198 WINFRIED SÜß
from a social history perspective” because ordinary workers were able to
overcome “the traditional narrowness and insecurity of the ‘proletarian’
way of life.” It also made it easier for low-wage earners to move beyond
a lifestyle that was solely directed at the immediate reproduction of their
capacity for labor.^16 Continued improvements in the standard of living
also generated an “elevator eff ect”^17 throughout many sectors of West
German society that, among other things, resulted in a steady decline in
poverty until the end of the 1970s. In 1973, not even 3 percent of West
Germans whose household income was less than half of the average West
German income level were considered to be poor, and social assistance
was provided to only about 1 percent of the population in order to com-
bat poverty. Using the idea of an “elevator” to describe this collective
increase in affl uence, however, can be problematic because it implies
that all demographic groups and social strata profi ted equally from this
prosperity boom. But, in fact, neither the degree of affl uence nor the
rate of growth was equally distributed. Rather than what contemporaries
such as Helmut Schelsky saw as a “leveled middle-class society,” West
German society was really a welfare-based work-oriented society with a
pluralization of social positions.^18 There were also people who lived in the
“shadows of the economic miracle,”^19 such as those for whom work could
not function as a mechanism of social integration (e.g., certain types of
war victims and the mentally disabled) or those who did not meet the
behavioral expectations that were the foundation for inclusion in the wel-
fare state (the homeless, for example). The same held true for groups
whose social integration was simply not part of the sociopolitical agenda,
including foreign labor migrants, who have commonly been referred to
as Gastarbeiter (guestworkers), a term which clearly underscores their
temporary residency status in the country.
- A fi fteen-year phase of full employment between longer periods
of low unemployment set in between 1959 and 1973 as part of the up-
swing in prosperity. Its implications for social history, as well as for the
history of experience, cannot be underestimated, especially because it
brought stability in work and lifestyle for most of the working population
for the fi rst time in decades. Full employment did away with one of the
most defi ning and signifi cant characteristics of a proletarian existence,
namely high job insecurity. During this era of labor shortage, the rise in
productivity brought higher real wages, thereby increasing the share of
wealth that landed in the hands of employees; incomes reliant on entre-
preneurial activity, however, slumped noticeably. In turn, this fostered
the emergence of overarching patterns of consumption that leveled the
diff erences between social classes as well as between the diff erent Euro-
pean societies.