THE INDIVIDUALIZATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE 301
of these changing social worlds becomes all the more evident.^38 The fol-
lowing sections trace these processes in terms of the basic human needs
for housing, food, and clothing.
Housing: Modern Lifestyles, Pleasure, and AestheticsThe rise in affl uence that was required for the spread of a new culture
of consumption may be indicated by the increased square footage of the
apartments in new residential construction projects. Whereas West Ger-
mans had an average of 592 sq. ft. (55 m^2 ) in 1955, this fi gure had climbed
to 753 sq. ft. (70 m^2 ) by 1960, and to 926 sq. ft. (86 m^2 ) by 1970. The con-
struction of a huge number of new rental apartments that went on well
into the 1970s laid the foundation for this enormous improvement in the
housing situation.^39 During this time, the government also subsidized the
construction of single-family homes.^40 One result of the better housing
situation was that the children of middle- and lower-class families often
got to have a room of their own. Although the average square footage of
living space also increased in the GDR, it still fell well behind that of West
Germany. Statistically speaking, each East German citizen had 222 sq. ft.
(20.6 m^2 ) to call their own in 1971; by 1989, this fi gure had jumped up
to 297 sq. ft. (27.5 m^2 ).^41 It was not until 1971 that new apartments were
constructed on a large scale in the GDR as part of the government’s so-
cial policy that aimed to remedy the housing shortage in the country by
- Simultaneously, there were distinctive signs that living space was
becoming more individualized, such as the boom in the construction of
single-family homes and the revival of the appeal of living in historic city
neighborhoods, which had been on the rise since the 1980s.
Alongside these developments, the way in which people furnished and
decorated their homes also changed dramatically. In the 1960s, separate
kitchens of about 40 to 65 sq. ft. (4 to 6 m^2 ) became the norm in social
housing projects, replacing the open kitchens that had traditionally been
favored in Germany. As a result, a growing number of consumers in East
and West began to buy standardized built-in kitchens. This transition to
the kitchen as a place of work was also linked to the idea of making
housework easier by integrating appliances and other kinds of technol-
ogy.^42 The trend toward the mechanization of household work could also
be found in the GDR. By the end of the 1970s, the full supply of all major
household items had been achieved, at least statistically.^43 Although most
of the household-related consumer goods had already been introduced
onto the market by the 1960s, the idea that a kind of catch-up consumer-
ism set in during the Honecker era can clearly be seen in the greatly in-