296 CHRISTOPHER NEUMAIER AND ANDREAS LUDWIG
Consumption as a social praxis was embedded within larger devel-
opments in both countries. Most especially, it was fi rmly rooted in the
formation of perpetually accelerating consumer societies in the devel-
oped industrial countries of the West and the COMECON countries in the
postwar decades. The major diff erences between the market societies of
the West and the planned economies of Eastern Europe will be dealt with
on a selective basis, bearing in mind that divided Germany played a par-
ticular role in both blocs. Both German states developed into leading eco-
nomic countries in Western as well as in Eastern Europe, and both were
like a showcase (Schaufenster) off ering a glimpse into life on the other
side of the Iron Curtain. Germans on both sides of the border kept tabs
on the level of consumption on the other side, which was then refl ected
in consumer politics. Although the consumer policy in the two Germanys
showed clearly asymmetric tendencies, consumption itself was tied to
the development of affl uence in a similar way. Especially after the early
1970s, when West Germany had completed the transition to a mass con-
sumer society, the GDR gave up its strategy of consumption-based com-
petition between the two systems. In its place, it developed a model of
social and consumer policy that was less tied to developments in the
West, known as the “unity of economic and social policy,” under Erich
Honecker. The collapse of the GDR in 1989/90 then produced a distinc-
tive kind of catch-up consumption in East Germany, albeit one that was
shaped by particularities specifi c to East German culture.
Any attempt to outline the formation of specifi c consumer societies
and the lifestyle aspects associated with them in the two German states
is plagued by methodological issues that arise from diff erent sociopoliti-
cal interpretations of consumption. Although it was quite straightforward
that a consumer society would be part of the postwar democracy in West
Germany, and corresponding sociological studies have been done to this
end, the position of the GDR vis-à-vis consumption was as changeable as
it was contradictory. The clear lack of any kind of contemporary analyses
that went beyond the level of consumer policy in the GDR means that this
analysis will have to rely more heavily on indirect information. This makes
it all the more diffi cult to get at the subcutaneous praxis of consumption
in alternative lifestyles. Given the diff erent types of sources available for
East and West, the following analysis is therefore also “asymmetric” in
its methodology.^10
Changes in Consumption and Their InterpretationThe 1950s marked a phase of catch-up consumption and the recon-
struction of “normal” living conditions after World War II. Between the