Konsumkultur. Inszenierte Warenwelt um 1900 explores how sellers presented commodities to consumers in Wilhelmine Germany. Gudrun König uses Arjun Appadurai's idea that “things” have a “social life” to argue that intellectual and commercial elites in Germany hoped to train citizens as ethical, cultivated shoppers by presenting goods in particular ways. The author makes a conceptual distinction between a Konsumgesellschaft (the actual market) and Konsumkultur (the values associated with objects) to separate the monetary from the cultural aspects of consumption. I am not sure that is helpful since these two things could not exist independently. Nonetheless, the book is fascinating as an intellectual history of the responses of educated Germans to the possibilities of using commodities to teach social lessons in the Kaiserreich.
The intellectuals König identifies, such as those of the Dürerbund, believed that a fusion of art and industrial production could produce good taste and a social conscience in citizens. This reminds us of the optimism of many educated Germans who believed that society could be nudged forwarded by the state, the middle-class family, the public schools, and shopping. Artists produced reform catalogs highlighting elegant but simple design ideas for toys, furniture, and dry goods. These were showcased in display windows at the new department stores. Such statistical data as is available suggests that department stores never accounted for more than ten percent of retail sales before 1914; however, they exerted a pull on the cultural imagination out of all proportion to their financial importance to the economy. They seemed to symbolize the possibilities of modern society—more and better goods; new white collar jobs; and a generic, capitalist equality for those with access to currency. König reminds the reader that even the architecture of the department stores changed to accommodate the new “world of goods.” The Berlin department stores installed massive picture windows to display things. The success of the department stores at changing the ways entrepreneurs displayed goods and citizens shopped for them lends credence to König's thesis.
The author presents evidence showing that intellectuals, such as Friedrich Naumann, thought seriously about the display of goods. They believed it would be possible to direct the shopping impulse in a way that improved their good taste. The most famous sites of display were the mass exhibitions. König demonstrates that after 1900 Berlin businessmen teamed up with intellectuals and reformers to host more of these than ever before. One of the most fascinating examples was the Deutsche Heimarbeit Ausstellung (Berlin, 1906). On the one hand, the exhibit elegantly displayed high-quality, hand-made toys, furniture, and dry goods in an effort to instruct consumers on what to buy. On the other hand, the organizers did everything they could to highlight the dreadful working conditions faced by home-workers, particularly women- and child-laborers. The outrage this caused in the press and the subsequent calls for reform were remarkable. The cultural impact of the exhibit far outweighed any profits it earned. It seems to have turned some consumers into moral shoppers. König could have taken her argument about the ways the “display” of “goods” impacted social values further. The SPD introduced a home-worker reform bill in 1906, although the final version did not pass until 1911. The Berlin exhibition was central to mobilizing public opinion behind their efforts, particularly the juxtaposition of wonderful toys and child labor.
A third contribution of König's book is to make a link between intellectual discourse on consumption and the development of consumer protection organizations. Consumer leagues developed in the U.S. during the late nineteenth century. Leaders in this movement, often women, traveled to Europe and helped to found similar organizations in France and Switzerland around the turn of the twentieth century. The German equivalent, Käuferbund Deutschland, appeared in 1907. Early proponents, including Matthias Erzberger of the Center Party, envisioned it as an organization whose primary objective was not the protection of consumers from bad products. Rather, it served as a means of moderating the impact of capitalism on vulnerable members of society. The “Buyers' Union” drew support from women's organizations, Soziale Praxis, the Verein für Sozialpolitik, and soon-to-be Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg's wife. König does a good job of placing this story in a cosmopolitan context, but I think she has missed a transnational aspect. The American consumer organizations were primarily interested in protecting purchasers. As this basic concept spread back to Europe, possessed of a similar capitalist culture, locals selectively adapted it to meet local conditions. In Germany, it seems that many people took “buyer leagues” as something that promoted ethical behavior by consumers, not companies or corporations.
This is a fascinating argument, but I was left with the feeling that there is more to the story. König's definition of consumer culture means that we get only one side of the equation. The copious information she presents suggests that intellectual and reformers wanted Germans to see shopping as more about ethics and less about economics. The ordinary consumer as an individual with social agency (and, for that matter, factory producers and department store owners), however, is completely absent from this substantial study. It is not clear how closely consumers, particularly the female variety, listened to all the messages they received. I suspect that many of them worried first about what they could afford. Even taking these observations into consideration, Konsumkultur. Inszenierte Warenwelt um 1900 is a worthwhile read for academics studying the Kaiserreich, consumer culture in Germany, and the Secession.
