From rations to fashions: The gendered politics of East and West German consumption, 1945-1961.

The interconnected development of socialist and capitalist consumer cultures became sites where the development of opposing Cold War political-economies, gender construction, and contested definitions of German identity, modernity, and citizenship intersected. Contested shopping practices and ideologically-charged commodity displays crucially politicized East and West German everyday life in the transition from the period of postwar reconstruction and rationing to the dual economic miracles of the 1950s. This political landscape centered around women as consumer-citizens. Economic ministries in each German state joined retailers and advertisers to target women as shopping experts bearing responsibility for bolstering their respective political-economies. Cast like votes, their purchases and commodity desires were interpreted as expressions of allegiance to one system or the other. The two Germanys' competing efforts to define ideal citizens within East German socialism or West Germany's version of welfare capitalism called the social market economy resonated in this reinstatement of women's domestic shopping burden and in advertising's reintroduction of female imagery to enhance consumer desire. In this context, women also seized a political voice as active consumers in organizations, in boycotts, and as individual shoppers. Consumer culture showcased not only Germany's deepening national rift, marked by differing abilities to fulfill promises of affluent postwar recovery, but also the parallel politicization of women in traditional consumer roles.Ph.D.European historyModern historySocial SciencesWomen's studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/131751/2/9929919.pd