Consumerism
Consumer patterns in Germany and America have always been intertwined with other aspects of culture. Objects and their ownership don’t just provide comfort, they are also markers of identity.
Thus throughout the twentieth century, the adoption of American consumerism (or mass consumption), and its cultural repercussions, was a subject of heated debate. It remains so today. The close relationship between American culture and mass consumption has spurned argument over the nature of Americanization in Germany, the level at which Americanization is actually modernization, and whether counter-Americaniza- tion measures are necessary in order to preserve cultural heritage.The debate over mass consumption first grew in Germany in the years following World War I, when industrialists sought to discover how the United States obtained its economic success. Proposals for postwar economic reforms were rooted in the Fordist model, but lifestyle and mass consumption were also key to these discussions as Germans sought to discover at what level culture, as well as technology and Tailorist methods of management, was formative. It was believed that the key to economic success also lay in American culture and society. Thus class structure, the emancipated American woman, and daily life in the United States became subjects of popular debate. Critics of Americanization, however, feared the effects of this change, as American culture became increasingly associated with a monotonous, homogenous mass consumption that was held up against traditional German culture (Kultur). They were concerned over the way that popular culture material such as American cinema and jazz music challenged established social and political orders. Film was one of the most effective avenues through which American consumer cultural values were spread. By the 1920s, approximately 60 percent of the films shown in Germany were American (Pells 1997, 16).
Coincidently, however, the transmission of American values through cinema was ultimately both an American and a German effort, beginning especially with the growth of fascism in Germany. German cinematic talent left to escape increasing social restrictions or was imported to play roles in American films. The result is that German actors, directors, and composers played a large role in American cinematic classics of worldwide renown, such as Gone With the Wind (1939) and later Casablanca (1942).The debate over consumerism continued between trade unionists and workers who saw mass consumption as democratizing and elites who feared such changes and rejected the effect mass consumption had on class structure. However, in the end, American influence was largely psychological only, affecting familial relationships and societal actions. It sold to Germans because it reflected many of the appealing American myths: individuality, success, progress, and optimism. Americanism was also attractive to Germans because it was not European; embracing American values was not seen as incorporating a competing culture but rather as a necessary, inevitable modernization. The American model need not be emulated outright but was something that could be modified to match German needs. Thus Weimar industry was modernized without the mass consumption stemming from expanded markets, decreased cost, and wage reform. Americanism was Germanized.
The influence of American consumerist practices changed in the years following World War II. As West German disposable incomes began to increase during the 1950s, people began to spend a larger percentage of their earnings on luxury items—many of which were made in the United States and associated with the American lifestyle. The purchase of an automobile, especially an American brand, became a symbol of the American dream. Whereas car ownership had formerly been an outward expression of the sharply stratified nature of German society, ownership of cars by a wider group of people was indicative of the growing middle class.
It was also during these postwar years that Germany became Coca-Cola’s most important foreign market. American-style advertising paired Coke with cars and that which they represented. Change, however, did not result in the replacement of one culture with another. Though cultural critics such as Francis Otto Matthiessen were alarmed by his German students’ preference for Coke over beer, drinks in Germany today that consist of a mixture of Coke and beer are an expression of the way American culture is reused after appropriation.The American government influenced German consumer habits at this time, as American culture and corporations had gained a foothold in West Germany during the occupation years. The place of American culture in Germany was central to Germans’ increasing acceptance of mass culture. Whereas Germans had rejected mass consumption after World War I because of its homogenizing, anticultural aspects, the United States had waged a cultural initiative in Europe following World War II that altered German conceptions of American culture. Marshall Plan funds, for instance, paid for the study of American industry and managerial methods; meanwhile, Germany was also the front line in the fight against communism in Europe and the center for many cultural initiatives by the United States. Cultural programs attempted not only to combat communism and sell democracy but also to change German habits and traditions. This is not to say that American culture has been absorbed in its original form or without protest. Germans who feared cultural change and a unifying of the masses (reminiscent of the Nazis’ mass politics) suggested that the building of culture from the bottom up, as opposed to the top down, was inferior. Companies such as McDonald’s and MTV have tailored their products to the German market and have been widely accepted. Nonetheless, anti-American sentiment in this regard continued throughout the twentieth century.
In the 1960s, American movies and music gained in popularity, especially through the adolescent revolt against high culture and their expression of this through consumer products.
Ironically, American popular culture and consumer habits became for German youth a symbol for the opposition of America. It had come to be associated with hegemony in the world and thereby also the older German generation of the war years. German youth expressed their affinity with the rebellion of American minorities and youth through American products.German and American consumption practices shifted again in the 1980s, when an improved German economy, coupled with the growing frustration of American consumers with the quality of products, increased sales of German products such as cars, which had long been associated with quality and craftsmanship. The influence of the German automotive industry in the United States is also apparent in late- century mergers and buyouts, such as the takeover by Germany’s Mercedes of the major American car manufacturer Chrysler.
Meanwhile, in the media, the privatization of German television in the 1980s led to commercials and an increase in American programming; German media has been increasingly influential in the United States as well, however, as evidenced in purchases and partnership agreements between American and German media companies, such as the buying of American media outlets by Bertelsmann, one of Germany’s largest media and publishing companies. Much like American producers of popular culture in Germany earlier in the decade, Bertelsmann tailors products to its American audience. The turn of the twenty-first century saw additional sales of iconic American media companies, such as the purchase of Jim Henson Company by Germany’s EMTV and Merchandising AG, as well as growing competition between media giants such as Kirch Group in Germany and Rupert Murdoch in the United States. Thus it becomes more difficult to differentiate who is creating consumer and popular cultural products and from which side of the Atlantic Ocean the influence in mass consumption is coming.
Stacy Dorgan
See also Coca-Cola; Foreign Policy (U.S., 1949-1955), West Germany in; Hollywood; McDonald’s Restaurant; Volkswagen Company and Its VW Beetle
References and Further Reading
Nolan, Mary. Visions of Modernity:
American Business and the
Modernization of Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Pells, Richard. Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture since World War II. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
Rogers, Everett M., and Francis Balle, eds. The Media Revolution in America and in Western Europe. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1985.
Willett, Ralph. The Americanization of Germany, 1945—1949. London: Routledge, 1989.