268 RÜDIGER HACHTMANN
political/administrative segment of the tertiary sector kept expanding in
the GDR.^62 In a similar vein, the nonpublic service sector in East Ger-
many, unlike its West German counterpart, was only peripherally aff ected
by rationalizations of any kind. Admittedly, larger stores belonging to the
public trading organization (Handelsorganisation, or HO) and the Kauf-
hallen shops run by consumer collectives had been run like supermarkets
since the 1960s, but the majority of the HO shops were still rather small
in size and managed in an antiquated fashion.^63
The introduction of computer technology in the 1970s did not result in
a loss of jobs in the service sector industries in the West because labor
demand increased at the same time. For example, the number of insured
individuals grew for the insurance companies, and the number of account
holders rose for the banks. In the banking and savings industry in the
GDR, computer systems were brought in on a large scale at the beginning
of the 1970s, in part to ease the transition from wages paid in cash to
direct deposits. Apparently, however, these computers were not always
used consistently. Since the production costs for these computers were
so high, or rather the cost of importing them from the West (if this was
actually even possible given the successively more restrictive embargoes
that had been put into place), purchasing them would have eaten up too
much foreign currency. Therefore, it seemed to be more cost-eff ective to
rely on existing personnel in the GDR, despite the chronic shortage of
labor.^64
West Germany, however, followed a completely diff erent path when it
came to digitalization. Although the voices that were skeptical about the
introduction of modern Internet and communication technologies at the
beginning of the Digital Age were more numerous and louder than in the
GDR, they could do nothing to halt the structural trend toward the digita-
lization of the tertiary sector over the long run. By the end of the 1970s at
the latest, digitalization had made broad inroads in West Germany. The
pioneers were the banking and savings institutions, which introduced
ATMs in West Germany as of 1968, as well as the insurance companies
and mail-order retailers. The Allianz AG insurance company, for example,
had already acquired an IBM mainframe computer in 1956, paving the
way for a comprehensive computerization of its offi ce operations.^65 The
mail-order department store Quelle also began using a gigantic comput-
erized order processing and warehouse bookkeeping system at the end
of 1957 that “digested” an average of twenty thousand orders a day. Pre-
viously, these orders had been processed laboriously by twelve hundred
employees, most of whom were women. Likewise, the major European
airlines began introducing electronic reservation systems in the 1960s in
order to keep up with their American competitors.^66