312 CHRISTOPHER NEUMAIER AND ANDREAS LUDWIG
life after World War II, calling for the return of elegance. In the 1960s, it
was dominated by consumer information focused on product usage and
creating an image of modern consumption. Then, in the 1970s, the actual
consumer products gradually disappeared from ads. It seems puzzling
that product advertising came to an end just as forms of consumerism
that served to make distinctions between consumers were offi cially rec-
ognized and even sometimes fostered in the GDR.
A Comparison of the Two Consumer SocietiesHaving identifi ed individualization, pluralization, and homogenization as
a sign of social change since the 1970s, this chapter will next look at the
related historical development of consumer society within a narrative that
approaches consumption as a multifaceted process of satisfying needs
and desires. From this perspective, the 1970s were very much a transi-
tional period or “Sattelzeit”^95 for consumer society in West Germany. It
marked the transition to a phase in which the satisfaction of the desire
for individual self-realization became paramount. Yet it is just as readily
apparent that consumption still served to satisfy the need to defi ne social
status, not to mention its role in providing for basic necessities. It has
also been rightly pointed out that social position continued to have a
lasting infl uence even after a consumer society had developed.^96 At the
same time, however, the temporality of consumer society must not be
neglected. The introduction of EC cards (debit cards) and ATMs during
the 1970s, for instance, caused yet another signifi cant dynamic rise in
consumption.^97 The move from needs to desires in West Germany in the
1960s as part of a historical narrative of consumption rested on improved
economic and social conditions, the separation of personal and social
positions, and a discursive shift from the emphasis on the social connota-
tions of consumption to a focus on its individual aspects.^98 In comparison
to the West, the 1970s also marked a phase in the GDR in which the focus
was on status; toward the end of the decade, albeit in a very confi ned
milieu, there was also a phase of self-realization that took the form of
alternative or “counteridentities.”^99 Nonetheless, it is still controversial to
refer to the GDR as a consumer society.
Despite the central focus on the consumer world of the FRG within
East Germany, consumer society itself cannot be interpreted as the
triumph of a successful Western model of society in the decades after
- While scholars point to the importance of the longue durée when it
comes to consumer society,^100 they also stress the cultural diff erentiation
among diff erent societies overall. Accordingly, there is no single model
of consumer society based on the paradigm of modernization, but rather