Fordism

Fordism is a set of principles that includes technological measures, especially mass production on the assembly line, as well as economic strategies such as supporting mass consumption by lowering prices and increasing wages.

The economic influence of Fordism was already considerable in the Weimar Re­public. In the second half of the 1920s, studies and travelogues by German ob­servers carried the message that the Ameri­can economic miracle was built on a new form of industrial organization. Especially businesspeople and engineers, but also trade unionists visited Highland Park and River Rouge, the main production sites of the Ford Motor Company. Almost all of them returned convinced that Fordism was a revolutionary concept that should be adopted in Germany.

This “second discovery of America” propagated the image of the United States as a modern society with peace between labor and capital, steadily rising wages, rap­idly increasing consumption, and a hith­erto undreamed-of prosperity, virtually cre­ating a classless society. Fordism seemed to be the answer to the class conflicts and overall instability in post-World War I Germany. The success of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company appeared to present irrefutable evidence for the validity of this “white socialism.” It was convincing not only for those afraid of Soviet-inspired “red” socialism, but also for most of the trade union leaders, who were especially impressed by the Fordist wage policy.

Weimar Germany’s economic reality in the 1920s, however, was different. The country was not sufficiently developed to apply Fordist principles in the same way that had been done in the United States. After 1933, the Nazis applied some Fordist ideas in designing their car for the masses, the Volkswagen. But even here, it was not until after World War II that Fordism played a key role in the German Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle), with the Volkswagen Beetle, the German Model T, as its iconic example.

Just as West Germany can be inter­preted as a Fordist success story, the ab­sence of a Fordist automobile industry had a negative effect on East Germany. As in the Weimar Republic, the lack of an ap­propriate economic basis for the develop­ment and production of special machines inhibited the evolution of a modern indus­trial structure. Even though Fordist pro­duction methods were also important in the German Democratic Republic, for ex­ample, in shipbuilding and the serial-style (prefabricated buildings, mostly high-rise) construction of apartment blocks, Fordism never became a dominant feature in the East German economy.

Even though the economic conse­quences of Fordism were generally em­braced and considered necessary, the result­ing cultural changes met with strong resistance in Germany. In the Weimar Re­public, the hope for a technological revolu­tion was accompanied by strong fears about the loss of the German cultural tra­dition. The modernization that attended the introduction of Fordist principles was interpreted as Amιerikanisierung (American­ization) and invoked the fear of soulless ra­tionalization, mass society, and mass cul­ture, which was perceived as a threat to German Kultur (high culture). One typical response to that fear was that the Old World could and should adopt American technology, yet the American technological muscle needed to be purged of its soulless, materialist capitalism. Instead it should be infused with aesthetic, philosophical, and spiritual values to establish a German cul­ture that would be superior to the modern civilization of the United States.

In contradistinction, there were also intellectuals and artists who believed that the United States was leading the world into a uniquely modern era. They consid­ered Fordism as a cultural opportunity for Weimar Germany. One of the leading per­sonalities was Walter Gropius, founder and director of the widely and lastingly influen­tial Bauhaus. Representing an important branch of modern architecture, later known as the international style, Gropius was one of those European pioneers who used machine and industrial metaphors to express their aesthetic commitment. One of his main projects was to mass-produce machine-made houses in order to fulfill the dream of inexpensive, attractive, and healthy homes for the masses. What Ford did for the automobile, Gropius attempted with his assembly-line housing, which Sigfried Giedion called a Wohnford (Home Ford).

It was particularly the chaotic post—World War I situation in Germany, with its fear of unrest and social catastro­phe, that influenced Gropius’s architectural style. However, Gropius was not simply applying Fordism. His aim was not only to create a mass product but also to infuse American technical forms with European culture, thereby aesthetically “filtering” the directness of American technology. When Gropius left Nazi Germany for the United States, aspects of an American technologi­cal style that had been transformed into a European architectural style thus were reimported into the country where Fordism originated.

Bernd Essmann

See also Americanization; Bauhaus; Ford, Henry; Gropius, Walter Adolph; Volkswagen Company and Its VW Beetle

References and Further Reading

Berghahn, Volker R. “Fordismus und westdeutsche Industriekultur, 1945-1989.” In Deutsch-amerikanische Begegnungen: Konflikt und Kooperation im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Eds. Frank Trommler and Elliott Shore. Stuttgart, Munchen: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001, 188-204.

Hughes, Thomas P. American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870—1970. New York: Viking, 1989.

Klautke, Egbert. Unbegrenzte Moglichkeiten: “Amerikanisierung” in Deutschland und Frankreich (1900-1933). Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003.

Trommler, Frank. “The Rise and Fall of

Americanism in Germany.” In America and the Germans: An Assessment of a Three- Hundred-Year History. Eds. Frank Trommer and Joseph McVeigh. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985, 332-342.