A History Shared and Divided. East and West Germany Since the 1970s

THE INDIVIDUALIZATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE 327

1990s. In terms of consumption, however, the lines of development have
to be drawn diff erently over the long term because the collapse of the
GDR brought a unique economic factor into the mix. Despite contrasting
consumption habits in the 1990s—catch-up consumerism versus a spe-
cifi c East German style of consumption—as well as ongoing economic
inequalities between East and West, the Western model of a consumer
society triumphed across the divide in the end.

Christopher Neumaier is a research associate at the Center for Contem-
porary History (ZZF) in Potsdam, and he was visiting professor for the
history of technology at the Technical University of Munich in 2017. He
holds an M.Phil. in European Studies from the University of Cambridge
and a Ph.D. from the Technical University of Munich. His research fo-
cuses on the history of consumption, environmental history, history of
technology, and the history of the family in Germany.

Andreas Ludwig is a research associate at the Center for Contemporary
History (ZZF) in Potsdam. He has published about the history of everyday
life and in the fi elds of material culture, musealization, and urban history.
He founded and directed the Documentation Centre of Everyday Culture
of the GDR, for which he has edited several publications. His current re-
search is about contemporary collecting in history museums.

NOTES

1. Tom Wolfe, “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening,” New York
   Magazine, 23 August 1976.


2. Refers to Ulrich Beck, “Tanz ums goldene Selbst,” Der Spiegel 48, no. 22
   (1994): 65.


3. See Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social
   Forecasting (New York, 1973); Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Chang-
   ing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics (Princeton, 1977); Hel-
   mut Klages, Wertorientierungen im Wandel: Rückblick, Gegenwartsanalyse,
   Prognosen (Frankfurt a. M., 1984); Gerhard Schulze, Die Erlebnisgesellschaft:
   Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart (Frankfurt a. M., 2000); Ulrich Beck and Elisa-
   beth Beck-Gernsheim, eds., Riskante Freiheiten: Individualisierung in moder-
   nen Gesellschaften (Frankfurt a. M., 1994).


4. See Georg Assmann, Wolfgang Eichhorn, and Erich Hahn, eds., Wörterbuch
   der marxistisch-leninistischen Soziologie (Berlin, 1977), s.v. “Lebensweise.”


5. See Hannes Siegrist, “Konsum, Kultur und Gesellschaft im modernen Eu-
   ropa,” in Europäische Konsumgeschichte. Zur Gesellschafts- und Kulturge-