Shaping affluent societies: Divergent paths to mass consumer society in West Germany and the United States during the postwar boom era

This dissertation is a comparative study of mass consumption in postwar West Germany and the United States. It engages three vital dimensions of consumer modernity: the role of the state, the role of society, and the role of space. The study questions the notion of a postwar hegemony of the American model of mass consumption and investigates the interplay of economic, political, social and cultural factors to fully understand the persistence of differences between both countries.;The second section turns to the consumers and the different social contexts in which they consume. Household consumption patterns in both countries differ significantly immediately after the war, with German consumers spending a much larger portion of their income on food. As disposable income levels begin to converge, however, important differences remain. American consumer spending is much more focused on the automobile, the suburban home and the appliances that fill it---a middle class model of consumption. German household spending and consumer expectations continued to show significant differences by class. Much less than their American counterparts did Germans link the possibility of upward social mobility with the adoption of particular patterns of material consumption. This is illustrated by differences in the use of consumer credit. Whereas consumer credit skyrocketed in the United States after World War II, widely hailed as a democratic means to access the American standard of living, Germans remain largely reluctant to embrace this form of financing consumption. The striking difference in consumer debt still by 1970 points to different cultural attitudes towards consumption, but also brings us back to the impact of public policy. While Americans were reluctant to dip into their savings for the purchase of consumer durables, saving for consumption became common practice for German consumers backed by a more expansive social welfare state.;Intimately linked to public policy and social practice, the space of consumption accounts for a third area of significant divergence between both consumer societies. Germans "consumed" space differently from Americans. Public housing programs and urban development (e.g. public transportation) contributed to the continuity of an urban pattern of consumption in Germany. A nation of renters, working class as well as middle class Germans were more likely to live in urban apartments than in suburban houses. Infrastructure programs for automobile traffic and subsidized mortgages, on the other hand, enticed Americans to move to the suburbs. The landscape of retailing changed accordingly. Tax exemptions and permissive zoning fueled the rise of suburban shopping centers and large supermarkets. City planners and state regulation in Germany helped preserve a retail structure in Germany centered on smaller stores in urban neighborhoods and city centers.;Public policy, consumer choices (informed by both cultural attitudes and economic restraints), and differences in geographic lay-out and use of space account for the emergence of two different paths to consumer modernity during the postwar decades. In the American case, these choices favored suburban housing and consumption patterns that centered on durable goods and the private home. West Germans did not fully embrace this model of mass consumption. Private prosperity was for many Germans more intimately tied to public spending. Despite modernization, familiar urban forms of consumption were retained and class and milieu differences continued to play a significant role. While some of these differences have somewhat subsided since the 1970s, the choices made in both societies during the formative postwar decades still inform mass consumption practices and the relationship between public and private consumption in Germany and the United States today. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).;In a first section I engage questions about the impact of public policy in shaping modern consumption patterns. I argue against the notion that the postwar boom in consumption was largely determined by the free play of the market. In both countries politics shaped mass consumption, albeit in different ways. Since the New Deal era, fostering mass demand had become an integral part of economic growth policies in the United States. But the extent of overt public consumption and economic redistribution was consciously limited. Instead, the 1950s saw the growth of what has been called a "hidden welfare state" of tax exemptions, loan guarantees, and subsidies that helped promote a pattern of private suburban middle class consumption. In Germany, public consumption was to play a much bigger role. Both conservative and social-democratic considerations led to state intervention in several areas. Expanded social-security and assistance programs indexed for a rising standard of living enabled access to mass consumption. Public spending on housing, health-care and transportation altered incentives for private consumer spending.