a lively feature of the landscape—today is almost extinct.”78 This shift in retailing affected not only large cities but also the Main Streets of many small American towns. Small-town department stores—long part of the fabric of local and regional communities—benefited briefly from postwar prosperity but began to decline by the 1960s.79 The face of Main Street changed as the detailed facades of Victorian buildings were covered over by aluminum siding and new stores were often limited to single-story structures with large glass fronts, imitating the design of the new shopping centers.80 At the very moment that Disneyland’s Main Street USA constructed a powerful nostalgic image, the traditional retailing structure of small towns was giving way to supermarkets and shopping centers.81 Suburban competition was central to these stories of decline. In just six years between 1948 and 1954, for example, the share of downtown specialty retailers’ share of total metropolitan retail sales fell from 14% to 10% in Chi-

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cago, from 15% to 10% in Detroit, and from 27% to 18% in Columbus, Ohio.82 This trend accelerated during the 1960s. In Boston, between 1948 and 1958 the lion’s share of retail sales had already shifted from downtown to outlying areas of the city; ten years later, that share had moved even farther away into the suburbs.83 The city of Akron, Ohio, is a good example of the way suburban shopping centers and supermarkets supplanted the dual system of urban retailing. Two studies financed by the Urban Renewal Administration traced the impact of new shopping centers in Akron. While sales of the city’s CBD had declined by 16% between 1958 and 1963, over 2 million square feet of retail space had been built in new shopping centers. Since 1950, twenty-six medium-sized shopping centers (featuring chains such as J.C. Penney and Montgomery Ward, as well as major supermarkets) were developed in the region, and two large centers were under construction by the mid-1960s.84 Urban Akron lost 550 stores between 1954 and 1963, including 260 grocery stores, 36 drugstores, 63 clothing stores, and 60 hardware stores.85 By the late 1960s, the urban commercial structure had been supplanted by a metropolitan one, dominated by suburban shopping centers that dealt in everyday needs and consumer goods alike. The typical shopping center in the Akron region was now “built around a junior department store or a variety store as well as one or more supermarkets.”86 The shift to suburban shopping had significant consequences with regard to the composition of the consuming public, for many urban residents were excluded from the modern retailing structure. The degree to which the American pattern of retailing resulted from a series of choices made by retailers, consumers, urban planners, and policy makers becomes apparent when viewed in comparison to developments in West Germany at the same time. The Continuity of Urban Retailing in Postwar West Germany “The regional shopping center came to Europe with a bang,” observed the New York Times on the occasion of the opening of a suburban shopping center in Frankfurt am Main in June of 1965.87 Another headline in the same issue read: “The American way of life has made a new break-through in West Germany.”88 Such boisterous claims, however, missed much of the reality of the postwar geography of retailing in West Germany. While many inner cities were hit hard by wartime destruction, the old commercial districts were quickly revitalized after 1945.89 A closer look at the development of shopping centers in West Germany suggests that the one in Frankfurt hailed by the New York Times was relatively

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little and relatively late. Some smaller shopping centers, to be sure, such as “Onkel Tom’s Hütte” (opened in 1928 in Berlin) had existed in Germany even before World War II. After the war, many of the newly built urban developments featured planned shopping complexes. During the 1960s, several indoor complexes appeared near the centers of large cities, such as the EuropaCenter in downtown Berlin and the Kö-Center in Düsseldorf.90 The 1964 Main-Taunus Center near Frankfurt, however, was the first that could qualify as a truly suburban shopping center, for it was built outside the city, “on the green meadow” (auf der grünen Wiese).91 It was followed by the Ruhrpark near Bochum and several other developments during the late 1960s. By 1972, an Ifo (Institute for Economic Research) study counted 282 shopping centers in all of West Germany. To put this into perspective, it is important to note that these 282 “shopping centers” were hardly comparable to the regional malls found in the United States. The same study found that 145 of the centers had less than 5,000 square meters (53,800 square feet) of retail space and only 29 had more than 25,000 square meters (270,000 square feet). By comparison, regional shopping centers in the United States generally exceeded 500,000 square feet (46,450 square meters).92 Taken together, shopping centers accounted for only 4% of the total retail sales in West Germany by the early 1970s (as compared to over 40% in the United States at the time). The location of the centers also stood in contrast to those in the United States: in West Germany, 14% were located in downtown areas, 77% in urban residential areas, 6% on the urban fringe, and only 3% entirely outside the city limits. This geographic distribution pattern held true not only for existing shopping centers at the beginning of the 1970s but also for those in the planning stage.93 t r e n d s i n t h e r e ta i l i n g i n d u s t ry Most German retailers were not enthusiastic about shopping centers. Despite concerns over urban decline, small urban stores even during the 1960s were usually content with their location and felt no need to move to a shopping center, which might burden them with new obligations and competition.94 The comparative continuity in retailing geography was a result of continuities in the structure of the retailing industry, which in West Germany remained dominated by smaller downtown and neighborhood stores. For much of the twentieth century, German retailing was dominated by what historian Victoria De Grazia has called a “commercial civilization,” emphasizing local retailers and class difference in consumption.95 While American-style mass consumer culture made significant inroads into conti-

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nental Europe during the interwar period and, to a greater degree, after World War II, its progress was far from speedy. In 1970, for example, when 70% of US consumer expenditure for groceries went to supermarkets, these new facilities commanded only 32% of the market share in West Germany. During the 1960s, continental Europeans still patronized their neighborhood shops and street markets. “There they shopped daily, usually on foot, visiting at least a half-dozen different commercial establishments for as long as fifteen hours a week while spending as much as fifty-five percent of their family incomes on food.”96 The old-style “commercial civilization” of retailing thus continued well into the postwar decades. De Grazia’s more general observations on transatlantic differences are supported by the specific developments in German retailing between 1950 and 1970. Certainly, self-service markets gained in importance as did the brandname products and new forms of packaging that went along with them.97 Even a few discounters appeared on the German scene.98 As historian Michael Wildt has observed, there was a noticeable push toward Konsumfreiheit, the freedom of consumer choice and a democratic shopping experience, which often entailed circumventing the traditionally powerful position of the salesperson or shopkeeper.99 To a surprising degree, however, smaller retailers did prevail, and American distribution methods were not imported wholesale. A group of German retailers and retailing experts touring the United States during the early 1960s, for example, marveled at the differences between the two countries. In addition to innovations like supermarkets, chain stores, and discounters, the group also looked at independent specialty stores (Fachgeschäfte). They noted that these continued to exist within the American system as well, but “it has to be said that the average Fachgeschäft in the United States displays a standard below those found in German specialty stores.” Few US retailers, they found, had clearly defined specialties, and many (e.g., drugstores) offered a smattering of different goods consistent with the trend to one-stop shopping. To German retailers this appeared as a threat to their own expertise as well as to the quality of goods and service.100 The mere quantitative differences between German and American retailing during the postwar decades are easy to illustrate. While the US population in 1965 was roughly three times that of Western Germany, the number of retail businesses was little more than twice as high (1,350,000 as against 600,000).101 Especially in the grocery trade, differences were significant. While regional supermarket chains began to dominate the American scene, many German independent grocers survived by joining voluntary chains (such as Spar) and purchasing cooperatives (such as Edeka). In 1966, independent stores that had organized themselves into chains accounted for 50.1%

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of market share, consumer cooperatives for 5.7%, and trade shops (such as butcher shops and bakeries) for 31.1 %. Supermarket chains and department stores could together claim only about 11% of the West German market share. Voluntary retail cooperatives dominated more than the grocery trade. By the late 1950s, 76% of all shoe retailers, 70% of hardware stores, and 45% of textile retailers were members of purchasing or marketing cooperatives. A high number of independent retailers thus remained healthy. The percentage of owner-proprietors and their family members among those working in retailing decreased somewhat over the course of the 1950s, but the percentage of retailing businesses that employed less than ten people fell only slightly from 97.7% in 1950 to 95.7% in 1960.102 In contrast to the United States, the overall number of retailing outlets actually grew significantly during the 1950s and into the early ’60s in areas such as groceries, textiles, shoes, electronics, and housewares.103 The independent specialty retailer remained dominant in West Germany well into the 1970s.104 Differences between the two countries also continued to exist with respect to store size. German stores in urban neighborhoods or centers were usually much smaller than their suburban American counterparts. A 1959 Time article observed: By U.S. standards, Europe’s supermarket boom is still in its infant stage. Most of the new self-service stores are not super-duper markets in the giant, U.S. sense, rarely have more than 3,000 sq. ft. of floor space (v. 10,000 for the average US supermarket), stock only an average of 1,000 to 2,000 items (v. 5,600 in the U.S. markets). Some stores still do not sell frozen foods, leave the meat to the outside butcher; only a few are big enough to produce their own brands of canned goods.105

Retailers with larger sales areas gained ground during the 1960s, but supermarkets in the American sense of more than 4,300 square feet (or 400 square meters) mustered some significance only after 1970. While non-self-service small to medium-sized stores in urban centers had begun to face serious competition from large retailing chains (Fachmärkte) and from discounters in outlying areas by the late 1970s, at the beginning of that decade the overwhelming majority of retail sales were still in the hands of small, independent retailers.106 How can we account for such continuities in the face of massive economic change, improvements in the standard of living, and changes in individual consumption habits? In part, the answer lies with public policies and market regulations discussed in chapter 1. In keeping with the often conservative politics of mass consumption in postwar West Germany, established retailing

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interests were successful throughout the 1950s in lobbying for a series of legislative changes that helped to protect their position. They frequently frustrated liberalizing efforts pursued by the ministry of economics, and government officials repeatedly worried that retailers were attempting to make retailing a closed-off “estate” within the economy.107 The law against unfair competition, for example, which was amended in 1957, prohibited the use of comparative advertising and price dumping and restricted promotional and holiday sales. The 1958 law against impediments to competition (Wettbewerbsbeschränkungen) severely restricted the practice of giving rebates and allowed for resale price maintenance (Preisbindung der zweiten Hand) for brand-name goods and books.108 Such efforts sought to take the competitive edge away from larger retailers, supermarkets, and discounters, whose biggest advantage lay in a lower price structure. The issue of resale price maintenance was highly contested during the postwar decades; manufacturers of brand-name goods and many retailers fought to retain this practice.109 The federal economics ministry, however, repeatedly urged an end to the practice, seeing it as an impediment to competition in the retail industry. Yet ministry officials recognized that price maintenance provided “the Aunt Anna Store at the corner with the backbone and opportunity for survival.”110 Whereas many manufacturers in the United States gave up the practice under the pressure of discounters and other retail interests over the course of the 1950s, price maintenance allowed many small German retailers to stay competitive with larger stores when offering nationally advertised brand-name goods, which became ever more important to West German consumer culture during the postwar decades. Price maintenance was only one example of converging interests between the German consumer goods industry and traditional retailing. Another advantage for small retailers in Germany were the stringent store hours, which had been made uniform by the 1956 store closing law.111 With few exceptions, retailers could only be open between 7:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. on weekdays and until 2:30 p.m. on Saturdays. In the absence of nationwide regulations in the United States, most major stores in American shopping centers were open until 9:00 p.m. The earlier closing hours in West Germany hampered extensive shopping at the end of the workday at outlying retailers and favored the shorter trip to stores in the neighborhood. Despite recurring debates about the issue and some opposition (albeit unorganized) from consumers, a strong coalition of retailing interests, churches, and labor unions succeeded in keeping closing hours regulations intact well into the 1970s and beyond.112 The role played by labor unions with regard to store hours suggests another difference between the German and the American postwar retailing

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industries: the skill and organizational level of sales staff. German observers visiting the United States frequently commented on how little the salespeople knew about the merchandise at many American stores. Retail sales employees received little formal training, were usually not unionized, and often were paid only the minimum wage.113 Consumers were therefore more likely to educate themselves about the goods they sought. While shopping centers offered many part-time employment opportunities for suburban women, there were few middle-class careers to be had in shopping center retailing.114 German retailers, by contrast, successfully lobbied for a 1957 law that required anyone opening a retail business to hold a certificate of “retail expertise.”115 Trained personnel were regarded as central in providing quality service. Many observers saw this certification requirement, along with relatively higher wages, as a major impediment to the establishment of American-style discount houses in Germany.116 c o n s u m e r at t i t u d e s a n d p r e f e r e n c e s The continued pattern of urban residence discussed in chapter 5 certainly helped neighborhood stores, while traditional downtown retailers benefited from widely used public transportation systems. German consumers into the 1970s were more likely to shop for everyday items on a daily basis than to drive to an outlying supermarket or retail center for a weekly shopping spree. Especially during the 1950s, a lack of refrigerators and freezers made daily grocery shopping essential for many German households. While German consumers sometimes complained about restrictive opening hours, they did not mount any sizable opposition, and surveys suggested that only 20% were truly unsatisfied. Most felt they had enough time to buy what they needed.117 The middle-class quality shoppers discussed in chapter 3 gave traditional neighborhood stores and specialty retailers advantages in a society in which consumption was linked to class and milieu differences. Specialty shops profited from consumers who equated quality with price.118 Whereas many American consumers required relatively little contact with sales personnel, German customers expected both sales expertise and service. Despite the success of self-service stores by the later 1960s in West Germany, retailers still remained generally respected and heavily integrated into the social networks of their community.119 West German consumers, even by the 1970s, continued to enjoy shopping in the city center. When looking for clothing and household goods, they thought the downtown specialty stores offered a wider selection and betterquality goods than competitors elsewhere.120 Pedestrian shopping streets,

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where they could visit cafés as well as shops, enhanced the largely positive image Germans had of their inner cities. Free of the concerns about safety, convenience, and racial conflict that kept a many American consumers from shopping downtown, West Germans enjoyed the upscale atmosphere afforded by pedestrian malls and demanded more of it.121

urban planning and public policy When the postwar development of West German retail is compared to that of the United States, the role of planning stands out. Planners in West Germany embedded new retailing forms into existing urban forms and much attention was paid to connecting the new centers to pedestrian traffic and public transportation. Many planners consciously rejected the suburban American model. As one urban planner observed in 1972: In the United States, the “shopping center” [. . .] is often located outside the city, for example at highway intersections; however, this choice of location entails many drawbacks for urban order [Raumordnung] and development. The shopping center within the urban area, by contrast, offers the best opportunities for supplying the population sufficiently and for relieving some of the pressure in the inner cities.122

And a retailing expert, Horst-Joachim Jaeck, pointed out that “while the majority of American shopping centers are shaped by commercial considerations, European centers are built predominantly in accordance with cityplanning.”123 Public policy and urban planning were central to preserving more traditional urban retailing in postwar West Germany. The planning for retail infrastructure was vital to the new housing projects and urban neighborhoods that arose during the postwar decades, partly through public financing. Although the 1965 federal building law (Bundesbaugesetz) and other building codes (e.g., Baunutzungsverordung of June 1962 and January 1969) did not explicitly mention retailing, most legal opinion held that the retail needs of consumers had to be carefully taken into account in larger construction projects and that some level of public planning was congruent with the social market economy.124 Already in 1955, the federal ministry for housing had issued guidelines that contained requirements for commercial space to locally supply the population of new publicly funded housing projects.125 Among urban planners, the study of regional retailing (regionale Handelsforschung or Handelsurbanistik) had evolved as a field since the interwar period.126 As retail planners were concerned with modernizing distribution

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patterns, many still conceived of the city as an “organism.”127 Accordingly, retail was seen as part of and subservient to a larger whole. Factors such as demand and shopping frequency were understood in the context of a hierarchical concept of urban and regional space. Walter Christaller’s influential theory of central places and peripheral areas formulated during the 1930s continued to inform planners in the postwar era.128 The distinction between the supply of “petty goods” for daily consumption and periodic (or shopping) goods of higher durability that was at the core of the dual pattern of urban retailing was now reflected in increasingly more refined theories of the retailing function of neighborhoods and urban centers. Many German planners held that a hierarchical model would remain feasible in the context of the postwar consumer society as well.129 In 1968, retailing expert Helmut Soldner suggested a four-stage hierarchy of metropolitan retailing. At the lowest level were “neighborhood centers,” agglomerations of stores in existing and new neighborhoods. Their function was to supply basic, everyday goods. On the second level were the “area centers” (Stadtviertelzentren), serving boroughs or satellite towns. On the third level, Soldner placed “city district centers” (Stadtteilzentren), larger, regional shopping centers. At the pinnacle of this hierarchy stood the traditional city center, the downtown business district, which focused almost exclusively on periodic goods.130 American retail planning, by contrast, was driven more overtly by market considerations and “sales areas,” so that suburban shopping centers challenged rather than complemented the existing hierarchy of metropolitan retailing.131 By taking the city as an organic whole as a starting point, the objective of planning was, according to retail geographer Robert Jahke, to avoid unnecessary shopping outside of the neighborhood. To accomplish this, planners had to methodically anticipate demand. Throughout the 1950s, Jahke and others conducted studies for a host of cities and municipalities across West Germany to assess demand and the viability of retail developments in neighborhoods and city centers.132 In doing this, Jahke could build on research conducted already during the Nazi era by the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung (mentioned in the introduction to part 3). Jahke called for an inclusive approach to city planning that took consumption into account and would ensure a “healthy” retail structure. He believed that new developments, despite the spatial separation of work and residence in many of them during the 1950s, needed a distinct character just like “cities that had grown organically.”133 Jahke’s writings display a distinctly conservative bent in extending notions of the city as an organic entity well into the postwar era. In 1960, Jahke

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published an extensive volume on commercial planning in urban development. His brand of conservatism was very much at odds with the American geography of suburban consumption. Disdainful of “American” trends toward weekly shopping in supermarkets, Jahke proposed to retain a more specialized retail structure even in new developments, which would supply quality products allegedly more congenial to the “mentality of the German customer.” In keeping with predominant economic thought, he was skeptical of central planning, arguing that public policy should foster competition among smaller (or Mittelstand) businesses. Jahke consequently lauded the ethos of German shopkeepers and doubted that large retail structures of the American kind were suitable for Germany. He even expressed qualified approval of Nazi measures to protect small businesses such as the Einzelhandelsschutzgesetz of 1933.134 While Jahke’s conservatism was not necessarily representative of German city planning in general, his writings do indicate that many planners consciously attempted to modernize the urban retail structure in ways that differed from the American model. More progressive planners helped to sustain the urban pattern of retailing in Germany as well. The large publicly sponsored housing developments of the postwar era are a case in point. From the 1960s on, while traditional corner stores were often eliminated when older neighborhoods were redeveloped, the planners of large developments aspiring to an ideal of urbanity and mixed-used residential areas organized their apartment high-rises around small agglomerations of shops.135 Larger and more modern than their prewar predecessors, such shops still offered a wide variety of goods and services locally and within walking distance.136 The housing development of the Neue Vahr in the city of Bremen provides a good illustration. Constructed during the late 1950s, the Neue Vahr was one of the largest new urban developments of its time, containing about ten thousand apartments in several neighborhoods. From the start, planners had included several decentralized clusters of stores to provide groceries and other necessities of daily life (fig. 11). At the heart of the Neue Vahr, a fairly large shopping center called the Berliner Freiheit was designed by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. A survey of residents of the Neue Vahr in the early 1970s revealed the practice of consumption in this new urban district. According to the survey, 83% of daily goods were purchased within the Neue Vahr, where 47% of residents shopped daily, 40% every other day, and only 13% on weekends. The residents had thus retained an “urban shopping style.”137 They made frequent use of the Berliner Freiheit, and acquired most of what they needed there. Periodic goods were still purchased mainly in the city center of Bremen. Indeed, a 1974 development plan for the Neue Vahr noted the need for

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f i g u r e 1 2 . Self-service store in new housing development, Bremen, 1957. Staatsarchiv Bremen.

expanding the availability of periodic goods and services locally because of growing prosperity, but it was explicitly stated that such expansion should be done to complement (not compete with) the urban core, which could be conveniently reached by streetcar or bus.138 1 9 7 0 s w e s t g e r m a n y : u r b a n r e t a i l i n g p r e va i l s Compared to the shopping centers and strip malls of 1970s America, the German retailing structure presents a vastly different picture. The urban pattern of small retailing, despite important changes, survived well into the 1970s. West Germany opted for a high-price and high-wage system of distribution that generally followed the prewar pattern of dual urban retailing.139 As German cities changed and grew, however, so did retail businesses. Urban planners in West Germany played a substantial role in shaping the retailing structure, without threatening the role of traditional urban centers. Unlike the declining American downtowns, German city centers frequently managed to expand their retail business during the postwar decades. Urban historians Wiltrud and Joachim Petsch have estimated that retailing space in German inner cities doubled between 1960 and 1970.140 Department stores continued to expand in downtown areas, and the importance of downtown retailing (especially for expensive shopping goods) remained constant.141

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The relative absence of suburban shopping in postwar West Germany highlights different choices made in the two consumer societies. The differences between the German and the American approach to retailing come into sharp relief when we look at the emergence of inner-city pedestrian malls. In West Germany, pedestrian malls would prove to be a central factor in assuring the viability of traditional downtown retailing. Their development provides an illuminating case study of the different conditions and decisions that led to the contrasting geographic models of retailing sketched above. Both West German and American cities began experimenting with pedestrian malls in the 1950s to keep consumers within the urban center. While these malls failed to gain widespread acceptance in the United States, they became commonplace throughout Germany and were consciously developed as an alternative to the suburban shopping mall.

Inner-City Pedestrian Malls as an Alternative to Suburban Shopping Centers In 1966, the German travel agency Hapag Lloyd offered city planners and retailing experts a guided tour to US cities.142 An ad for the trip in the trade publication Der Aufbau explained its purpose: It is an obvious development that our expanding cities are growing increasingly and visibly sick in their centers. The reasons for this are manifold. Because of too much traffic, noise and bad air, the consumer has no longer any incentive to make the cumbersome trip into the city. Thus the consumer is about to leave downtown behind. The United States took too long to recognize such trends, which were devastating their city centers, and is now forced to pursue radical solutions. We would do well to learn from the American experiences.143

One of the crucial lessons that German cities learned from the declining downtowns in the United States was the need to keep city centers attractive for consumers. The development of the Fußgängerzone, an inner-city pedestrian mall, between the early 1950s and the early 1970s was central to such efforts. Today the Fußgängerzone is a prominent feature of most German cities, big or small, and has become integral to the way many postwar German consumers imagine and experience urban space.144 The Fußgängerzone, its proponents hoped, would serve as a bridge between the traditional living space of German—or more generally European—cities and the needs of postwar mass consumption. The first pedestrian malls emerged in West Germany during the 1950s as

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part of reconstruction efforts after the destruction of World War II. The city of Cologne provides a useful example. Even during the war, city officials had begun to plan for new ring roads and increased parking space.145 The “New Cologne,” a comprehensive plan for reconstruction devised in the late 1940s, envisioned vast highways for speedy access to and passage through the urban core.146 The urban center itself, however, was to adhere to a “human scale.” Surrounded by modern traffic, the central districts were to remain within the Western (abendländische) tradition of walkability.147 The Cologne office for city planning designated the area west of the cathedral as a “metropolitan marketplace,”148 complete with department stores and smaller shops for “exquisite goods.” At the heart of this area were two of Cologne’s traditional shopping streets, the Hohe Strasse and the Schildergasse. As early as 1949, vehicular traffic was banned at certain times of the day, since it presented, city officials felt, an “unacceptable” burden on pedestrian traffic in these narrow streets.149 City representatives were soon boasting that the newly created pedestrian space had attracted much praise and attention from colleagues in other German cities.150 A few cities had already experimented with traffic-free shopping streets during the interwar period. The Limbecker Street in Essen, which had become one of the premier shopping streets of the Ruhr in the early twentieth century, was one such example.151 Fully pedestrianized streets were largely a postwar development, however. Kiel and Stuttgart were among the innovators in the Federal Republic.152 While both cities occasionally laid claim to the distinction of having the “oldest” Fußgängerzone in West Germany, the city of Kassel inaugurated, in 1953, the best-known early pedestrian street: the Treppenstrasse. In 1948, Kassel had devised a plan for its city center, which had been devastated during the war. To accommodate anticipated modern traffic demands, a circular road pattern was to enclose the inner city. The Treppenstrasse was to provide pedestrian access from the train station to the main business street. The core of the city, planners envisioned, was to be the “realm of the pedestrian,” and in 1952 the city council unanimously voted to create a fully pedestrianized shopping street.153 The completion of the Treppenstrasse in November of 1952—and its further expansion a few years later—received nationwide attention in the press. Kassel’s city center was widely celebrated as an “oasis for pedestrians.”154 The introduction of pedestrian areas during the 1950s was more than simply an attempt to make German cities suited to the demands of the automobile.155 The language of planners and commentators in the media often betrayed underlying concerns—especially among conservative and educated elites—about the modern “mass city” of the twentieth century.156 This can

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be seen in attempts to connect newly created pedestrian streets to Western traditions. Images of Venice, the public spaces of other early modern cities, and even the Greek agora were invoked repeatedly. The characterization of pedestrian areas as an urban “oasis” suggests a widespread perception of the modern city as an urban desert. Ideas about the contribution pedestrian areas could make toward improving urban space in the postwar era would gain in importance over the next decades, as did the notion that they might prove a vital tool in preventing the commercial decline of urban business districts. In many ways, the United States would provide the foil for these debates. There, too, pedestrian areas were considered by various cities, though without achieving the success they would eventually have in the German case.

t h e at t e m p t t o c r e at e a m e r i c a n pedestrian malls The potential of pedestrian malls to revive struggling central business districts was not unknown to Americans. As the negative consequences of the shift to the suburban pattern of retailing began to emerge during the 1950s, American city planners soon found themselves looking in envy at their European colleagues. Traveling to Europe during the late 1950s, they marveled not only at modern public housing projects but also at inner-city shopping districts bustling with life.157 Traffic-free areas in the centers of various European cities caught the eye of American observers: pedestrian malls, they thought, might hold the key to halting the decline of the downtown.158 It was Victor Gruen, the architect so influential in designing suburban malls during the 1950s, who became one of the key figures in pushing for pedestrian malls in the United States. Inner cities, Gruen argued, had to learn from their new suburban competition. Their shopping districts had to be designed in such a fashion that consumers would want to linger there.159 Addressing the American Planning and Civic Association in 1957, Gruen outlined his vision for the Main Street of the future: The surface of the city center will belong exclusively to the pedestrian. [. . . A] large part will be devoted to planting—beds, trees and bushes—and to paved promenade areas. [. . .] Thus a new measure of compactness and cohesion for the urban center can be reached, similar in character to the one found in older European cities.160

In later publications, Gruen reiterated his call for a revitalization of American downtowns with pedestrian areas in the European mold.161 Of several US cities to heed Gruen’s advice during the late 1950s, Kalama-

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zoo, Michigan, was one of the first. Hit by rapidly declining retail sales due to suburban competition in 1956 and 1957, the business community of Kalamazoo commissioned Gruen’s firm to design a plan for converting its main business street into a pedestrian mall. The mall, built in 1959, proved to be a tremendous success for the city and its retailers, mustering national attention. Retail sales rose noticeably, as did the number of shoppers and visitors from outside the city.162 A key to the mall’s success was the close cooperation of the city’s business community, which bore part of the cost for planning and implementing the project.163 Kalamazoo—dubbed “Mall City USA”—became a model for similar projects in Ponoma, Fresno, Miami Beach, and Minneapolis. The pedestrian mall, however, would not become widespread during the 1960s. They remained the exception, and many American cities quickly ended experiments with traffic-free zones. The experience of Toledo, Ohio, provides one such example. To combat the commercial decline of its center, the city had decided in 1959 to ban vehicular traffic on a two-block stretch of its main shopping street for a six-week trial period. Automobiles were replaced with trees, flowerbeds, benches, a playground, and artwork. A pond featured a few penguins from the local zoo. Despite a large number of visitors and national media attention, however, critical voices prevailed. Adjacent businesses complained about declines in sales and feared further declines if the traffic ban were made permanent. Many noted the lack of sufficient parking space.164 After the experiment had come to an end, a group of business owners protested plans for further pedestrian malls, and none materialized.165 A number of other cities—including Louisville, Baton Rouge, Oxnard, and Springfield, Oregon—had similar experiences.166 A variety of reasons accounts for the failure of inner-city pedestrian malls in the United States. One reason was inadequate planning for alternative traffic patterns, parking, or public transportation. In many cases it was the business community that opposed the ban on vehicular traffic, fearing even greater declines in sales, should their customers be prevented from driving directly to their stores. Surveys have shown some justification for this concern. The vast majority of shoppers said they drove downtown. In a 1975 survey, respondents repeatedly complained about limited parking space and, moreover, voiced concerns about safety, crime, and “the element of people” in downtown areas, hinting at the importance of race in postwar American urban development.167 Few white middle-class Americans at the time thought of urban centers as any sort of “oasis.”168 By the mid-1970s, only sixty-two American cities featured pedestrian malls, the great majority of which were in cities of fewer than 100,000 in-

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habitants.169 In the meantime, the severity of the urban crisis only grew. In the 1960s, Victor Gruen and others had taken it upon themselves to warn European cities from repeating American mistakes. At a 1968 congress on commerce and urban planning in Brussels, Gruen emphasized the negative aspects of suburban shopping centers and presented his design for the pedestrian mall in Fresno as a viable alternative. “To me it seems unnecessary, illogical and tragic,” Gruen observed, “that Europe and other regions should repeat the mistakes made in the United States rather than to make use of the new concepts which have arisen from our own shortcomings and our search for better methods.”170 fussgängerzonen and inner-city r e ta i l i n g i n g e r m a n y By the 1960s, German observers were already attuned to the concerns Gruen presented. The “death of the American city” had become a commonplace, and planners worried about the possibility of a “Los-Angelization” of European cities.171 Tours of the United States for planners and retailing experts, such as the one mentioned above, abounded. Study tours were organized by federal and local administrations as well as retailing and planning experts.172 The “deluge of American shopping-centers” as well as a lack of comprehensive planning had been identified as root causes for the American problem.173 The survival of inner-city retailing drove the debate about Fußgängerzonen in 1960s Germany. As shopping centers were appearing on “green meadows” in the suburbs, many German towns stepped up their efforts to develop pedestrian areas.174 City officials and urban planners often worked in close cooperation with inner-city retail businesses: the transformation of the Sögestrasse in Bremen into a pedestrian street is one such example of converging interests. Here the city’s reconstruction association (Aufbaugemeinschaft ) emerged as the driving force. Founded after the war, the association brought together retailers, property owners, and independent architects to facilitate reconstruction by mediating between public and private interests.175 Since 1946, the Aufbaugemeinschaft had been publishing a periodical called Der Wiederaufbau (Reconstruction; after 1963 the title was shortened to Der Aufbau). The journal documented local projects and problems but also surveyed the broader German discussion on postwar urban planning. Retail planning as part of urban development received significant coverage.176 This emphasis reflected a growing concern about shopping centers (recall the Dortmund protest of 1966 noted at the beginning of this chapter) and the concerted push for pedestrian malls. In the case of Bremen, retailers along the

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Sögestrasse had called in 1967 for a design competition in order to pedestrianize this busy shopping street. According to the Aufbau editors, the project was part of “the momentous task for the business community and the city administration to come together in building a competitive downtown for the future.”177 Back in 1947, the Aufbaugemeinschaft had advocated such a plan, and in 1958 they had organized an exhibition featuring “exemplary shopping streets” (including pedestrian streets in Kassel, Kiel, Cologne, and the Rotterdam Lijnbaan).178 The desire to be the first to implement such plans gained urgency during the 1960s. Following the 1967 competition, a Fußgängerzone was finally constructed, financed jointly by the city and adjacent businesses.179 By the 1960s, several German cities were planning not only single pedestrianized shopping streets but entire networks of them. The city of Munich was a pathbreaker. With the 1972 Olympic Games in mind, the city aimed to develop a network of pedestrian streets in its center. The plan was championed by Social-Democratic mayor Hans-Jochen Vogel, a leading critic of urban development in the American mold. Concerned about the dissolution of urban structures, Vogel chided American downtowns for “surrendering their function to the urban fringes and to shopping centers on the green meadow.”180 The Munich pedestrian mall was the result of a 1962 development plan heavily influenced by Herbert Jensen, who had been advancing similar ideas in Kiel. The “Jensen plan” envisioned a system of pedestrian areas connected to public transportation, designed to recreate the old urban center in its “original glory” for citizens and tourists alike.181 Centered on the Marienplatz, the largest contiguous Fußgängerzone in Europe was built between 1967 and 1972.182 A survey conducted among Munich citizens in 1969 revealed vast differences in the role downtowns played for German and American consumers at the time. Over 80% of respondents in Munich indicated that they routinely shopped while visiting the city center. Not only did they visit department stores and specialty shops there, but a surprising number of them bought goods for everyday use as well. Many complained about crowded sidewalks and the lack of benches and similar amenities on downtown streets. Parking space, on the other hand, was not considered as high a priority as it was on the other side of the Atlantic. Indeed, the majority of respondents used public transportation when going downtown, and at least 20% occasionally went on foot.183 Under such circumstances, the development of pedestrian malls was a natural way to keep urban consumers within city centers.184 Of seventy cities that participated in a 1968 exhibition on the state of urban planning, more than forty highlighted their Fußgängerzonen.185 The city of Wuppertal, for example, praised its pedestrian mall as a “crystalliza-

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f i g u r e 1 3 . Inner-city shopping at Hohe Strasse, Cologne, 1968. Photo by Rolf Unterberg. Bundesarchiv.

tion point of commercial life.”186 By 1970, a total of 96 Fußgängerzonen existed in West Germany; by 1973, the number had risen to 214.187 Most downtown retailers were now located on pedestrian streets and doing well. According to one study, by the mid-1970s as many as 62% of downtown department stores were within pedestrian malls (and another 27% were adjacent). All pedestrian malls were connected to public transportation.188 Commenting on rising sales, Heinz Hermans, manager of the Cologne chamber of commerce, summed up in 1972: In Cologne, we do not talk about pedestrian streets, we have them! [. . .] Amazingly, furniture stores, which nowadays often move out to “the green meadow,” decide in Cologne to establish themselves in the pedestrian streets. [. . .] Since automobile traffic was banned, retail sales there have grown by 30%–40%. This revival of the inner city not only benefited the owners of stores, restaurants,

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and amusement facilities but also has increased the elegance and the prestige of the city as a whole.189

Downtown and Suburbia: Two Forms of the Postmodern Consumer City? While American downtowns lost out to suburban retail outlets, German inner cities maintained their central role during the decades of the “economic miracle.” But what were the larger ramifications of these geographic differences in retailing with respect to urban space and the consuming public? Were shopping experiences by the 1970s really so different for consumers in Germany and the United States? The academic debate regarding the “malling of America” repeatedly emphasizes the disappearance of public space. Private shopping malls exercised control not only over consumers (regulating access, public speech, and acceptable behavior) but over retailers as well, by favoring, for example, chain stores over smaller, independent shops. Furthermore, the shopping center contributed to a metropolitan environment, historian Lizabeth Cohen has suggested, “in which people were no longer brought together in central marketplaces and parks, and public buildings that surrounded them but, rather, were separated by class, gender, and race in differentiated commercial subcenters.”190 Others have argued that shopping has increasingly become an isolated and individualized experience because the postwar geographic shift in the United States pushed it largely outside of the sphere of social and public interaction.191 Most new shopping centers did not live up to the idealized vision of a suburban public sphere that planners like Victor Gruen hoped they would become. As surveys from the late 1950s indicate, the consumers who frequented suburban retailers were a fairly homogenous group: 75% were female, 90% were married, and a large majority was in white-collar employment; skilled and unskilled workers accounted for only about 25%. Most regular customers were suburbanites who lived within a driving distance of twenty minutes. Of the 2,205 respondents in a 1960s survey of five shopping centers in Akron, Ohio, families with an annual income below $3,000 were heavily underrepresented by comparison to the national average, while middle-income families had a disproportionally strong presence.192 The suburban pattern of retailing loosened the connection between consumption and genuine community life at the expense of less well-off inner-city communities. Did inner-city pedestrian malls in West Germany present an alternative to this trend? In part at least, this is what many urban planners hoped for dur-

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ing the late 1960s and early 1970s. The explosion in the number of pedestrian malls since the late 1960s was due in part to urban renewal debates. Preserving the economic vitality of downtowns came to be seen as one aspect of a larger struggle. To proponents like Hans-Jochen Vogel, who became minister for urban development in 1972, the Fußgängerzone was a key to improving urban quality of life; a symbol for augmenting public goods in an era of private affluence.193 Inner cities, many argued, should once again become a focal point of urban living.194 Next to retailing, studies found, the ideal pedestrian mall should also include a residential population, restaurants, public meeting places, and cultural attractions.195 Combined with expanded mass transit systems, pedestrian areas were expected to create urban leisure environments free of traffic and pollution. Pedestrian areas were envisioned as a “social-democratic version of a mall.”196 In outlining the urban development law (Städtebauförderungsgesetz) of 1971, minister for urban development Lauritz Lauritzen believed a primary goal of urban policy was to ensure that “people of different views and interests can meet and congregate.” For this, community centers, urban squares, and pedestrian malls would be needed.197 In a 1971 radio feature, one Cologne city official compared the pedestrian-only Schildergasse to a modern-day “Piazza del Popolo”: “Here the stream of people can disperse. On the street, hippies display silver jewelry for sale, jealously observed by shopkeepers but democratically defended by letters to the editor in local dailies.”198 The popularity of pedestrian areas rested on more conservative considerations as well, including the preservation of historic districts. Whereas planners critical of the modern city had reminisced about urban environments in the Western tradition during the 1950s, twenty years later interest in preserving and displaying the historic face of German cities was fanned by the rising importance of tourism in the era of mass consumption. The Fußgängerzone seemed ideally suited to showcase the historic character of a city. “Everyone— the native and the tourist, the modernist and the preserver of the old—can agree on one thing,” declared Munich officials. “They all agree on the importance of the pedestrian area in Munich’s historic center, which has helped the city find its way back to itself and its own history.”199 Pedestrian areas in postwar German cities were meant to combine consumption with public communication and a sense of civic identification. But did the Fußgängerzone really deserve the praise it received? Even during the 1970s, critics charged that the emergence of pedestrian areas in city centers all across West Germany contributed to a rather problematic transformation of urban space, whereby urbanity itself was increasingly defined in terms of shopping and consumption. The recreation of historical settings

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was likened to the creation of “Potemkin villages” and “German-style Disneylands”200 Did the Fußgängerzone represent, after all, not so much a public space as a sales area—albeit with a local and historic facade—for large department stores and national retail chains? Contemporary critics of pedestrian areas focused on the commercialization of urban space. Rising rents and property values in pedestrianized streets often drove out smaller, traditional retailers, while favoring national chains and large department stores.201 Hopes for Fußgängerzonen as public space were frequently disappointed.202 While artists and street performers were welcome, peddlers and the homeless were marginalized by store owners and local authorities.203 In external appearance, pedestrian areas began to resemble their suburban counterparts. Shopping arcades, such as the Stuttgart CalwerPassage, represented a new generation of downtown shopping areas during the 1970s. Protected from inclement weather by canopies, consumers could now do their downtown shopping with “dry feet.”204 Such improvements, critics noted, helped convert urban space into closed-off spaces of consumption.205 We should therefore be wary of celebratory assessments of the urban model of consumption found in German and other European cities. In some respects, the Fußgängerzone was—in David Harvey’s terms—a postmodern “leisure environment,” not altogether different from suburban malls in the United States.206 Since the 1970s, the geography of retailing in general has shown some trends of convergence between the two countries we have been comparing. In West Germany, more shopping centers and large retailers did open on the urban fringes. Such developments, however, often coincided with the expansion of downtown shopping areas.207 Lively downtown business districts and suburban shopping centers were not mutually exclusive.208 In the United States, many cities have attempted to revitalize their centers by combining retailing, entertainment, and tourism. The Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston or the Harborplace in Baltimore were early examples of such “festival marketplaces.”209 Similarities can surely be found in the postmodern consumer cities of the late twentieth century, but, as evidenced particularly in the German case, modern consumerism with its stress on individualized leisure and its proclivity to create purely commercialized space need not be antithetical to traditional notions of cosmopolitan urbanity.210 Between the 1950s and the 1970s, modernization took rather different paths; German cities did not fully “Americanize” in their spatial and social layout. The continuity of an urban distribution pattern in general, and the development of the Fußgängerzone in particular, exemplified West German

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modernization. On the one hand, progressive and social democratic planners sought to counterbalance privatizing trends of mass consumption by emphasizing public transportation and the urban public sphere. On the other hand, social conservative interests aimed to preserve traditional retailing structures as well as the historical character of urban communities in an effort to prevent what they perceived as the uprooted or faceless mass cities of the United States. The suburban pattern of retailing and the large-scale distribution system it entailed often meant lower prices and greater convenience (one-stop shopping and liberal opening hours) for many American consumers. It increased their consumer sovereignty. But gains for the consumer as an individual often came at the price of a greater geographic segregation of the consuming public. Urban quality of life suffered, and many communities (new suburban subdivisions as well as inner-city housing projects) lacked the infrastructure of small retailers that had long defined urban neighborhoods. Car ownership became a virtual necessity for middle-class consumers patronizing suburban shopping centers and supermarkets. The urban pattern of retailing in Germany, by contrast, restricted consumers in several regards. Prices tended to be higher, small specialty retailers continued to wield more influence in everyday consumption practices, and shopping hours were severely limited. The relative importance of small neighborhood stores, no doubt, helped to perpetuate class and milieu differences in overall household consumption. Still, the continuity of urban retailing incurred some benefits for all German consumers. A variety of retail stores within walking distance limited dependence on the automobile. Neighborhood shops and vital city centers contributed to the attractiveness of urban living to middle-class consumers. Pedestrian malls provided a way for Germans to identify with city centers as an urban Heimat, a homelike environment that reached beyond the mere commercial. In this regard, many Fußgängerzonen have remained successful to this day. Urban space did not lose its traditional form as radically as in the postwar United States, and German cities could usually define a shared public space.211 While commercialized, such spaces did provide a modicum of public interaction and cosmopolitan flair in a modern consumer society. The pedestrial malls well illustrate West Germany’s peculiar path to consumer modernity, bounded as much by both conservative preservation efforts as by a broader commitment to balancing commercial development and public goods.

conclusion

When American retailing giant Wal-Mart entered the German market in the mid-1990s, the chain was booming with confidence. The move not only represented the ever increasing globalization of consumer markets, but also testified to the resurgent appeal of the American consumption model in a post–cold war world. Few companies expressed the core elements of late twentieth-century American consumerism as well as Wal-Mart: a plethora of affordable goods through everyday low prices, space-intensive suburban development, but also a defiance of regulatory frameworks and reliance on cheap labor. In the United States, Wal-Mart had helped to accelerate existing trends toward retail concentration in the previous decades and thus furthered the decline of Main Street retailing in small and medium-sized cities across the country. Now it was setting its sights on European and Asian consumers. Wal-Mart’s venture across the Atlantic, however, was not the success story many expected. By 2006 the company had given up on the German market. The reasons for this were manifold and included failed business strategies and fierce competition from German chains. In part, however, Wal-Mart ran up against prominent elements of West Germany’s consumer mentality as it had developed after World War II. For German consumers, the appeal of bargains remained more limited. Neither did the spatial layout of German cities allow for the megastores that were integral to Wal-Mart’s growth in the United States. Zoning restrictions, labor laws, and regulated store hours further hampered the company’s success.1 Wal-Mart’s experience in Germany speaks as much to the globalization of consumer markets during the last quarter of the twentieth century as it does to the very limits of that process. Consumption has certainly become a more transnational phenomenon since the 1970s. Global financial markets and the

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tremendous expansion in foreign direct investments in recent decades have accelerated the growth of multinational corporations in the consumer goods sector. The advent of container shipping has dramatically lowered transportation costs and thus enabled a global consumer economy with tremendous regional divisions in production and consumption. New forms of communication technology, most prominently the internet, now allow not only for cross-border retailing in unprecedented forms but also for a global consumer discourse on products, brands, and consumption styles. While acknowledging some regional differences, marketing in areas ranging from fashion to beauty products has become thoroughly global in scope.2 Given such circumstances, does it still make sense to differentiate between American and European models of consumption? The decade of the 1970s has emerged as a historical caesura, marking the end of sustained postwar growth.3 In addition to the effects of globalism, American and West German societies underwent transformations that influenced their respective models of mass consumption. Most basic, perhaps, were changes in political ideology and economic thought. The rise of neoconservatism coalesced with the decline of Keynesian economics, fundamentally altering postwar assumptions about mass demand and consumption-driven growth. The decline of Fordist labor models, of stable and well-paying jobs, marked a further shift in both countries. The 1970s and early 1980s were also a transformative era for urban consumer spaces, drawing the United States somewhat closer to the European model. The “new urbanism” movement responded to concerns about metropolitan fragmentation and the quality of urban life. A growing awareness of the environmental costs of mass consumption led to renewed attention to mass transit projects. Such efforts, however, were overshadowed by an increasing individualization of consumer culture. For all the sense of crisis, consumption styles during the 1970s and ’80s became more diverse, atomistic, and openly materialistic. These trends can, with a grain of salt, be traced on both sides of the Atlantic. The postwar boom era came to an end with the 1973 oil crisis, stagnant growth, rising inflation, and unemployment. All of this cast a shadow on the hopes for a continually improving standard of living. Both in the United States and in West Germany, consumer expectations had been formed in an era of seemingly endless growth; this would pose difficult demands on both models of consumer modernity in the decades to come. By the 1970s, an exceptional historic episode, which engendered these two models of an “affluent society,” came to a close. Yet the changes of the 1970s posed challenges to both boomera consumption models in decidedly different ways. In the United States, the decline of purchasing power growth would only heighten previously masked

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social inequalities. The precarious status of many suburban middle-class consumers led them to demand increased disposable incomes in form of lower taxes, at the further expense of public consumption. The conservative turn in domestic politics would go hand in hand with more deregulation in the retail and credit markets and an increased reliance on consumer debt to compensate for reduced social spending. A parallel revolution in the consumer credit sector meant that by the 1980s even more consumption was financed on credit by consumers whose financial circumstances were often precarious. If anything, the defining characteristics of the American consumption model became more accentuated during the last quarter of the twentieth century. For West Germany, by contrast, maintaining its mass consumption model meant acceding to demands for the continuation and even expansion of public spending in face of dwindling public revenues. Although there was little conservative backlash against public consumption—in part because of the different relationship of middle-class consumers to public goods— critical voices became louder by the 1980s. Still, the social market economy’s mix of public and private consumption that had defined West Germany’s path to postwar affluence remained essentially intact, despite the difficulties of those decades. The affluent 1950s and ’60s produced no uniform model of “Americanized” mass consumption. To explain the historical development of two quite distinct models of mass consumer society, I have explored long-term historical paths that have informed the postwar organization of markets, the degree of state intervention and social expenditures, and the attitudes of consumers. Broad differences in postwar economic development, as well as contrasting racial and ethnic compositions and the geographic density, also pushed these countries in different directions. Equally important, the shaping of these two affluent societies depended on social choices made by policy makers and consumers. Both societies followed a distinct set of frequently contested priorities in negotiating the postwar politics of mass consumption, its social meaning, and its spatial expression. In the United States, a weak regulatory tradition (with the notable exceptions during the New Deal and war years) informed the postwar mass consumer society. The mass production model and the notion of a broad middle market were well entrenched. The commercial Keynesian response to the Depression and the postwar conversion to a peace economy could thus focus on a consensus around expanding private purchasing power and consumption. Low prices and affordable credit in an increasingly deregulated mass distribution market allowed for limits on direct public spending, as did indirect subsidies to the heads of households, mostly middle-class. American con-

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sumers embraced this emphasis on private purchasing power. They shared a consumer culture, based on bargain shopping and emulation, that promised social mobility. Moving to the suburbs and frequenting suburban shopping centers meant access to an expanding middle class for millions of American families in the 1950s and ’60s. The power of the American model lay not only in the heavily advertised abundance of more and more new cars and consumer durables to fill suburban homes. The core of the purchasing-power ideology, around which policy makers, industry, unions, and consumers rallied, was its promise of broad, democratic access to affluence and its perceived ability to overcome older social and cultural stratifications. The price, however, for achieving a middle-class consumer lifestyle—which would remain elusive for many households—entailed limited social services, public health, and pensions, and a level of consumer debt that has had serious economic and social consequences. Rather than living a hedonistic life of leisure, the imperative to acquire and maintain the “standard package of goods” would lead many Americans to work much longer hours than their Western European counterparts in the last part of the twentieth century. The premium on disposable income and the increasingly limited impact of public goods on middle-class consumers made them even more averse to taxation and public spending. Such limited support for public goods, in turn, hurt especially those in the lowest income bracket. The lack of public consumption alternatives to the marketplace made the inequalities of America’s mass consumption model even more severe; by the 1960s, it had started to impinge on the quality of urban life. In the absence of sustained public intervention in and regulation of both urban and retail development, many American communities began to suffer from the outflow of middle-class consumers as citizens and shoppers. The purchasing-power paradigm broke down in the 1970s. During the “stagflation” of that decade, promoting economic growth lost its connection to the potentially inflationary expansion of purchasing power. Expanding private consumption lost the progressive undertones it had acquired since the New Deal. Inflation pitted the interests of unionized workers ever more vigorously against those of middle-class consumers. The socially and racially segmented metropolitan spaces that had emerged since 1945 further weakened the link between private suburban consumption and wider notions of metropolitan citizenship. As grass-roots conservatism and tax revolts grew in the suburbs, urban America fell ever more deeply into crisis. Great Society proponents of public consumption had lost ground by the 1980s, as private consumption and private consumer markets became even more deregulated.

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The American model of a mass consumer society had come a long way from the social Keynesianist visions of liberal policy makers during World War II. West Germany entered the postwar period under very different circumstances. Establishing a mass consumer society after the war required overcoming severe shortages. It meant facing the challenges of reconstruction and a more direct cold war competition with the East German state. Among those dealing with this crisis were neoliberal modernizers such as Ludwig Erhard, who wanted to promote a more American-style model of marketbased private consumption while retaining traditions of public consumption and a guarded expansion of spending. Beyond the immediate past of the Nazi regime, Germany’s longstanding traditions of public intervention and public consumption remained more than mere vestiges in the postwar years. West Germany’s heavily diversified and quality-oriented industrial production regime and retailing landscape were less amenable to the expansion of private mass consumption than their American counterparts. Rather than a broad middle market of the American kind, the German consumer market had been highly class-stratified, and middle-class attitudes were historically ambivalent or even hostile to American-style material consumption. Some elements of the American model were adapted during the “economic miracle” of the 1950s and ’60s, as witnessed in the areas of industrial production, decartelization, and marketing. West Germans mass-produced cars such as the Volkswagen “beetle,” and some even embraced self-service stores. Yet none of this, I have shown, amounted to a true Americanization, for the new elements were embedded in a peculiarly German model of a mass consumer society. Erhard’s push for liberalization was kept in check by conservative forces and social-democratic pressures for expanded public consumption. Conservative defenders of the old Mittelstand no longer carried the weight they had in the interwar years, though they still managed to preserve some existing retail and urban structures. A middle-class bias against potential social changes associated with American-style “materialism” further hampered changes in retailing and growth of private consumption. The still influential bürgerlich consumption ethos in postwar West Germany reinforced the protection of traditional retailing. Its emphasis on saving and on buying only quality goods precluded the promise of social mobility through expanded consumption inherent in the American model. Instead of a broad middle class, class differences in consumption and milieu-specific consumption plateaus continued to mark West German society into the 1960s. Whereas large-scale suburbanization promoted the concept of a broad middle market in the United States, the West German retention of a more urban

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housing pattern and a continued division between a renting majority and a minority of homeowners reinforced this class stratification. The American credit-financed consumption pattern of home, car, and durables never gained quite the same importance in West Germany during the boom era; nor did material consumption offer as viable a path to attaining middle-class respectability as it did in the United States. Thus, despite liberalizing impulses, West German shoppers remained comparatively traditional and conservative with regard to both where they shopped and what goods they bought. The progressive promise of the purchasing power ideology never took hold as thoroughly among German policy makers and consumers. Instead, the West German model of the affluent society showed a much greater commitment to public goods. More direct public spending and numerous public services that provided an alternative to what was available in the private marketplace made the allocation of postwar prosperity more inclusionary than in America. The “conservative” nature of the West German welfare regime, which emphasized shared access across class lines much more than redistribution, also meant that vast segments of middle-class Germans profited from public consumption. This access, combined with a stronger preference (reinforced by public incentives) for urban residence and urban goods, prompted many middle-class Germans to willingly forgo disposable income in favor of a tax-financed expansion of public goods. When the Social-Democrat-led government formulated a consumer policy in the early 1970s that explicitly encompassed private and public consumption, the governing parties could count on widespread support for the “social market economy.” In many ways, the preservation of inner-city retailing and the development of Fußgängerzonen encapsulate the West German path to mass consumer modernity. Their creation speaks to the importance of public intervention and planning in postwar Germany, often in coordination with business interests. In their thrust, these pedestrian shopping streets aimed to balance commercialization and expanded private consumption with the conservative preservation of urban and retail structures. At the same time, the pedestrian zones signaled a commitment to public goods, public spaces, and an urban quality of life that both Social Democrats and more conservative Bürger could agree on. The spatial dimension was central to both consumption models; and consumer historians, my comparative perspective suggests, need to pay even greater attention to the changing spatial configuration of consumption and everyday life throughout the twentieth century. The stark differences between the two consumption models of the 1970s have abated somewhat. Deregulation, it is true, has made the market orienta-

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tion of the American model even stronger in many respects. Megaretailers such as Wal-Mart now exemplify the twenty-four / seven shopping experience to a new extreme. America’s massive private consumption has become increasingly import-dependent, which has not only caused deficits in the current account balance but has further undercut the Keynesian assumption that increased consumption would fuel American economic growth, insofar as a growing number of consumer goods are now produced elsewhere. Nevertheless, the United States has seen continuing efforts since the 1960s to revive at least some public spaces and to reinvest in certain goods such as mass transportation—if on a limited scale and with mixed results. In Germany, shopping centers and discounters for now coexist with more traditional downtown and neighborhood stores. Retail regulation has shown admirable staying power, but is now under review—in part because the consumer goods market has become thoroughly Europeanized over the last decades. Store hours, for example, lengthened greatly over the past fifteen years. The retail sector in Germany as well has seen significant concentration with the rise of conglomerates like Metro or the low-priced food discounter Aldi, which has been successful even in the US market. The traditional consumer ethos and the class distinctions in consumption habits described for the 1950s and ’60s have certainly lessened. If the bürgerlich consumption ethos is now weaker, it has been taken up by a new generation of educated middle-class consumers who still proclaim the value of quality goods and limited material consumption, albeit with a new environmental thrust. High public deficits have somewhat muted the call for expanded public goods since the heyday of social-democratic Keynesianism of the early 1970s. Neue Heimat, the once all-powerful, union-backed provider of public housing, faced bankruptcy in the 1980s. Most significantly, the collapse of the East German state put an end to the cold war rivalry that had helped to shape the West German model of mass consumption by spurring on competition over private and public goods. Yet many aspects of the postwar models are alive and well in the everyday experience of mass consumption in Germany and the United States. Important differences remain with regard to the balance between public and private spending. Public consumption in the areas discussed in this study remains a much more important part of the spending mix in Germany. Differences continue to exist in the public perception of consumption, in the role of saving and consumer credit for household spending, and in retailing and consumer housing choices. The mortgage and credit crisis that began in 2007 was felt less acutely by German than American consumers. To properly understand such divergences, I have argued, historians of consumption need to study private and public consumption within a holistic framework.

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The picture that ultimately emerges is decidedly a mixed one: transnational convergence is balanced by continued distinctions in cultural and economic terms; hegemonic Americanization has not occurred. Nor is this story likely to reach a conclusion, as the paths to mass consumption continue to be renegotiated on both sides of the Atlantic. In recent policy debates in Germany, the postwar model has been increasingly challenged. The heavy emphasis on public consumption is frequently discussed as too restrictive and expensive and ultimately a hindrance for Germany’s global competitiveness. Sluggish consumer spending has become vilified as a source for lagging growth for much of the past decade. In the United States, by contrast, the fundamental organization of its mass consumer society had long received comparatively less public scrutiny beyond the fringe of social and cultural criticism. Only in the wake of the crisis of 2007–8, amid mortgage defaults and personal bankruptcies, has the American consumption model received renewed attention. Heavy reliance on debt to finance consumption has been sharply criticized. Public investments and even mass transit ridership have found their way back into the evening news. A renaissance of Keynesian economics was accompanied by a revival of large-scale public spending programs—even though such efforts were quickly met with populist anti-tax backlash that resonated with financially pressured middle-class consumers. Still more fundamentally, perhaps, matters of resource and energy consumption have gained importance. Under the German mass consumption model, per-capita energy usage was only half that of the United States in 2004.4 The energy crisis of the 1970s, to be sure, had once before raised awareness of the limits of growth based on private mass consumption, but consumption patterns were hardly altered. Still, under recurring conditions of scarcity, public consumption and more traditional consumer attitudes may regain importance. By the same token, those expectations of continuous growth, innovation, and improvement formed in the exceptional postwar boom period could come under scrutiny. Despite challenges to both the German social market economy and the American private consumer market, the structures and choices that shaped divergences between German and American consumer modernity in the twentieth century remain relevant. For private consumer behavior in a globalized world, differences in politics, society, and space continue to matter.

Notes

Introduction 1. Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth Century Europe (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2005). On the global development of modern consumption, see also Peter Stearns, Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire (London: Routledge, 2001); John Brewer and Frank Trentmann (eds.), Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges (Oxford: Berg, 2006); and Hartmut Berghoff and Uwe Spiekermann (eds.), Decoding Consumerism (New York: Palgrave, 2012). 2. On postwar West German consumption see Michael Wildt, Am Beginn der “Konsumgesellschaft”: Mangelerfahrung, Lebenshaltung, Wohlstandshoffnung in Westdeutschland in den fünfziger Jahren (Hamburg: Ergebnisse, 1994); Axel Schildt, Moderne Zeiten: Freizeit, Massenmedien und Zeitgeist in der Bundesrepublik der 50er Jahre (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 1995); Arne Andersen, Der Traum vom Guten Leben: Alltags- und Konsumgeschichte vom Wirtschaftswunder bis heute (Frankfurt: Campus, 1997); Axel Schildt and Arnold Sywottek (eds.), Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau: Die westdeutsche Gesellschaft der 50er Jahre (Bonn: Dietz, 1993); Axel Schildt, Detlev Siegfried, and Karl Christian Lammers (eds.), Dynamische Zeiten: Die 1960er Jahre in beiden deutschen Gesellschaften (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 2000); and Alfred Reckendrees (ed.), Die bundesdeutsche Massenkonsumgesellschaft 1950–2000, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook 2007 / 2. See also Paul Betts, The Authority of Everyday Objects: A Cultural History of West German Industrial Design (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); and Detlef Siegfried, Time Is on My Side: Konsum und Politik in der Westdeutschen Jugendkultur der 1960er Jahre (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006). More generally, see also Wolfgang König, Geschichte der Konsumgesellschaft (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2000); Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Konsum und Handel: Europa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002); Michael Prinz (ed.), Der lange Weg in den Überfluss: Anfänge und Entwicklung der Konsumgesellschaft seit der Vormoderne (Paderborn: Schoeningh, 2003); Christian Kleinschmidt, Konsumgesellschaft (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008); and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Claudius Torp (eds.), Die Konsumgesellschaft in Deutschland 1890–1990: Ein Handbuch (Frankfurt: Campus, 2009). 3. Bundesministerium für Raumordnung, Das Wohnen in der Bundesrepublik (Bonn, 1975), pp. 60–61. 4. The literature on postwar American consumption is vast. See Lizabeth Cohen, A Consum-

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er’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2003); Gary Cross, An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); and Meg Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). See also Andrew Hurley, Diners, Bowling Alleys and Trailer Parks: Chasing the American Dream in the Postwar Consumer Culture (New York: Basic Books, 2001); Marina Moskowitz, Standard of Living: The Measure of the Middle Class in Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); and Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 5. On transatlantic comparisons, see Susan Strasser et al. (eds.), Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998); Gary Cross, Time and Money: The Making of Consumer Culture (London: Routledge 1993); and Avner Offer, The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain Since 1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 6. For a popular critique of global consumption, see e.g. Naomi Klein, No Logo (New York: Picador, 2002). 7. A good overview of recent scholarship on the transnational turn in the historical profession in the United States and elsewhere is Ian Tyrrell, “Reflections on the Transnational Turn in United States History: Theory and Practice,” Journal of Global History 4 (2009): 453–474. A recent transnational history of the consumer movement is Matthew Hilton, Prosperity for All: Consumer Activism in an Era of Globalization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009). 8. See Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge: Belknap, 1998) for a classic study of transatlantic exchanges in a variety of areas from housing to urban utilities. 9. Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997). See also Hartmut Kaelble, “Europäische Besonderheiten des Massenkonsums, 1950–1990,” in Hannes Siegrist, Hartmut Kaelble, and Jürgen Kocka (eds.), Europäische Konsumgeschichte: Zur Gesellschafts- und Kulturgeschichte des Konsums (Frankfurt: Campus, 1997), pp. 169–203. 10. David Steigerwald, “All Hail to the Republic of Choice: Consumer History as Contemporary Thought,’” Journal of American History (2006): 385–403, cautions especially against an overemphasis on consumer agency, which loses sight of the very real restraints of the “plastic cage of consumerism.” 11. On the boom in Western Europe, see Hartmut Kaelble (ed.), Der Boom 1948–1973: Gesellschaftliche und wirtschaftliche Folgen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und in Europa (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1992). 12. Sheryl Kroen, “Negotiations with the American Way: The Consumer and the Social Contract in Post-war Europe,” in Brewer and Trentmann, Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives, pp. 251–278, recently suggested a widely successful transmission of the American consumption model to West Germany in the wake of the Marshall Plan. Lizabeth Cohen more cautiously discusses the postwar export of America’s “consumer’s republic” in “The Consumer’s Republic: An American Model for the World,” in Sheldon Garon and Patricia Maclachlan (eds.), The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), pp. 45–62. 13. See Ralph Willett, The Americanization of Germany 1945–49 (London: Routledge, 1989); Michael Ermath, America and the Shaping of German Society, 1945–1955 (Oxford: Berg, 1993);

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Alf Lüdtke, Inge Marssolek, and Adelheid v. Saldern (eds.), Amerikanisierung: Traum und Alptraum im Deutschland des 20. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1996); Konrad Jarausch and Hannes Siegrist (eds.), Amerikanisierung und Sowjetisierung in Deutschland 1945–1970 (Frankfurt: Campus, 1997). On Americanization in business, see e.g. Volker Berghahn, The Americanisation of West German Industry, 1945–1973 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Christian Kleinschmidt, Der produktive Blick: Wahrnehmung amerikanischer und japanischer Management- und Produktionsmethoden durch deutsche Unternehmer 1950–1985 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002); and Harm Schröter, Americanization of the European Economy: A Compact Survey of American Economic Influence in Europe since the 1880s (Boston: Springer, 2005). On the Americanization of everyday life, see Kasper Maase, Bravo Amerika: Erkundungen zur Jugendkultur der Bundesrepublik in den fünfziger Jahren (Hamburg: Junius, 1992); Kaspar Maase, “Establishing Cultural Democracy: Youth, ‘Americanization,’ and the Irresistible Rise of Popular Culture,” in Hanna Schissler (ed.), The Miracle Years: A Cultural History of West Germany 1949–1968 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 428–450; and Uta Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). For West German views of American culture in the postwar years, see also Alexander Stephan (ed.), Americanization and Anti-Americanism: The German Encounter with American Culture after 1945 (New York: Berghahn, 2005); and Axel Schildt, Zwischen Abendland und Amerika: Studien zur westdeutschen Ideenlandschaft der 50er Jahre (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999). For a recent review article, Marcus Payk, “Amerikanisierung in Deutschland und Europa,” http: // hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de / rezensionen / 2009-1-031. 14. See e.g. Anselm Döring-Manteuffel, Wie westlich sind die Deutschen? Amerikanisierung und Westernisierung im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1999). On Western European consumption patterns, see also Sabine Haustein, “Westeuropäische Annäherung durch Konsum seit 1945,” in Hartmut Kaelble and Jürgen Schriewer (eds.), Gesellschaften im Vergleich: Forschungen aus Sozial- und Geschichtswissenschaften (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999), pp. 353–390; and Sabine Haustein, Vom Mangel zum Massenkonsum: Deutschland, Frankreich und Großbritannien im Vergleich, 1945–1970 (Frankfurt: Campus, 2007). 15. See Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (ed.), Multiple Modernities (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002). On Germany and the United States in particular, see Christof Mauch and Kiran Klaus Patel, The United States and Germany During the Twentieth Century: Competition and Convergence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and Mary Nolan, “Varieties of Capitalism und Versionen der Amerikanisierung,” in Berghahn and Vitolis (eds.), Gibt es einen deutschen Kapitalismus? Tradition und globale Perspektiven der sozialen Marktwirtschaft (Frankfurt: Campus, 2006), pp. 96–110. On a long continuity of a more “coordinated” or “Rheinish” model of capitalism in twentieth-century Germany, see Werner Abelshauser, Kulturkampf: Der deutsche Weg in die neue Wirtschaft und die amerikanische Herausforderung (Berlin: Kadmos, 2003). 16. See e.g. Walt Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960). 17. On the politics of consumption, see generally Martin Daunton and Matthew Hilton (eds.), The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America (Oxford: Berg, 2001); Hartmut Berghoff (ed.), Konsumpolitik: die Regulierung des privaten Verbrauchs im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1999); and Gunnar Trumbull, Consumer Capitalism: Politics, Product Markets, and Firm Strategy in France and Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).

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18. Speech by Philipp Rosenthal, “Schiller ist der Verbraucherminister,” October 21, 1971, in BuArch B 102 / 168533. 19. On this point, see also Frank Trentmann, “Beyond Consumerism: New Historical Perspectives on Consumption,” Journal of Contemporary History 39 (2004): 373–401. 20. On the history of cold war consumerism, see David Crew (ed.), Consuming Germany in the Cold War (New York: Berg, 2003); and Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann (eds.), Cold War Kitchen: Americanization, Technology, and European Users (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009). See also Katherine Pence, “The Myth of a Suspended Present: Prosperity’s Painful Shadow in 1950s,” in Paul Betts and Greg Eghigian (eds.), Pain and Prosperity: Reconsidering Twentieth-Century German History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 137–159; and a review essay by Alexander Nützenadel, “Consumerism, Material Culture and Economic Reconstruction in Cold War Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History 42 (2007): 387–396. 21. See e.g. Jonathan Zatlin, Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Eli Rubin, Synthetic Socialism: Plastics and Dictatorship in the German Democratic Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); and Kathy Pence and Paul Betts (eds.), Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008). 22. Suburban history has become a vibrant subfield of postwar American political and consumer history; see e.g. Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Becky Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles 1920–1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); and Matthew Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 23. The environmental aspect of mass consumption has attracted increasing attention; see e.g. David Nye, Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998); Christian Pfister (ed.), Das 1950er Syndrom: Der Weg in die Konsumgesellschaft (Bern: Haupt, 1995); and Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 24. See L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic; and Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics. On the impact of the mass distribution economy on recent brands of American conservatism, see also Shane Hamilton, Trucking Country: The Road to America’s Wal-Mart Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); and Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of a Free Christian Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). 25. See Hartmut Kaelble (ed.), The European Way: European Societies in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004); and Jeremy Rifkin, The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream (New York: Tarcher, 2004). 26. See Garon and Mclaughlin, The Ambivalent Consumer; and Sheldon Garon, “Japan’s Post-war ‘Consumer Revolution,’ or Striking a ‘Balance’ between Consumption and Saving,” in Brewer and Trentmann, Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives, pp. 189–217. 27. On the notion of “social citizenship,” see T. H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship, and Social Development (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1973). See also Frank Trentmann, “Bread, Milk, and Democracy: Consumption and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Britain,” in Daunton and Hilton, The Politics of Consumption, pp. 129–63. 28. See e.g. L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic; Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1995); and Lawrence Glickman, A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society (Ithaca: Cornell University

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Press, 1997). See also Robert Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); and Kathleen Donohue, Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Idea of the Consumer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). 29. See e.g. A. J. Nicholls, Freedom with Responsibility: The Social Market Economy in Germany, 1918–1963 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); and James Van Hook, Rebuilding Germany: The Creation of the Social Market Economy, 1945–1957 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). On the role of public goods in Germany’s postwar consumer society, see Arnold Sywottek, “From Starvation to Excess? Trends in the Consumer Society from the 1940s to the 1970s,” in Schissler, The Miracle Years, pp. 341–358. 30. The gender and family implications of consumption in West Germany are explored in Erica Carter, How German Is She? Postwar West German Reconstruction and the Consuming Woman (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997); Katherine Pence, “From Rations to Fashions: The Gendered Politics of East and West German Consumption, 1945–1961” (diss., University of Michigan, 1999); and Jennifer Loehlin, From Rugs to Riches: Housework, Consumption, and Modernity in Germany (New York: Berg, 1999). For the United States, see e.g. Elaine T. May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988); Lynn Spigel, Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); and Nina Leibman, Living Room Lectures: The Fifties Family in Film and Television (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995). 31. For the impact of changes in consumption on class relations, see Victoria de Grazia and Lizabeth Cohen, “Class and Consumption,” International Labor and Working-Class History 55 (Spring 1999). 32. On this concept, see Manfred Hettling and Bernd Ulrich (eds.), Bürgertum nach 1945 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2005); and Jens Hacke, Philosophie der Bürgerlichkeit: Die liberal-konservative Begründung der Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006). 33. On the history of consumer credit, see Lendol Calder, Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1999); and Martha Olney, Buy Now, Pay Later: Advertising, Credit, and Consumer Durables in the 1920s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); and for the postwar period, see especially Louis Hyman, Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). For Germany, see Peter Horvath, “Die Teilzahlungskredite als Begleiterscheinung des deutschen Wirtschaftswunders,” Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 37 (1992): 19–55; Michael Wildt, “Amerika auf Raten: Konsum und Teilzahlungskredit im Westdeutschland der fünfziger Jahre,” in Heinz Bude and Bernd Greiner (eds.), Westbindungen: Amerika in der Bundesrepublik (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1999), pp. 202–230; Jan Logemann, “Different Paths to Mass Consumption: Consumer Credit in the United States and West Germany during the 1950s and ’60s,” Journal of Social History 41(2008): 525–559; Britta Stücker, “Konsum auf Kredit in der Bundesrepublik,” in Economic History Yearbook 2007 / 2, pp. 63–88; and Sabine Effosse and Isabelle Gaillard (eds.), “Consommer à crédit en Europe au XXe siècle,” Entreprises et Histoire 59 (2010). 34. See Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press:, 1985); Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (New York: Basic Books, 2000); Margaret Marsh, Suburban Lives (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990); Barbara Kelly, Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993). On transportation see

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e.g. Tom Lewis, Divided Highways: Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life (New York: Viking, 1997); Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Vintage Books 1974); and Sam Warner, Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870–1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962). See also Glenn Yago, The Decline of Transit: Urban Transportation in German and US Cities, 1900–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 35. See e.g. Tilman Harlander (ed.), Villa und Eigenheim: Suburbaner Städtebau in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 2001); Werner Polster and Klaus Voy, “Eigenheim und Automobil: Materielle Fundamente der Lebensweise,” in Klaus Voy, Werner Polster, and Claus Thomasberger (eds.), Gesellschaftliche Transformationsprozesse und materielle Lebensweise: Beiträge zur Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Marburg: Metropolis, 1991), pp. 263–320; Adelheid v. Saldern, “The Suburbanization of German and American Cities,” GHI Bulletin 38 (Spring 2006): 33–49; and Klaus Brake, Jens Dangschat, and Günther Herfert (eds.), Suburbanisierung in Deutschland: Aktuelle Tendenzen (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 2001). On postwar reconstruction, see e.g. Jeffry Diefendorf, In the Wake of the War: The Reconstruction of German Cities after World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). On public housing, see Günther Schulz, Wohnungspolitik im Sozialstaat: Deutsche und europäische Lösungen 1918–1960 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1993); and Georg Wagner, Sozialstaat gegen Wohnungsnot: Wohnraumbewirtschaftung und Sozialer Wohnungsbau im Bund und Nordrhein-Westfalen 1950–1970 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoenigh, 1995). On public transportation, see Hans-Liudger Dienel and Barabara Schmucki (eds.), Mobilität für Alle: Geschichte des öffentlichen Personennahverkehrs in der Stadt zwischen technischem Fortschritt und sozialer Pflicht (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1997); Barbara Schmucki, Der Traum vom Verkehrsfluss: Städtische Verkehrsplanung seit 1945 im deutsch-deutschen Vergleich (Frankfurt: Campus, 2001); and Dietmar Klenke, Bundesdeutsche Verkehrspolitik und Motorisierung: konfliktträchtige Weichenstellungen in den Jahren des Wiederaufstiegs (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1993). 36. Alexander Sedlmaier, “From Department Store to Shopping Mall: New Research on the Transnational History of Large-scale Retail,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte (2005 / 2), pp. 9–16. 37. On mass distribution retailing in postwar America, see Hamilton, Trucking Country and Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart. On American retail landscapes, see Richard Longstreth, The Drive-In, the Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial Space in Los Angeles, 1914–1941 (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999); and Nancy Cohen, America’s Marketplace: The History of Shopping Centers (Lyme, CT.: Greenwich Publishing Group, 2002); Jeffrey Hardwick, Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of an American Dream (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2004); Robert M. Fogelson, Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880–1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); and Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). For Germany, see Jan Logemann, “Einkaufsparadies und ‘Gute Stube’: Fußgängerzonen in Westdeutschen Innenstädten der 1950er bis 1970er Jahre,” in Adelheid v. Saldern (ed.), Stadt und Kommunikation in bundesrepublikanischen Umbruchszeiten (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2006), pp. 103–122. Introduction to Part One 1. See Christoph Nonn, Verbraucherprotest und Parteiensystem im wilhelminischen Deutschland (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1996); Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics; and Charles McGovern, Sold

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American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 2. See Abelshauser, Kulturkampf; and Berghahn and Vitolis, Gibt es einen deutschen Kapitalismus? 3. See de Grazia, Irresistible Empire. 4. On growing “consumer” expectations toward the state since the late nineteenth century, see Greg Eghigian, Making Security Social: Disability, Insurance, and the Birth of the Social Entitlement State in Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); and Belinda Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 5. See e.g. Yung-Sun Hong, Welfare, Modernity and the Weimar State 1919–1933 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); and David Crew, Germans on Welfare: From Weimar to Hitler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) 6. See Kleinschmidt, Konsumgesellschaft, pp. 91–97. 7. Jennifer Klein, For All These Rights: Business, Labor and the Shaping of America’s PublicPrivate Welfare State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). 8. Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics. 9. See Cross, All-Consuming Century, for a comprehensive overview. See also Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989); William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Pantheon, 1993); and Richard Tedlow, New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America (New York: Basic Books, 1990). For the impact of professional advertising on modern US consumption, see Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic Books, 1994); and Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 10. See Olney, Buy Now, Pay Later; and Calder, Financing the American Dream. 11. On the negotiations of the “Fordist” consumption regime and the trade-offs it involved, see e.g. Glickman, Living Wage, Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Cross, Time and Money. 12. See Geoffrey Crossick and Serge Jaumain, Cathedrals of Consumption: The European Department Store, 1850–1939 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999); Uwe Spiekermann, Basis der Konsumgesellschaft:Enststehung und Entwicklung des Modernen Kleinhandels in Deutschland, 1850–1914 (Munich: Beck, 1999); and Detlef Briesen, Warenhaus, Massenkonsum und Sozialmoral: Zur Geschichte der Konsumkritik im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Campus, 2001). 13. See esp. Briesen, Warenhaus. 14. Hartmut Berghoff, “Marketing im 20. Jahrhundert: Absatzinstrument—Managementphilosophie—universelle Sozialtechnik,” in Hartmut Berghoff (ed.), Marketinggeschichte: Die Genese einer modern Sozialtechnik (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag 2007); pp. 11–58. 15. On anti-American attitudes in the Weimar republic, see Adelheid von Saldern, “Überfremdungsängste: Gegen die Amerikanisierung der deutschen Kultur in den zwanziger Jahren,”in Lüdtke, Marssolek, and Saldern, Amerikanisierung: Traum und Alptraum, pp. 213–244. 16. Mary Nolan, Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 17. On advertising, see Alexander Schlug, “Missionare der globalen Konsumkultur: Corporate Identity und Absatzstrategien amerikanischer Unternehmen in Deutschland im frühen 20. Jahrhundert,” in Wolfgang Hardtwig (ed.), Politische Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit

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1918–1939 (Göttingen: Vanderhoek 2005); and Ross, Corey, “Visions of Prosperity: The Americanization of Advertising in Interwar Germany,” in Swett, Wiesen, and Zatlin, Selling Modernity: Advertising in Twentieth-Century Germany (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 52–77. 18. Davis, Home Fires Burning, shows how consumers as a result of the shortages and conflicts of World War I increasingly looked to the state to represent their interests, a task on which the Weimar state, plagued by economic crises, frequently failed to deliver. 19. For “underconsumption” as a major contributing cause to the Great Depression, see e.g. Robert McElvaine, The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941 (New York: Times Books, 1984; 2nd edition, 1993). 20. Jordan Schwarz, The New Dealers: Power Politics in the Age of Roosevelt (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1993). By contrast, Collins, More, emphasizes the more contradictory nature of the New Deal and sees a conscious growth strategy emerge only by WWII. 21. For a discussion of electrification and home-improvement programs of the 1930s, see Ronald Tobey, Technology as Freedom: The New Deal and the Electrical Modernization of the American Home (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 22. Schwartz, New Dealers, chap. 6. Mark Leff, The Limits of Symbolic Reform: The New Deal and Taxation, 1933–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), contends that New Deal tax reform remained largely “symbolic” with few redistributive effects, and shows that especially early on low-income consumers, the “forgotten man,” bore the brunt of expanded regressive excise taxation of “luxury goods.” 23. On this theme, see e.g. McGovern, Sold American, chap. 9. 24. On the ascendancy of the purchasing power paradigm in 1930s liberalism, see Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics; and Donohue, Freedom From Want. 25. L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, chap. 1. 26. Most recently, see Jonathan Wiesen, Creating the Nazi Marketplace: Commerce and Consumption in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 27. Albert Ritschl, “NS Wirtschaftsideologie—Modernisierungsprogramm oder reaktionäre Utopie?” in Michael Prinz and Rainer Zitelmann (eds.), Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1991), pp. 48–70. A central aspect of Nazi infrastructure development was the highway program. See Frank Becker, “Autobahnen, Automobilität: Die USA, Italien und Deutschland im Vergleich,”in Hardtwig, Politische Kulturgeschichte, pp. 23–59. 28. See e.g. Dietrich Schäfer, “Amerikanismus im Dritten Reich,” in Prinz and Zitelmann, Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung, pp. 199–215; and Detlef Junker, “The Continuity of Ambivalence: German Views of America, 1933–1945,” in David Barclay and Elisabeth GlaserSchmidt (eds.), Transatlantic Images and Perceptions: Germany and America since 1776 (Washington: German Historical Institute, 1997), pp. 243–263. See also Jonathan Wiesen, “Massenkonsum und Unternehmenskultur im Dritten Reich,” in Berghahn and Vitolis, Gibt es einen deutschen Kapitalismus? pp. 129–142. 29. See Briesen, Warenhaus, pp. 178–195. 30. De Grazia, Irresistible Empire, pp. 167–168 and. 275–279. See also Hartmut Berghoff, “‘Times Change and We Change with Them’: The German advertising industry in the Third Reich—Between Professional Self-Interest and Political Repression,” in Roy Church and Andrew Godley (ed.), The Emergence of Modern Marketing (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp. 128–147, who emphasizes the limited effect and modernization achieved by Nazi regulatory policies in advertising.

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31. See Wolfgang König, Volkswagen, Volksempfänger, Volksgemeinschaft: “Volksprodukte” im Dritten Reich, vom Scheitern einer nationalsozialistischen Konsumgesellschaft (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004); and Wolfgang König, “Das Scheitern der nationalsozialistischen Konsumgesellschaft: ‘Volksprodukte’ in Politik, Propaganda und Gesellschaft des ‘Dritten Reichs,’ ” Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 48 (2003): 131–163. 32. Shelley Baranowski, Strength through Joy: Consumerism and Mass Tourism in the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 33. See Georg Bergler, Die Entwicklung der Verbrauchsforschung in Deutschland und die Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung bis zum Jahre 1945 (Kallmütz: Lassleben, 1959). 34. See Werner Durth, “Architektur und Stadtplanung im Dritten Reich,” in Prinz and Zitelmann (ed.) Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung, pp. 139–171; and Tilman Harlander, Hitlers sozialer Wohnungsbau 1940–1945 (Hamburg: Christians, 1986). 35. See Nancy Reagin, “Comparing Apples and Oranges: Housewives and the Politics of Consumption in Weimar and Nazi Germany,” in Strasser et al., Getting and Spending, pp. 162–184. 36. Hartmut Berghoff, “Enticement and Deprivation: The Regulation of Consumption in Pre-War Nazi Germany,” in Daunton and Hilton, The Politics of Consumption, pp. 165–184. 37. Pamela Swett suggests that wartime brand advertising worked to heighten expectation of the postwar return of a plethora of consumer consumer goods to store shelves. See Swett, Wiesen, and Zatlin, Selling Modernity, p. 10. 38. See Götz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007); Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), on Nazi social programs and their racial aspects. On the longer trajectory of the German social security state, see Greg Eghigian, Making Security Social. 39. On mass consumption in Britain and France after the war and their respective paths vis-à-vis the American model, see e.g. James Obelkevich, “Consumption,” in James Obelkevich and Peter Catterall (eds.), Understanding Post-war British Society (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 141–154; John Benson, The Rise of Consumer Society in Britain 1880–1980 (London: Longman, 1994); and Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 40. For examples on the burgeoning literature on East German consumption, see Ina Merkel, “Consumer Culture in the GDR, or How the Struggle for Antimodernity was Lost on the Battle Ground of Consumer Culture,” in Strasser et al., Getting and Spending, pp. 281–299; Mark Landsman, Dictatorship and Demand: The Politics of Consumerism in East Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); and Jennifer Schevardo, Vom Wert des Notwendigen: Preispolitik und Lebensstandard in der DDR der fünfziger Jahre (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2006). Chapter One 1. On the importance of economics as a discipline in postwar politics, see Alexander Nützenadel, Stunde der Ökonomen: Wissenschaft, Politik und Expertenkultur in der Bundesrepublik 1949–1974 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005). 2. Consumer historians have only recently paid more systematic attention to the relationship between public and private consumption, and British historians have been especially active in this. See e.g. Mark Bevir and Frank Trentmann (eds.), Governance, Consumers and Citizens: Agency and Resistance in Contemporary Politics (London: Palgrave, 2007). For a theoretical ap-

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proach, see also Ben Fine, Whither the Welfare State: Public Versus Private Consumption? (London: Department of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2000). 3. Calculations based on Peter Flora, Franz Kraus, and Winfried Pfennig, State, Economy and Society in Western Europe 1815–1975, vol. 2 (Chicago: St. James Press, 1987), p. 380, for Germany (in constant prices); and Susan Carter et al. (eds.), Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition Online (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Series Ca9-19, 3-26, for the United States (in constant 1996 dollars). 4. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Historical Statistics, 1960–1995 (Paris, 1997), p. 70. 5. Ibid., pp. 71–72. 6. See e.g. Kroen, “Negotiations with the American Way.” 7. The argument for the postwar “Americanization” of European consumption regimes is most prominently made—in a nuanced form—by Victoria de Grazia. See esp. “Amerikanisierung und wechselnde Leitbilder der Konsum-Moderne (consumer-modernity) in Europa,” in Siegrist, Kaelble, and Kocka, Europäische Konsumgeschichte, pp. 109–137; and de Grazia, “Changing Consumption Regimes in Europe 1930–1970: Comparative Perspectives on the Distribution Problem,” in Strasser et al., Getting and Spending, pp. 59–83. 8. L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, passim. On the shift in American liberalism and the growth consensus, see also Brinkley, The End of Reform, and Collins, More. 9. Thomas H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship, and Social Development (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2nd ed. 1973), pp. 256–276. 10. See Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, chap. 11. 11. Stuart Chase, Goals for America: A Budget of Our Needs and Resources (1942; New York: Greenwood Press, 2nd ed. 1968), pp. 3–4. 12. Ibid., pp. 12–13. 13. On the history of the NRPB, see Charles Merriam, “The National Resources Planning Board: A Chapter in American Planning Experience,” American Political Science Review 38 (1944): 1075–1088. 14. See John Jeffries, “The ‘New” New Deal: FDR and American Liberalism, 1937–1945,” in Political Science Quarterly 105 (1990): 397–418. 15. See e.g. Alvin Hansen, After the War—Full Employment (Washington: NRPB, 1942); and NRPB, After the War—Toward Security (Washington, 1942). 16. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Annual Message to Congress, January 6, 1941. See also Keith Olson, “The American Beveridge Plan,” in Mid-America 65 (1983): 87–99, here p. 91. 17. Sir William Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services (London, 1942). 18. Henry Hazlitt, “To Set Men Free from Want,” New York Times, January 3, 1943. 19. “A Beveridge Plan for U.S. is outlined by Miss Perkins,” New York Times, January 20, 1943, and “Action Urged Now on Security Plan,” New York Times February 15, 1943. 20. “Security, Work and Relief Policies,” Message from the President of the United States, March 10, 1943. 21. See NRPB, After the War, p. 17. 22. Eveline Burns, “New Perspectives in Social Welfare,” Survey (January 1944): 15–17. The reconceptualization of transfer recipients as “consumers” had already been part of New Deal policies during the 1930s. See Rachel Moran, “Consuming Relief: Foodstamps and the New Welfare of the New Deal,” Journal of American History 97 (2011), pp. 1001-1022. 23. Hansen, After the War, p. 1.

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24. Ibid., pp. 4–5. 25. See e.g. “Parkinson Criticizes Beveridge Plan,” New York Times, February 19, 1943; and “Beveridge Plan Seen as Curb to Liberty,” New York Times, April 7, 1943. 26. “Lewis Scorns Plan for Social ‘Utopia,’ ” New York Times, March 17, 1943. 27. “Abolition of NRPB,” New York Times, June 3, 1943. A growing Republican minority in the house and speaker Sam Rayburn, who was “not a champion” of further social legislation, were credited with this move. 28. Chase, Goals for America, p. 20. To be sure, Americans by 1943 were more reserved than their British counterparts about the desirability of their respective “Beveridge Plans.” While 57% of British respondents called for sweeping social reform, 58% of Americans were in favor of a return to prewar “normalcy.” See George Gallup, “U.S. Voters Seen Cool to Reform,” New York Times, August 22, 1943. 29. “Miss Perkins Maps Postwar Economy,” New York Times, June 2, 1944. 30. Most famously UAW’s Walther Reuther called on General Motors to open its books On postwar labor history, see Nelson Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining: Postwar Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy,” in Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (eds.), The Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 122–152. 31. See Brinkley, The End of Reform, pp. 201–226. 32. See “Lower Prices, Rise in Wages Forecast,” New York Times, January 19, 1947; and “Ford’s Price Cut Viewed as an Economic Challenge,” New York Times, January 19, 1947. 33. See Council of Economic Advisers, Second Annual Report to the President (Washington, December 1947), pp. 1–6. 34. Secretary of the Treasury Frederick Vinson, cited in Alvin Hansen, Economic Policy and Full Employment (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1947), p. 166. 35. CEA, Second Annual Report, p. 19. 36. The promises of abundance entailed in the CEA’s agenda were in part a reaction to “social Keynesianist” notions of full employment and mass consumption on the left, outlined for example by Henry Wallace’s 1948 “Sixty Million Job’s” campaign. See “Wallace Explains Full Employment,” New York Times, September 6, 1945. 37. See e.g. Cynthia Henthorn, From Submarines to Suburbs: Selling a Better America, 1939– 1959 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006). 38. Hansen, Economic Policy and Full Employment, pp. 20–24. 39. Ibid., pp. 24–28. 40. Ibid., pp. 30–31. 41. Council of Economic Advisers, Business and Government: Fourth Annual Report to the President (Washington, December 1949), p. 6. 42. Ibid., p. 10. For his stance on Keynesianism and regulatory controls in general, see pp. 5–13. 43. Hansen, Economic Policy, p. 131. 44. Council of Economic Advisers, The Economics of National Defense: Fifth Annual Report to the President (Washington, December 1950), pp. 19–20. 45. Ibid., pp. 19 and 23. 46. See Lester Brune, “Guns and Butter: The Pre-Korean War Dispute Over Budget Allocations,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 48 (1989): 357–371. On the concept of military Keynesianism and its role in postwar America, see Michael Sherry, In the Shadow of War: The United States Since the 1930s (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

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47. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), pp. 182–185. On the links between Keyserling, the CEA, and the new liberalism, see Alonzo Hamby, “The Vital Center, the Fair Deal and the Quest for a Liberal Political Economy,” The American Historical Review 77 (1972): 653–678, here p. 678 On postwar liberalism, see also Richard Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1985). 48. See Robert Griffith, “Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,” American Historical Review 87 (1982): 87–122, and Robert Collins, More, chap. 2. 49. “Excerpts from Eisenhower’s Report to Congress on the Economic Condition of the Nation,” New York Times, January 29, 1954. 50. Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, pp. 246–261, points out that inflation was seen as a prominent problem by the American public during the 1950s which, in her interpretation, worked to undermine the purchasing power consensus as it pitted the interests of unionized workers against middle-class consumers. 51. “The Relationship of Prices to Economic Stability and Growth: Commentaries Submitted to by Economists Appearing before the Joint Economic Committee,” October 31, 1958 (CIS-NO: J0041). 52. Keyserling compared the “tight money” policy of the late 1950s to the strict goldstandard policy of the 1890s and likened his stand to William Jennings Bryan’s 1896 “Cross of Gold” speech. Conference on Economic Progress, Key Policies for Full Employment: Expand Consumption (Washington, 1962), pp. 57–59. See also Alvin Hansen, Economic Issues of the 1960s (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960). 53. Rationalisierungs-Kuratorium der Deutschen Wirtschaft (RKW), Der Verbraucher als Partner der Wirtschaft (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1958), p. 8. 54. On the centrality of the “consumer,” see for example Joseph Loftus, “Spending of Consumers is a Key—And Puzzle,” New York Times, October 7, 1951; Helen Miller, “Key to the Economy—The Consumer,” New York Times, July 25, 1954; Edwin Dale, “The Consumer Plays a Big Role in Recession,” New York Times, May 18, 1958. 55. See David Hamilton, The Consumer in Our Economy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), pp. 348–52. For an account of the OPA and its postwar demise see L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, pp. 65–75 and 100–109; and Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, chaps. 5 and 6. 56. “Investigation of Reconversion Policy of Office of Price Administration,” Report of the Select Committee to Investigate Executive Agencies, October 22, 1945 (SERIALSET-ID: 10935), p. 2. 57. The National Association of Manufactures had run a nationwide advertising campaign in 1946 calling for the end of price controls. For administration officials calling for modernized mass distribution, see “Urges Mass Sales to Avert Slump,” New York Times, May 23, 1946. The 1946 Price Control Extension Act transferred the responsibility for phasing out price controls to the Price Decontrol Board. 58. “Consumer Resistance,” New York Times, November 13, 1946. While most price controls were eliminated in 1946, OPA itself continued to exist until May of 1947. 59. As Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, pp. 30–38, points out, an American Fair Trade League had been formed already prior to World War I. Fair trade was, however, “never an easy sell to consumers,” and only the Great Depression temporarily changed this situation. See also Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed, chap. 8. 60. On the history of Fair Trade, see P.W.S. Andrews and Frank Friday, Fair Trade: Resale

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Price Maintenance Re-Examined (London: McMillan, 1960); and Hamilton, The Consumer in Our Economy, pp. 374–379. 61. William Greiner et al., Regulation of Retail Competition in Washington (University of Washington Bureau of Business Research, January 1963), p. 47. 62. See “Amending Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, Authorizing Resale Price Maintenance (‘Fair Trade’),” Report from the Committee of Interstate and Foreign Commerce to accompany H.R. 1253, June 9, 1959 (SERIAL-SET-ID: 12160 H.rp.467); and Hamilton, The Consumer in Our Economy, p. 375. 63. See e.g. “Discount House Operations,” Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Senate Select Committee on Small Business, June 1958 (CIS-NO: 85 S1304-1); and “The Impact of Suburban Shopping Centers on Independent Retailers,” Report of the Senate Select Committee on Small Business, January 5, 1960 (SERIAL-SET-ID: 12153 S.rp.1016). 64. Small Business Administration, Third Semi-Annual Report (Washington, January 31, 1955), pp. 27–28. 65. See Rüdiger Schoneweg, Ladenzeiten im Einzelhandel: Entwicklungen und Probleme (Opladen: West-deutscher Verlag, 1955), pp. 122–134; David Luck, Store Hours for Shopping Goods Retailers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1950); and George Plant, “Current Trends in Store and Employee Hours,” Stores (March 1950), pp. 21–26. 66. See Greiner et al., Regulation of Retail Competition, p. 58. 67. The number of state blue laws declined significantly after 1970. See David Laband, Blue Laws: The History, Economics, and Politics of Sunday-Closing Laws (Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1987), pp. 39–40 and 162. On the relaxation on Sunday shopping prohibitions in the context of changing cultural attitudes toward the Sunday in general, see Alexis McCrossen, Holy Day, Holiday: The American Sunday (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 105–110. 68. Greiner et al., Regulation of Retail Competition, pp. 56–57. 69. On the decline of the antitrust movement, see Richard Hofstadter, “What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?” in Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1965), pp. 205–211. 70. On the decline of the “culture of constraint” in American consumerism, see Gary Cross, An All-Consuming Century, pp. 111–143. 71. Eveline Burns, Social Security and Public Policy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956), p. 156. 72. Cited in Burns, Social Security, p. 61. 73. For the notion of the United States as the “laggard” in social policy, see Peter Flora and Arnold Heidenheimer (eds.), The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1981). Critical of the “laggard thesis” and more nuanced is Edwin Amenta, Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern Social Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). 74. Burns, Social Security, p. 4. 75. See more detailed discussion in chapter 5. 76. Charles Haar, Federal Credit and Private Housing: The Mass Financing Dilemma (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), p. 115. 77. “Old-Age Security,” New York Times, April 30, 1950. 78. Christopher Howard, “The Hidden Side of the American Welfare State,” Political Science Quarterly 108 (1993): 403–436. 79. Jacob Hacker, The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. xii.

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80. In 1949 the Supreme Court ruled that benefits were indeed a mandatory item for collective bargaining. See Lawrence Root, “Employee Benefits and Social Welfare: Complement and Conflict,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 479 (1985), pp. 101–118. On postwar pension funds and their role in shoring up corporate earning power in the postwar period, see also Roger Murray, “Pension Funds in the American Economy,” Journal of Finance 23 (1968): 331–336. 81. Root, “Employee Benefits,” p. 105. 82. See e.g. “Company Outlays on Welfare Rise,” New York Times, August 2, 1952, “Fringe Benefits in U.S. are Rising,” New York Times, October 17, 1954; “New Laws Raise Pension Levels,” New York Times, January 3, 1955; and “Employers Increase Welfare Payments; Pension Funds Receive Greatest Share,” New York Times, January 6, 1958. 83. “Excerpts form Eisenhower’s Report to Congress on the Economic Condition of the Nation,” New York Times, January 29, 1954. 84. The same is true in analogy to private health insurance schemes, which similarly grew during the 1950s. See e.g. Alan Derickson, Health Security for All: Dreams of Universal Health Care for All (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), esp. pp. 110–120. Derickson characterizes the health insurance debate of the late 1940s and 1950s as the resurgence of “welfarecapitalism” and “the heyday of voluntarism.” 85. Klein, For All These Rights, p. 7. 86. See Haar, Federal Credit and Private Housing, as well as chap. 5, for a more detailed discussion. 87. A substantial number if one considers that total income tax revenue in 1954 amounted to $29.5 billion and federal outlays to individuals (mostly social security) to $12.6 billion. U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Budget of the United States Government, Historical Tables, http: // w3.access.gpo.gov / usbudget / fy2004 / pdf / hist.pdf. 88. Paul Merz, “The Income Tax Treatment of Owner-Occupied Housing,” Land Economics 41 (1965): 247–255. 89. This holds especially true for the “sun-belt” states. See e.g. McGirr, Suburban Warriors, for the example of Orange County, CA. 90. L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, passim. 91. See Gösta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). This influential study distinguishes three ideal-type “welfare regimes,” which differ with regard to the degree of social rights granted (measured as “decommodification,” i.e. the degree to which people are able to achieve their living standard independent of pure market forces) and social stratification. Esping-Andersen distinguishes the “social-democratic” welfare regime—mainly found in Scandinavia—from a “conservative” type, which would include Germany, and a “liberal” one, exemplified by the United States. 92. See e.g. Willett, The Americanization of Germany; and, for a critical discussion, see Arnold Sywottek, “The Americanization of Everyday Life? Early Trends in Consumer and Leisure Time Behaviour,” in Michael Ermath (ed.), America and the Shaping of German Society 1945–1955 (Providence: Berg, 1993), pp. 132–152. 93. On the development of private consumption in the postwar era, see Andersen, Der Traum vom Guten Leben; Reckendrees, Die bundesdeutsche Massenkonsumgesellschaft 1950– 2000; and Sywottek, “From Starvation to Excess?” 94. Wildt, Am Beginn der Konsumgesellschaft. See also Werner Abelshauser, Die Langen

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Fünfziger Jahre: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in Deutschland 1949–1966 (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1987). 95. See Pence, From Rations to Fashions. On 1950s consumer policy, see also Harm Schröter, “Konsumpolitik und ‘Soziale Marktwirtschaft’: Die Koexistenz liberalisierter und regulierter Verbrauchsgütermärkte in der Bundesrepublik der 1950er Jahre,” in Hartmut Berghoff (ed.), Die Regulierung des privaten Verbrauchs im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), pp. 113–133; and, more recently, Christian Kleinschmidt, “Massenkonsum, ‘Rheinischer Kapitalismus,’ und Verbraucherschutz,” in Berghahn and Vitolis, Gibt es einen deutschen Kapitalismus? pp. 143–153. 96. On the German model of an “organized economy” as opposed to more competitive American varieties of capitalism, see Abelshauser, Kulturkampf. 97. Explicitly Keynesian policies found their way into Germany only during the 1960s. However, due to the important role of the state in the reconstruction efforts after the war and because of the expansion of the welfare state during the 1950s, a case can be made for still subsuming Western Germany under a broadly defined “Keynesian growth paradigm.” See Christopher Allen, “The Underdevelopment of Keynesianism in the Federal Republic of Germany,” in Peter Hall (ed.), The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism across Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Helge Berger, Konjunkturpolitik im Wirtschaftswunder: Handlungsspielräume und Verhaltensmuster von Bundesbank und Regierung in den 1950er Jahren (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997); and especially Nützenadel, Stunde der Ökonomen. Berger and Nützenadel also argue that despite the official rejection of Keynesian full-employment policies a good deal of macroeconomic steering existed in early 1950s West Germany. On German postwar economic policy more generally, see Nicholls, Freedom with Responsibility, and Van Hook, Rebuilding Germany. 98. See Alfred Müller-Armack, “Soziale Marktwirtschaft,” in Erwin Beckerath (ed.), Handwörterbuch der Sozialwissenschaften, vol. 9 (Tübingen, 1956), p. 390. 99. “Soziale Marktwirtschaft: Untersuchung über die Verständlichkeit und populäre Auslegung politischer Begriffe III” (1950), in Bundesarchiv Koblenz (subsequently BuArch) ZSG 132 / 2695. A 1955 survey brought similar results, see “Soziale Marktwirtschaft,” Der Spiegel, July 31, 1957, p. 14. 100. Bernd Griese, Die Rationen-Gesellschaft: Versorgungskampf und Vergleichsmentalität— Leipzig, München und Köln nach dem Kriege (Münster: Westfälische Dampfboot, 1991). See also Alan Kramer, The West German Economy 1945–1955 (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1991); and Paul Steege, Black Market, Cold War: Everyday Life in Berlin, 1946–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 101. Pence, Rations to Fashions, chap. 4. See also “Preisringen,” Der Spiegel, October 9, 1948; and “Dann streiken sie gegen den Streik,” Der Spiegel, November 13, 1948. 102. On the role of the 1948 reform in popular memory during the cold war, see Katherine Pence, “The Myth of a Suspended Present: Prosperity’s Painful Shadow in 1950s,” in Paul Betts and Greg Eghigian (eds.), Pain and Prosperity: Reconsidering Twentieth-Century German History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 137–159. 103. Erica Carter, How German is She? Postwar West German Reconstruction and the Consuming Woman (Ann Arbor: University of Michgan Press, 1997), p. 9. 104. For a recent, largely sympathetic biography of Erhard, see Alfred Mierzejewski, Ludwig Erhard: A Biography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). More extensive

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and more critical of Erhard is Volker Hentschel, Ludwig Erhard: Ein Politikerleben (Munich: Olzog, 1996). 105. See Georg Bergler, Die Entwicklung der Verbrauchsforschung in Deutschland und die Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung bis zum Jahre 1945 (Kallmünz: Michael Lassleben, 1959). 106. “Ich bin nicht der Seelsorger,” Der Spiegel February 5, 1949, pp. 3–5. See also Alfred Müller-Armack, Wirtschaftslenkung und Marktwirtschaft (Hamburg, 1947), p. 71. 107. See Bernd Meier, Verbraucherpolitik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1984), p. 110. 108. See e.g. Rationalisierungs-Kuratorium der Deutschen Wirtschaft, Der Verbraucher als Partner der Wirtschaft, pp. 9–10. 109. Exports made up a much larger share of the economy in West Germany than in the United States. While exports of goods and services accounted on average for 18.4% of the German GDP between 1960 and 1973, for example, the comparable American figure was only 5.5%. OECD, Historical Statistics, p. 75. 110. “Marktwirtschaft: Bis dato gut geritten,” Der Spiegel, December 6, 1950, pp. 5–7. 111. “Nach Steuerbord,” Der Spiegel, June 26, 1948. 112. See “Im Jahre der Hingabe,” Der Spiegel, March 2, 1950, pp. 29–30; and “Sterben und Steuern zahlen,” Der Spiegel, May 30, 1951, p. 5. 113. Memorandum über das Aufbausparen, April 4, 1951, in BuArch B 102 / 12674, 1. 114. On the continuity of price administration and the eventual deregulation during the 1950s, see Irmgard Zündorf, Der Preis der Marktwirtschaft: Staatliche Preispolitik und Lebensstandard in Westdeutschland 1948 bis 1963 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2006). See also Andre Steiner (ed.), Preispolitik und Lebensstandard: Nationalsozialismus, DDR und Bundesrepublik im Vergleich (Cologne: Böhlau, 2006); and Schröter, “Konsumpolitik.” 115. See memo, “Konsumbrotpreise,” January 1, 1951, in BuArch B 102 / 3738 vol. 2. 116. See “Wege und Möglichkeiten einer Neuorientierung der Lohn- Preispolitik in der Bundesrepublik,” February 13, 1951, in BuArch B 102 / 12674,1, “Preise: Täglich höher,” Der Spiegel, February 14, 1951, p. 27; and “Preise: Der Konsument als Richter,” Der Spiegel, July 14, 1954, pp. 5–6. 117. Minutes, Kabinettsausschuß für Wirtschaft, 24th session, February 14, 1955. 118. “Grundsätze für die Beurteilung und Behandlung administrativer Preisregelungen im Hinblick auf die wirtschaftpolitischen Ziele,” January 8, 1970, in BuArch B 102 / 93321. 119. On the greater orientation of German fiscal and monetary policy toward consumer demand, see also Berger, Konjunkturpolitik, p. 38. 120. Memo, “Sitzung eines Unterausschußes des Bundeswirtschaftsausschußes der CDU (confidential),” in BuArch B 102 / 192434. For the importance of the US model of affordable consumer durables for German consumer promotion in 1952–53, see also an internal memo, “Konsumentenpolitik, Gütezeichen,” May 12, 1952; and memo, “Leitsätze für ein GütezeichenProgramm,” June 13, 1952, in BuArch B 102 / 37241. 121. “Erhard beruft Müller-Armack: Kommissarische Leitung der Abteilung I im BMW— Verstärkte Konsumentenpolitik,” Handelsblatt, October 17, 1952. 122. See memo, “Die konjunkturelle Bedeutung des Verbrauchsgüterabsatzes,” September 18, 1953, in BuArch B 102 / 3990. 123. Ludwig Erhard, “Ein Kühlschrank für jeden Haushalt,” Welt der Arbeit, June 16, 1953. On the refrigerator campaign, see the file “Werbeaktion für langlebige Konsumgüter,” in BuArch B 102 / 35963; as well as a more detailed discussion in Pence, Rations to Fashions, chap. 7.

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124. Radio transcript, “Kühlmöglichkeiten,” Frauenfunk recording, June 14, 1953, in BuArch B 102 / 35963. 125. Memo, “Verbreitung des gehobenen Bedarfs; hier: Kühlschränke, Abschlußbericht,” October 2, 1953, in BuArch B 102 / 35963. 126. See minutes of the sessions of the Verbraucherausschuß in BuArch B 102 / 168705– 168709. 127. See e.g. Josef Bock and Karl Gustav Specht (eds.), Verbraucherpolitik (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1958), p. 67; and Christa von Braunschweig, Der Konsument und seine Vertretung (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1965), pp. 133–134. 128. On the emergence of the AgV, see Bock and Specht, Verbraucherpolitik, pp. 73–79. Pence, Rations to Fashions, gives a more detailed account of the AgV during the 1950s. 129. See Bock and Specht, Verbraucherpolitik, esp. pp. 26–28 and 50–51. 130. Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Verbraucherverbände, “Charta des Verbrauchers” (1954), in BuArch B 102 / 168666. 131. Initially, the ministry was extremely wary of the AgV viewing it as a “potential Social Democratic agglomeration” in the area of consumer politics. Internal memo May 10, 1953, in BuArch B 102 / 168666. 132. “Consumer Centers” (Verbraucherzentralen), formed at the state level in eleven states between 1958 and 1961 and partially funded by federal monies, played a major role in the pursuit of more “modern” consumption patterns, which earned them the criticism that they were founded upon a conflict of interest between genuine consumer education and counseling on the one hand and the “general promotion of sales” on the other See Braunschweig, Der Konsument. 133. Minutes, Kabinettsausschuß für Wirtschaft, 51st session, June 12, 1956. 134. Cabinet proposal submitted by ministry of economics and ministry of finance for a 2nd “Konjunkturprogramm,” May 17, 1956, in BuArch B 136 / 653. 135. Ludwig Erhard, government policy statement June 22, 1956, Bulletin, 114 (1956): 1121– 1122, in BuArch B 102 / 48652. 136. Minutes, Kabinettsausschuß für Wirtschaft, 51st session, June 12, 1956. 137. Expert Commission, Federal Chancellery, “Wege und Möglichkeiten einer Neuorientierung der Lohn- Preispolitik in der Bundesrepublik,” February 13, 1951, in BuArch B 102 / 12674,1. 138. See Barry Eichengreen, “Institutions and Economic Growth: Europe after World War II,” in Nicholas Crafts and Giovanni Toniolo (eds.), Economic Growth in Europe since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 38–72. 139. See Elisabeth Nölle and Erich Neumann (eds.), Jahrbuch der öffentlichen Meinung 1958– 64 (Allensbach: Verlag für Demoskopie, 1965), pp. 397–401. 140. See de Grazia, Irresistible Empire, passim. 141. On postwar retail interests and retail policy, see Ralf Banken, “Schneller Strukturwandel trotz institutioneller Stabilität: Die Entwicklung des deutschen Einzelhandels 1949–2000,” in Economic History Yearbook 2007 / 2, pp. 117–146, Abdolreza Scheybani, Handwerk und Kleinhandel in der Bundesrepublik: Sozioökonomischer Wandel und Mittelstandspolitik 1949–1961 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996); and Briesen, Warenhaus. 142. See Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, chap. 1. 143. RKW, Der Einzelhandel im Konkurrenzkampf (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1955), p. 29. On the history of the RKW, see Manfred Pohl, “Die Geschichte der Rationalisierung: Das RKW

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1921 bis 1996,” in RKW (ed.), Rationalisierung sichert Zukunft: 75 Jahre RKW (Eschborn, 1996), pp. 85–116. 144. See file on price policy and retail margins in BuArch B 102 / 4017. See also Scheybani, Handwerk und Kleinhandel, pp. 262–274. 145. Artur Woll, Der Wettbewerb im Einzelhandel: Zur Dynamik der modernen Betriebsformen (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1964). 146. Woll, Wettbewerb im Einzelhandel, pp. 80–120. 147. See “Der Sieg des Schrebergärtners,” Handelsblatt, July 15, 1957. 148. Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Glas-, Porzellan- und Keramik-Einzelhandels in der Hauptgemeinschaft des Deutschen Einzelhandel, Fachlicher Ausbildungsplan für den Lehrling im Glas-, Porzellan- und Keramik-Einzelhandel (Bonn 1953) in BuArch B 102 / 39451. 149. Henry Braunwarth, Die führenden westdeutschen Warenhausgesellschaften, ihre Entwicklung nach dem Kriege und ihre heutigen Probleme (Nuremberg: Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung, 1957), p. 184. 150. Memo “Referentenbesprechung zu Wirtschaftsverfassung,” June 25, 1954, and memo, June 26, 1954, in BuArch B102 / 168666. 151. Minutes Kabinettsausschuß für Wirtschaft, 26th session, March 3, 1955. 152. Bock and Specht, Verbraucherpolitik, pp. 62–67 and 122–137. 153. On the legal aftermath of the retailing law, see file BuArch B 102 / 262948. A further 1972 decision by the court made the retailing law virtually pointless, yet the retailer’s association continued to lobby for its existence. 154. The term “sinecures” was emblematic for market-liberal attacks on traditional business practices during the 1950s. Like references to “guilds” and “estates,” it was meant to denote premodern economic thinking. See e.g. Karl Böttcher, “Probleme des Kaufmanns von Nebenan und Gegenüber: Für den Optimalen Kundendienst—Gegen einen ‘Berufsschutz’ freiwilliger ‘Mittelstands’-Proletarier,” Frankfurter Hefte 2 (1955): 107–116. 155. See Kleinschmidt, Der Produktive Blick; and Berghahn, The Americanization of West German Industry. On continuities in business ethos and culture, see Wiesen, West-German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past, esp. chap. 5. 156. See RKW, Der Verbraucher als Partner der Wirtschaft. 157. On continuities with regard to notions of quality and design, see Abelshauser, Kulturkampf, pp. 123–126 and 137–138; and especially Betts, The Authority of Everyday Objects. 158. See Bock and Specht, Verbraucherpolitik, pp. 94–96. 159. The study was conducted by the Rationalisierungsgemeinschaft des Handels. See, ibid., p. 146. 160. See file “Gütezeichen 1952–53,” in BuArch B 102 / 192434, especially memo, “Besprechung Gütezeichenprogramm,” March 5, 1952; and Gröger, “Niederschrift zum selben Gespräch,” March 14, 1952. 161. See “Gütezeichenprogramm ist problematisch,” Der Deutsche Handel 4 / 5 (May 1952); and letter Markenverband to Erhard, October 3, 1952, in BuArch B 102 / 37241. 162. See “Keine Kühlschränke für den kleinen Mann,” Düsseldorfer Handelsblatt, October 8, 1953. 163. “Lohn-Preis-Spirale,” Der Spiegel, September 14, 1955, pp. 16–18. 164. “Der gestörte Markt,” Der Spiegel, May 28, p. 28. See also the cabinet proposal of the ministry of economics and the ministry of finance for a second “Konjunkturprogramm,” May 17 1956, in BuArch B 136 / 653.

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165. Letter, Office of the US High Commissioner for Germany to the ministry of economics, “Resale Price Maintenance for Branded Articles,” November 18, 1952, in BuArch B 102 / 8032. 166. “Preisbindung: Rabatte verboten,” Der Spiegel, April 28, 1954. 167. On the ministry’s stance on price maintenance, see file, “Preisbindung 1955–57,” in BuArch B 102 / 3991. On the discrepancy between reluctant public endorsement (especially on the part of retailers) and the internal rejection of resale price maintenance, see minutes of March 22, 1961, session of the consumer council, in BuArch B 102 / 168707. 168. A ministry official commented “bogus!” (Schwindel!) in a copy of the newsletter in the ministry files. Braun Vertraulicher Informationsdienst für den guten Fachhandel, “Zur Situation des deutschen Fachhandels,” July 1954, in BuArch B 102 / 4017. 169. Discounters were described as “parasites” who “feast on the harvest” brought in by the specialty stores. Braun Vertraulicher Informationsdienst für den guten Fachhandel, “5 Minuten vor 12,” March 1955; and Braun Sonderinformationen für den guten Fachhandel, “Schluß mit den Schwarzen Märkten!” January 1956, in BuArch B 102 / 4017. 170. Klaus Schwank, “Bestätigte Preisbindung,” Deutsche Zeitung, January 8, 1964. 171. Rudolf Meyer-Ronnenberg (Bund der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten [BHE, later CDU]) before the Bundestagung der Verbraucherverbände in Cologne, May 1954, in BuArch B 102 / 168666. 172. “Preisbindung: Zucht und Unzucht,” Der Spiegel 13 / 1969, p. 33. 173. On the history of German store hours, see Uwe Spiekermann, “Freier Konsum und soziale Verantwortung: Zur Geschichte des Ladenschlußes in Deutschland im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,”Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 49 (2004): 26–44; Schoneweg, Ladenzeiten im Einzelhandel; and Renate Aengenendt, Ladenöffnungszeiten im Einzelhandel (Cologne: Kölner Universitätsverlag, 1971), pp. 11–13. 174. See Schoneweg, Ladenzeiten im Einzelhandel. 175. Memo, “Ladenschluß,” April 30 1951, in BuArch B 102 / 39398. 176. Erhard, to be sure, did not agree with this line of argument. See cabinet proposal, Erhard, July 4, 1956, in BuArch B 102 / 39398. 177. This had been favored by the economic cabinet committee in a 1954 vote. Minutes Kabinettsausschuß für Wirtschaft, 15th session, August 3, 1954. 178. Braunwarth, Warenhausgesellschaften, p. 178. 179. Aengenendt, Ladenöffnungszeiten, p. 23. 180. Elisabeth Nölle and Erich Neumann (eds.), Jahrbuch der öffentlichen Meinung 1958–64, p. 87. 181. On the development of the postwar German social security state, see Hans Günter Hockerts, Sozialpolitische Entscheidungen in Nachkriegsdeutschland: Alliierte und deutsche Sozialversicherungspolitik 1945 bis 1957 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980); Jens Alber, Der Sozialstaat in der Bundesrepublik 1950–1983 (Frankfurt: Campus, 1989); and Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Sozialordnung (ed.), Geschichte der Sozialpolitik in Deutschland seit 1945 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2001). 182. According to International Labor Office calculations; see Hockerts, Sozialpolitische Entscheidungen, pp. 196–97. 183. See Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, “Sozialpolitische Grundsätze,” Protokoll des Gründungskongresses des Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes (DGB), Munich, October 1949, p. 318, “DGB Lohnpolitik: Der Weg in die Inflation,” Der Spiegel, February 3, 1953, pp. 12–14; and “Nachfrage nach Verbrauchsgütern muß gestärkt werden,” DGB Nachrichtendienst, April 18, 1961.

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184. Karl Schiller, “Verbraucher und Wettbewerb,” in Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Verbraucherverbände (ed.), Grundsätze und Forderungen zur Verbraucherpolitik (Hamburg: Verlagsgesellschaft deutscher Konsumgenossenschaften, 1954), pp. 7–21. 185. See Hockerts, Sozialpolitische Entscheidungen, p. 24. 186. Government policy statement by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, October 20, 1953, StenBer BT, 2. WP, vol. 18, pp. 11–19. On the public perception of a lopsided distribution of the benefits of recent economic advances, see also “Soziale Marktwirtschaft: Die Fluch nach vorn,” Der Spiegel, September 9, 1953, pp. 13–17. 187. Letter from Adenauer to federal ministers “Entwicklung zum Versorgungsstaat,” January 16, 1955 in, BuArch B 102 / 40896. 188. Letter from Erhard to Adenauer, May 24, 1955, in BuArch B 102 / 40896. 189. Letters to Adenauer from Franz-Joseph Würmeling, February 25, 1955; Anton Storch, March 8, 1955; Viktor-Emanuel Preusker, March 17, 1955; and Jakob Kaiser, March 15, 1955, in BuArch B 102 / 40896. 190. See e.g. Nützenadel, Stunde der Ökonomen, pp. 175–186. 191. See minutes Unterausschuß Kinderbeihilfen des Ausschußes für Arbeit und Sozialpolitik des Bundesrates einberufene Konferenz “Kinderbeihilfen,” December 21, 1949, in BuArch B 153 / 733. See also Gutachterausschuß im Bundeskanzleramt “Wege und Möglichkeiten einer Neuorientierung der Lohn- Preispolitik in der Bundesrepublik,” February 13, 1951, in BuArch B 102 / 12674,1. 192. On the development of child allowances, see Ursula Münch, “Familien- , Jugend- und Altenpolitik,” in Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales (ed.), Geschichte der Sozialpolitik in Deutschland seit 1945, vol. 3 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2005), pp. 597–652, esp. pp. 625–631. 193. Alexander Rüstow et al. (eds.), Das Problem der Rentenreform (Ludwigsburg: Martin Hoch, 1956), pp. 18–20. 194. Cabinet proposal, Bundesminister für Arbeit, April 7, 1955, in BuArch B 136 / 1379. 195. See “Kabinettsache Schäffer zu Fragen der Reform der Sozialversicherung,” November 13, 1953, in BuArch B 102 / 42309; letter from Storch to Erhard, January 9, 1954, in BuArch B 102 / 42309; and letter from Erhard to Storch, March 5, 1954, in BuArch B 102 / 42309. 196. “Herrn Meiers Lebensabend,” Der Spiegel, February 6, 1957. 197. See Laszlo Alex, “Ökonomische Probleme der Rentenreform von 1957” (diss., Frankfurt 1966), pp. 86–89 and 100–101. 198. The definition of “conservative” follows Esping-Andersen’s classification. See n. 91 above. 199. On welfare reform, see Michael Heisig, Armenpolitik im Nachkriegsdeutschland 1945– 1964: Die Entwicklung der Fürsorgeunterstützungssätze im Kontext allgemeiner Sozial- und Fürsorgereform (Frankfurt: Deutscher Verein für öffentliche und private Fürsorge, 1995); and Friedericke Föcking, Fürsorge im Wirtschaftsboom: Die Entstehung des Bundessozialhilfegesetzes von 1961 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007). 200. See Michael Heisig, Armenpolitik, pp. 104 / 105, 115–118. 201. Ibid., p. 137. 202. “Der neue ‘Warenkorb’ für Ernährung,” Bulletin des Presse- und Informationsamts. der Bundesregierung 39 (February 25, 1961). 203. “Neuer Preisindex für die Lebenshaltung von Renten- und Fürsorgeempfängerhaushalten,” Mitteilung Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, December 2, 1961. 204. “Das Prestige muß gewahrt werden,” Der Spiegel, December 8, 1965, pp. 81–96.

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205. On the exclusion of these areas from the principles of the social market economy, see also Schröter, “Konsumpolitik.” 206. On the history of television in Germany, see Axel Schildt, “Der Beginn des Fernsehzeitalters: Ein neues Massenmedium setzt sich durch,” in Schild and Sywottek (ed.), Modernisierung im Wiederaufbau, pp. 477–492; Hans Bausch, Rundfunkpolitik nach 1945, Vol. I (1945–1962) (Munich: DTV, 1980), and Hans Kleinsteuber, Rundfunkpolitik in der Bunderepublik: der Kampf um die Macht über Hörfunk und Fernsehen (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1992). Chapter Two 1. See e.g. Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: McMillan, 1962). On the challenges to private mass consumption in the late 1950s and 1960s, see also Collins, More, chap. 2; and Daniel Horowitz, Vance Packard and American Social Criticism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). 2. Witness the famous “kitchen debate” between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev, in which Nixon argued for American superiority, not so much in military and technological terms as in the standard of living of the “average” (i.e. middle-class) consumer. See Karal M. Marling, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Every-day Life in the 1950s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), chap. 7. 3. Edwin Dale Jr., “Are We Americans Going Soft?” New York Times, December 1, 1957. 4. Walter Lippman, cited in ibid. 5. David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950). 6. William Whyte, “Budgetism: The Opiate of the Middle Classes,” Fortune (May 1956). 7. On Packard, see Horowitz, Vance Packard. 8. Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders (New York: D. McKay, 1957). Packard expanded on the charge of “planned obsolescence” in his 1960 The Wastemakers. 9. See e.g. Hillel Black’s attack on predatory practices of the consumer credit industry, Buy Now, Pay Later (New York: Morrow, 1961). 10. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (1958; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 4th ed. 1984), p. 118. On Galbraith as a dissenting economist and proponent of active government, see Loren J. Okroi, Galbraith, Harrington, Heilbronner: Economics and Dissent in an Age of Optimism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); and Conrad Waligorski, Liberal Economics and Democracy: Keynes, Galbraith, Thurow, and Reich (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997). See also Richard Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), esp. chap. 13. 11. Galbraith, Affluent Society, esp. p. 232. 12. See Collins, More, p. 49. 13. Edwin Dale Jr., “Big Debate: Public vs. Private Spending,” New York Times, March 13, 1960. 14. “‘Hairshirt Economists’ Scored for Pushing Public Spending,” New York Times, October 13, 1960. 15. Cited in Elizabeth Fowler, “Personal Finance: The Typical Consumer,” New York Times, November 9, 1964. 16. Alvin Hansen, “We Must Grow—Or We Sink,” New York Times, March 18, 1962, and Alvin Hansen, Economic Issues of the 1960s (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), p. 24.

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17. Leon Keyserling, “Public Weal—and Private, Too,” New York Times, August 21, 1960. 18. Assuming subsequent growth, the tax cut was regarded as largely self-financing. See Leon Keyserling, Phillip Ritz, and Nettie Shapiro, Key Policies for Full Employment: Expand Consumption (Washington: Conference on Economic Progress, 1962). 19. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963–64, vol. 1 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1965), pp. 704–707. 20. On the Great Society programs, see John Andrew, Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society (Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1998). 21. Economic Report of the President, January 1966, p. 35, cited in George Katona and Eva Mueller, Consumer Responses to Income Increases (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1968). 22. President Johnson, Remarks to the Members of the Consumer Advisory Council, December 13, 1963, John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project http: // www .presidency. ucsb.edu / ws / ?pid=26343 and http: // www.presidency.ucsb.edu / ws / ?pid=27315. 23. “Consumer Protection and Interest Program,” Message from the President, March 15, 1962 (in Monthly Catalog United States Public Documents = MCUSPD). 24. See e.g. “The American Consumer: King or Pawn?” Address by Richard Holton, assistant secretary of commerce for economic affairs at Inter-Mountain Regional Consumer Conference, June 16, 1964 (MCUSPD). 25. Throughout the 1960s, efforts were made to establish a cabinet-level department of consumer affairs. See e.g. “Creating a Department of Consumers,” Hearings before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations on H.R. 7179, April—August 1966 (CIS-NO: 89 H2221-2). 26. See “The American Consumer,” Message from the President, February 5, 1964 (MCUSPD); “Consumer Interests,” Message from the President, March 21, 1966 (MCUSPD); and “The American Consumer,” Message from the President, February 6, 1968 (MCUSPD). 27. Richard Holton, Address at the American Gas Association’s 19th Annual Research and Utilization Conference, June 2, 1964 (MCUSPD), p. 13. 28. Peterson, Speech before the 1965 National Educational Conference, December 6, 1965 (MCUSPD), p. 2. 29. Kennedy, “Consumer Protection and Interest Program,” p. 2. 30. Consumer Advisory Council, Consumer Issues ’66: A Report to the President (Washington 1966), p. viii. 31. David Caplovitz, The Poor Pay More (New York: Free Press, 1967). 32. Johnson, “Consumer Interests,” p. 7. 33. See The President’s Committee on Consumer Interests, A Summary of Activities 1964–67 (Washington, March 1967), pp. 17–20. 34. Cited in ibid., p. 17. 35. These were, to be sure, effectively wartime measures, but the administration also followed popular demands to restrict price increases. The price freezes are generally thought to have been ineffective and, furthermore, a damper on America’s mass distribution economy. See Hugh Rockoff, Drastic Measures: A History of Wage and Price Controls in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 200–233. 36. See “Text of President Nixon’s Message to Congress on Proposals to Help Consumer,” New York Times, October 31, 1969; and “Business-Consumer Relations,” address by secretary of commerce Maurice Stans before the Grocery Manufacturers Executive Conference, June 15, 1970 (MCUSPD).

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37. Maurice Stans, address before the Annual Marketing Conference, October 14, 1970 (MCUSPD). 38. Indeed, by the early 1970s state governments had become increasingly involved in consumer legislation with the creation of consumer offices and various initiatives from regulating consumer credit to providing opportunities for legal action (e.g. class-action suits). See Office of Consumer Affairs, State Consumer Action ’71 (Washington 1971); and Douglas Cray, “Protecting Consumer,” New York Times, December 12, 1971. 39. Gary Cross, “Corralling Consumer Culture: Shifting Rationales for American State Intervention in Free Markets,” in Hilton and Daunton, The Politics of Consumption, pp. 283–299. 40. Heinz-Dietrich Ortlieb, “Unsere Konsumgesellschaft: Glanz und Elend des deutschen Wirtschaftswunders,” Hamburger Jahrbuch für Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftspolitik 4 (1959), pp. 225–246. To be sure, conservatives, too, continued to attack the materialism of the affluent society and used Galbraith and Packard for this purpose. See e.g. Alexander Mahr, Der unbewältigte Wohlstand: Probleme der modernen Industriegesellschaft (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1964). 41. Minutes Verbraucherausschuß, January 21, 1958, in BuArch B 102 / 168707. 42. The federal government had introduced national accounts statistics (volkswirtschaftliche Gesamtrechnung) only in 1958. See “Erhard: Neue Waffe,” Der Spiegel, January 22, 1958, pp. 12–13. See also Nützenadel, Stunde der Ökonomen, esp. pp. 99–121. 43. Between 1960 and 1973, the average unemployment rate in the United States was 4.8% (and higher than 5% during the early 1960s), whereas West Germany’s average unemployment rate was 0.8% during the same time period. OECD, Historical Statistics, p. 45. 44. “Konjunktur: Hunde geweckt,” Der Spiegel, January 6, 1960, pp. 17–19. 45. In the United States, the concept of an “ownership society” with widespread ownership of stocks had already risen in popularity during the intewar years. See Julia Ott, “When Wall Street Met Main Street: The Quest for an Investors’ Democracy and the Emergence of the Retail Investor in the United States, 1890–1913,” in Enterprise and Society 9 (2008): 619–630. 46. This emphasis on balancing consumption with saving was not a German peculiarity, but was prominent in other West European countries, as well as in Japan. See Sheldon Garon, “Japan’s Post-war ‘Consumer Revolution,’ or Striking a ‘Balance’ between Consumption and Saving,” in Brewer and Trentmann, Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives, pp. 189–217. 47. “Vermögensbildung: Volk ans Papier,” Der Spiegel, November 25, 1964, pp. 38–47. 48. See e.g. Aktionsgemeinschaft Soziale Marktwirtschaft, “Eigentumsstreuung ohne Zwang,” October 10, 1962. See also Kurt Wendt, “Volkskapitalismus—nur durch Konsumverzicht,” Die Zeit, March 14, 1957. 49. See “Nachfrage nach Verbrauchsgütern muß gestärkt werden,” DGB Nachrichtendienst, April 18, 1961, “Privater Verbrauch hinkt nach,” DGB Nachrichtendienst, February 6, 1961. 50. “Preissenkung durch Abbau der Handelsspannen möglich,” DGB Nachrichtendienst, August 17, 1962, “Für Massnahmen zur Preisstabilität,” Die Welt, September 6, 1962. 51. Letter from Margret B. (Neuss), August 10, 1965; and letter from Ernst B. (Offingen), February 18, 1963, in BuArch B102 / 115627. 52. This was the CDU position. Social Democrats were more inclined to view the stability law as a means to ensure continued growth. See Nützenadel, Stunde der Ökonomen, pp. 283–295. 53. By contrast, see e.g. Wayne Phillips, “What’s So Bad about Inflation?” New York Times August 21, 1971. Phillips, former director of public affairs of the HUD in the Johnson administration, argued that heavily indebted American consumers often enjoyed inflation more than

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anyone. The deflationary depression of 1930s, not the German runaway inflation of 1920s, was central to American memory. Inflation, to Phillips, meant rising wages and had made mortgages as well as consumer credit more affordable to consumers. 54. Speech by Karl Schiller, “Eröffnung der Woche des Verbrauchers und der Hausfrau,” Bad Godesberg, November 6, 1967, in BuArch B 102 / 168533. 55. Verbraucherpolitische Korrespondenz No. 13 (1966), in BuArch B 102 / 168504. 56. On the history of product testing, see Braunschweig, Der Konsument, pp. 125–132; and Christian Kleinschmidt, “Konsumgesellschaft, Verbraucherpolitik und soziale Marktwirtschaft: Verbraucherpolitische Aspekte des ‘Modell Deutschland’ (1947–1975),” in Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 2006 / 1, pp. 13–28. On consumer rights and consumer protection into the 1970s, see Gunnar Trumbull, “Strategies of Consumer Group Mobilization: France and Germany in the 1970s,” in Daunton and Hilton, The Politics of Consumption, pp. 260–282. 57. Interministerial committee for consumer affairs (IMA), 7th session, April 29, 1968, in BuArch B 102 / 168507. 58. Klaus v. Dohnanyi, “Zweite Woche des Verbrauchers,” Bad Godesberg, May 5, 1969, in BuArch B 102 / 168533. 59. See “Interministerieller Ausschuß für Verbraucherfragen,” in BuArch B 102 / 168504. 60. Summary protocol, “10. Sitzung des IMA,” May 6, 1970, in BuArch B 102 / 16851. 61. Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Finanzen, Bericht der Bundesregierung zur Verbraucher Politik (Bonn 1971). 62. Speech by Phillip Rosenthal, “Schiller ist der Verbraucherminister,” October 21, 1971, in BuArch B 102 / 168533. A year later, finance minister Helmut Schmidt would similarly call for a “cutback in consumption” or, at least, in its growth (Konsumverzicht) to allow for more public investments. “Schmidt fordert mehr Konsumverzicht—Nur dann sei eine höhere Staatsleistung möglich,” Stuttgarter Nachrichten, August 3, 1972. 63. Memo “Verbraucherpolitik, hier: Interview des Ministers in der VR,” October 6, 1971, in BuArch B 102 / 168533. 64. Werner Osel, “Und wieder zeichnet sich ein ‘neuer Verbraucher’ ab,” BAG-Nachrichten 5–6 (1971), in BuArch B 102 / 168525. 65. Gerhard Scherhorn et al., Verbraucherinteresse und Verbraucherpolitik (Göttingen: Otto Schwartz, 1975), pp. 18–29. 66. Gerhard Friedel, Lebensqualität: Öffentliche Armut—Privater Reichtum (Munich: Bayerische Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1973). 67. Ibid., p. 9. 68. Ibid., pp. 12–16, 22, 60, and 70–75. Introduction to Part Two 1. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (New York: McMillan, 1902). 2. See Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America 1870–1920 (New York: Free Press, 2003). 3. See e.g. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream; and Horowitz, The Morality of Spending. 4. Clair Brown, American Standards of Living, 1918–1988 (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994), esp.

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p. 19, n. 4, rightly observes that “innovation” has been insufficiently emphasized in emulationcentered frameworks of analyzing consumer behavior. 5. Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, esp. pp. 15–30. 6. McGovern, Sold American, p. 184. 7. Cohen, Making a New Deal, chap. 3. See also Andrew Heinze, Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption and the Search for American Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). 8. Joan Shelly Rubin, The Making of Middle-Brow Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). 9. This shift is captured, for example, in the shift in the mid-twentieth century from resorts such as Coney Island to family amusement parks such a Disneyland. See Gary Cross and John Walton, The Playful Crowd: Pleasure Places in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 10. See Leach, Land of Desire, and Moskowitz, Standard of Living. 11. See Cross, All-Consuming Century, pp. 75–82. 12. On the experience of the Depression, see e.g. Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970). 13. Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (1973; New York: Pantheon Books, 1984). 14. This contrast and what it meant for interwar advertisers is nicely captured in Corey Ross, “Visions of Prosperity: The Americanization of Advertising in Interwar Germany,” in Swett, Wiesen, and Zatlin, Selling Modernity, pp. 52–77. 15. See Klaus Tenfelde, “Klassenspezifische Konsummuster im Deutschen Kaiserreich,” in Siegrist, Kaelble, and Kocka, Europäische Konsumgeschichte, pp. 245–266. See also Nonn, Verbraucherprotest, pp. 67–68. 16. Their savings-and-production oriented consumption ethos was still influenced by an older nineteenth-century distinction between the “frugal” Bürger and the “wasteful” and “indulgent” aristocrat. See Michael Prinz, “Die konsumgesellschaftliche Seite des ‘Rheinischen Kapitalismus,’” in Berghahn and Vitolis, Gibt es einen deutschen Kapitalismus? pp. 113–128. 17. See Belinda Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 18. Reiner Flik, “Nutzung von Kraftfahrzeugen bis 1939—Konsum- oder Investitionsgut?” in Rolf Walter (ed.), Geschichte des Konsums: Erträge der 20. Arbeitstagung der Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2004), pp. 249–269. 19. Michael Geyer and Konrad Jarausch, Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), chap. 10, discuss interwar Germany until the early 1950s, not as a consumer society, but as a mass culture society. See also Maase, Grenzenloses Vergnügen: Der Aufstieg der Massenkultur 1850–1970 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1997). 20. See Adelheid von Saldern, “Massenfreizeitkultur im Visier: Ein Beitrag zu den Deutungsund Einwirkungsversuchen während der Weimarer Republik,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 33 (1993): 21–58. 21. Such conflicts were especially prominent in the aftermath of the war and during the inflation of the early 1920s, when charges of retailer profiteering were running rampant. See e.g. Nonn, Verbraucherprotest; and Hartmut Kiehling, “Einzelhandel und Konsum in Zeiten der Inflation 1920–23,” in Walter, Geschichte des Konsums, pp. 275–312. As Frank Trentmann’s

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discussion of consumer discourses in interwar Britain suggests, the emphasis on “quality” over “price” similarly coalesced with social-democratic visions of a more regulated consumer society. Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption, and Civil Society in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University, 2008), esp. p. 220. 22. The importance of “deprivation” in German consumer history is stressed in Geyer and Jarausch, Shattered Past, chap. 9; and Michael Wildt, Vom Kleinen Wohlstand: Eine Konsumgeschichte der fünfziger Jahre (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1996), chap. 1. 23. For a recent treatment of the experience of scarcity in postwar Berlin, see Paul Steege, Black Market, Cold War: Everyday Life in Berlin, 1946–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007), chap. 1. Chapter Three 1. Editors of the Wall Street Journal, Americans and Their Pocketbooks: How Your Neighbors Earn and Spend Their Money (New York: Dow Jones & Co., 1964). 2. In lieu of an extensive survey, see e.g. Cross, An All-Consuming Century; and Andersen, Der Traum vom Guten Leben. 3. See de Grazia, Irresistible Empire; and König, Geschichte der Konsumgesellschaft. See also Kaelble, “Europäische Besonderheiten des Massenkonsums 1950–1990”; and Victoria de Grazia, “Changing Consumption Regimes in Europe 1930–1970: Comparative Perspectives on the Distribution Problem,” in Strasser et al. (eds.), Getting and Spending, pp. 59–83. 4. “How High Is Up, and Can You Afford to Live?” in Consumer Reports (February 1948), p. 50. 5. Stanley Lebergott, Pursuing Happiness: American Consumers in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Cross, All-Consuming Century; and König, Geschichte der Konsumgesellschaft. 6. “The Two Car Family,” Consumer Reports (November 1955), pp. 520–522. 7. The percentage of cars bought on time increased from 39% in 1949 to 60% in 1955. Minimum down payments declined from an average of between 25% and 30% to only 20% in 1955. See RKW, Teilzahlungsfinanzierung in den USA (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1956), p. 17; and Bureau of Labor Statistics, How American Buying Habits Change (1959; New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), p. 191. 8. The corresponding figure for inner-city residents was considerably lower, at 63%. Ewan Clague (commissioner of labor statistics), “Changing Consumption Patterns,” paper presented at conference on Consumer Economics, North Carolina State University, May 26, 1965. 9. By 1970, 29% of US households had multiple cars (as opposed to only 4.4% in West Germany). Helmut Lercher, “Trends im Automobilmarketing,” in Johannes Bidlingmaier (ed.), Modernes Marketing—Moderner Handel (Wiesbaden: Gabler, 1972), pp. 403–422. 10. Lewis Mandell et al. (eds.), Surveys of Consumers 1971–72 (Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, 1973), pp. 30–31. 11. George Katona and Eva Mueller, Consumer Attitudes and Demand 1950–1952 (Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, 1953). 12. George Katona, The Powerful Consumer: Psychological Studies of the American Economy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), p. 173. 13. H. S. Houthakker and Lester Taylor, Consumer Demand in the United States, 1929–1970: Analyses and Projections (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966).

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14. Ibid. See also Lebergott, Pursuing Happiness, esp. p. 79, which shows this to be consistent with long-term trends in the development of American consumption patterns throughout the twentieth century. 15. William Butler, “Consumer Durables: Stocks and Expenditures,” in Foundation for Research on Human Behavior, Consumer Behavior in 1961: A Summary Report (Ann Arbor, 1961), pp. 13–22. 16. See e.g. James Morgan, “Consumer Investment Expenditures,” American Economic Review 48 (1958): 874–902. 17. “Suburban Trend Shapes Economy,” New York Times, March 22, 1955. 18. Federal Housing Administration, Home Owner’s Guide (Washington, 1959), p. 1. 19. Ibid., p. 271. 20. See e.g. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Family Income, Expenditures, and Savings in 10 Cities (Washington, 1952). 21. William Whyte, “The Consumer in the New Suburbia,” in Lincoln Clark, Consumer Behavior: The Dynamics of Consumer Reaction (New York: New York University Press, 1954), pp. 1–14. 22. See Hurley, Diners, Bowling Alleys and Trailer Parks. 23. Werner Polster, “Wandlung der Lebensweise im Spiegel der Konsumentwicklung,” in Voy, Polster, and Thomasberger, Gesellschaftliche Transformationsprozesse, pp. 193–248, here p. 246; and König, Geschichte der Konsumgesellschaft, p. 201. See also Kroen, “Negotiations with the American Way.” 24. Wildt, Am Beginn der Konsumgesellschaft. The importance of the late 1950s as a caesura is also underscored by Alfred Reckendrees “Konsummuster im Wandel: Haushaltsbudgets und Privater Verbrauch in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1952–1998,” in Economic History Yearbook 2007 / 2, pp. 29–61. 25. See e.g. Norbert Bub, “Neue Tendenzen in der Einkommensverwendung,” supplement to Der Volkswirt 28 (1959), pp. 20–23; Helga Schmucker, “Die langfristigen Strukturwandlungen des privaten Verbrauchs der privaten Haushalte in ihrer Interdependenz mit den übrigen Bereichen einer wachsenden Wirtschaft,” in Fritz Neumark (ed.), Strukturwandlungen einer wachsenden Wirtschaft (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1964), pp. 106–179; and Stella Seeberg, “Langlebige Haushaltsgüter und Haushaltsinvestitionen,” in Erich Egner (ed.), Aspekte des hauswirtschaftlichen Strukturwandels (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1967), pp. 49–97. 26. Seeberg, “Langlebige Haushaltsgüter,” p. 73. 27. The annual rate of motorization increase was on average 20.5% in West Germany during the 1950s (as compared to only 2.8% in the already quite saturated US market). See Thomas Südbeck, Motorisierung, Verkehrsentwicklung und Verkehrspolitik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland der 1950er Jahre (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994), p. 27. 28. See Statistisches Bundesamt, Statistisches Jahrbuch für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Wiesbaden, 1971). On the role of automobiles and the consumption of transportation in postwar Germany, see below, chapter 5. 29. While many Germans may have desired a car, GfK studies on consumer aspirations showed a mere 2% increase in respondents citing an automobile on their list of desired consumer goods between 1953 and 1956. See Bock and Specht, Verbraucherpolitik, p. 263. 30. See e.g. Schmucker, “Die langfristigen Strukturwandlungen,” p. 124. On the special emphasis that was awarded to women as both consumers and household managers in the postwar era, see e.g. Pence, From Rations to Fashions.

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31. See Schildt, Moderne Zeiten, pp. 109–151. 32. See e.g. “Der Verbrauch in Arbeitnehmerhaushalten 1960,” Bulletin des Presse- und Informationsamtes der Bundesregierung, May 26, 1961. 33. See ibid and Statistisches Bundesamt, Fachserie M: Preise, Löhne, Wirtschaftsrechnungen—Reihe 18: Einkommens-und Verbrauchsstichproben 1962 / 63 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1964), p. 18. 34. Cited in Andersen, Der Traum vom Guten Leben, chap. 4. 35. Peter Kramper, “From Economic Convergence to Convergence in Affluence? Income Growth, Household Expenditure and the Rise of Mass Consumption in Britain and West Germany, 1950–1974,” Working Paper No. 56 / 00, London School of Economics, Department of Economic History (2000), p. 28. 36. See especially US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Study of Consumer Expenditures, Income and Savings (Urban U.S. 1950) (Washington DC, 1956); and, e.g. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey 1960–61 (Washington, 1963) as well as Statistisches Bundesamt, Fachserie M: Preise, Löhne, Wirtschaftsrechnungen—Reihe 18: Einkommens-und Verbrauchsstichproben 1962 / 63 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1964); and Statistisches Bundesamt, Fachserie M: Preise, Löhne, Wirtschaftsrechnungen—Reihe 18: Einkommens-und Verbrauchsstichproben 1969 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1970). Further data on particular aspects of private consumption is available in a variety of collections of social and economic statistics. See e.g. Thelma Liesner (ed.), One Hundred Years of Economic Statistics: United Kingdom, United States of America, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden (London: Economist Publications, 1989), Flora, Kraus, and Pfennig, State Economy and Society in Western Europe 1815–1975, or Brian Mitchell (ed.), International Historical Statistics: Europe 1750–1988 (London & New York: MacMillan, 31992). 37. For the United States, see US Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstracts of the United States, and for a compilation of historical consumption statistics, see US Bureau of the Census, Statistical History of the United States: From Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1976). For Germany, see Statistisches Bundesamt, Statistisches Jahrbuch für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Comparison is hampered to some degree by different standards of measurement. While the Statistical Abstract generally gives data on personal expenditure, its German counterpart looks at different categories of households. Similarly, there is no common standard of what falls under such categories as recreation, household operations, or transportation. The data thus remains aggregate and rough. For a critical discussion of statistical evidence in the German case, see Reckendrees, “Konsummuster im Wandel.” The International Labor Office and similar organization offer statistics that may be more easily comparable, but tend to be even more abstract. See e.g. ILO Yearbook of Labour Statistics or OECD, Historical Statistics. 38. See US Department of Commerce, The National Income and Product Accounts of the United States 1929–82 (Washington, 1986), and Joachim Beier and Klaus-Dieter Jacob, Der Konsumentenkredit in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Frankfurt: Fritz Knapp, 1987). These numbers are more significant for the trends they express than for their relative comparability. 39. Lebergott, Pursuing Happiness, p. 111. For more data on durable attainment in West German households during the 1960s and ’70s, see Ralf Rytlewski and Manfred Opp de Hipt, Die Bundesrepublik in Zahlen 1945 / 49–1980 (Munich: Beck, 1987), p. 140. 40. Houthakker / Taylor, Consumer Demand in the United States, p. 169. 41. Kaelble, “Europäische Besonderheiten des Massenkonsums.” More recently, however, Sabine Haustein has questioned the notion of an emerging European “model of consumption”

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which Kaelble suggests can be contrasted to the American case. Looking at the time period between 1960 and 1990, Haustein finds a relatively high degree of diversity between different European countries. Sabine Haustein, “Westeuropäische Annäherung durch Konsum seit 1945,” in Kaelble and Schriewer (ed.), Gesellschaften im Vergleich, pp. 353–390. 42. Walt Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), pp. 4–16. 43. See e.g. Harry Johnson, “The Political Economy of Opulence,” in Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 26 (1960): 552–564 and Paul Strassmann, “Optimum Consumption Patterns in High-Income Nations,” in Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 28 (1962): 364–372. 44. Moses Abramovitz, “Catching Up, Forging Ahead, and Falling Behind,” Journal of Economic History 46 (1986): 385–406. 45. Nicholas Crafts, “The Golden Age of Economic Growth in Western Europe, 1950–1973,” in Economic History Review 48 (1995): 429–447. 46. On the origins and social effects of the economic boom in West Germany, see Kaelble (ed.), Der Boom 1948–1973, and Ludger Lindlar, Das missverstandene Wirtschaftswunder: Westdeutschland und die westeuropäische Nachkriegsprosperität (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997). For data and analysis on postwar European growth, see Nicholas Crafts and Giovanni Toniolo (eds.), Economic Growth in Europe since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 47. See Statistisches Bundesamt, Statistisches Jahrbuch, 1960, p. 512, and 1972, p. 470. On the increase in real wages in West Germany, see also Abelshauser, Die langen Fünfziger Jahre, and Rytlewski and Opp de Hipt, Die Bundesrepublik in Zahlen, pp. 117–119. 48. While several international organizations (including the OECD and the International Labour Organization) trace wage developments, finding comparable data on household income for both countries over the entire span of 20 to 25 years proves surprisingly difficult. Where the Germans publish hourly and weekly wages during the 1950s, American statistics work with yearly incomes. Some tables give household and others personal income, some calculate net income where others work with disposable income, some give aggregate national income while others break it down by industry or occupation. Differences in income distribution, furthermore, make average salary incomes less meaningful than median household incomes. Similar to consumer prices, the comparative purchasing power of wages and salaries, finally, can often only be estimated. 49. The index numbers grew from 107 (1963) to 161 (1969) in West Germany as compared to 103 to 133 in the United States (1962 = 100). Statistisches Jahrbuch, 1970, p. 122. This continues an even more pronounced trend during the 1950s when the numbers climbed from 78 (1950) to 163 (1960) in West Germany and from 83 to 129 in the same time period in the US (1953 = 100), see Statistisches Jahrbuch, 1961, p. 134. 50. Saroja Selvanathan, A System-Wide Analysis of International Consumption Patterns (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), p. xii. 51. Fluctuations in the exchange rate and relative purchasing power of national currencies make even-handed comparative assessments of nationally calculated prices difficult. Price indexes—as published in the German Statistisches Jahrbuch, by the International Labor organization, or by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Consumer Price Index—that trace the relative development of prices over time, on the other hand, afford at least some a sense of which commodities or services became more affordable or more expensive. The calculation of consumer price indexes, to be sure, was frequently controversial and subject to challenges by

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various groups. See e.g. United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, The Facts about High Living Costs (New York, 1951). 52. Consumer prices in West Germany rose from 39.8 in 1950 and 48.0 in 1960 to 61.7 in 1970 (1982 = 100). In the United States, consumer prices moved from 29.2 in 1950 and 35.9 in 1960 to 47.1 in 1970 (1980 = 100). See Liesner (ed.), One Hundred Years of Economic Statistics, pp. 91 and 211. 53. See Statistisches Jahrbuch 1972, p. 485; and Statistical Abstracts 1972, p. 348. 54. See “Consumer Price Index, Development 1958–1968,” in U.S. Department of Labor, Bulletin 1647 (1970): 15. Costs for all durable goods rose by roughly 7% between 1958 and 1968, well below inflation. Prices for new cars declined by roughly 5% and for appliances by 14% during the same period. 55. See Statistisches Bundesamt, Statistisches Jahrbuch, 1972, p. 457. Costs for household appliances grew by 5%, and for furniture 16%, while TV and radio receivers were on average 17.5% cheaper. For an attempt to relate changes in household consumption patterns to price development in West Germany, see Andre Steiner, “Die Veränderung der Verbraucherpreise und der private Verbrauch von Konsumgütern in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1948–98,” in Economic History Yearbook 2007 / 2, pp. 89–116. 56. It should be noted, however, that West German retail price increases were modest if compared to overall inflation during the postwar decades. See Ralf Banken, “Schneller Strukturwandel trotz institutioneller Stabilität: Die Entwicklung des deutschen Einzelhandels 1949–2000,” in Economic History Yearbook 2007 / 2, pp. 117–146, here p. 120. 57. Differences in disposable income were not dramatic however. In 1950 the rate was 90.9% in the US and 89.1% in West Germany. By 1970 the rates were 85.6% and 83.4% respectively. See Statistisches Jahrbuch 1965, p. 529; Statistisches Jahrbuch 1972, p. 491; and Statistical Abstracts 1972, p. 317. 58. By the early 1960s, for example, consumption of public services (health, education, culture) accounted for over 18% of total private consumption. Polster, “Wandlung der Lebensweise im Spiegel der Konsumentwicklung,” pp. 239–243; and Schmucker, “Die langfristigen Strukturwandlungen,” pp. 145–148. 59. See Clague, “Changing Consumption Patterns.” 60. While Americans typically dipped into their savings in old age, the annuity income of West German pensioners frequently exceeded their expenses as they lowered their overall consumption. See George Katona, Private Pensions and Individual Saving (Ann Arbor: Survey Research Center, 1965), pp 27–34; and Axel Börsch-Supan, “Aging in Germany and the United States: International Comparisons,” in David Wise (ed.), Studies in the Economics of Aging (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 291–325. 61. Peter Kramper, “From Economic Convergence to Convergence in Affluence?” 62. See e.g. Cross, All-Consuming Century, pp. 88–93. On the notion of the “standard package,” see David Riesman, Abundance for What and Other Essays (New York: Transaction, 1964), pp. 100–101. 63. Katona, Mass Consumer Society, pp. 10–14. 64. In 1962 for example, this group accounted for only 16% of Americans. Ibid., p. 105. 65. Ibid., p. 117. 66. RKW, Teilzahlungsfinanzierung, p. 38 67. See e.g. Henthorn, From Submarines to Suburbs. 68. Saturday Evening Post, August 15, 1959, p. 3.

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69. “Macht Wohlstand zufrieden?”Die Welt, August 6, 1963. During the 1950s, to be sure, the level of contentedness was considerably lower, especially among younger and working-class households, who continued to express stronger aspirations to improve their standard of living into the 1960s. 70. See George Katona, Burkhard Strumpel, and Ernest Zahn, Aspirations and Affluence: Comparative Studies in the United States and Western Europe (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), pp. 1–2. Discussing different perspectives on intergenerational social mobility, the authors note that over two-thirds of American fathers during the 1960s expected their boys to go college (girls were not included in these statistics), while only one-third of German fathers approved of their boys staying in school beyond the age of eighteen. 71. Ibid., p. 70. 72. Nölle and Neumann, Jahrbuch der öffentlichen Meinung 1958–1964, p. 73. 73. Ibid., p. 53. 74. Katona, Strumpel, and Zahn, Aspirations and Affluence, pp. 70–72. On American Christmas lists, see Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, p. 249. 75. Ibid., pp. 173–178. 76. Nölle and Neumann, Jahrbuch der öffentlichen Meinung, pp. 547–551. 77. See Kaelble, “Europäische Besonderheiten des Massenkonsums,” pp. 169–203. See also Schildt, Moderne Zeiten, pp. 399–423. 78. On efforts to “rationalize” consumption practices in 1950s West Germany, see e.g. Katherine Pence, Rations to Fashions. 79. Ministry of economics, internal memo, December 21, 1953, in BuArch B 102 / 35996. 80. Eberhard Günther, “Staat und Verbraucher,” in Bundesausschuß für volkswirtschaftliche Aufklärung (ed.), Der Verbraucher am Markt (Cologne, 1965), pp 2–20. 81. The economics ministry often worked in close cooperation with West German women’s organizations. See Carter, How German Is She?; Loehlin, From Rugs to Riches; and Pence, Rations to Fashions. 82. American consumer education through schools and civil society organizations was also closely followed and hailed as exemplary by the ministry. See e.g. the minutes of the November 15, 1955, session of the consumer council in BuArch B 102 / 168706. 83. RKW, Der Verbraucher als Partner der Wirtschaft, pp. 19–27. 84. Ibid., p 72. 85. Ibid., pp. 85–87. 86. On the emergence of bargain shopping since the 1920s, see Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, chap. 1. 87. Sidney Margolius, The Consumer’s Guide to Better Buying (New York: Signet Books, 1951), p. 8. 88. Senator Philip Hart, in preface to Ella Gale, $$$ and Sense: Your Complete Guide to Wise Buying (New York: Fleet Publishing, 1965), p. viii. 89. Eva Mueller and George Katona, “A Study of Purchase Decisions,” in Clark, Consumer Behavior, pp. 30–87. 90. Ibid., pp. 62–69. Only about 25% said they did not like to shop around. 91. Stuart Rich, Shopping Behavior of Department Store Customers: A Study of Store Policies and Customer Demand (Boston: Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, 1963), p. 110. See also Charles Collazzo, Consumer Attitudes and Frustrations in Shopping (New York: Retail Research Institute, 1963), pp. 32–36.

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92. Rich, Shopping Behavior, p. 66. 93. G. Voigt, memo, June 18, 1957, in BuArch B 102 / 35996. 94. Elisabeth Nölle-Neumann and Gerhard Schmidtchen, Verbraucher beim Einkauf: Eine wirtschaftssoziologische Studie über die Rolle des Markenartikels (Allensbach: Institut für Demoskopie, 1968), p. 88. Ironically, the most affluent (and, it was supposed, most sophisticated) consumers looked most favorably on bargain hunting. 95. G. Voigt, “Dem Verbraucher als Menschen helfen,” in Bundesausschuß für volkswirtschaftliche Aufklärung, Der Verbraucher am Markt, pp. 21–40. He based his discussion in part on a large study of shopping habits conducted in the late 1950s on behest of the ministry. See Intermarket, Das Verhalten der Verbraucher (Bonn, 1959); and minutes of consumer council meeting, January 21, 1958, in BuArch B 102 / 168707. 96. See e.g. Günther Mehlem, “Die Stellung des Verbrauchers in der Marktwirtschaft unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seines Verhältnisses zur Warenqualität” (diss., Hamburg, 1960), esp. pp. 150–155. 97. As late as 1967, 53% of German consumers still supported resale price maintenance. Women, especially, seemed to prefer a constant price in all stores, which would limit the time spent comparison shopping. Nölle-Neumann and Schmidtchen, Verbraucher beim Einkauf, pp. 63–75. 98. On the rise of self-service retailing in West-Germany, see Rainer Gries, “‘Serve Yourself!’ The History and Theory of Self-Service in East and West Germany,” in Swett, Wiesen, and Zatlin, Selling Modernity, pp. 307–327. 99. Bruno Tietz, Konsument und Handel: Strukturwandlungen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von 1950 bis 1975 (Frankfurt: Lorch Verlag, 1965), p. 202. 100. Intermarket, Das Verhalten der Verbraucher, pp. 53–54. Such attitudes can be traced back to the late nineteenth century. As Uwe Spiekermann notes, small retailers were initially indifferent to the rise of department stores because they expected customers always to desire “quality” and “expert advice.” Uwe Spiekermann, “Theft and Thieves in German Department Stores, 1895–1930: A Discourse on Morality, Crime and Gender,” in Crossick and Jaumain, Cathedrals of Consumption, pp. 135–159. 101. Collazzo, Consumer Attitudes, pp. 29–30 and 32–33. 102. Rich, Shopping Behavior, p. 101. 103. Consumer Education Study, Effective Shopping: A School-and-Community Project for High School Students (Washington: National Education Association, 1949), p. 53. 104. Scheybani, Handwerk und Kleinhandel in der Bundesrepublik, p. 74. 105. See e.g. Consumer Education Study, Effective Shopping, pp. 10–11; and Galen, $$$ and Sense, p. 10. 106. Lawrence Abbott, Quality and Competition: An Essay in Economic Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), p. 125. 107. From its inception during the 1920s, the American consumer movement put a relatively strong emphasis on subjective “value” right along with objective, measurable “quality.” See McGovern, Sold American, pp. 163–184. 108. Vance Packard, “The Waste Makers,” Consumer Reports (October 1960), pp. 532–537. (Packard’s article was published as a book, The Waste Makers (New York: McKay, 1960.) 109. Thomas Hine, Populuxe (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1986). 110. Alexander Mahr, Der unbewältigte Wohlstand: Probleme der modernen Industriegesellschaft (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1964), pp. 81–89.

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111. See Südbeck, Motorisierung, pp. 51–55, as well as a short essay by Ford Germany chairman Erhard Vitger, in Stiftung “Im Grüne” (ed.), Verschwendung als Wirtschaftsphilosophie? (Düsseldorf: Econ-Verlag, 1962), pp. 68–91. 112. Hartmut Berghoff, “Marketing im 20. Jahrhundert,” p. 15. On advertising, see Berghoff, “‘Times Change and We change with Them.’ ” 113. About 2.75% in the United States as compared with 1.08% in West Germany. See Markus Imobersteig, Die Entwicklung des Konsums mit zunehmendem Wohlstand: Bestimmungsgruende und Auswirkungen (Zürich: Polygraphischer Verlag, 1967), p. 80. 114. Ernst Guth, Kollektive Verbrauchervertretung in den USA (Nuremberg: Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung, 1957), pp 83–84. 115. Anton Böhm, Lebensstandard—Wozu? (Osnabrück: A. Fromm, 1961), p. 31. 116. The “good old times” usually referred to imperial era Germany between 1871 and 1914. See e.g. Walter Breuer, “Verbrauch und Qualität” supplement to Der Volkswirt 28 (1959), pp. 32–34. 117. See e.g. Paul Meyer and Wolfgang Möckel, Einkaufsgewohnheiten in Bayern (Nuremberg: Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung, 1957), pp. 137–147. 118. See Intermarket, Das Verhalten Der Verbraucher. 119. See Alf Lüdtke, “‘Deutsche Qualitätsarbeit,’ ‘Spielereien’ am Arbeitsplatz und ‘Fliehen’ aus der Fabrik: industrielle Arbeitsprozesse und Arbeiterverhalten in den 1920er Jahren,” in Friedhelm Boll (ed.), Arbeiterkulturen zwischen Alltag und Politik: Beiträge zum europäischen Vergleich in der Zwischenkriegszeit (Vienna: Europa Verlag, 1986), pp. 155–197, esp. pp. 182–183. 120. See e.g. Günther v. Pechmann, Die Qualitätsarbeit: Ein Handbuch für Industrielle, Kaufleute, Gewerbepolitiker (Frankfurt: Societätsdruckerei, 1924), p. 13. For the continuity of such ideas into the postwar era, see Betts, The Authority of Everyday Objects. 121. “Im Wandel der Vorstellungen,” in Die Qualitätsware, pp. 1–2, supplement to Der Deutsche Handel 1 / 1 (1949). 122. Landesgewerbeamt Stuttgart (ed.), Wie Wohnen: Hausrat aus Keramik, Glas, Metall, Holz (Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje, 1951), pp. 5–9. 123. Betts, The Authority of Everyday Objects, pp. 8–10 and 137. 124. Intermarket, Verhalten der Verbraucher, pp. 50–55. 125. See Trumbull, Consumer Capitalism, esp. chaps. 5 and 7. 126. Katona, Strumpel, and Zahn, Aspirations and Affluence, p. 113. 127. On the “belated” arrival of emulative consumption in West Germany, see Christoph Deutschmann, “Anglo-amerikanischer Consumerism und die Diskussion über Lebensstile in Deutschland,” in Berghahn and Vitolis, Gibt es einen deutschen Kapitalismus? pp. 154–165. 128. Bureau of Labor Statistics, How American Buying Habits Change, p. 7. 129. On the renaissance of Veblen in postwar economics, see Roger Mason, The Economics of Conspicuous Consumption: Theory and Thought Since 1700 (Cheltenham, UK: Edgar Elgar, 1998). 130. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), esp. chaps. 4 and 5. 131. See Ghanie Ghaussy, Verbrauchen und Sparen: Versuch einer kritischen Überprüfung der Keynes’schen Konsumfunktion an Hand der langfristigen Sparentwicklung in den USA (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1964), esp. p. 89. 132. James Duesenberry, Income, Saving and the Theory of Consumer Behavior (1949; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 26–28. 133. See also Cross, All-Consuming Century, pp. 22–23 and 118. As Cross points out, however,

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this hardly meant that American consumer society was egalitarian or free of social distinction, but rather that such differences were “fluid and continually interrelating.” 134. Neil Gross, “Social Class Identification in the Urban Community,” American Sociological Review 18 (1953): 398–404. See also discussion in Heinz Kluth, Sozialprestige und sozialer Status (Stuttgart: Ferdinend Enke, 1957), p. 70. 135. Ely Chinoy, Automobile Workers and the American Dream (1955; Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), p. 126. 136. Ibid. On the shift in social and political self-identification through home ownership and the embrace of mass consumer culture, see Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven. 137. On the considerable stratification of used and new car ownership in 1950s America, see Sally Clarke, Trust and Power: Consumers, the Modern Corporation, and the Making of the United States Automobile Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 247–249. 138. See Moskowitz, Standard of Living. Leach, Land of Desire, similarly discusses the “democratization of desire” in the first half of the twentieth century through the displays of modern department stores. 139. Hazel Kyrk, The Family in the American Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 380. 140. See e.g. Karl Hörning, Ansätze zu einer Konsumsoziologie (Freiburg: Rombach, 1970), pp. 136–137, who cites findings from C.W. Sherif, Reference Groups (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 101. 141. See above, Abramovitz, “Catching up.” 142. Lawrence Mayer, “The Diverse $10,000-and-Over Masses,” Fortune (December 1967), pp. 114–117, reprinted in Grant McClellan (ed.), The Consuming Public (New York: W. H. Wilson, 1968), pp. 24–32. 143. Holton, “The American Consumer: King or Pawn.” 144. James Morgan, “Consumer Investment Expenditures,” American Economic Review 48 (1958): 874–902. 145. Gary Hendricks, Janet Keller, and Kenwood Youmans, Consumer Durables and Installment Debt: A Study of American Households (Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, 1973), p. 147. 146. See e.g. Ben Seligman (ed.), Poverty as a Public Issue (New York: Free Press, 1965); and Alan Andreasen, The Disadvantaged Consumer (New York: Free Press, 1975). 147. See e.g. Caplovitz, The Poor Pay More. 148. Andreasen, Disadvantaged Consumer, pp. 24–25. 149. Herman Miller, “The Dimensions of Poverty,” in Seligman, Poverty as a Public Issue, pp. 20–51. 150. See Richard Sterner, The Negro’s Share: A Study of Income, Consumption, Housing and Public Assistance (1943; Westport: Negro Universities Press, 1971). L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, chap. 4, discusses the many ways in which African Americans fought to overcome consumer during the postwar decades. 151. Seligman, Poverty as a Public Issue, p. 2. 152. See e.g. Bureau of Census demographer Herman Miller, “Is the Income Gap Closed?— No!” New York Times, November 11, 1962. 153. Offer, The Challenge of Affluence, p. 301. 154. Ruth Mack, “Trends in American Consumption and the Aspiration to Consume,” American Economic Review 46 (1956): 55–68.

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155. Helmut Schelsky, Auf der Suche nach Wirklichkeit: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Düsseldorf: Eugen Diederichs, 1965), esp. pp. 331–332, 355, and 365–366. For the debate on Schelsky, see Schildt, Moderne Zeiten, pp. 352–363. 156. West Germany certainly was not the only country to witness similar debates during the postwar decades. For the case of Britain and its debates about the “embourgeoisement” of the working class, see e.g. John Goldthorpe, The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). 157. Kurt Fiedler, “Lebenshaltung und Lebensstandard der deutschen Bevölkerung” (diss., Tübingen, 1961), pp. 3–10. 158. Ibid., p. 146. 159. Georg Bergler, Beiträge zur Absatz- und Verbrauchsforschung (Nuremberg: Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung, 1957), pp. 78–96 and 113. 160. See e.g. Braunwarth, Die führenden westdeutschen Warenhausgesellschaften, p. 198. 161. See Abelshauser, Die langen 50er Jahre, pp. 50–60, who emphasizes the continuities of social inequalities despite the widespread increase in real incomes during the economic miracle. 162. Schelsky, Auf der Suche, pp. 341–344. 163. Kramper, “From Economic Convergence to Convergence in Affluence?” p. 60. 164. Ernst Koch, “Macht und Ohnmacht des Verbrauchers,” supplement to Der Volkswirt 28 (1959), p. 7. 165. See Annemarie Gaus, “Die Lebenshaltung in vergleichbaren Haushalten von Beamten, Angestellten und Arbeitern,” Wirtschaft und Statistik 8 (1966): 467–471, esp. p. 469. See also (with some variations in findings) Statistisches Bundesamt, Fachserie M: Preise, Löhne, Wirtschaftsrechnungen—Reihe 18: Einkommens- und Verbrauchsstichproben 1962 / 63 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1964). 166. Richard Hamilton, “Affluence and the Worker: The West German Case,” American Journal of Sociology 71 (1965): 144–152, here p. 144. For a further critique of the ideological underpinnings of the “leveling thesis” and the degree to which it overstates class equalization, see Richard Hamilton, “Einkommen und Klassenstruktur: Der Fall der Bundesrepublik,” in Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie 20 (1968): 250–287. 167. Ibid. A similar picture emerges from historian Michael Wildt’s account of middle-class and working-class households during the 1950s. See Wildt, Am Beginn der Konsumgesellschaft, pp. 109–115. 168. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). 169. Karl Hörning, Ansätze zu einer Konsumsoziologie, pp. 97–100 and 122–23. 170. On the decline of milieus and the role of mass consumption in this process, see Stefan Goch, “Aufstieg der Konsumgesellschaft—Niedergang des Milieus?” in Prinz, Der lange Weg in den Überfluss, pp. 403–430. 171. Achim Schrader, Die soziale Bedeutung des Besitzes in der modernen Konsumgesellschaft: Folgerungen aus einer empirischen Untersuchung in Westdeutschland (Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1966), esp. pp. 68–69. 172. Peter Hitschmann, “Die soziale Bindung des Konsums,” supplement to Der Volkswirt 28 (1959), pp. 16–20. 173. Peter Meyer-Dohm and Wolfgang Strauss (eds.), Buch und Leser in Deutschland (Güthersloh: Bertelsmann Verlag, 1965), pp. 15, 87, and 90–97. 174. Kaelble, “Europäische Besonderheiten,” pp. 182–184, notes that in 1960 in West Germany

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363 books were produced per one million inhabitants (1970 = 707) as opposed to 79 in the United States (1970 = 388). 175. Maase, Bravo Amerika, pp. 231–239. Pells, Not Like Us, p. 236, makes a very similar point for Western Europe in general. 176. On the persisting influence of “Bürgerlichkeit” as a concept, see Manfred Hettling, “Bürgerlichkeit im Nachkriegsdeutschland,” in Manfred Hettling and Bernd Ulrich (eds.), Bürgertum nach 1945 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2005), pp. 7–37. 177. Michael Wildt, “Konsumbürger: Das Politische als Optionsfreiheit und Distinktion,” in Hettling and Ulrich, Bürgertum nach 1945, pp. 255–283. 178. See e.g. Joseph Mooser, “Liberalismus und Gesellschaft nach 1945: Soziale Marktwirtschaft und Neoliberalismus am Beispiel Wilhelm Röpcke,” in Hettling and Ulrich (ed.), Bürgertum nach 1945, pp. 134–163. 179. Elizabeth Hoyt et al. (eds.), The American Income and Its Use (New York: Harper, 1954), pp. viii and xx. 180. Böhm, Lebensstandard—Wozu?, pp. 7 and 18. Böhm was the coeditor of Wort und Wahrheit and, between 1963 and 1973, editor of the Catholic weekly Rheinischer Merkur. 181. Mahr, Der unbewältigte Wohlstand, pp. 92–102. 182. Hettling, “Bürgerlichkeit im Nachkriegsdeutschland,” p. 27. 183. Intermarket, Das Verhalten der Verbraucher, pp. 116–117. 184. Reckendrees, “Konsummuster im Wandel,” p. 55. Chapter Four 1. Katona, Strumpel, and Zahn, Aspirations and Affluence, p. 3. 2. In 2001, total outstanding consumer debt in the United States amounted to $1822.2 billion (roughly 18% of GDP and $6485 per capita). As many as 42.5% of Americans had outstanding installment debt and 44.4% credit card debt. In Germany, 22.4% of households had outstanding consumer debt, amounting to a total of €222.4 billion (roughly 10% GDP and €2695 per capita). See Udo Reifner and Helga Springeneer, “Die private Überschuldung im internationalen Vergleich—Trends, Probleme, Lösungsansätze,”in Schuldenkompass 2004: Empirische Indikatoren der privaten Ver- und Überschuldung in Deutschland (Wiesbaden: Schufa, 2004), pp. 167–168. 3. For a recent discussion of the emphasis on expanding purchasing power since the 1930s, see Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, esp. chaps. 3 and 4. 4. On the notion of American peculiarity in financing consumption, see Sheldon Garon and Patricia Maclachlan (eds.), The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), esp. Charles Horioka, “Are the Japanese Unique? An Analysis of Consumption and Saving Behavior in Japan,” pp. 113–136. 5. On the history of consumer credit in the United States, see Calder, Financing the American Dream; Olney, Buy Now, Pay Later; and Lewis Mandell, The Credit Card Industry: A History (Boston: Twayne, 1984). Only Louis Hyman, Debtor Nation, now fills the postwar gap in the historiography. 6. Calder, Financing the American Dream, passim. 7. See e.g. Rolf Nugent, Consumer Credit and Economic Stability (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1939); and Martha Olney, “Avoiding Default: The Role of Credit in the Consumption Collapse of 1930,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (1999): 319–33. 8. “Big Expansion Seen in Consumer Credit,” New York Times, May 12, 1945.

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9. See e.g. “Credit Curb Order to Be Issued Today,” New York Times, August 19, 1948; “Consumer Debt Is at Peak Level, But Has It Reached Peril Point?” New York Times, March 27, 1955; “Do Installments Peril the Economy?” New York Times, May 4, 1958; “Deposits Decline at Savings Banks,” New York Times, January 11, 1960; and “Credit Is Nearing Theoretical Peak,” New York Times, April 15, 1963. 10. By 1959 these institutions together held about 70% of all outstanding consumer credit and about 90% of outstanding installment debt, with commercial banks accounting for the largest share, about 38%. See Paul Smith, Consumer Credit Cost 1949–1959 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 1, 5–28, 47, and 64. 11. See Thomas Juster, Household Capital Formation and Financing 1897–1962 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966); p. 56, and “Consumer Credit Planned by Banks,” New York Times, February 22, 1946. 12. Juster, Household Capital, pp. 51–57; and Carl Dauten, The Consumer Finance Industry in a Dynamic Economy: The Record and Problems of Consumer Finance Companies during World War II and the Postwar Period (St. Louis: American Investment Company of Illinois, 1959). 13. See Clarke, Trust and Power, chap. 7. 14. On state laws, see e.g. Dauten, Consumer Finance Industry, and Thomas Rogers, “A Summary Review of Laws Governing Consumer Credit,” in Consumer Credit Today: Proceedings of the Consumer Credit Conference 1950 (University of Illinois Bulletin, 1951), pp. 29–80. 15. See e.g. Hansen, After the War—Full Employment; and Hansen, Economic Policy and Full Employment. 16. See Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (ed.), Consumer Instalment Credit, pt. 1, vol. 1 (Washington, 1957), pp. 286–287. 17. Rolf Nugent, Consumer Credit and Economic Stability (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1939), p. 220. On Nugent’s role in formulating Regulation W, see Irving Michelman, Consumer Finance: A Case History in American Business (New York: Frederick Fell, 1966), p. 263. 18. On the notion of “growth liberalism,” see Collins, More. On the broader postwar consensus built around a mass consumption economy, see also Brinkley, The End of Reform; and L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic. 19. Tobey, Technology as Freedom. Tobey considers the 1930s a major caesura in the shift from a savings- to a debt-based consumer society. 20. See ibid.; and Schwarz, The New Dealers, p. 235. 21. During World War II consumer credit terms had been limited by the Federal Reserve Board’s Regulation W in an effort to shift resources from civilian to military production and consumption. Instituted in August of 1941, Regulation W provided for minimum down-payment requirements as well as maximum maturity rates for installment purchases. In varied forms, Regulation W remained effective until November of 1947 and was briefly reinstated between September 1948 and June 1949 and again during the Korean War as part of the Defense Production Act of 1950. See Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Consumer Installment Credit, pp. 288–324. See also Michelman, Consumer Finance. 22. See “Merchants’ Leader Hits Credit Curbs,” New York Times, October 21, 1966; and Mandell, The Credit Card Industry. 23. Louis Hyman, “Debtor Nation: How Consumer Credit Built Postwar America,” Enterprise & Society 9,4 (2008), pp. 614–618, here p. 616. Hyman also speaks of a shift from the “Fordist” era of installment credit to the “Post-Fordist” revolving credit economy during the early 1960s. 24. See L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic pp. 269–270.

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25. See especially Horvath’s comprehensive article “Die Teilzahlungskredite als Begleiterscheinung des deutschen Wirtschaftswunders”; and Stücker, “Konsum auf Kredit in der Bundesrepublik.” See also Wildt, “Amerika auf Raten,” who gives a nuanced account for the 1950s developments but insists that the 1960s presented the decade in which West Germany took up the American consumption and credit model. 26. For the history of consumer credit in Germany prior to World War II, see Jan Logemann and Uwe Spiekermann, “The Myth of a Bygone Cash Economy: Consumer Lending in Germany from the Nineteenth Century to the Mid-Twentieth Century,” Entreprises et Histoire 59 (2010): 12–27. 27. On the 1948 currency reform, see Pence, “The Myth of a Suspended Present.” 28. See Horvath, “Teilzahlungskredite,” p. 20. 29. See Der Spiegel, November 10, 1949. See also Franz Effer, “Die Bedeutung des Konsumentenkredits für den deutschen Einzelhandel,” in Franz Schneider (ed.), Die Finanzen des privaten Haushalts (Frankfurt: Fritz Knapp, 1969), pp. 95–104. 30. See Friedrich Lutz, Der Konsumentenkredit (Cologne: Carl Heymanns, 1954), pp. 18–19. 31. “Wer ins Leihhaus geht,” Der Spiegel, June 30, 1949. 32. Paul Selby, “Consumer Credit and the Standard of Living—Europe vs. America,” in Proceedings of the National Consumer Credit Conference for 1952 (Indiana University Bulletin, 1952), pp. 35–46. 33. Doris Hallermann, “Der Teilzahlungskredit: Ein Beitrag zur betriebswirtschaftlichen Absatzmarktforschung” (diss., Münster, 1966), pp. 95–97. 34. See Lutz, Der Konsumentenkredit, pp. 9–11. 35. Rudolf Menge, “Der unorganisierte Kundenkredit im Einzelhandel II,” Die Teilzahlungswirtschaft (subsequently TW) 4 (1956): 100. 36. Lutz, Der Konsumentenkredit, pp. 14–17. 37. See ibid., pp. 37–38. Lutz bases his numbers on the Federal Reserve Bulletin and the German Institut für Handelsforschung. 38. See Jörn Schmidt-Wegenast, “Der Wandel in der Einstellung des Kreditwesens zum Konsumenten,” in Schneider, Finanzen des Privaten Haushalts, pp. 121–141. 39. See e.g. Fritz Weiss, “Die Entwicklung und wirtschaftliche Bedeutung der Teilzahlungskreditwirtschaft in der Bundesrepublik,” in Schneider, Finanzen des Privaten Haushalts, p. 112; and “24 Prozent Zinsen sind kein Wucher,” Der Spiegel, November 23, 1963, p. 53. 40. See “Einkauf am Küchentisch,” Der Spiegel, January 1, 1954. On the important role of credit for the mail-order business, see also Hallermann, Der Teilzahlungskredit, pp. 97–101. 41. See e.g. Sheldon Garon, “The Transnational Promotion of Savings in Asia: ‘Asian Values’ or the ‘Japanese Model’?” in Garon and Maclachlan, Ambivalent Consumer, pp. 163–187. 42. For the overriding concern about ensuring adequate capital supply and investments in West Germany, particularly during the early 1950s, see e.g. Van Hook, Rebuilding Germany. 43. Ludwig Erhard “Ein Kühlschrank für jeden Haushalt,” in Ludwig Erhard, Deutsche Wirtschaftspolitik: Der Weg der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft (Frankfurt: Knapp, 1962), pp. 221–223 (originally published in Welt der Arbeit, June 16, 1953). See also memo, “Arbeitstagung des AGV,” April 30, 1954, in BuArch B 102 / 168666. 44. Ibid. Wildt, “Amerika auf Raten,” too, notes the fundamentally different perspective on social mobility through credit expressed by Erhard. 45. “Lohn-Preis-Spirale,” Der Spiegel, September 14, 1955; and Monatsbericht Bank deutscher Länder, 9 (1954) in BuArch B102 / 3941.

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46. Well publicized incidents of mass defaults on smaller consumer loans especially by working-class consumers in the industrial Ruhr area (where the wages of miners were being garnished at alarming rates in 1953) fueled this notion in German public debate during the 1950s. See e.g. “Ratenkäufe—Die Zeche zahlen,” Der Spiegel, December 9, 1953. 47. See Bulletin 114 (1956): 1121–1122. 48. See Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 197, 2nd WP 1953; and Drucksache 1895, 4th WP 1963. 49. See Horvath, “Die Teilzahlungskredite,” pp. 37–38; and a report on the trip to the ministry’s consumer council, minutes of the consumer council’s session of November 6, 1956, in BuArch B 102 / 168706. 50. See e.g. the CDU response by Dr. Elbrächter to the SPD bill of 1963 in Deutscher Bundestag, Stenographische Protokolle, 4th WP, p. 118, Session of March 4, 1964. 51. For the correspondence and reports of working group IX of the ministry of economics between 1961 and 1962, see BuArch B 126 / 48652. 52. See Horvath, “Teilzahlungskredite”; Stücker, “Konsum auf Kredit”; and Effer, “Bedeutung des Konsumentenkredits,” p. 99. 53. See Hallermann, Teilzahlungskredit, pp. 96–97. 54. Ibid., p. 119. On this development, see also Fritz Weiss, “Die Entwicklung und wirtschaftliche Bedeutung der Teilzahlungskreditwirtschaft in der Bundesrepublik,” in Schneider, Die Finanzen des privaten Haushalts, pp. 105–120. 55. “Wohlstandskredite,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 14, 1965. 56. “Viele Lohnpfändungen bei Bergarbeitern: Feststellungen der Handelskammer Münster / Steigender Wunsch nach Luxus,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 21, 1966. 57. “Diners’ Club—Planziel 50 000,” Der Spiegel, September 25, 1963, p. 66. On the slow expansion of consumer credit cards in Germany, see also Detlef König, Konsumentenkredit: Neuordnung in den USA und deutsche Reformprobleme (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1971), pp. 7–8. 58. See “Der Konsumentenkredit in Westdeutschland,” Neue Züricher Zeitung, July 17, 1966; and “Schlußbericht der Arbeitsgruppe IX,” April 3, 1962, in BuArch B126 / 48652 as well as a memorandum dated August 22, 1966, in BuArch B 126 / 48653. 59. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Historical Statistics, 1960– 1995 (Paris: OECD, 1997), p. 70. 60. See Stella Seeberg, “Langlebige Haushaltsgüter und Haushaltsinvestitionen,” in Erich Egner (ed.), Aspekte des hauswirtschaftlichen Strukturwandes (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1967), p. 84. 61. Axel Börsch-Supan et  al., “The German Savings Puzzle,” Beiträge zur angewandten Wirtschaftsforschung No. 594 (Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre und Statistik der Universität Mannheim, 1999). 62. See Klaus Schuberth, Konsumentenkredit und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung: Der Einfluss der Kreditfinanzierung des privaten Konsums auf die Struktur der Volkswirtschaft (Spardorf: Wilfer, 1988), p. 173. 63. See e.g. Günter Schmölders, Der Umgang mit Geld im privaten Haushalt (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1969), pp. 59–66; and Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach (ed.), Jahrbuch der öffentlichen Meinung 1965–67 (Allensbach: Verlag für Demoskopie, 1968), pp. 83 and 278. 64. The survey allowed for multiple answers. Gesellschaft für Konsum-, Markt- und Absatzforschung (1967), cited in Katona et al., Aspirations and Affluence, p. 96. 65. Schmölders, Der Umgang mit Geld, cited in Katona et al., Aspirations and Affluence,

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p. 97. Already in a 1955 survey on the development of attitudes toward saving, the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach concluded: “The savings account very often also serves the purpose of accumulating assets, which will subsequently be used for consumption.” See “Die soziale Spannung II: Eigentumsbildung durch Sparen,” 1955, in BuArch ZSG 132 / 2775, p. 14. 66. See e.g. Raymond Goldsmith, A Study of Savings in the United States, 3 vols. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1955), pp. 4–7, who finds an upward trend in savings in the United States during the twentieth century. However, if durables as assets were excluded from his calculation of the savings to income ratio, a small decline would be noticeable. 67. Multiple answers were possible. University of Michigan Survey Research Center, “Surveys of Consumer Finances,” cited in Katona et al., Aspirations and Affluence, pp. 97–98. 68. See Kaelble, “Europäische Besonderheiten.” 69. Federal Reserve, Consumer Instalment Credit, pt. 1, vol. 1, pp. 85–108. 70. See L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, pp. 160–161, 170–172, 281–283, 369–370, and 381–386. 71. See Horvath, “Teilzahlungskredite”; Stücker, “Konsum auf Kredit,” pp. 80–82; and DIVO-Institut (ed.), Umfragen: Ereignisse und Probleme der Zeit im Urteil der Bevölkerung, vol. 2 (Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1958). 72. See Schuberth, Konsumentenkredit und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung, p. 146; Knut Holzscheck, Günter Hörmann, and Jürgen Daviter, Die Praxis des Konsumentenkredits in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Eine empirische Untersuchung zur Rechtssoziologie und Oekonomie des Konsumentenkredits (Cologne: Bundesanzeiger, 1982), p. 437; and Katona et al. Aspirations and Affluence, p. 177. 73. See chapter 3; and Moskowitz, Standard of Living. 74. “Consumer Credit Expected to Rise,” New York Times, January 2, 1947. 75. “Credit Curb Eased for Home Repairs,” New York Times, September 26, 1945. 76. “CIO for Ending Time Buying Curbs,” New York Times, May 7, 1952. 77. Clyde Phelps, Financing the Installment Purchases of the American Family (Baltimore: Commercial Credit Company, 1954), pp. 29–31. 78. Consumer Instalment Credit, pt. 1, vol. 1, pp. 315–324. See also Milton Friedmann, speech published in “Symposium on Consumer Credit and Consumer Spending,” University of Pennsylvania Bulletin 57 (Philadelphia, 1957), p. 67. 79. Clyde Phelps, Using Installment Credit (Baltimore: Commercial Credit Company, 1955), pp. v–vi. 80. William Cheyney, Using Our Credit Intelligently (Washington: National Foundation for Consumer Credit, 1956). 81. See David Tucker, The Decline of Thrift in America: Our Cultural Shift from Saving to Spending (New York: Praeger, 1991), p. 135. The broader shift in cultural attitudes toward spending and consumption during the first half of the twentieth century is traced in Horowitz, Morality of Spending. 82. Gladys Bahr, Using Consumer Credit (Washington: National Education Association, 1947). Bahr, though not necessarily critical of credit, gives equal voice to “Mrs. Cash” and “Mrs. Credit,” pp. 33–34. 83. See e.g. Roger Babson, The Folly of Installment Buying (New York: Frederick Stokes, 1938), pp. 138–149. 84. Carl Dauten, Financing the American Consumer (St. Louis: American Investment Company of Illinois, 1956), p. 5. Similarly Cheyney, Using our Credit Intelligently, p. 4. 85. See Dauten, Financing the American Consumer, pp. 4–5.

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86. “To Own More, One Owes More Today,” New York Times, March 24, 1957. 87. See e.g. Raymond Goldsmith, A Study of Savings in the United States, 3 vols. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1955), esp. pp. 6–7. 88. Cheyney, Using our Credit Intelligently. 89. Donald McClure, “What Consumer Credit Does for the Wage Earner and the Standard of Living,” in Proceedings of the National Conference on Consumer Credit (Columbus: Ohio State University Publications, 1948), p. 60. 90. See e.g. “Consumer Credit Held Out of Hand,” New York Times, August 1, 1948; “Consumer Credit at Peak Level, But Has It Reached Peril Point?” New York Times, March 27, 1955; “Do Installments Peril the Economy?” New York Times, May 4, 1958; “Consumer Credit Reaches $1 for Each $9 of Wages,” New York Times, January 11, 1960. 91. “The Coming Turn in Consumer Credit,” Fortune, March 1956; and “The Danger in Mortgage Debt,” Fortune, April 1956. 92. William Whyte, “Budgetism: The Opiate of the Middle Classes,” Fortune, May 1956, pp. 133–37, 164, 166, 171–72. 93. L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, p. 121, argues this very point by suggesting that the introduction of Scrooge McDuck’s character in Disney comics in 1947 reflects a dramatic change to negative attitudes toward thrift. 94. Moreover, Whyte suggested banks should take advantage of suburbanites’ penchant for regularity by setting up savings plans (modeled on the successful Christmas clubs) designed so that people would “trap themselves into accumulation.” See Whyte, “Budgetism.” 95. Black, Buy Now, Pay Later, p. 5. 96. Ibid., p. 214. 97. Franz Theunert, “Ein Kühlschrank in jedem Haushalt: Aber heben Teilzahlungskäufe den Lebensstandard?” Welt der Arbeit, June 5, 1953. 98. Paul Keuth, “Das Problem der Konsumfinanzierun: Skepsis ist unbedingt notwendig,” Der Deutsche Handel 2 / 3 (1950): 7–8, for example, warned against the “fashion” of credit financing in retailing. How divided the German retail industry was on the question of installment credit is well illustrated by an internal economics ministry memo stating: “Installment plans are supported by one part of the consumer goods associations as emphatically as they are rejected by the other.” Memo, October 28, 1953, in BuArch B102 / 39409. 99. “Ratenschreck: Für Stotterer mitbezahlen,” Der Spiegel, February 11, 1953. 100. See e.g. “Teilzahlungskäufe nehmen erheblich zu: Die volkswirtschaftlichen Gefahren sollten aber nicht übersehen werden,” Die Zeit, December 12, 1953. 101. See economics ministry memo dated January 11, 1954, in BuArch B 102 / 39409. Because of the commercial interests involved, ministry employees advised their superiors to avoid affiliation with the Arbeitskreis and not to attend its meetings. See letter Dr. Michel to Ludwig Erhard, December 19, 1953, in BuArch B 102 / 39409. 102. See Horvath, “Die Teilzahlungskredite,” pp. 33–36. 103. Lutz, Der Konsumentenkredit, p. 108. 104. Ibid., pp. 107–123. See also letter Curt Bley to Ludwig Erhard, April 27, 1954, with attached report by Friedrich Lutz in BuArch B102 / 39409. 105. Curt Bley, Tatsachen über Kredit und Kreditmissbrauch: Anregungen an den Gesetzgeber (Cologne: Karl Heymanns, 1954), p. 5. 106. Wilhelm Röpke, Vorgegessenes Brot: Kritische Nachlese zu Diskussion über das Borgkaufwesen (Cologne: Karl Heymanns, 1955), p. 16.

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107. Wilhelm Röpke, Borgkauf im Lichte der sozialethischen Kritik (Cologne: Karl Heymanns, 1954), pp. 9–11. 108. Röpke, Vorgegessenes Brot, p. 14. In an unfortunate repartee to this claim, Nöll v.d. Nahmer, a leading proponent of installment buying stated: “Medical science would certainly heartily disagree if a medical Röpke were to claim that every smoker should be concerned about developing cancer!” See Nöll v.d. Nahmer, “Zur Diskussion um Teilzahlungskredit,” TW 5 (1955): 134–138. 109. See Carter, How German Is She?; and, especially, Pence, From Rations to Fashions. 110. See e.g. Anton Böhm, Lebensstandard—Wozu? (Osnabrück: A. Fromm, 1961). The debate over married women working part-time to add to the household income illustrates how slow the public perception of gender roles in West Germany’s emerging consumer society changed. See Christine von Oertzen, Teilzeitarbeit und die Lust am Zuverdienen: Geschlechterpolitik und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Westdeutschland 1948–1969 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999). 111. See Günter Schmölders, Der Umgang mit Geld, pp. 24–38. 112. Or the wasteful alcohol and tobacco consumption of men. See e.g. “Credit Drunk,” New York Times, July 18, 1968, and Ruth Mack, “Trends in American Consumption and the Aspiration to Consume,” in American Economic Review 46 (1956): 55–68. 113. L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, pp. 146–148. 114. On postwar consumer engineering and the gendered symbolism employed see e.g. Henthorn, From Submarines to Suburbs. On the relationship between consumption and cold war domesticity, see also May, Homeward Bound. 115. References to the “good old days,” referring predominantly to the Imperial era after 1871, permeated the West German discourse over mass consumption during the postwar decade, and they are intimately connected to an attempt to salvage the cultural role the bourgeois middleclass after the war. See e.g. Hettling and Bernd, Bürgertum nach 1945. 116. Röpke, Borgkauf, pp. 11–16. 117. Memo, December 12, 1953, in BuArch B 102 / 39409. 118. See “Ratenkauf—Ein Feind des Spargedankens?” TW 4 (1954): 112–113; and citation in Bley, Tatsachen, p. 16. Moral appeals to save were commonplace in 1950s Sparkassen rhetoric and were seen as an expression of the savings banks’ public mission to encourage a culture of saving. Only with a new leadership generation by the mid-1960s did savings banks become more marketing oriented and reevaluated consumers as “economic citizens” who could handle their money responsibly. See Rebecca Belvederesi-Kochs, “Von der ‘moralischen Anstalt’ zum vertriebsorientierten Finanzdienstleister,” Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 53 (2008): 192–215. 119. On the centrality of savings for the economic debate on consumer credit (including the question of what actually constitutes saving), see Franz Wagner, “Die volkswirtschaftliche Kontroverse über die Wirkung des Teilzahlungskredits” (diss., Freiburg, 1957). 120. See e.g. the long-running series “Der Konsumkredit in den USA,” beginning in TW 3 (1954): 94–95. 121. “Bericht der deutschen Studiengruppe über das Ergebnis einer Reise in die USA zum Studium der amerikanischen Teilzahlungsfinanzierung,” TW 5 (1956): 156–159. 122. DIVO-Institut (ed.), Umfragen, p. 95. 123. See e.g. DIVO-Institut (ed.), Umfragen; and Günter Schmölders, Umgang mit Geld, p. 133. On the general liberalization and change in attitude toward consumption of the generation that came of age during more affluent 1960s, see Siegfried, Time is on My Side.

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124. See Hallermann, Der Teilzahlungskredit, p. 133. 125. Katona et al., Aspirations and Affluence, p. 99. 126. Günter Schmölders, Psychologie des Geldes (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1966), pp. 113–119. 127. Federal Reserve, ed., Consumer Instalment Credit, pt. 1, vol. 1, pp. 105–107. 128. See George Katona, “Die Bedeutung des Konsumentenkredits in der Wirtschaft der USA,” in Finanzen des privaten Haushalts, pp. 219–227. On differences in economic outlook and expectations for determining household behavior well into the 1970s, see also Burkhard Strümpel, “Amerikanische Konsumenten und deutsche Sparer,” in Forschungsstelle für den Handel (ed.), Handelsforschung heute (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1979), pp. 207–213. 129. Today it is notably in the United States that “deficit financing” by means of credit card debt plays a major role, e.g. in covering medical expenses for lower-income groups. See Udo Reifner and Helga Springeneer, “Die private Überschuldung im internationalen Vergleich.” 130. See e.g. Tucker, The Decline of Thrift in America. 131. Calder, Financing the American Dream. 132. Katona et al., Aspirations and Affluence, pp. 173–178. 133. Sheldon Garon has observed very similar dynamics in postwar Japan. See Garon, “Japan’s Post-war ‘Consumer Revolution.’ ” 134. Calder, “The Evolution of Consumer Credit in the United States,” pp. 23–34. Introduction to Part Three 1. There is a growing literature on the spatial dimension of modern mass consumption. See e.g. John Urry, Consuming Places (London: Routledge 1995); and Steven Miles and Malcolm Miles, Consuming Cities (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave 2004). 2. For a recent comparative discussion of urban development patterns in both countries, see v. Saldern, “The Suburbanization of German and American Cities.” 3. See e.g. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier; and Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside. 4. Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopia: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books 1987). 5. See Friedrich Lenger, Urbanisierung als Suburbanisierung—Grundzüge der Nordamerikanischen Entwicklung im 20. Jahrhundert (Bochum: Stiftung Bibliothek des Ruhrgebiets, 2003) for a recent overview from a comparative angle. For a refutation of technology-centered explanations of suburbanization in favor of a more consumer- and market-oriented paradigm, see Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820–2000 (New York: Vintage Books, 2003). 6. See e.g. Clifford Clark, The American Family Home, 1800–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986); and John Stilgoe, Borderlands: Origins of the American Suburb 1820–1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). 7. On the social reconstruction of American cities into automotive cities during the interwar years, see Peter Norton, Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). 8. For the term “Keynesian suburbanization,” see Lenger, Urbanisierung als Suburbanisierung. 9. See Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias. 10. On the rise of city planning since the late nineteenth century, see Jürgen Reulecke, Geschichte der Urbanisierung in Deutschland (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985), chap. 3; and, especially,

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Jörn Düwel and Niels Gutschow, Städtebau in Deutschland im 20. Jahrhundert: Ideen-ProjekteAkteure (Stuttgart: Teubner, 2001), chap. 1. 11. See e.g. Christoph Mohr and Martin Hunscher, Wohnen in Frankfurt am Main: Wohnformen, Quartiere und Städtebau im Wandel der Zeit (Frankfurt: Campus, 1995), p. 79. 12. Clemens Zimmermann, “Wohnungspolitik—Eigenheim für alle?” in Harlander, Villa und Eigenheim, pp. 231–349, here p. 338. 13. Tilman Harlander, Hitler’s sozialer Wohnungsbau. 14. On postwar city planning and its continuities, see Gerd Albers, “Städtebau seit 1945,” in Lothar Juckel (ed.), Haus, Wohnung, Stadt: Beiträge zum Wohnungs- und Städtebau 1945–1985 (Hamburg: Neue Heimat, 1986); Harlander, “Wohnen und Stadtentwicklung,” p. 240; and Niels Gutschow, “Fritz Schumacher: Vordenker für den Wiederaufbau zerstörter Städte in Norddeutschland,” Stadtbauwelt 48 (1984), pp. 346–349. 15. Jahke, Die wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen, pp. 10–15, 35–45. 16. The use of the English term “city” even in Germany is reflective of the perceived pioneer role of the “City of London” in this development. See Erich Otremba, Allgemeine Geographie des Welthandels und des Weltverkehrs (Stuttgart: Franckh’sche Verlagshandlung, 1957), column 1355. 17. Soldner, Die City als Einkaufszentrum, pp. 62–81. 18. Otremba, Allgemeine Geographie, p. 194. 19. See Fogelson, Downtown. 20. On the history of department stores, see H. Pasdermadjian, The Department Store: Its Origins, Evolution and Economics (London: Newman Books, 1954); Helmut Frei, Tempel der Kauflust: Eine Geschichte der Warenhauskultur (Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1997); Crossick and Jaumain, Cathedrals of Consumption; and Briesen, Warenhaus. 21. Pasdermadjian, The Department Store, pp. 21–27. 22. See Leach, Land of Desire. 23. Crossick and Jaumain, Cathedrals of Consumption. 24. Leach, Land of Desire, chap. 6. 25. See especially Spiekermann, Basis der Konsumgesellschaft. 26. Saco de Boer, Shopping Districts (Washington: American Planning and Civic Association, 1937), p. 5. 27. The term “central business district” came into popular usage during the 1920s, indicating that it was now merely one among several business districts. Fogelson, Downtown, pp. 185–86. 28. Fogelson, Downtown, pp. 63–65. 29. Ibid., pp. 218–248 and 314–316. 30. Edgar Uherek, “Wandlungen in der Standortstruktur des Einzelhandels,” in Karl Christian Behrens (ed.), Wandel im Handel: Festschrift zum 10-jährigen Bestehen der Beamten-Einkaufs GmbH Koblenz (Wiesbaden: Theodor Gabler, 1962), pp. 107–122, here pp. 110–119. 31. On interwar and Nazi-era retail policy, see Briesen, Warenhaus, pp. 151–230. Chapter Five 1. “Raumordnung: Wächst und stinkt,” Der Spiegel, January 1,1968, pp. 68–72. 2. For a concise treatment of the impact of suburban homes and automobiles on postwar urban development in West Germany, see e.g. Werner Polster and Klaus Voy, “Eigenheim und Automobil: Materielle Fundamente der Lebensweise,” in Voy, Polster, and Thomasberger, Gesellschaftliche Transformationsprozesse, pp. 263–320.

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3. On the globalization in housing, see e.g. King, The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture (London: Routledge, 1984). On differences in urban development in Germany and the United States, see Kenneth Jackson, “Metropolitan Borderlands: Metropolitan Growth in the United States, Germany and Japan after WWII,” GHI Bulletin 38 (Spring 2006), pp. 11–32; and v. Saldern, “The Suburbanization of German and American Cities.” 4. The most searing indictment is perhaps James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), chap. 4. 5. For a comparative survey of urbanization trends, see Walter Kamphöfner, “Urbanisierung in den USA und Deutschland,” IMIS-Beiträge 1 (1995): 1–17. For a recent overview of the history of urbanization in Germany, see Friedrich Lenger (ed.), Towards an Urban Nation: Germany Since 1780 (Oxford: Berg, 2002). 6. In 2000 the rate was 66.2%. See online Statistical Abstract of the United States (Historical Statistics HS-27) http: // www.census.gov / statab / hist / HS-27.pdf. 7. See Clemens Zimmermann, “Wohnungspolitik—Eigenheim für alle,” in Harlander, Villa und Eigenheim, p. 331; and Bundesminister für Raumordnung, Bauwesen und Städtebau (ed.), Das Wohnen in der Bundesrepublik (Bonn, 1975), p. 10–11. 8. US Department of Commerce, Office of Statistical Standards, Standard Metropolitan Areas (Washington, 1967), pp. 1–3, cited in Klaus Uhlig, Die Stadterneuerung in den USA (Bonn: Uhlig, 1971), p. 39. 9. See e.g. Johann Jessen, “Suburbanisierung—Wohnen in Verstädterter Landschaft,” in Harlander, Villa und Eigenheim, pp. 316–329. 10. Loula Lasker, “The Call of Our Cities,” Survey Graphic 33 (April 1944): 197–198; emphasis in the original.. The conference was organized by the National Committee on Housing, for which Lasker served as one of the directors. 11. On housing traditions, see e.g. Clark, The American Family Home. On the suburban tradition, see Stilgoe, Borderlands; Marsh, Suburban Lives; Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier; and Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias. On postwar suburbia, see Kelley, Expanding the American Dream; and Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows. 12. Recently, L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, has proved an insightful exception. Historians of housing and urban development, of course, have addressed the subject. See especially Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, chaps. 11–13; and Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows. 13. US Bureau of the Census, National Housing Inventory, vol. III, 1 (Washington, 1956), p. 15. 14. Hearings, Senate Special Committee on Post-war Economic Policy and Planning, Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Redevelopment, June 1944–January 1945 (CIS-No: 78 S7510-B to H), p. 1056. 15. Herbert Nelson, “Incentive Taxation,” in Survey Graphic 33 (April 1944): 210–211. 16. “Text of American Federation of Labor Committee’s Recommendations for the Post-war World,” New York Times, April 12, 1944. 17. “Post-war Housing on Big Scale Seen,” New York Times, May 20, 1947. 18. See e.g. Tobey, Technology as Freedom. 19. “Realtors Demand Private Building,” New York Times, November 20, 1943. 20. “Sees Little Future in Housing Abroad,” New York Times, November 13, 1947. See also “Text of Truman’s Message to Congress on the Measure Continuing Modified Rent Control,” New York Times, July 1, 1947; and “Text of Truman Message on Housing and Rent Control,” New York Times, February 24, 1948.

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21. “The Fortune Survey,” in Fortune 33 (April 1946), pp. 266–275. 22. John Blandford, “Housing Principles for America,” in Survey Graphic 33 (April 1944), p. 213. 23. Statement Philip Klutznick, Commissioner Federal Public Housing Authority, in Hearings, Senate Special Committee on Post-war Economic Policy and Planning, Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Redevelopment, June 1944–January 1945 (CIS-No: 78 S751-0-B to H), p. 1567. 24. Ibid., p. 1572. 25. New York Post, January 27, 1948, cited in Leon Keyserling, “Can We Do It? Yes, in an Integrated Economy,” The Nation, May 15 1948, pp. 542–544. 26. See Mel Scott, American City Planning Since 1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 463–471. 27. See e.g. “Folly on Housing,” New York Times, April 22, 1953; “Public Housing Rationed,” New York Times, August 25, 1953; and “Curtailed Program for Housing Starts,” New York Times, December 20, 1954. 28. Harry Conn (Public Affairs Institute), “Housing: A Vanishing Vision,” New Republic, July  16, 1951, pp. 12–14; followed up in New Republic, July 23, 1951, pp. 10–12; New Republic, July 30, 1951, pp. 12–13; and New Republic, Aug 13 1951, pp. 15–16. 29. “Public Housing Plans Run into Serious Snag,” New York Times, May 30, 1954. 30. “Public Housing Plan Plagued by Troubles,” New York Times, October 12, 1958. 31. William Whyte, “Are Cities Un-American?” in Editors of Fortune (eds.), The Exploding Metropolis (Garden City: Doubleday, 1957), pp. 1–31, here 23–24. 32. New York City’s large public housing program was somewhat of an exception, as pointed out by Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: U Penn Press, 2008). Well managed and with a socially mixed clientele, New York City Housing Authority escaped some of these pitfalls, at least during the 1950s and 60s. 33. Lasker, “The Call of our Cities,” p. 197. 34. “Text of Truman Message on Housing and Rent Control,” New York Times, February 24, 1948. See also “Housing Stressed in Post-war Plan,” New York Times, March 16, 1944, on a conference of the Institute on Post-war Reconstruction at New York University. 35. On the development of the neighborhood concept in the United States and in Germany, see Dirk Schubert, “Die Renaissance der Nachbarschaftsidee—Eine deutsch-angloamerikanische Dreiecks-Planungsgeschichte,” in Ursula v. Petz (ed.), “Going West?” Stadtplanung in den USA—gestern und heute (Dortmund: Institut für Raumplanung, 2004) pp. 120–154. Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Suburban Alchemy: 1960s New Towns and the Transformation of the American Dream (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001), chronicles the relative success of three new towns inspired by European examples. 36. Mary Carney, “Suburban and Central City Building in Metropolitan Areas 1957,” Construction Review 4 (1958): 13–16. 37. Otto Kämpe, Der Wohnungsbau und seine Finanzierung in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (Bonn: Domus Verlag, 1955), p. 17. 38. New technologies such as cars did not predetermine the drive toward suburbanization, as Hayden, Building Suburbia, rightly emphasizes, but rather the interplay of consumer demand and private developers, unhampered—and even fostered—by public policies. 39. See Kämpe, Der Wohnungsbau, pp. 18–19.

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40. Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, p. 37–39. 41. “At Last, Mass Housing,” Science Illustrated 1 (1946): 13–15. 42. See “The Promise of the Shortage,” in Fortune 33 (1946), pp. 101–103, “Mr. Wyatt’s Shortage,” in Fortune 33 (1946), pp. 105–107, and “Where is Prefabrication?” in Fortune 33 (April 1946), pp. 127–128. 43. Robert Lasch, “The Building Industry,” The Nation, May 15, 1948, pp. 538–539. 44. “The Industry Capitalism Forgot,” in Fortune 36 (August 1947), pp. 61–67 and 167–170. 45. “Up From the Potato Fields,” in Time, July 3, 1950, pp. 67–72. 46. See L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, chap. 5. 47. “Ownership of Homes by Negroes on the Rise,” New York Times, February 2, 1964. Not only market discrimination but public policy such as the “redlining” of certain neighborhood by the FHA contributed to racial discrimination with regard to housing. See Tobey, Technology as Freedom, chap. 7. 48. Davis McEntire, Residence and Race: Final and Comprehensive Report to the Commission on Race and Housing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960). On a survey of the development of restrictive covenants, see Loren Miller, “Covenants for Exclusion,” in Survey Graphic 36 (Oct 1947): 541–43. 49. “Housing Act Aids Private Building,” New York Times, August 12, 1956. 50. Kämpe, Der Wohnungsbau, pp. 61–69. 51. Loan guarantees were popular in part because they had a limited impact on the Treasury. See e.g. “Washington’s Housing Dilemma,” Business Week, February 21, 1953, p. 32; and “The Housing Fight,” Time, March 2, 1959, p. 62. 52. The restriction placed on mortgage lenders by the Federal Reserve Board’s so-called “Regulation X” during the Korean War did little to hamper the expansion of the residential mortgage market. See e.g. “Easier Mortgages,” Business Week, June 14, 1952, p. 33; and “Reg. X Gone: Will Building Spurt?” Business Week, September 27, 1952, pp. 102–106. 53. Commercial banks covered 20.8% of mortgages, savings banks 6.6%, life insurance companies 10.0%, and other private lenders 31.3%. See Kämpe, Der Wohnungsbau, pp. 36–54. 54. See Uhlig, Stadterneuerung, pp. 11–21. 55. Whyte, “Are Cities Un-American?” esp. pp. 4–6. 56. See “U.S. Housing Aide Put to Nominees,” New York Times, September 29, 1960; “Text of President Johnson’s Economic Report on the Nation’s Progress and Trends,” New York Times, January 24, 1964; “A Department of Housing,” New York Times, January 28, 1964; “Excerpts from the President’s Message on Housing,” New York Times, March 3, 1965; “Rent Subsidy,” New York Times, June 29, 1965; and “Johnson Proposes Sharp Rise in Spending for Public Housing and Rent Subsidies,” New York Times, January 30, 1968. 57. Uhlig , Stadterneuerung, p. 94. 58. Nathan Glazer, “Slum Dwellings Do Not Make a Slum,” New York Times, November 21, 1965. 59. “Wohnungsbau: Auch für arme Schlucker,” Der Spiegel, May 11, 1950, pp. 21–22. 60. On the impact of the war on postwar housing, see Diefendorf, In the Wake of the War. 61. “Wohnungen: Wie 1871,” Der Spiegel, July 20, 1950, pp. 26–31. 62. See e.g. Schulz, Wohnungspolitik im Sozialstaat; and Wagner, Sozialstaat gegen Wohnungsnot. 63. “Wohnungsbau: Der überflüssige Minister,” Der Spiegel, September 18, 1957, pp. 14–16.

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64. Carl Schmitz-Mohrkramer, “Qualitätswohnung und Beleihungswert,” in Wie wohnen wir morgen? Neue Perspektiven im Wohnungsbau, supplement to Der Volkswirt 15 (April 13 1962): 46–48. 65. See e.g. Axel Schildt and Arnold Sywottek (ed.), Massenwohnung und Eigenheim: Wohnungsbau und Wohnen in der Grosstadt seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt: Campus 1988); and Johann Jessen and Christian Simon, “Städtebau—Vom eigenen Haus mit Garten zum suburbanen Wohnquartier,” in Harlander, Villa und Eigenheim, pp. 349–382. 66. See e.g. “Lassen Sie mich mal regieren,” Der Spiegel, September 15, 1949, pp. 14–15. 67. The East German showcase for socialist urban planning and the rejection of Western modernism in architecture was the infamous Stalin-Allee with 2,680 apartments that were to serve as a model for future construction in the GDR; see “Stalin-Allee,” Der Spiegel, May 14, 1952. 68. “Eigenheime: Bürger im Grünen,” Der Spiegel, July 16, 1958, pp. 26–34. 69. Cited in Hans-Joachim Klein, Wohneigentum in der Stadtregion: Eine soziologische Analyse eigentumsbezogener Wohnerfahrungen und Wohnerwartungen (Karlsruhe: Institut für Regional-wissenschaft Universität Karlsruhe, 1970), p. 115. 70. On the history of Bausparkassen, see Martin Müller, Bausparen in Deutschland zwischen Inflation und Währungsreform 1924–48 (Munich: Beck, 1999); and Alexander Block, Bausparen in England, Amerika und Deutschland (Berlin: Bauwelt Verlag, 1931). 71. On home financing, see Kämpe, Der Wohnungsbau, here p. 104–108. See also Thomas Weber (ed.), So Wollen Wir Wohnen: Über hundert Beispiele für Eigenheime und Raumgestaltung (Berlin: Herbig, 1962), pp. 14–17. 72. “Eigenheime: Bürger im Grünen,” Der Spiegel, July 16, 1958, pp. 26–34. 73. While Bauspar-saving at DM 0.4 billion accounted for 8.1% of all private household savings in 1950, by 1966 this had risen to an astounding DM 9.36 billion or 23.6% of household savings. See Klein, Wohneigentum in der Stadtregion, p. 120. 74. Hans Budde “Wohnungsbau in den USA,” Der Wiederaufbau 14 / 2 (August 1960): 13–14. 75. On the development of the postwar construction industry, see Thomas Hafner, Vom Montagehaus zur Wohnscheibe: Entwicklungslinien im deutschen Wohnungsbau 1945–1970 (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1993). 76. “Versuchsbauten: Mister Butlers Erbe,” Der Spiegel, April 25, 1956, pp. 27–29. 77. “Fertighäuser: Wenn Theresa heiratet,” Der Spiegel, September 4, 1963, pp. 37-39. 78. “Fertighäuser: Oben ohne,” Der Spiegel, November 4, 1964, pp. 85–87. See also, Klein, Wohneigentum in der Stadtregion, pp. 192–196, who notes that about 40% of renters interested in housing property had a positive view of ready-made houses; the majority were ambivalent or had negative views, frequently citing their preference for the “solid German brick house.” 79. “Fettaugen der Gesellschaft,” Der Spiegel, September 15, 1949, pp. 23–24. 80. Public subsidies were contingent upon adherence to the “Verdingungsordnung für Bauleistung,” which required the supervision of master craftsmen in many areas of construction. See “Wohnungsbau: Es bröckelt,” Der Spiegel, March 2, 1969, pp. 38–62. 81. Statistisches Bundesamt, Statistisches Jahrbuch für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Wiesbaden: Kohlhammer, 1961), p. 265. 82. Wilhelm Kaisen in a 1951 speech before the Volksheimstätten-Tag. See Wilhelm Kaisen, “Die Funktion des Eigenheims in der Sozialordnung unserer Zeit,”Der Wiederaufbau 5 / 3 (1951): 1–4. 83. In 1959, 75 out of 131 major cities were headed by SPD-mayors (the CDU, by contrast, had only 26), “Wer in unseren Rathäusern regiert,” Deutsche Zeitung, June 22, 1959.

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84. “Eigenheime: Bürger im Grünen,” Der Spiegel, July 16, 1958, pp. 26–34. 85. See “Interbau: Heiliger Otto,” Der Spiegel, July 31, 1957. 86. Kämpe, Der Wohnungsbau, p. 102. The percentage of units owned by Wohnungsbaugesellschaften reached 27% in structures that contained 3 or more apartments. See Bundesminister für Raumordnung, Das Wohnen in der Bundesrepublik, pp. 12–13. On the history of the most prominent housing nonprofit, see Peter Kramper, Neue Heimat: Unternehmenspolitik und Unternehmensentwicklung im gewerkschaftlichen Wohnungs- und Städtebau 1950–1982 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008). 87. “May: Der Plan-Athlet,” Der Spiegel, May 4, 1955, pp. 30–37. On the neighborhood concept, see Schubert, “Renaisssance der Nachbarschaftsidee”; and Dirk Schubert, “‘Heil aus Ziegelsteinen’—Aufstieg und Fall der Nachbarschaftsidee,” in Die Alte Stadt 1998, pp. 141–173. 88. “Unsere Städte sind krank,” Der Spiegel, December 25, 1963, pp. 92–99. 89. “May: Der Plan-Athlet,” Der Spiegel, May 4, 1955, pp. 30–37. 90. “Eigenheime: Bürger im Grünen,” Der Spiegel, June 7, 1958, pp. 26–34. 91. Gerhard Dittrich (ed.), Neue Siedlungen und alte Viertel: Städtebaulicher Kommentar aus der Sicht der Bewohner (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1973), p. 56. 92. See Walter Fey, Die Wohnungsmiete im Rahmen des Gesamtverbrauchs (Bonn: Domus, 1954). 93. See “Wohnungsbau: Der überflüssige Minister,” Der Spiegel, September 18, 1957, pp. 14– 16; and “Wohnungsbau-Konjunktur: Manche mögen’s heiß,” Der Spiegel, July 1960, p. 30. 94. “Miet-Erhöhungen: Blitz und Donner,” Der Spiegel, May 18, 1960, p. 15–16. Prior to this change landlords could terminate leases typically only in court and only if “asocial behavior” on part of the tenant could be proved. 95. These counties were described as “white.” In 168 “black counties” (mainly in the Ruhr area, Lower-Saxony, Hamburg, Munich, Nuremberg and other bigger cities), by contrast, existing regulations remained in effect until that level was reached. See “Wohnungsmarkt: Ein zweites Wunder,” Der Spiegel, August 14, 1963, pp. 20–27. 96. See Zündorf, Der Preis der Marktwirtschaft, pp. 307–309. 97. “Sozial-Mieten: Nevermann ging voran,” Der Spiegel, January 29, 1958, pp. 17–18; and “Warum Sollen Die Mieten erhöht werden?” Der Spiegel, July 2, 1958, pp. 22–25. 98. Oberregierungsrat Völker on the proposed law to abolish the controlled housing economy, minutes of Verbraucherausschuß, session of April 15, 1959, in BuArch B 102 / 168707. 99. See “Mietfreigabe: Die fünfte Welle rollt,” Der Spiegel, March 21, 1966, pp. 79–81. 100. Subsidies were further extended by the first and second Wohngeld acts of 1965 and 1970. See Bundesminister für Raumordnung, Das Wohnen in der Bundesrepublik, pp. 106–121. 101. Kurt Michaelis, “Eigentumswohnung—zu Unrecht vernachlässigt,” in Wie wohnen wir morgen?, pp. 36–37. 102. Bundesministerium für Wohnungswesen und Städtebau (ed.), Das Eigenheim in der Etage (Bonn, 1966). 103. Ferdinand Sandgänger, “Das Reihenhaus ist keine Notlösung,” in Wie wohnen wir morgen? pp. 33–35. Sandgänger noted that while the rowhouse had a somewhat negative image among the general population (it was seen as monotonous), over 75% living in rowhouses liked their accommodation. 104. “Bausparprämien: Vorstrafen-Zubringer,” Der Spiegel, April 24, 1963, pp. 38–39, and “Bausparverträge: So kühn,” Der Spiegel, May 13, 1964, pp. 51–52. 105. “Bausparkassen: Gebremster Traum,”Der Spiegel, March 18, 1968, p. 96.

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106. See Bundesministerium für Wohnungsbau und Städtewesen (ed.), Wohnungsbau und Stadtentwicklung: Demonstrativbauvorhaben des Bundesministeriums für Wohnungsbau und Stadtentwicklung (Munich: Fackler, 1968). 107. “Wohnungszählung: Am Markt vorbei,” Der Spiegel, October 28, 1968, p. 41. 108. Paul Lücke (Bundesminister Wohnungswesen, Städtebau, Raumordnung), “Vom Wohnungsbau zum Städtebau,” in Wie wohnen wir morgen? pp. 7–8. 109. Julius Brecht, “Modernisieren und Sanieren,”in Wie wohnen wir morgen? pp. 15–22. 110. Bundesminister für Raumordnung (ed.), Das Wohnen in der Bundesrepublik, pp. 1–69. 111. Axel Börsch-Supan, “Tenure Choice and Housing Demand,” in Konrad Stahl and Raymond Struyk (ed.), U.S. and West German Housing Markets: Comparative Economic Analyses (Berlin: Springer, 1985), pp. 55–105, here p. 104. 112. On the development of postwar housing conditions, see e.g. Ulfert Herlyn, “Wohnverhältnisse in den Neubausiedlungen der 1960er Jahre” in Schild and Sywottek, Massenwohnung und Eigenheim, pp. 513–536; and Ingeborg Flagge (ed.), Geschichte des Wohnens, vol. 5 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1999). 113. Uhlig, Stadterneuerung, p. 68. König, Die Geschichte der Konsumgesellschaft, gives a good overview of continuing differences in housing standards between West Germany and the United States after World War II. 114. Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, p. 87. 115. Kämpe, Der Wohnungsbau, p. 16. 116. “Top Family Goal is Living Space,” New York Times, June 5, 1966. 117. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven. 118. See e.g. Hine, Populuxe, chap. 3; and Kelley, Expanding the American Dream. 119. See Hurley, Diners, Bowling Alleys and Trailer Parks. 120. Kämpe, Der Wohnungsbau, pp. 97–99. 121. Alphons Silbermann, Vom Wohnen der Deutschen: Eine soziologische Studie über das Wohnerlebnis (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1963), pp. 23–24. 122. Adelheid von Saldern, “Von der guten Stube zur guten Wohnung,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 35 (1995): 227–254, here pp. 235–238. 123. Wolfgang Glatzer, Wohnungsversorgung im Wohlfahrtsstaat: Objektive und subjektive Indikatoren zur Wohlfahrtsentwicklung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Frankfurt: Campus, 1980), pp. 158 and 255. 124. This is not to say that problems did not exist. Residents complained about anonymity and the lack of amenities from pharmacies and restaurants to public pools, traffic connections and post offices. See e.g. “Trabanten-Städte: Kaum Kontakt,” Der Spiegel, October 14, 1968, pp. 203–205. 125. “Mietwohnung oder Eigenheim? Ergebnisse einer Vorstudie über Wohnverhältnisse und Wohnungswünsche” (1954), in BuArch ZSG 132 / 2769. 126. Dittrich, Neue Siedlungen, p. 86. 127. “Das Wohnen im Hochhaus: Umfrage unter Mietern in zwei BASF-Bauten” (1961), in BuArch ZSG 132 / 2863. 128. Marianne Mangold (ed.), Bericht über die Bundesberatertagung “Bauen und Wohnen” Amorbach 12.-16.8. 1969 (Bad Godesberg: Land- und Hauswirtschaftlicher Auswertungs- und Informationsdienst, 1969), p. 11. 129. Glatzer, Wohnungsversorgung, pp. 188–89 and 275.

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130. Angus Campbell et al., The Quality of American Life: Perceptions, Evaluations, and Satisfactions (New York: Russell Sage, 1976), pp. 240–245. 131. See Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven. 132. Dittrich, Neue Siedlungen, p. 56. 133. Bundesministerium für Raumordnung, Das Wohnen in der Bundesrepublik, pp. 14–15. 134. See “Das Wohnen im Hochhaus: Umfrage unter Mietern in zwei BASF-Bauten” (1961), in BuArch ZSG 132 / 2863. 135. See Andrew Lees, Cities Perceived: Urban Society in European and American Thought, 1820–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), pp. 269–304. 136. Niles Hansen, The Challenge of Urban Growth: The Basic Economics of City Size and Structure (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1975), pp. 19–23. Again racial differences figured strongly; among African Americans the preference for large urban areas was, at 33%, notably higher. 137. Kenneth Jackson, “Metropolitan Government versus Suburban Autonomy: Politics on the Crabgrass Frontier,” in Kenneth Jackson and Stanley Schultz (eds.), Cities in American History (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1972), pp. 442–462. See also Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias; and Stilgoe, Borderlands. 138. Glatzer, Wohnungsversorgung, pp. 256–257. 139. Bundesministerium für Raumordnung, Das Wohnen in der Bundesrepublik, pp. 60–61. 140. While the baby boom peaked in the United States in 1957 in terms of birthrates, this did not happen until 1964 in West Germany. Not only did US society have a greater share of young families, but Germany was demographically generally older as well. This certainly contributed to the greater mobility of US households and differences in housing consumption with regard to space. 141. “Are Big Cities Worth Saving?” US News & World Report, July 26, 1971, pp. 42–49. 142. See Yago, The Decline of Transit. On the development of postwar urban mass transportation, see also Fogelson, Downtown; Dienel and Schmucki, Mobilität für Alle; and Barbara Schmucki, Der Traum vom Verkehrsfluss: Städtische Verkehrsplanung seit 1945 im deutschdeutschen Vergleich (Frankfurt: Campus, 2001). For a general account of twentieth-century transportation policy, see Mark Rose, Bruce Seely, and Paul Barrett, The Best Transportation System in the World: Railroads, Trucks, Airlines, and American Public Policy in the Twentieth Century (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006). 143. See James Flink, The Car Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1975); David Gartman, Auto Opium: A Social History of American Automobile Design (London: Routledge, 1994), chap. 6; Hine, Populuxe, chap. 2; and Clarke, Trust and Power, chap. 7. 144. Hans Huber and Bruno Rothschuh, Generalplanung im Straßenbau der USA: Studienreisebericht (Bonn: Bundesminister für Verkehr, 1970), p. 6. 145. See Fogelson, Downtown; and Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Vintage Books, 1974). 146. US Department of Transportation, 1968 National Highway Needs Report: A Study (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1968). 147. See e.g. Sam Warner, Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870–1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962); and George Hilton and John Due, The Interurban Electric Railway in America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962). 148. Cliff Slater, “General Motors and the Demise of Streetcars,” Transportation Quarterly 51 (1997): 44–45.

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149. Paul Barrett, “Public Policy and Private Choice: Mass Transit and the Automobile in Chicago between the Wars,” Business History Review 49 (1975): 473–497. 150. See Rose, Seely, and Barrett, The Best Transportation System in the World, esp. pp. xxi– xxii and 31. 151. Walter Rainville (American Transit Association), “Urban Transit: What’s the situation? Where is it heading?” Vital Issues 14 (1965): 1–4, reprinted in Diana Reische (ed.), Problems of Mass Transportation (New York: W. H. Wilson, 1970), pp. 12–16, here p. 12. 152. John R. Meyer and Jose Gomez-Ibanez, Autos, Transit and Cities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 29. 153. “City Transit Seen Curbed by Costs,” New York Times, September 12, 1952. See also “Saving Public Transit,” New York Times, March 24, 1955; and “Transit Experts Discuss ‘Crisis,’” New York Times, June 23, 1955. 154. Huber and Rothschuh, Generalplanung, pp. 18–19; and Rationalisierungskuratorium der deutschen Wirtschaft (RKW), Verkehrsingenieurprobleme im Schnellstrassen- und U-Bahn-Bau der USA und Kanadas (Bielefeld: Erich Schmidt, 1965), p. 135–148. On the development of the Washington DC Metro system as part of the broader ambitions to stem the decline of public transportation during the Great Society era, see Zachary Schrag, The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). 155. See Meyer and Gomez-Ibanez, Autos, Transit and Cities, pp. 28–29. 156. For this assessment, see e.g. John Meyer et al., The Urban Transportation Problem (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 88–99. 157. Huber and Rothschuh, Generalplanung, pp. 16–17. See also Rationalisierungskuratorium der deutschen Wirtschaft, Stadtautobahnen: Erfahrungen deutscher Fachleute in den USA (Wiesbaden: Bauverlag, 1961), esp. pp. 11 and 21–23. 158. Surveys cited from Meyer and Gomez-Ibanez, Autos, Transit and Cities, pp. 102–105. 159. Edgar Hoover, “Motor Metropolis: Some Observations on Urban Transportation in America,” The Journal of Industrial Economics 13 (1965): 177–192, here p. 181. 160. See Meyer and Gomez-Ibanez, Autos, Transit and Cities, p. 250. 161. See Campbell et al., The Quality of American Life, pp. 223–234. 162. George Smerk, Urban Mass Transportation: A Dozen Years of Federal Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974), pp. 146–147. 163. See RKW, Verkehrsingenieurprobleme, pp. 8–11; and Statement by James Beggs, Hearings, Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs, July 23–November 18, 1969 (CIS: 70 S-241-1), p. 13. 164. “Controversy over Federal Methods of Financing Aid to Urban Transit Systems,” Congressional Digest 48 (1969): p. 48, reprinted in Reische, Problems of Mass Transportation, pp. 19–21. 165. Edgar Hoover, “Motor Metropolis,” p. 185. 166. See e.g. Hearings, Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs, April 8–9 1970 (CIS: 70-S241-12). 167. Edwin Haefele, “Urban Transport: Who Decides?” in Public Administration Review 25 (1965): 224–239. 168. See Herman Mertins, National Transportation Policy in Transition (Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1972), pp. 57–58; Smerk, Urban Mass Transportation, pp. 27–30; and National Transportation Policy, Preliminary Draft of a Report to the Senate Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 87th Congress, 1st Sess. (Washington: Government Printing Office 1961).

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169. Smerk, Urban Mass Transportation, pp. 32–40. 170. John F. Kennedy, “The Transportation System of Our Nation,” Message from the President of the United States, HR Doc# 384 87th Congress 2nd Sess., April 5, 1962. See also Hugh Norton, National Transportation Policy: Formation and Implementation (Berkeley: McCuchan, 1966), p. 83. 171. On the creation of the DOT and the UMTA, see Mertins, National Transportation Policy, pp. 77–103. 172. Statement by Senator Williams, Hearings, Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs, July 23–November 18 1969 (CIS: 70 S-241-1), p. 1. 173. See Meyer and Gomez-Ibanez, Autos, Transit and Cities, pp. 234–235. See also statement by Senator Williams, Hearings, Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs, July 23–November 18, 1969 (CIS: 70 S-241-1), p. 1. 174. See Meyer / Gomez-Ibanez, Autos, Transit and Cities, p. 231. 175. Harry Richardson, Urban Economics (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971), p. 118. 176. See e.g. Gregor Rinn, “Das Automobil als nationales Identifikationssymbol zur politischen Bedeutungsprägung des Kraftfahrzeugs in Modernitätskonzeptionen des “Dritten Reichs” und der Bundesrepublik” (diss., Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, 2008). 177. Numbers based on OECD statistics; see Kaelble, “Europäische Besonderheiten des Massenkonsums.” 178. Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Verkehr—gestern, heute, morgen (Bonn, 1966), pp. 32–33. 179. See Südbeck, Motorisierung, Verkehrsentwicklung und Verkehrspolitik, pp. 51–55. See alsochapter 3 above. 180. See Klenke, Bundesdeutsche Verkehrspolitik, pp. 117–123. 181. Ibid., pp. 130–132 and 319–329; and Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Verkehr—gestern, heute, morgen, p. 34. 182. See “Nehmt doch die Straßenbahn,” Der Spiegel, November 11, 1953, pp. 10–11. On Schaeffer’s fiscal policy limiting automobile ownership, see also “Nahezu gesättigt,” Der Spiegel, September 12, 1951. 183. Zündorf, Der Preis der Marktwirtschaft, pp. 309–310. 184. Ibid., pp. 33–43. 185. Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Verkehr—gestern, heute, morgen, pp. 10–13. 186. In the United States, passenger miles traveled declined by 66% during the same time period. See Liesner, One Hundred Years of Economic Statistics, p. 115; and Mitchell, International Historical Statistics, p. 684. 187. Südbeck, Motorisierung, pp. 159–195. 188. See Barbara Schmucki,“Stadt-(r)und-Fahrt gegen Verkehrsinfarkt: Motorisierung und urbaner Raum,” in v. Saldern, Stadt und Kommunikation in Bundesrepublikanischen Umbruchszeiten, pp. 329–350. 189. Herbert Dix, “Stadt und Verkehr von morgen: Betrachtungen aus Anlass der Internationalen Verkehrsaustellung in München,” Der Aufbau 19 / 3 (December 1965): 8–9. 190. “Die Stillegung von Strassenbahnbetrieben in der Bundesrepublik,” Der Stadtverkehr 2 (1957): 270. 191. Friedrich Lehner, Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Städtebau und Nahverkehr (Bielefeld: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1966), p. 32. 192. In terms of absolute ridership numbers, streetcar use was neither before nor after the war as high as during the 1960s and 70s. See Schmucki, Der Traum vom Verkehrsfluss, pp. 53–57.

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193. Kurt Leibbrand, Verkehrsingenieurwesen: Städtische Verkehrsplanung für Schiene und Straße (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1957), p. 14. 194. Kurt Leibbrand, “Aufbau eines städtischen Verkehrssystems,” Der Wiederaufbau 7 / 4–5 (December 1953), pp. 5–6. See also Leibbrand, Verkehrsingenieurwesen; and Günter Stetza (Verkehrsreferent, Essen), “Wir müssen mit dem Verkehrsdualismus fertig werden,” Der Stadtverkehr 1 (1956): 37–39. 195. Lehner, Wechselbeziehungen, p. 22. 196. RKW, Verkehrsingenieurprobleme, p. 8. 197. Dix, “Stadt und Verkehr von morgen,” pp. 8–9. 198. Some of the larger developments built during the 1960s, however, initially lacked these connections and were linked to public transport only later. See Peter Hall and Carmen HassClau, Can Rail Save the City? The Impacts of Rail Rapid Transit and Pedestrianization on British and German Cities (Brookfield, VT: Gower, 1985), pp. 21–23. 199. See e.g. the 1964 “Landesentwicklungsprogramm” for North Rhine-Westphalia; N. Ley (Ministerialdirigent Düsseldorf), “Der Beitrag der Raumordnung zur Lösung des Nahverkehrsproblems,” in Arbeits- und Forschungsgemeinschaft für Straßenverkehr und Verkehrssicherheit (ed.), Individualverkehr—öffentlicher Nahverkehr im Rahmen des Generalverkehrsplans (Bad Godesberg: Kirschbaumverlag, 1965), pp. 9–21. 200. Klaus Wächter, Wohnen in den städtischen Agglomerationen des 20. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Karl Krämer, 1971), p. 58. See also Walter Labs, “Nahverkehr braucht Hilfen: Öffentliche Hand profitiert am Wertzuwachs,” Rheinischer Merkur, March 12, 1971. 201. For the influence of American developments on German public debate, see e.g. Gerhard Kienbaum (Verkehrsminister NRW), “Wege zur Neugestaltung des öffentlichen Personennahverkehrs,” in Mehr Vorrang dem Öffentlichen Personennahverkehr. Schriftenreihe für Verkehr und Technik 21 (Bielefeld: Erich Schmitt Verlag, 1964), pp. 5–15, here pp. 6–8; and “Glatt überrollt,” Der Spiegel, June 29, 1970, pp. 46–53. 202. E. Thiemer, “Lösungsmöglichkeiten und Grenzen der öffentlichen Verkehrsbetriebe aus praktischer Sicht,” in Arbeits- und Forschungsgemeinschaft für Straßenverkehr und Verkehrssicherheit, Individualverkehr—öffentlicher Nahverkehr, pp. 57–65. 203. Hall and Hass-Clau, Can Rail Save the City? pp. 32–34. 204. See Deutscher Bundestag, Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, Stenographische Protokolle, April 16, 1964, p. 5885B. 205. See e.g. “CDU-Verkehrsprogramm für Städte,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 22, 1963; “Öffentliche Verkehrsbetriebe mahnen Bundesregierung,” Die Welt, April 13, 1966; “Plädoyer für den öffentlichen Verkehr,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 6, 1966; and “Abbau der Schienenwege—ein schlechter Weg,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 5, 1966. 206. Bundesanzeiger No. 93, May 20, 1967. See also Klenke, Bundesdeutsche Verkehrspolitik, pp. 319–329; and Hall and Hass-Clau, Can Rail Save the City? p. 23. 207. See e.g. “Mit dem Auto vom Bett ins Büro,” Der Spiegel, October 7, 1964, pp. 63–70. 208. See Thiemer, “Loslösungsmöglichkeiten.” 209. Kienbaum, “Wege zur Neugestaltung,” pp. 13–14. 210. Thiemer, “Loslösungsmöglichkeiten.” 211. According to a 1963 Deutscher Industrie- und Handelskammertag study on commuters in cities with populations greater than 50,000, 43% used the bus or streetcar, 25% walked, 16% used cars or motorcycles, and 7% the train. Anton Kurze (city manager, Aachen), “Verkehrs-

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aufgaben und Verkehrsprobleme in unseren Mittelstädten und kleineren Grosstädten,” in Mehr Vorrang dem öffentlichen Personennahverkehr, pp. 17–38, here p. 29. 212. In 1965, 54.5% of department store shoppers in cities of more than 500,000 took public transport, and by 1980 this share had risen to about 60%. Hall and Hass-Clau, Can Rail Save the City, p. 115. 213. “If it doesn’t cost anything, it isn’t worth anything” would be the prevailing consumer attitude, one commentator suggested. Jürgen Eick, “Die Null-Tarife,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 12, 1969. See also “Kostenlose Beförderung utopisch,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 6, 1969; and “In Hannover fährt keine Straßenbahn,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 13, 1969. 214. “Die Utopie der ÖTV,” Die Zeit, July 30, 1971. 215. “Arndt sieht Ende des Individualverkehrs,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 7, 1972. 216. Julian Orr, “United States—German Cities Compared,” in The American City, November 1960, pp. 116–117. For similar observations, see Angus McCallum, “Amerikanische Architekten reisen durch die Bundesrepublik,” Der Wiederaufbau 8 / 4 (November 1954): 4–6. 217. John Galbraith, The Affluent Society, esp. chap. 18. 218. See e.g. Victor Gruen, The Heart of Our Cities. The Urban Crisis—Diagnosis and Cure (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964); and Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. (New York: Random House, 1961). 219. David Popenoe, Private Pleasure, Public Plight: American Metropolitan Community Life in Comparative Perspective (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1985), p. 117. 220. This “metropolitan problem,” especially the challenges of localist traditions for metropolitan governance, is receiving increasing attention by urban historians. See e.g. Lassiter, The Silent Majority; and Thomas Sugrue, “All Politics is Local: The Persistence of Localism in Twentieth-Century America,” in Meg Jacobs, William Novak, and Julian Zeizler (eds.), The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp. 301–326. 221. Scott Greer, The Urbane View: Life and Politics in Metropolitan America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 109. 222. Based on the twenty-five largest Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs); Hansen, The Challenge of Urban Growth, pp. 99–100. 223. Meyer et al., The Urban Transportation Problem, p. 23. 224. Michael Flax, A Study in Comparative Urban Indicators: Conditions in 18 Large Metropolitan Areas (Washington: Urban Institute, 1972), p. 29. 225. Based on a study of the 37 largest SMSAs in 1968, see Hansen, The Challenge of Urban Growth, p. 80. 226. Bennett Harrison, “The Once and Future City,” in Challenge 1973, p. 9, cited in Hansen, The Challenge of Urban Growth, p. 77. 227. Charles M. Haar, Metropolitanization and Public Services (Washington: Resources for the Future, 1972), p. 4. 228. M. L. Stein, “Boy, Are Those Suburbs Simple,” New York Times, April 22, 1972. 229. Fred Prowledge “The Slurbs are Ahead of the City,” New York Times, May 22, 1971. 230. Wallace Oates, “The Effects of Property Taxes and Local Public Spending on Property Values: An Empirical Study of Tax Capitalization and the Tiebout Hypothesis,” Journal of Political Economy 77 (1969): 957–971.

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231. See Jeff Wiltse, Contested Waters: A Social History of the Swimming Pool in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). 232. Herbert Gans, “Effects of the Move from City to Suburb,” in Leonard Duhl (ed.), The Urban Condition: People and Policy in the Metropolis (New York: Basic Books, 1963), pp. 184–198, here p. 188. 233. Ibid., p. 194. 234. Robert Weaver, The Urban Complex: Human Values in Urban Life (New York: Doubleday, 1964), p. 56, cited in Uhlig, Die Stadterneuerung, p. 23. Weaver later became the first secretary of the HUD. 235. This is suggested in particular by Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven, chap. 7. See also Lassiter, Silent Majority, p. 302. 236. See McGirr, Suburban Warriors. 237. Ada Louise Huxtable, “Western Europe Is Found to Lead U.S, in Community Planning,” New York Times, November 22, 1965. Similar views could be found among urban planning experts during the 1950s; see e.g. “U.S. Held Lagging in City Planning,” New York Times, October 5, 1958. 238. On recent studies addressing the failure of urban renewal attempts of the 1960s, see the review essay by Howard Gilette, “Urban Renewal Revisited,” Journal of Urban History 33 (2007): 342–350. 239. A series of congressional hearings between September of 1969 and June of 1970 on “the quality of urban life” speaks to this. Europe seen as a positive example was a recurring theme throughout. See Hearings, House Committee on Banking and Currency, Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Urban Growth, September 30 1969–June 24 1970, “The Quality of Urban Life, Pt. 2” (CIS: 91 H2560-1). 240. “Excerpts from the President’s Message on Housing and Urban Problems,” New York Times, February 23, 1968. 241. See e.g. “Raumordnung: Wächst und stinkt,” Der Spiegel, January 1, 1968, pp. 60–64. 242. See Rytlewski and Opp de Hipt, Die Bundesrepublik in Zahlen, pp. 228–229. 243. Property taxes accounted for nearly 50% of local real tax revenues, but their share declined to almost 20% by the early 1970s. Still in 2002, property taxes accounted for only 1.5% of overall tax revenue in Germany as compared to roughly 10% in the United States. See “Reform der Grundsteuer, Bericht des Bayerischen Staatsministers der Fiinanzen und des Ministers der Finanzen des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz an die Finanzministerkonferenz, Januar 2004” (http: // www.fm.rlp.de / z_pdf / reform_der_grundsteuer.pdf ). For communal tax revenues, which also include a share of federally collected income taxes, see Article 106 Paragraph 5-9, Basic Constitutional Law (Grundgesetz). 244. See Paul Nolte, “Jenseits der Urbanisierung? Überlegungen zur deutschen Stadtgeschichte seit 1945,” in Friedrich Lenger and Klaus Tenfelde (eds.), Die europäische Stadt im 20. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Boehlau, 2006), pp. 477–493. 245. See Dittrich, Neue Siedlungen und alte Viertel, pp. 143–147. 246. Glatzer, Wohnungsversorgung, p. 257. 247. Hans-Jochen Vogel, “Bei den Regeln gewinnt kein Bürgermeister das Spiel,” Frankfurter Rundschau, July 5, 1972, p. 12. 248. Hans-Jochen Vogel, “10 Thesen zur Stadtentwicklung,” Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung Bulletin 141 (October 31, 1973): 1397. 249. The theme of the postwar inversion of the “private vices—public virtues” paradigm is

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explored, for the British case, by Matthew Hilton, “The Fable of the Sheep, or Private Virtues, Public Vices: The Consumer Revolution of the Twentieth Century,” Past & Present 174 (2002): 222–256. 250. For a recent survey on the role of race in postwar American urban development, see Kevin Fox Gotham, “Racialized Uneven Development: Race, Class, and Segregation in the Postwar Era,” Journal of Urban History 33 (2007): 332–341. 251. See e.g. Reulecke, Geschichte der Urbanisierung in Deutschland. Chapter Six 1. See Der Aufbau 20 / 1 (April 1966): 13. 2. Dieter Carl, “Rendezvous auf der grünen Wiese,” Die Absatzwirtschaft, October 1968, pp. 17–22. 3. See e.g. Pells, Not Like Us, pp. 292–293. 4. Sedlmaier, “From Department Store to Shopping Mall,” pp. 9–16. 5. See e.g. Nancy Cohen, America’s Marketplace: The History of Shopping Centers (Lyme, CT: Greenwich Publishing Group, 2002), p. 23; and Leonard Ament, “The Effect of the Shopping Center Phenomenon on Central Business District Retail Sales” (MBA thesis, San Antonio 1972), p. 1. 6. Horst-Joachim Jaeck, Das Shopping Center, vol. 2: Geschichte des Shopping Centers (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1979), p. 12. 7. Richard Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920–1950 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), pp. xiii–xix and 127–141. 8. Jaeck, Das Shopping Center, vol. 2, pp. 12–16. 9. See Tedlow, New and Improved, esp. chap. 4. 10. Cross, An All-Consuming Century, p. 76. Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics, discusses the confluence of market power and consumer interest in low prices that begins to undermine traditional small-store retailing in the United States after World War I. 11. Pasdermadjian, The Department Store, pp. 63–65. Others, though, tried to compete for the low price market as well by expanding “bargain basements.” 12. See e.g. “Boomtown on the Byways,” Time, July 20, 1953, pp. 72–73. 13. See N. Cohen, America’s Marketplace, p. 54. See also Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall, pp. 309–310; and “Big Gain Reported in Branch Stores,” New York Times, December 31, 1951. 14. Gasser, Das Shopping Center in Nordamerika, pp. 115–117. 15. “Shopping Centers—1959,” Hearing before Senate Select Committee on Small Business, April 28–29, 1959 (CIS-NO: 86 S1335-3), pp. 4, 67, and 230. 16. “The Impact of Suburban Shopping Centers on Independent Retailers,” Report of the Senate Select Committee on Small Business, January 5, 1960 (CIS-NO: 12153, 86-1 S. rp.1016), pp. 25–27. 17. US Bureau of the Census, The Statistical History of the United States, pp. 843–845. 18. “Status of Small Business in Retail Trade (1948–1958),” Staff Report to House Select Committee on Small Business, December 16, 1960 (CIS-NO: 86-2 H5033), pp. 18–19. 19. See e.g. Desmond Smith, “Chain Squeeze: The Power of Big Food . . . ,” The Nation, June 29, 1964, pp. 646–648; Jean Libmann Block, “Why the Supermarkets are Booming,” Reader’s Digest, August 1956, pp. 89–91; and “Merger Epidemic Will Rage, Unchecked, among Food Dealers,” Business Week, November 12, 1955, p. 56.

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20. National Association of Retail Grocers, The Merger Movement in Retail Food Distribution 1955–58 (Chicago, 1959), cited as appendix II in “Mergers and Unfair Competition in Food Marketing,” Hearing before Senate Select Committee on Small Business, July 2, 1959 (CIS-NO: 86 S1367-6), pp. 57–86. See also “Food Marketing—Report of the Federal Trade Commission,” Hearing before Senate Select Committee on Small Business, June 22, 1960 (CIS-NO: 86 S1413-5), p. 3. 21. “Retail Trade: The Independents,” Time, September 21, 1953, pp. 96–98. Other large independent chains included Red & White (with 7,200 stores but less than half the sales of IGA), Clover Farm Stores, and United Buyers. 22. “Discount House Operations,” Hearing before Senate Select Committee on Small Business, June 23–25, 1958 (CIS-NO: 85 S1304-1), pp. 6 and 20. 23. Ibid., pp. 2 and 5. 24. US Bureau of the Census, Statistical History of the United States, p. 141. 25. “Small Business Problems in Urban Areas,” Hearing before House Select Committee on Small Business, January 24, November 23–24, 1964 (CIS-NO: 88 H2099-3), pp. 7–8. 26. See e.g. “Life without Supermarkets,” U.S. News & World Report, June 29, 1964, p. 12, on a 1964 Baltimore area supermarket strike organized by the Retail Clerks Union involving ACME and five other chains. 27. “Department Stores Worry,” Business Week, January 4, 1953, pp. 43–46. 28. Wendell Barnes, “What Government Efforts Are Being Made to Assist Small Business,” Law and Contemporary Problems 24 (1959): 3–26, here p. 12. On the SBA, see also “The Small Business Administration and Related Activities,” Hearing before House Select Committee on Small Business, March 1955 (CIS-NO: 84 H1494-3). 29. See e.g. “Supermarket Prices,” New Republic, October 5, 1959, pp. 10–11; “Mergers and Unfair Competition in Food Marketing,” Hearing before Senate Select Committee on Small Business, July 2, 1959 (CIS-NO: 86 S1367-6); “Food Marketing—Report of the Federal Trade Commission,” Hearing before Senate Select Committee on Small Business, June 22, 1960 (CIS-NO: 86 S1413-5). 30. “Fair Trade Laws on the Way Out?” Time, February 21, 1955, p. 72; and S. C. Hollander, “United States of America,” in B. S. Yamey (ed.), Resale Price Maintenance (Chicago: Aldine, 1966), pp. 65–100. 31. “Planned Postwar Shopping Centers Come Big,” Business Week, October 11, 1952, pp. 124–128. 32. Donald Curtiss, “Entwicklung und verschiedene Aspekte der Shopping Center in den USA,” in Stiftung im Grüne (ed.), Das Shopping Center in Europa (Rüschlikon, 1957), pp. 9–13, here p. 11. 33. “Merchants Fight New Store Center,” New York Times, January 30, 1955. Lizabeth Cohen traces similar opposition to new shopping centers in New Jersey in L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, pp. 271–273. 34. Fogelson, Downtown, p. 390. 35. “Downtown Isn’t Dead by a Long Shot,” Business Week, October 24, 1953, pp. 41–44. 36. Gasser, Das Shopping Center in Nordamerika, p. 77. Paul Smith, Shopping Centers: Planning and Management (New York: National Retail Association, 1958), notes, however, that in the case of some early shopping centers, as many as 50% of their patrons could get there by foot or public transportation. 37. See C. T. Jonassen, The Shopping Center versus Downtown: A Motivation Research on

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Shopping Habits and Attitudes in Three Cities (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1955), esp. p. 45. 38. Fogelson, Downtown, p. 3. 39. See e.g. May, Homeward Bound; and Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 40. See Sylvia Murray, The Progressive Housewife: Community Activism in Suburban Queens 1945–65 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003). 41. C. B. Palmer, The Shopping Center Goes to the Shopper,” New York Times, November 29, 1953, p. SM14. 42. “Revolution in Retail Selling,” U.S. News & World Report, June 20, 1958, pp. 48–58. 43. “Planned Postwar Shopping Centers Come Big,” Business Week, October 11, 1952, pp. 124–128. 44. “On the Seventh Day?” Newsweek, April 21, 1958, p. 72. 45. “The Turn to Sunday Shopping,” U.S. News & World Report, January 5, 1970. 46. H. Lawrence Isaacson, Store Choice: A Case Study of Consumer Decision Making (New York: Retail Research Institute, 1966), p. 71. 47. Kendree and Shepherd Planning Consultants, The Shopping Core: Interim Report (Tenafly, NJ, Planning Board, 1969), sec 2, p. 7 and pp. 13–15. 48. See e.g. Brian Berry, “Ribbon Developments in the Urban Business Pattern,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 49 (1959):, pp. 145–155. 49. Victor Gruen and Larry Smith, Shopping Towns USA: The Planning of Shopping Centers (New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1960), pp. 46–51. 50. Saul Cohen and George Lewis, “Form and Function in the Geography of Retailing,” in Economic Geography 42 (1967): 1–42, here pp. 13–14. For the impact of shopping centers on municipal tax revenue, see e.g. Thomas Muller, The Fiscal Impact of Regional Malls on Central Business Districts in Small Cities (Washington: Urban Institute, 1978). 51. “Cities Regulate Shopping-Center Districts,” American City, February 1952, p. 155. 52. Richard Babcock, The Zoning Game: Municipal Policies and Practices (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), pp. 70–79, here p. 72. 53. Thomas Hanchett, “U.S. Tax Policy and the Shopping-Center Boom of the 1950s and 1960s,” American Historical Review 101 (1996): 1082–1110. 54. See Gasser, Das Shopping Center in Nordamerika, pp. 153–154. 55. Ibid., p. 72. See also “Home Areas Draw Shopping Centers,” New York Times, January 22, 1950; and “Levittown Plot Taken for Stores,” New York Times, March 3, 1950. 56. N. Cohen, America’s Marketplace, pp. 24–25. 57. Caplovitz, The Poor Pay More. 58. “Should Supermarkets Take a New Look at Urban Areas?” Food Topics, February 1967, reprinted in: Frederick Sturdivant, The Ghetto Market Place (New York: Free Press, 1969), pp. 175–192. 59. “Consumer Problems of the Poor: Supermarket Operations in Low-Income Areas and the Federal Response,” Hearings before House Committee on Government Operations, October 12, 1967 (CIS-NO: 90 H2312-7). 60. Frederick Sturdivant, “Better Deal for Ghetto Shoppers,” Harvard Business Review 46 (1968): 130–139. 61. “Shopping Scarce in City Projects,” New York Times, June 16, 1957. Until a 1964 amendment to the Small Business Act, small retailers (unlike residential tenants) affected by urban

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renewal projects did not receive any federal aid for relocation. See “Urban Renewal Projects and Slum Clearance,” Hearing before House Select Committee on Small Business, May 3, 1956 (CIS-NO: 84 H1547-2). 62. Sidney Hollander Associates, Study of Eighteen Older Community Shopping Centers (Baltimore, 1965), pp. 1 and 7. 63. “Small Business Problems in Urban Areas,” Hearing before House Select Committee on Small Business, January 24, November 23–24, 1964 (CIS-NO: 88 H2099-3), here pp. 20–21. 64. See Nicholas Dagen Bloom, “Public Life as Consumerism: American Businessmen Revolutionize Suburban Commerce,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte (2005 / 2), pp. 71–87. 65. Kenneth Welch, “Location and Design of Shopping Centers,” in Harlean James (ed.), American Planning and Civic Annual (Washington: American Planning and Civic Association, 1952), pp. 131–138. 66. C. B. Palmer, “The Shopping Center Goes to the Shopper,” New York Times, November 29, 1953, p. SM 14. 67. Victor Gruen Associates, Shopping Centers of Tomorrow (American Federation of Arts, 1954), pp. 6–7. 68. Ibid., p. 4. 69. “Exhibit of Shopping Centers,” New York Times, October 19, 1954. 70. On Gruen, see Jeffrey Hardwick, Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of an American Dream (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); and Longstreth, City Center to Regional Mall, pp. 323–341. 71. Gruen and Smith, Shopping Towns, p. 32. 72. Gruen and Smith, Shopping Towns, p. 11. 73. See ibid., pp. 21 and 23–24. 74. Gasser, Das Shopping Center in Nordamerika, pp. 206–208. 75. See L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, pp. 275–278. 76. Bloom, “Public Life as Consumerism,” notes the prominent example of James Rouse, who, in many ways like Gruen, was a mall designer turned urban reformer. 77. “Down and Out Downtown,” Time, December 7, 1970, p. 87. 78. Elinor Lander Horwitz, “What Ever Happened to the Neighborhood Store?” McCall’s, July 1969, pp. 70 and 120. 79. Vicky Howard, “‘The Biggest Small-Town Store in America’: Independent Retailers and the Rise of Consumer Culture,” Enterprise and Society 9 (2008): 457–486. 80. Richard Francaviglia, Mainstreet Revisited: Time, Space, and Image Building in SmallTown America (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996), pp. 50–53. 81. See Francaviglia, Mainstreet Revisited, pp. 145–167; and William Kowinski, The Malling of America: An Inside Look at the Great Consumer Paradise (New York: Morrow, 1985), pp. 64–73. 82. Thomas Gasser, Das Shopping Center in Nordamerika. Einkaufscentren in Europa (Bern: Verlag Paul Haupt, 1960), p. 19. See also Alma Taeubner, “Population Redistribution and Retail Changes in the Central Business District,” in Ernest Burgess and Donald Bogue (eds.), Contributions to Urban Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 163–177, here p. 166. 83. Matthias Judt, “Reshaping Shopping Environments: The Competition between the City of Boston and Its Suburbs,” in Strasser et al., Getting and Spending, pp. 317–337. 84. Tri-County Regional Planning Commission, Shopping Center Effects on Central Business Districts (Akron, 1965), pp. 1–2 and 4. 85. Ibid., pp. 20–23.

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86. Steven Paranka, Shopping Center Effects on Small Business (Akron: Tri-County Regional Planning Commission, 1964), p. 17. 87. “European Developers Turning to Suburban Shopping Centers,” New York Times, June 14, 1965, p. 51. 88. “West Germany Gets Shopping Centers,” New York Times, January 15, 1965, p. 53. The reaction in the German press was decidedly more skeptical with regard to the economic prospects of the new shopping centers. See e.g. “Das Wagnis auf der grünen Wiese,” Der Volkswirt, May 8, 1964, p. 832; and “Ein Experiment auf der grünen Wiese,” Die Absatzwirtschaft, May 1964, p. 584. 89. See e.g. Paul Keuth, “Die Entvölkerung der Innenstädte,” Der Deutsche Handel 2 / 6 (1950): 5–6. 90. On the Europa-Center, see Alexander Sedlmaier, “Berlin’s Europa-Center (1963–65): Americanization, Consumerism, And the Uses of International Style,” in GHI Bulletin Supplement 2 (2005), pp. 87–99. 91. See Jaeck, Das Shopping Center, vol. 2, pp. 70–74. 92. “The Impact of Suburban Shopping Centers on Independent Retailers,” Report of the Senate Select Committee on Small Business, January 5, 1960 (CIS-NO: 12153, 86-1 S. rp.1016), p. Small “neighborhood centers” were considered to cover 20,000–60,000 square feet, and “community centers” between 100,000 and 400,000 square feet. 93. See Erich Greipl, Einkaufszentren in der Bundesrepublik: Bedeutung sowie Grundlagen und Methoden ihrer ökonomischen Planung (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1972), p. 74; and Jaeck, Das Shopping Center, vol. 2, pp. 70–74. 94. Greipl, Einkaufszentren, pp. 89–92. 95. See de Grazia, Irresistible Empire; and de Grazia, “American Supermarkets versus European Small Shops, or How Transnational Capitalism Crossed Paths with Moral Economy in Italy During the 1960s,” in Trondheim Studies on East European Cultures & Societies 7 (2002): 1–26. 96. Grazia, “American Supermarkets,” p. 8. 97. On the introduction of first self-service (Bedien’ dich selbst) stores, see for example Der Spiegel, February 9, 1950, p. 30. See also Rainer Gries, “‘Serve Yourself!’ The History and Theory of Self-Service in East and West Germany,” in Swett, Wiesen, and Zatlin, Selling Modernity, pp. 307–327. 98. See Der Spiegel, “Diskonthäuser,” February 2, 1963, pp. 43-46. On the postwar development of retailing, see Banken, “Schneller Strukturwandel trotz institutioneller Stabilität.” 99. See Michael Wildt, Am Beginn der Konsumgesellschaft, esp. chap. 3. On self-service and supermarkets in Europe, see also Sibylle Brändli, Der Supermarkt im Kopf: Konsumkultur und Wohlstand in der Schweiz nach 1945 (Vienna: Boehlau, 2000). 100. Fritz Brandes, Ist in Amerika alles anders? Das wirtschaftliche Leben in den USA— Ergebnisse einer Studienreise (Frankfurt: Verlag für Wirtschaftspraxis, 1962), pp. 9–10. 101. Bruno Tietz, Konsument und Einzelhandel: Strukturwandel in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von 1950 bis 1975 (Frankfurt: Lorch-Verlag, 1966), p. 504. 102. The voluntary chains were akin to the Independent Grocers Association (IGA) in the United States. Data according to Helmut Soldner, Die City als Einkaufszentrum, pp. 230–234. 103. See Bruno Tietz, Unterschiede und Wandlungen der regionalen Handelsstruktur in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1950 und 1961 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1967), pp. 136–145; Banken, “Schneller Strukturwandel”; and Scheybani, Handwerk und Kleinhandel in der Bundesrepublik, p. 61. 104. See Banken, “Schneller Strukturwandel.”

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105. “La méthode americaine,” Time, November 16, 1959, pp. 105–106. 106. Elmar Kulke, “Entwicklungstendenzen suburbaner Einzelhandelslandschaften,” in Brake, Dangschat, and Herfert, Suburbanisierung in Deutschland, pp. 57–69, here p. 59. 107. For the pressure exerted by small retailers, their fight against larger competitors and their continued dominance in the German market, see “Warenhäuser: Alles für Frau Plesecke,” Der Spiegel, January 7, 1953, pp. 11–14. See chapter 1 above for a more detailed discussion. 108. Tietz, Konsument und Einzelhandel, pp. 39–48. 109. See e.g. “Preise und viel schöne Reden,” Der Spiegel, March 7, 1956, p. 13; and “Preise: Testprozess,”Der Spiegel, September 24, 1958. 110. Dr. Langer of the Ministry of Economics in the minutes of the March 22 session of the Verbraucherausschuß in BuArch B102 / 168707. 111. Larger retailers and department stores, of course, had protested the the limitation of store hours (particularly on Saturday afternoons). See “Horten Konzern: Das Paradis der Damen,” Der Spiegel, May 18, 1955, pp. 18–24. 112. On the Ladenschluss debate, see chapter 1 above; and Uwe Spiekermann, “Freier Konsum und soziale Verantwortung: Zur Geschichte des Ladenschlusses in Deutschland im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 49 (2004): 26–44. Also, Brandes, Ist in Amerika alles anders? and Kenneth Jackson, “All the World’s a Mall: Reflections on the Social and Economic Consequences of the American Shopping Center,” American Historical Review 101 (1996): 1111–1121. 113. Brandes, Ist in Amerika alles anders? pp. 27–29. 114. See L. Cohen, Consumer’s Republic, pp. 283–285; and Jackson, “All the World’s a Mall,” p. 1119. 115. Grocery store proprietors further needed a Fachkundenachweis, a specialist certificate. The law was liberalized in 1966, following a ruling by the federal constitutional court. Tietz, Konsument und Einzelhandel, p. 51. 116. See Brandes, Ist in Amerika alles anders, p. 17; and Klaus Müller-Beilschmidt, “Handelskosten und Handelsspanne im Wandel der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung,” in Behrens, Wandel im Handel, pp. 95–105, here pp. 97–99. 117. “Is the Bell Tolling for Blue Laws?” Business Week, April 4, 1970, p. 39. 118. See 1958 survey on consumer behavior commissioned by the ministry of economics. Cited in January 21, 1958, session of the Verbraucherausschuß in BuArch B 102 / 168707. 119. See Scheybani, Handwerk und Kleinhandel, pp. 156 / 57 and 172. 120. Ibid., pp. 298–299. 121. See Hannes Weeber, Als Fußgänger beim Einkauf in der City: Leistungsbereitschaft, Zeitaufwand und beeinflussende Faktoren (Stuttgart: Forschungsgemeinschaft Bauen und Wohnen, 1973), pp. 97–105. 122. Friedemann Wild and Walter Pawlik, Warenhaus und Einkaufszentrum (Munich: Georg Callwey, 1972), p. 2; and, Jaeck, Das Shopping Center, vol. 1, p. 14. 123. Ibid., pp. 57–58. 124. Greipl, Einkaufszentren, pp. 65–66 and 105–114. 125. Bundesanzeiger, December 15, 1955, cited in Jahke, Die Wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen, p. 7. 126. See Jaeck, Das Shopping Center, vol. 1, p. 19. The early literature on the location of retailing includes J. Hirsch, Das Warenhaus in Westdeutschland (Leipzig 1910); J. Hirsch., Der Moderne Handel (Tübingen 1925); Herlan, “Der Standort des Kleinhandels” (diss., Cologne, 1926); W. Lippmann, “Der Standort des Einzelhandels” (diss., Berlin, 1932); and R. Schmidt-

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Friedländer, Grundzüge einer Leher vom Standorte des Handels (Prague, 1933). See also Karl Behrens, Der Standort der Handelsbetriebe (Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1965). 127. For example, Soldner, Die City als Einkaufszentrum, p. 54, refers to Ferdinand Tönnies’s characterization of the medieval city as a “living communal organism.” 128. Walter Christaller, Die zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1933). Hierarchical models of regional space existed in the United States as well; however, they did not command nearly as much attention during the postwar decades. During the 1920s, for example, E. W. Burgess of the Chicago school of sociology developed a “concentric zonal” theory of retailing centered on the central business district; see Fogelson, Downtown, p. 183. 129. See e.g. Greipl, Einkaufszentren, pp. 114–172. 130. Soldner, Die City als Einkaufszentrum, p. 269. 131. Gasser, Das Shopping Center in Nordamerika, p. 70. 132. The catalog of the Institute of Urbanistik (Senatsbibliothek Berlin) contains reports regarding consumer demand written by Jahke in the postwar decades for at least fifty cities (mostly in Southern Germany and North Rhine–Westphalia). 133. Jahke, Die wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen, pp. 10–15 and 35–45. 134. Robert Jahke, Gewerbeplanung im Städtebau (Kirchheim-Teck: Städtebau-Verlag, 1960), pp. 21, 97, 147–148. 135. See Wulf Tessin, “Zum Entwicklungskontext der Stadteilsiedlungen in den sechziger Jahren,” in Schildt and Arnold Sywottek (ed.), Massenwohnung and Eigenheim, pp. 494–512. 136. Retailing interests cooperated with planners to adapt new housing developments to the changing demands of a modern consumer society. See “Selbstbedienung ausserhalb der City,” in Die Absatzwirtschaft, Juni 1962, pp. 358, 360–61. 137. Janpeter Kob et al., Städtebauliche Konzeptionen in der Bewährung: Neu Vahr Bremen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), pp. 58–69. 138. Freie Hansestadt Bremen, Projektgruppe Vahr, “Entwicklungskonzept fuer die Neue Vahr” Entwurf March 11, 1974, in archive of Bremer Zentrum für Baukultur. 139. See Jackson, “All the World’s a Mall,” p. 1119. 140. Wiltrud and Joachim Petsch, Bundesrepublik—eine Neue Heimat? Städtebau und Architektur nach ’45, (Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1983), pp. 175–77. 141. On the development of inner-city department stores, see Tietz, Konsument und Einzelhandel, p. 422 as well as Ekkehard Buchhofer, Volker Jülich, and Peter Jüngst, “Warenhausniederlassung und Fußgängerzone als Mittel der Zentralitätsförderung am Beispiel Marburgs,” in Gerhard Sandner (ed.), Tagungsbericht und wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen. 42. Deutscher Geographentag (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1980), pp. 402–404. The relative strength of inner city retailing see Soldner, Die City als Einkaufszentrum, pp. 271–278. 142. Parts of this section have been published in German: Jan Logemann, “Einkaufsparadies und ‘Gute Stube’: Fußgängerzonen in Westdeutschen Innenstädten der 1950er bis 1970er Jahre,” in v. Saldern, Stadt und Kommunikation in bundesrepublikanischen Umbruchszeiten, pp. 103–122. 143. “USA Studienreise für Städtebau und Städteplanung,” in Der Aufbau 20 / 3 (December 1966): 39. 144. For the history of pedestrian malls in Germany, see Rolf Monheim, Fußgängerbereiche und Fußgängerverkehr in Stadtzentren in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Bonn: Ferdinand Dümmler, 1980), Monheim, “The Evolution and Impact of Pedestrian Areas in the Federal Republic of West Germany,” in Rodney Tolley (ed.), The Greening of Urban Transport. Planning for Walking and Cycling in Western Cities (London: Belhaven, 1990), pp. 244–253, Joseph Hajdu,

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“Pedestrian Malls in West Germany: Perceptions of their Role and Stages in their Development,” Journal of the American Planning Association 54,3 (1988): 325–335, and Carmen Hass-Klau, The Pedestrian and City Traffic (London: Belhaven, 1990). 145. See Stadtbaurat Haas, “Das Kölner Straßenbauproblem,” November 14, 1942, Historisches Archiv Stadt Köln (= HStA Köln), Best 953, Nr. 33. 146. See Stadt Köln (ed.), Das Neue Köln. Ein Vorentwurf, (Köln: Bachem, 1950); and a letter by Rudolf Schwarz to Paul Stock, January 24, 1949 in HStA Köln Acc 24, Nr. 11. 147. Ibid., pp. 11, 15 and 43. See also Harald Ludmann and Kurt Jatho, “Rudolf Schwarz—sein Konzept für das neue Köln,” in Architekten- und Ingenieurverein Köln (ed.), Köln—seine Bauten 1928–1988 (Köln: Bachem, 1991), pp. 106–119. 148. “Riesengeviert des grosstädtischen Marktes,” see Städtebauamt Köln, “Köln, Metropole des Abendlandes, im Wiederaufbau” (1951), HStA Köln Acc 24, Nr. 10. 149. See Stadtplanungsamt Köln, appendix to “Fußgängerbereiche in Köln”(1975), HStA Köln Acc. 1714. 150. Verhandlungen des Rates der Stadt Köln 1959, 12. Session of October 13, 1959, pp. 456–57. 151. See Klaus Uhlig, Pedestrian Areas. From Malls to Complete Networks (New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1979), p. 47, and Deutsche Akademie für Städtebau und Landesplanung (ed.), Deutscher Städtebau 1968. Die Städtebauliche Entwicklung von 70 deutschen Städten, (Essen: Richart Bacht, 1970), S. 197–199. 152. See Helmut Grieser, “Wiederaufstieg aus Trümmern,” in Jürgen Jensen and Peter Wulf (ed.), Geschichte der Stadt Kiel (Neumünster: Wachholtz, 1991), pp. 401–456 und Herbert Jensen, “Aktuelle Probleme der Stadtentwicklung”in Der Aufbau 20 / 2 (1966): 5–12. 153. Hansdietmar Klug, “Städtebauliche Planung für Fußgänger zur Erneuerung der Innenstädte,” in Bauen und Wohnen 21,4 (1967), pp. 149–156. 154. See e.g.: “Innenstadt bleibt Oase der Fußgänger,” Hessische Allgemeine, September 30, 1961. 155. See Monheim, “The Evolution and Impact,” pp. 244–45 and Hajdu, “Pedestrian Malls,” p. 328. Traffic planning, to be sure, did play an important role in the introduction of pedestrian areas as the Berlin Interbau exhibition and its coverage of Fußgängerzonen underscores. Deutsche Akademie für Städtebau und Landesplanung (ed.), Deutscher Städtebau nach 1945 (Essen: Richard Bacht, 1961), pp. 235–253 and “Düsseldorf und der deutsche Städtebau,” Düsseldorfer Nachrichten, July 13, 1957. 156. See e.g. Adolf Abel, Regeneration der Städte (Zürich: Verlag für Architektur, 1950). 157. “U.S. Cities Held Lagging—Expert Back from Europe,” New York Times, October 5, 1958. 158. On pedestrian areas in the United States cf. Roberto Brambilla / Gianni Longo, For Pedestrians Only: Planning, Design, and Management of Traffic-Free Zones (New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1977), Harvey Rubenstein, Pedestrian Malls, Streetscapes, and Urban Spaces (New York: Wiley, 1992), and Kent Robertson, Pedestrian Malls and Skywalks (Aldershot: Avebury, 1994). 159. “Merchants Lose Downtown Blues,” New York Times, February 27, 1955. 160. Victor Gruen, “Main Street 1969,” in American Planning and Civic Annual (1957), pp. 16–21. 161. Victor Gruen, The Heart of Our Cities. 162. “Kalamazoo Mall Gathers Acclaim,” New York Times, October 4, 1959, and C.H. Elliot, “Long-Term Benefits of a Shoppers’ Mall,” in American City (March 1964), pp. 91–92. 163. See Institute of Traffic Engineers (ed.), Traffic Planning and Other Considerations for Pedestrian Malls, (Washington, 1966), pp. 36–39.

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164. “Parklike Malls Are Hailed As Gain for Downtown Toledo,” New York Times, August 23, 1959. 165. “New Toledo Malls Opened,” New York Times, July 12, 1960, and “Toledo Dismantles Malls,” New York Times, November 30, 1960. 166. Institute of Traffic Engineers, Traffic Planning, pp. 8–9. 167. Downtown Research and Development Center (ed.), Public Attitudes towards Downtown Malls. A National Opinion Research Survey (New York 1975). 168. In his 1969 Streets for People, Bernard Rudofsky notes: “It simply never occurs to us to make streets into oases rather than deserts.” Bernard Rudofsky, Streets for People: A Primer for Americans (Garden City: Doubleday, 1969), p. 13. 169. See Downtown Malls an Annual Review 1 (1975): 60–61. 170. Cited in Günter Schütze, “Internationaler Kongress ‘Handel und Städtebau’ in Brüssel,” in Der Aufbau 21 / 2 (May 1967): 10–12. 171. See e.g. Alexander Mitscherlich, “Die Stadt der Zukunft,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 2, 1967, and Hansdietmar Klug, “Städtebauliche Planung für Fußgänger.” 172. See e.g. Erwin Thomas, Einzelhandel im Städtebau. Shoppingcenters in den USA—Europäische Konsequenzen (Frankfurt: Verlag für Wirtschaftspraxis, 1964). 173. Herbert Dix, “Städtebauliche Erneuerung im Widerstreit der Interessen,” in Der Aufbau 20 / 3 (December 1966): 17–18. 174. Günther Schütze, “Innerstädtische Geschäftszentren oder Shopping-Centers?” in Der Aufbau 19 / 1 (May 1965): 11–12. 175. Similar associations existed in many German cities. For the Bremish case, see Gerhard Iversen, “Das Bremische Beispiel,” in Der Wiederaufbau 5, 1 / 2 (June 1951), p. 1. 176. The April 1966 issue, for example, was devoted almost solely to this issue. See Der Aufbau 20 / 1 (April 1966): 1–15. 177. Editorial, in Der Aufbau 20 / 1 (April 1966): 13. 178. Gerhard Iversen, “Vorbildliche Verkaufsstrassen in deutschen und ausländischen Städten,” in Der Wiederaufbau 12,3 (1958), pp. 2–8. 179. See the special edition covering the Sögestraße competition, Der Aufbau 21 (November 1967). 180. Hans-Jochen Vogel, “Rettet unsere Städte jetzt!”Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 27, 1971. See also “Die Stadt, in der es sich zu leben lohnt,” Die Welt, June 12, 1965; “Die Stadt in der Krise,” Die Welt, February 2, 1968; and “Bei den Regeln gewinnt kein Bürgermeister das Spiel,” Frankfurter Rundschau, July 5, 1972. 181. Herbert Jensen, “Aktuelle Probleme der Stadtentwicklung,” in Der Aufbau 20 / 2 (September 1966): 2–12. See also special coverage on the Munich pedestrian mall in Der Aufbau 22 / 3 (September 1968): 1–11 and Herbert Jensen, Fußgängerbereiche München—Altstadt: Plangutachten zur Einrichtung von Fußgängerzonen innerhalb des vom Altstadtring umfahrenen Altstadtbereiches in München (Munich, June 1965). 182. See Baureferat München, München—Fußgängerbereiche in der Altstadt (Munich, 1972). 183. These numbers were published by the Münchener Forums 1969 based on a survey commissioned by the Süddeutschen Zeitung and the Münchener Merkur. Cited in Harald Ludmann, Fußgängerbereiche in deutschen Städten: Beispiele und Hinweise für die Planung (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1972), pp. 14–15. 184. The largely positive attitude toward pedestrian malls is also reflected in Hans Günter Naumann, Berichte und Protokolle des Münchner Forum Nr.3, 2nd ed. (May 1970).

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185. Deutsche Akademie für Städtebau und Landesplanung, Deutscher Städtebau 1968. 186. Ibid., p. 164. 187. Monheim, Fußgängerbereiche und Fußgängerverkehr, p. 274. 188. Robert Jahke, Zur Problematik der Fußgängerzone im innerstädtischen Ladenzentrum von Mittelstädten (Kircheim: Städtebauverlag 1979), pp. 10–12. 189. Appendix to “Fußgängerbereiche in Köln” (1972) in HStA Köln, Acc 1714. 190. Lizabeth Cohen, “From Town Center to Shopping Center: The Reconfiguration of Community Market Places in Postwar America,” American Historical Review 101 (1996): 10501081, here p. 1079. For a discussion on the public / private relationship in postwar German shopping malls, see Walter Siebel, “Zum Wandel des öffentlichen Raums—das Beispiel ShoppingMall,” in v. Saldern, Stadt und Kommunikation in bundesrepublikanischen Umbruchszeiten, pp. 67–82. 191. Ann Satterthwaite, Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). 192. See Tri-County Regional Planning Commission, Shopping Center Effects on Central Business Districts (Akron: Tri-County Regional Planning Commission, 1965), p. 31. 193. Hans-Jochen Vogel, “Bei den Regeln gewinnt kein Bürgermeister das Spiel,” Frankfurter Rundschau, July 5, 1972. 194. See e.g. “Länge mal Breite mal Geld,” Der Spiegel (cover), June 7, 1971; and”Bißchen Piazza,” Der Spiegel, December 20, 1971. 195. “Fußgängerzonen als Standortfaktor,” in Kommunalwirtschaftliche Informationen 4 (1972): 24–28 (Senatsbibliothek Berlin 4°80 / 3550). 196. See Eberhard Syring, Stadtvisionen im Wandel: Bremerhavens neue Mitte am Alten Hafen. Entwürfe 1940–1955 (Bremerhaven: Kulturamt, 1998), p. 44. 197. Lauritz Lauritzen, Die Zukunft unserer Städte: Analysen, Ziele, Lösungen (Bonn: Vorstand der SPD, 1971), p. 9. 198. Hans Schmitt-Rost, “Neue Völker Wandern: Zustände im Kölner Fußgängerparadies” (1971), HstA Köln Ef 121. 199. Ibid. 200. “Eine Zukunft für die Vergangenheit,” Der Spiegel, June 17, 1974, p. 54. 201. See e.g. “Länge mal Breite mal Geld,” Der Spiegel, June 7, 1971; and D. Garbrecht, “Fußgängerbereiche: ein Alptraum?” in Baumeister 11 (1977), pp. 1052–53. 202. Ironically, it was in East Germany that pedestrian areas may have come closest to serving the purpose of affording space for a critical public sphere. Here, East German consumers could congregate and (at least occasionally, though usually in an unorganized fashion) air their grievances. Rainer Lehmann, “Entwicklung der Fußgängerbereiche in Altstädten der DDR,” Die Alte Stadt 25 (1998): 80–99. 203. Deutscher Industrie- und Handelskammertag, Einkaufsmagnet Fußgängerzone (Bonn 1979), pp. 17–18. 204. Stadtplanungsamt Köln, “Fußgängerbereiche,” p. 9. 205. Werner Durth, Die Inszenierung der Alltagswelt: Zur Kritik der Stadtgestaltung (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1977), esp. pp. 74–87 and 128–132. 206. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 66–98. 207. One example is the near parallel development of a suburban shopping center, the We-

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serpark, and a covered inner-city pedestrian street, the Lloyd-Passage, in the city of Bremen during the 1980s and early 1990s. 208. Herbert Dix, “Städtebauliche Erneuerung im Widerstreit der Interessen,” in Der Aufbau 20 / 3 (December 1966): 18, developed this argument during the 1960s, seeing the two (with proper planning) as useful complements. 209. James Rouse, “Festival Market Places,” in Economic Development Commentary, Summer 1984, pp. 3–8. 210. For the notion that modern consumerism does contradict notions of urbanity, see Jürgen Reulecke, Geschichte der Urbanisierung in Deutschland (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985), pp. 159–163. By contrast, see Barbara Henderson-Smith, “From Booth to Shop to Shopping Mall: Continuities in Consumer Space from 1650 to 2000” (diss., Griffith University, 2002). 211. On the dissolution of urban boundaries and efforts to maintain urban publics and communication especially during the 1970s, see v. Saldern, Stadt und Kommunikation in bundesrepublikanischen Umbruchszeiten. Conclusion 1. Herald Schultz, “This Is Not America. Why Wal-Mart Left Germany,” Atlantic Times, September 2006; and Mark Landler, “Wal-Mart Finds That Its Formula Does Not Fit Every Country,” New York Times, August 2, 2006. 2. On the global transportation revolution, see Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). On globalized marketing by multinational corporations, see e.g. Geoffrey Jones, Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).  3. On the 1970s as caesura, see Anselm Doering-Manteuffel and Lutz Raphael. Nach dem Boom: Perspektiven auf die Zeitgeschichte seit 1970 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008). A recent intellectual history of the epochal break is Daniel Rodgers, Age of Fracture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 4. At 178 million btu as opposed to 342 million btu in the United States; see http: // www .eia.doe.gov / pub / international / iealf / tablee1c.xls. Although differences in consumption do not account for the entire difference, GDP per capita in 2004 was still 72% of the US level; see http: // www.census.gov / compendia / statab / tables / 07s1325.xls.

Index

A&P stores, 188, 189 Abbott, Lawrence, 94 Adenauer, Konrad, 52 advertising, 2, 5, 14–15, 17, 28, 45, 54, 57, 59, 70–71, 87, 91, 94–95, 118, 125–26, 132, 191, 202, 222 “affluent society,” 1, 21, 57–59, 66, 140, 176–82 African American consumers, 61, 100, 101, 148, 163, 168, 170 Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), 16 Albers, Gerd, 134 “Americanization” (“Americanisms”), 1, 3, 4, 14, 25, 38, 71–72, 104, 186, 223, 226 American Municipal Association, 167, 169 American Planning and Civic Association, 210 Ann Arbor, MI, 193 apartment living, 2, 7, 10, 96, 133, 141–45, 157–59, 161–65, 206; construction in US, 145, 149; construction in West Germany, 151, 155; social housing in Germany, 150–52 appliances, 1, 5, 16, 28, 48, 75, 77–79, 82, 85, 87, 89, 93, 104, 112, 125 Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Verbraucherverbände (AgV), 42, 64 Arbeitskreis für Absatzfragen, 123, 125 Arndt, Rudi, 176 “aryanization” of stores, 17 Aufbausparen, 40 automobile, 1–2, 5–7, 9–11, 14, 18, 25–28, 40, 57, 70, 71–79, 82, 85–89, 95, 99, 103, 108–10, 114, 117, 119, 130, 132, 134, 136, 139–41, 150, 161, 165–75, 182–83, 186–87, 192–93, 218, 222–24 bakeries, 81, 190, 201 Baltimore, MD, 167, 190, 194–95, 217

bargains / bargain shopping, 9, 69, 75, 92–93, 97, 222; bargain basements, 70 “bargain shoppers” (“value shoppers”), 9, 35, 48, 69–70, 86, 91–92, 94, 97, 115, 161, 187, 191, 193, 219 Bausparen / Bausparkasse, 116, 149, 152–53, 158–59 Berlin, 134–35, 155, 199 Beveridge Plan / American Beveridge Plan, 25–27, 30, 35, 51, 67 Black, Hillel, 122 black market, 38–39, 72 Blandford, John, 143 Bley, Curt, 125 “blue laws,” 34, 192. See also Sunday closing laws Bochum, 199 books, 88–89, 104, 202 “boom era,” 1, 3, 7–9, 19, 76, 84, 104, 220, 224 Boston, MA, 182, 198, 217 Bourdieu, Pierre, 103 brand-name goods, 1–2, 14, 33, 48, 54, 100, 185, 189–90, 200–2, 220; collective brand initiative, 47 Braun, 480 Brecht, Julius, 159 Bremen, 5, 134, 156–57, 206–7, 212 Budde, Hans, 153 “budgetism,” 122, 129 Bundesbahn, 171–72 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 76, 98–99 bürgerlich (bourgeois) ethos of consumption, 9–10, 13, 44, 63, 66, 71, 74, 91, 97–98, 101–6, 108, 115, 117–18, 125–27, 129–30, 152, 162, 197, 223, 225 Burns, Eveline, 26, 35 buses, 41, 164, 166–69, 172–75, 207

296 butcher shops, 81, 190, 201 Butler, James, 154 Butschkau, Fritz, 127 C&A Brenninkmeyer, 123 California, 33, 145, 187 Caplovitz, David, 61 Carey, James, 118 cars. See automobile cartels, 17–18, 38, 45, 90, 223 cash loans, 110, 112–14, 129 cash payment (Barkauf), 45, 111, 114, 119–21, 123, 126 chain stores, 15, 17, 31, 33, 48, 112, 137, 185, 188–91, 194, 198, 200–201, 215, 217 Chase, Stuart, 25, 70 Cheney, William, 119, 121 Chicago, IL, 142, 168 child allowances, 52–53 Christaller, Walter, 205 Christian Democratic Union (CDU), 6, 8, 38, 44–45, 49, 51, 114, 151, 155 Christmas wishes, 89 CIT Financial Corporation, 118 city (downtown) districts, 2, 7, 10–11, 134–37, 165, 168, 176, 179, 185–88, 191–95, 197–99, 203–8, 210–11, 213–17, 225 Clague, Ewan, 76 cold war, 1, 5, 8, 21, 25, 30–31, 39, 51–52, 57, 63, 90, 126, 155, 223, 225 Cologne, 134–35, 209, 213–14, 216 comparison shopping, 60, 90, 92–93 condominiums, 158, 160 conservatism, 7, 116, 180, 206, 220, 222 conspicuous consumption, 64, 70, 78, 98 Consumer Advisory Council, 60–61 consumer behavior, 2, 66, 76, 87, 92–93, 100, 107, 226 consumer citizen, 7–8, 24, 222 consumer confidence (sentiment) index, 86, consumer debt, 73, 77, 107, 109–10, 114–16, 122, 127–29, 194, 221–22, 226 consumer education, 60–61, 64–65, 90 consumer engineering, 28, 71, 126 consumer expectations / aspirations, 9, 71, 76, 87, 90, 98, 123, 220 Consumer Price Index, 41, 54, 85 Consumer Reports, 64, 76, 94 consumer rights, 8, 60, 62, 64 consumer sovereignty, 6, 40, 42, 58, 60, 64, 218 consumption patterns, 2, 4, 7, 14, 35, 53, 62, 69–75, 79–80, 82–87, 90–91, 97–100, 117, 130, 133, 143, 164, 166, 182, 226 convergence, 1, 4, 72–73, 75, 83–86, 217, 226 Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), 28–30, 33–34, 56 credit card, 107, 109–10, 115

index credit unions, 109, 152 currency reform of 1948, 39, 11, 116 Daimler-Benz, 2 Dale, Edwin, Jr., 57 Dauten, Carl, 119 De Boer, Saco, 135 Democrats, 27 Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 59, 150, 170, 183 department stores, 14, 17, 31, 33, 50, 92–94, 112, 114, 134–36, 175, 185–90, 195, 197–98, 201, 207, 209, 213–14, 217 Depression, 15–16, 18, 25, 70, 72, 91, 108–10, 119, 136, 166, 188, 221 Detroit, MI, 195, 197–98 Deutscher Hausfrauenbund, 42 Dietz, Alfred, 118 Diners Club, 115 discount stores, 10, 18, 31–34, 46, 48, 85, 92–94, 97, 136, 185, 188, 190–93, 200–203, 225 Disneyland, 197, 217 Dortmund, 185, 212 Duesenberry, James, 98 Düsseldorf, 134, 157, 185, 199 durable goods, 1, 9–10, 25–26, 29, 41–43, 47, 54, 59, 71–72, 75–80, 82, 85–90, 95–96, 100, 102–3, 108–13, 117–20, 123, 125, 127–28, 130, 143–44, 147, 222 Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), 154 “economic miracle” (Wirtschaftswunder), 3, 8–9, 38, 53, 62, 67, 74, 79, 87, 111, 128, 215, 223 Edeka, 200 Eigenheim, 10, 152–62 Einzelhandelsschutzgesetz, 206 Eisenhower, Dwight, 30, 35–36, 58, 78, 145, 148 Employment Act of 1946, 28 energy, 14, 16, 226–27 Engel curve, 84 environment, 6, 65–66, 106, 139, 220, 225 Erhard, Ludwig, 8, 38–45, 47–48, 51–53, 62–63, 67, 113–14, 171, 223 Essen, 134, 209 Eucken, Walther, 38 Europe, 1, 3–7, 11, 13–14, 18, 24–25, 31, 44, 58, 66, 71, 75, 83–84, 89, 95, 107, 112–13, 115, 130, 135, 144, 164–65, 177, 180, 185, 195, 198, 200–201, 204, 208, 212–13 Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, 111 fair trade laws. See resale price maintenance family shopping, 30, 50, 70, 91, 192 Federal Highway Aid Act, 166, 169 Federal Housing Administration (FHA), 37, 78, 110, 143, 148–49, 194–95

index Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), 29, 37, 149 Federal Report on Consumer Policy of 1971 Federal Trade Commission (FTC), 32–34, 189–90 Federated Department Stores, 188 Fiedler, Kurt, 102 Filene, Edward, 147 Food Stamp Act of 1964, 59 Fordism, 13, 15, 71, 220 Ford Motor Company, 14, 28, 74 Frankfurt am Main, 133–35, 156, 176, 198–99 Fresno, CA, 211–12 Friedel, Gerhard, 66 furniture, 27–28, 47, 81, 85, 96, 104, 111, 119, 123, 214 Fußgängerzone, 11, 208–9, 213–14, 216–18, 224. See also pedestrian malls Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1, 58–59, 62, 66, 122, 176–77 Gans, Herbert, 179 garden-city movement, 132, 134 GdF Wüstenrot, 158 Gemeinwirtschaft, 54, 171, 182 General Electric, 48 General Motors, 43, 70 Genussmittel, 9, 72, 82, 89, 103 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 8, 19, 40, 51–52, 90, 152, 155, 223, 225 Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung (GfK), 17, 40 Glazer, Nathan, 150 Great Society, 56, 59–60, 100, 183, 222 grocery stores, 2, 33, 42, 46, 135–36, 189, 197–98, 200–201 Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 22–23, 66, 74, 86, 115 growth policy, 3, 16, 24–25, 28–30, 43, 51–52, 58–59, 63, 67, 87, 108–10, 123, 129, 147, 166, 182, 220 Gruen, Victor, 195–96, 210–12, 215 guaranteed loans, 28, 148–49, 152, 190 Gütezeichen program, 47 Guth, Ernst, 95 Hamburg, 134–35, 156, 172 Hannover, 175 Hansen, Alvin, 26–27, 29, 31, 58, 63 Hapag Lloyd, 208 Hauptgemeinschaft des Deutschen Einzelhandels, 45–46 Hermans, Heinz, 214 “hidden” welfare state, 22–23, 36–37, 54, 67, 143, 182, 193 Holton, Richard, 60–61, 100 home ownership, 10, 37, 63, 76, 78, 82, 85, 110, 132, 139, 141–43, 158, 160–61, 165–66, 179, 182–83

297 Hoover, Edgar, 168 Hoover, Herbert, 36 Hörnig, Karl, 103 Horwitz, Elionor Lander, 197 household equipment, 79–80 household expenditures, 80–82 Housing Act: of 1934, 16; of 1935, 109–10; of 1937, 144; of 1949, 35, 145, 150–51; of 1954, 35; of 1956, 148; of 1961, 169; of 1950, West Germany, 150–51; of 1956, West Germany, 150 Hoyt, Elizabeth, 105 Huxtable, Ada Louise, 180 Ifo Institute, 199 income development, 3, 7, 14, 16, 23, 28–30, 35–36, 51–52, 63, 71, 74–77, 80, 82–86, 98–105, 108, 110, 115–17, 127, 141, 153, 160, 162, 178, 221; disposable income, 7, 14, 30, 36, 59, 71, 85; income redistribution, 16, 29, 35 Independent Grocers Association (IGA), 189 index of consumer sentiment, 86 inflation, 27, 29–32, 36, 40, 42–43, 45, 48, 51, 53, 56, 59, 61–64, 72, 89, 110, 116, 122, 220, 222 inner cities, 3, 11, 61, 100, 132–37, 145, 156–57, 163–65, 168, 170, 177–80, 183–84, 191–92, 194, 197–98, 204, 207–15, 224, installment credit, 89, 107, 109–15, 117–19, 123–30 Interbau exhibition, 155 interstate highways, 37, 166 Jaeck, Horst-Joachim, 204 Jahke, Robert, 205–6 Jensen, Herbert, 213 J.C. Penney, 189, 198 Johnson, Keen, 28, Johnson, Lyndon B., 59, 61, 64, 100, 139, 150, 180 Kaiser, Jakob, 52 Kalamazoo, MI, 211 Kämpe, Otto, 161 Kansas City, MO, 187 Karstadt, 112 Kassel, 209, 213 Katkow, Herman, 190 Katona, George, 58, 77, 86, 89, 97, 129 Kennedy, John F., 59–60, 150, 169 Keynesianism, 8, 25, 28–29, 30, 35, 42, 51, 58, 63–64, 67, 107, 110, 113, 143, 220–21, 225–26; Keynesian suburbanization, 132; military Keynesianism, 30; social Keynesianism, 25, 29, 35, 51, 67, 223 Keyserling, Leon, 29–31, 40, 59, 63 Kiel, 134, 209, 213 Kienbaum, Gerhard, 174 Kilometerpauschale, 171 Königsberg system, 112, 129

298 Korean War, 30, 32, 41, 76, 114, 118 Kyrk, Hazel, 99 labor unions, 8, 15, 27–28, 36, 39, 41–43, 45, 49–51, 54, 63, 118, 122–23, 127, 144, 154, 156, 202–3, 222 Ladenschlussgesetz, 49 Lasker, Loula, 142, 146 Lauritzen, Lauritz, 159, 216 Leary, Robert, 193 Lehner, Friedrich, 173 Leibbrandt, Karl, 173 Levittowns, 147–48 Lewis, John, 27 Lippmann, Walter, 57 Little Rock, AK, 145 Los Angeles, CA, 150, 168, 170, 187, 212 Lücke, Paul, 152, 159 Lutz, Friedrich, 123, 125 Mack, Ruth, 101 Macy’s, 188 mail-order retailing, 33, 50, 132, 187 Margolius, Sidney, 92 “Marshall Plan,” 3, 23, 154 mass distribution, 8 15, 22, 31, 34, 44, 48, 55, 60, 67, 90, 188, 191, 221 mass transportation, 58, 60, 85, 132, 165–75, 181, 183, 116, 220, 225–26 Masshalteappelle, 63 May, Ernst, 133, 156–57 Medicare and Medicaid, 59 Merz, Paul, 37 Meyer, John, 177 Meyer-Ronnenberg, Rudolf, 49 Miksch, Leonhard, 38 Minneapolis, MN, 195–96, 211 McDonald’s, 2 McEntire, Davis, 148 McGowan v. Maryland, 34 McGuire Act, 33, 191 Mittelstand, 44, 46, 206, 223 mixed economy, 25, 30, 39, 51, 62 modernization, 4, 17, 49, 104, 154, 217–18; of homes and households, 16, 42, 79, 110, 143, 151; of railroads and mass transit, 172, 174; of retail, 49, 185 mortgages, 29, 37, 85, 100, 107, 110, 113, 122, 130, 143, 148–49, 152–53, 165, 178, 182, 225, 226 motorcycles, 82, 171–72 Müller-Armack, Alfred, 41, 47 Munich, 134, 139, 182, 213, 216 municipal socialism, 14 Nannen, Henri, 154 National Dry Goods Retailers Association, 190

index National Housing Administration (NHA), 143 National Recovery Administration (NRA), 16 National Resources Planning Board (NRPB), 25–27 National Socialist (Nazi) regime, 1, 15–18, 39, 44, 45, 72, 79, 126, 133–34, 137, 205, 206, 223 neighborhood concept, 146, 155–57, 173–74, 205, 206 neighborhood store, 10, 93, 134–37, 158, 186, 188–90, 194–95, 197, 199–203, 205, 218, 225 Nelson, Herbert, 143 Neue Heimat, 156, 159, 225 Neue Vahr (Bremen), 5, 156–57, 206 New Brunswick, NJ, 191 New Deal, 15–16, 18, 24–27, 32, 35, 110, 130, 132, 179, 221–22 new urbanism, 220 Nixon, Richard M., 61 Nugent, Rolf, 110 Nulltarif, 175 Office of Price Administration (OPA), 32 oil crisis of 1973, 220 Oklahoma City, OK, 168 old-age insurance (pension plans), 14, 26–27, 36, 39, 43, 51–53, 55, 85, 116, 128, 222 one-stop shopping, 136, 190, 196, 200, 218 ordo-liberal, 38–40, 42, 64, 67, 114 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 23, 84 Orr, Julian, 176 Ortlieb, Heinz-Dietrich, 24 Packard, Vance, 57, 59, 94–95, 122 pedestrian malls, 3, 11, 176, 204, 208, 210–18. See also Fußgängerzone pension reform of 1957, 52–53, 55, 128 Perkins, Frances, 26–27 Peterson, Esther, 60 Phelps, Clyde, 118–20 planned economy, 6, 21, 39, 90 planned obsolescence, 94–95, 153 populuxe design, 95–97 Portland, ME, 176 poverty, 54, 57, 108, 11, 114, 128, 178, 192; old age poverty, 53; relative poverty, 100; war on poverty, 59, 100 Preisbindung der zweiten Hand. See resale price maintenance Preusker, Viktor-Emanuel, 52 price controls, 18, 29, 32, 39, 41, 43 price policy, 31, 41, 43 prices, 7–9, 13–14, 27–35, 39–41, 43, 45, 47–48, 63, 67, 85, 90, 93–94, 97, 123, 126, 158, 174, 188–94, 218–19, 221 Progressive Era, 14–15, 70, 167

index “project moneywise,” 61 Prowledge, Fred, 178 public broadcasting, 54 public consumption, 4–5, 7, 13, 15, 21–25, 27–28, 35–36, 38, 44, 50, 55, 57–59, 62–66, 85, 100, 105, 177, 179, 221–26 public goods, 8–10, 14, 22–24, 35, 50, 56, 58, 60, 62, 65–67, 82, 122, 140, 159, 176–84, 186, 216, 218, 221, 224–25 public housing, 10, 35, 37, 66, 131–32, 144–48, 150, 165, 170, 181, 183, 194, 210, 225 public poverty, 8, 58, 60, 66, 140, 176, 182 public space, 11, 136, 177, 186, 210, 215, 217–18, 224 public transportation, 2–3, 7–11, 66, 82, 120, 134– 35, 140, 159, 165–78, 182–83, 186, 192, 203–4, 211, 213–14, 218. See also mass transportation purchasing power, 8, 15–16, 18, 21–22, 25–26, 28–31, 35–36, 39–40, 42, 51–54, 56–59, 62–67, 75, 83, 87, 90, 107–8, 112–14, 121–23, 129, 220–22, 224 Qualitätsarbeit, 96 quality goods, 9–10, 48, 94, 96, 104, 117, 194, 203, 222, 225 quality of life, 59, 66, 106, 122, 140, 159, 165, 174, 180, 182–83, 216, 218, 224 “quality shoppers,” 69, 86, 97, 187, 203 race (and consumption), 73, 11, 145, 148, 163, 177, 186, 192, 211, 215 radio, 25, 41, 46–47, 71–72, 76, 103, 11, 216 Railroad Act of 1950 (Bundesbahngesetz), 171 railroads, 7, 41, 134, 140, 166–67, 171–72, 175, 181, 209 Rationalisierungs-Kuratorium der Deutschen Wirtschaft (RKW), 44–46 recession of 1957 / 58, 31, 56, 76 refrigerator, 27, 47, 72, 77, 79, 80, 82, 90, 113, 117, 120, 144, 147, 155, 203; campaign, 41–42 Regulation W, 110, 114, 118–19 Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung, 134, 205 Republicans, 27, 35, 38, 58, 145 renting, 10, 140, 158–62, 224 resale price maintenance, 33, 45–46, 48–49, 191, 202 retailing, 1–4, 10–11, 17, 21, 24, 31–35, 38, 42, 45, 48, 50–51, 67, 72, 91–93, 96–97, 108, 112, 123, 129–30, 134–37, 185–218, 219–25 retail mergers, 31, 33–34, 188–90 Revenue Act of 1964, 59 Riesman, David, 122 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 25 Rosenthal, Philipp, 64, 65 Rostow, Walt, 83 Sarnoff, Robert, 58 Saulnier, Raymond, 58

299 savings, 8–10, 26–27, 40, 58, 61–63, 71, 87, 89, 104, 106, 108, 111–13, 115–16, 119, 126–27, 129–30, 149, 152–53, 158, 223, 225; savings rate, 115–16, 153 Savings and Loans (S&L), 111, 149 scarcity, 38–40, 58, 79, 115, 158, 226 Schäffer, Fritz, 171 Schelsky, Helmut, 101–2 Schiller, Karl, 51, 64–65 Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 30, 58 Schlink, F. J., 70 Schrader, Achim, 103–4 Scranton, PA, 194 Sears, 187, 189 Seattle, WA, 34, 167 Seebohm, Hans-Christoph, 171, 174 Selby, Paul, 112 self-service, 93–94, 185, 190, 200–201, 203, 207, 223 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (G.I. Bill of Rights), 35 Shelley v. Kraemer, 148 shopkeepers, 14–15, 17, 136, 200, 206, 214 shopping center, 1, 3, 6, 10–11, 31, 34, 91, 136, 146–47, 185–87, 188–91, 212–13, 215, 217–18, 222, 225; development in Germany, 199–208; planning for, 193–97; shoppers in, 192 shopping street, 3, 134–35, 156, 185, 203, 209, 211, 213, 224 single-family home, 1, 10, 133, 139–40, 142–43, 146–47, 149–50, 153–54, 157, 160–62 Sloan, Alfred, 70 Small Business Administration (SBA), 34, 190 social citizenship, 8, 19, 24 Social Democratic Party (SPD), 4, 9, 15, 23, 38–39, 42, 49–51, 62–64, 66, 114, 151, 155, 159, 181–82, 213, 218, 223, 225 social distinction, 9, 24, 75, 83, 95, 99, 101–5, 126, 168, 225–26 social fares, 172 social housing, 151, 153, 155, 157, 159 “social market economy” (Soziale Marktwirtschaft), 6, 8, 18, 38–41, 50, 52, 55, 64, 66–67, 90, 113, 159, 204, 221, 224, 226 social mobility, 75, 78, 99, 101, 118, 161, 222, 223 Soldner, Helmut, 205 Soviet Union, 21, 58, 156 Spar, 200 Sparkassen, 112, 116 specialty stores (Fachgeschäft), 2, 48, 52, 93–94, 96, 135, 197, 200, 203 Sputnik shock, 21, 52, 57 Stability Law of 1967, 63 Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA), 142 standard of living, 2, 5, 13–14, 18, 21–22, 30, 35, 38, 47, 53, 57–58, 60, 69, 71, 74–77, 80, 82, 86–87, 90, 98–100, 105, 108, 114, 118, 123, 130, 140, 153, 157, 159, 178, 180, 182, 201, 220; Lebenshaltung, 102

300 “standard package” of goods, 2, 73, 86–87, 92, 222 Stans, Maurice, 61 Steiner, Richard, 195 Sternlieb, George, 165 Stiftung Warentest, 64 store hours, 31, 33–34, 42, 45, 49–50, 202, 219, 225 Sturdivant, Frederick, 194 Stuttgart, 134, 209, 217 suburbanization, 132–33, 141–42, 148, 168, 180, 181, 183, 223 suburbia, 77, 119, 132, 140, 160, 166, 178, 194, 196, 215 Sunday closing laws, 34, 192 supermarkets, 1, 81, 85, 185–86, 189–91, 194, 197–98, 200–203, 206, 218 Survey of Consumer Finances, 128 Survey Research Center (University of Michigan), 76, 86, 161 Taft, Robert, 144–45 Taft-Hartley Act of 1946, 28 tailfins, 2, 57, 59 Tamm, Friedrich, 157 tax credits and subsidies, 23, 36–37, 54, 153, 171, 193 taxes, 7, 16, 23, 26, 35–37, 40, 51, 58–60, 65–66, 85, 119, 136, 151, 170, 177–83, 186, 191, 194, 221–22, 224, 226 Teilzahlungsbanken, 112 Teilzahlungswirtschaft, Die, 127 television sets, 54, 74, 77–79, 82, 87, 89, 100, 103, 147, 159 Tennessee Valley Administration (TVA), 16 textiles, 47–48, 54, 96, 111, 201 theatres, 65, 66, 104, 140, 158, 180–81 Toledo, OH, 211 trailer homes, 78, 161–62 trams (streetcars), 2, 41, 140, 164–67, 169–73, 175, 185, 207 Truman, Harry S., 35, 118, 144, 146 Truth in Lending Act of 1968, 60, 110

index urban planning, 65, 131, 133–34, 155, 158–59, 162, 176, 204–6, 209, 212–13 urban renewal, 35, 66, 150, 179, 195, 198, 216 Veblen, Thorstein, 69–70, 98, 103 Verbraucherausschuss, 42, 158 Vermögensbildungsgesetz, 63 Veterans Administration (VA), 37, 110, 148–49 Vietor, Albert, 159 voluntary chains, 189, 200–201 Vogel, Hans-Jochen, 139, 189, 213, 216 Volkswagen, 17, 63, 223 wage-price inflation, 31, 43 wages, 13–15, 26–29, 31, 36, 41, 43, 45, 53, 61, 63–65, 76, 123, 125, 188, 203, 207, 223; comparative development, 84; wage garnishment, 110, 125 Wal-Mart, 188, 219, 225 Warenkorb, 54 Watts riot, 170, 194 Weimar era, 13–14, 18, 71, 134 welfare, 13, 14, 23, 36–37, 39, 51–54, 67, 84–85, 116, 126, 128, 157, 178, 224 West Virginia, 74, 101 Whyte, William, 57, 78, 122, 146, 149 Wildermuth, Eberhard, 150 Winter, Foster, 195 Wohngeld, 158 Wohnungsamt, 151 Woll, Artur, 45 women (as consumers), 34, 42, 47, 50, 64, 71, 83, 88, 91–92, 99–100, 121, 126, 175, 189, 203 World War I, 13–14, 70, 72 World War II, 1, 3, 16, 18, 22–23, 25–27, 32, 34, 36, 50, 52, 71, 74, 80, 87, 109–11, 118, 136, 142, 144, 146, 151, 154, 159, 167, 172, 174, 198, 209 Wuppertal, 213 Würmeling, Franz-Joseph, 52, 172 “year of the consumer,” 41, 51

Urban Institute, 150 Urban Land Institute, 191, 195 urban living, 1, 10, 132, 140, 155, 158–59, 163–64, 181, 186, 216, 218

zoning regulations, 10, 135, 146, 149, 163, 178, 186, 193, 219