Report:  German Studies Association 2002, Session Nr. 58, Modernity
Begins at Home: Domesticity, Consumerism and Technology

Moderator:  Brent Maner, Kansas State University

"Taste in Everyday Life: Campaigns to Create Aesthetic Homes at the
Fin-de-Siecle"
Jennifer Jenkins (History, Washington University in St. Louis)

"The Hausfrau as National Consumer: Household Technology and Modernity
in 1920s Germany"
Eve Duffy, Trinity University

"Healthy for Family Life: Television, Gender and Consumerist Modernity
in West Germany's Economic Miracle"
Joe Perry (History, Georgia State University)

Commentator:  Katherine Pence, CUNY-Baruch College


The papers in this panel showed how objects in and around the home were
central to public discussions of significant social, political, and
technological changes in modern Germany.  They revealed how instructions
for interior design, consumer and family education, and advertising were
vital sites of contestation, especially in the context of industrial and
economic changes that were producing a modern consumer society.  Using
specific examples, the papers highlighted the importance of the
diminishing divide between public and private for the study of national
and gender identities.  All three papers convincingly portrayed the
domestic sphere as an important research setting for future studies of
consumption.

Jennifer Jenkins' paper, "Taste in Everyday Life: Creating Aesthetic
Homes in Fin-de-Siecle Germany," showed how discussions of "taste"
(Geschmack) involved much more than aesthetics or individual choices.
Jenkins' close reading of the work of cultural critics revealed that
debates about taste were tied to gender politics, responses to
industrialization, and a broader program of "nationalist pedagogy."  The
key evidence for her claims was Joseph August Lux's Taste in Everyday
Life (1910), a manual that provided advice on a range of issues--from
the hanging of pictures on the walls, to the choice of visiting cards,
to the proper operation of a camera.  Lux found these issues very
pressing because they were tied to questions of national culture.
Through proper attention to decorum, manners and morals, Lux argued that
taste would become a vital national resource.

Other issues heightened the significance of "taste."  Lux feared that
the coming of a consumer society would subject design decisions to the
irrational and impulsive desires of female consumers.  He therefore
hoped to educate and direct matters of taste with his expert advice.  In
this way, the elevation of taste would not only serve the greater
national good, but it would also prevent the abasement of culture that
individual excesses might bring.  Jenkins argued that this control over
taste and design at home could also be applied to larger, exterior
projects, and therefore architects, social reformers, and politicians
voiced similar concerns about taste and modernity around the turn of the
century.  This idea connected Lux's advice for the private sphere to
larger discussions about the health and aesthetics of society in a
modern, industrial world.

Eve Duffy's paper, entitled "The Hausfrau as National Consumer:
Household Technology and Technological Corporatism in 1920/30s Germany,"
built on several of the themes introduced by Jennifer Jenkins.  Her
paper also explored the role of "experts" who desired to reform and
improve domestic settings.  Oskar von Miller, the founder of the
Deutsches Museum in Munich, as well as leaders from the utilities
industries, staged public displays during the Weimar years that
endeavored to make housewives and other members of the non-scientific
public, in Miller's words, "comrades and trusted friends of science and
technology."  A particularly rich example of Miller's popularizing
efforts was a series of household exhibitions of electric stoves in
Bavaria during the 1920s and 1930s.  This campaign stressed the benefits
of technology in domestic settings by showing how electric appliances
were clean, efficient, and safe.

In addition to presenting these fascinating links between comfortable
home settings and the world of technology, this paper explored larger
issues of consumption and national economic planning.  Duffy argued that
the effort to bring the electric stove into the home represented an
entrance of "technological corporatism" into the private lives of
Germans during the Interwar years.  The use of electric appliances was
part of an effort by manufacturers and utilities officials to increase
demand for electrical power and bring technology into the home.  This
promoted the purchase of new durable goods and allowed economic and
political actors to steer the ways that Germans perceived and consumed
technology.

Joe Perry presented the third paper of the panel, "Healthy for Family
Life: Television, Gender, and Consumerist Modernity in West Germany's
Economic Miracle."  He explored the debates over the effects of
television and new media that emerged from the rising popularity of
television in West Germany during the 1950s.  This study convincingly
portrayed the arrival of the television as a lighting rod that attracted
both critiques of modern consumer society and an optimistic evaluation
from those who saw new media as keys to greater access to information
and therefore to democratization.  Perry argued that the place of the
family was central to these debates, which again showed the panel's
interest in the connections between national politics and private
settings.  Of particular concern was the representation of gender roles
and traditional notions of marriage and family hierarchy.

In the second half of his presentation, Perry analyzed images of
television in contemporary advertisements.  He argued that advertisers
stressed the modernity of the television--both the appearance of the
television set and the communication it enabled--in an effort to build
up the notion of that the television was an essential part of modern
home life.  Advertisements are also an important source for the
exploration of notions of gender roles in German households.  Recurrent
images showed wives serving a family gathered around the TV or men
relaxing in front an evening show.  Advertisers also benefited from the
prosperity of the "Economic Miracle" and explicitly discussed the
affordability of new technologies. These advertisements once again spoke
to a major theme of the panel:  the connection between purchases for the
home and the vitality of the national economy.

In her commentary on the panel, Katherine Pence noted how the panelists
were working with aspects of modernity that stressed the connections
between private households and the national community.  In this way, all
three papers showed how the home was a nucleus of the nation that was
shaped by the age of consumerism.  Proper uses of material goods were
important because they formed the basis of familial and national
well-being.  Pence found the connection between the work of expert
reformers and the actual practices of consumers original, and she was
curious to see how the particular twentieth-century concern with notions
of national health influenced discussions of everyday objects.  She
wondered, however, if more could not be done to investigate the
practices of consumption in order to find out more about the
relationships between manufacturers, advertisers, reformers, and
consumers.  More insights along these lines would help to clarify the
interplay between state, economy and citizenry in modern societies.
Pence also hoped that the panel would spark further dialogue between the
three presenters.  How did issues of design, so central to Jenkins'
presentation, play out in the examples of household technology displays
and the marketing of the television?  Were social distinctions (as
pointed out by Perry in his examination of televisions in working-class
neighborhoods) also important to the likes of Joseph Lux?  Perhaps this
question would help to flesh out the important theme of social and
aesthetic harmony in an industrialized world.  What lines did reformers
draw between the well-designed and technologically savvy products that
"strengthened" the national community and the industrially mass-produced
items that seemed to carry negative associations?  Finally, Pence asked
about the specific national context of these three presentations.  To
what degree do they shed light on a particularly German path to
modernity?  In what ways do these case studies reflect international
trends?

The audience was very receptive to all three topics and posed several
engaging questions.  Several members of the audience commented on the
historical rivalry between handiwork and industrialization and wondered
how this played out in the modern contexts of these papers.  Did sleek
modern design replace traditional handicraft?  This line of questions
was also linked to Pence's distinction between national versus
international trends in design and reform.  It was noted that much of
the discussion of design took place in a wider German context that
included Austria and Switzerland.  Several people were intrigued by the
ways that politics entered the household through technology displays and
the television debates.  The suggestion was made to Perry that a wider
analysis of other kinds of media, especially the radio, might confirm
his findings.  Attention to TV and radio programming would also help to
evaluate the political significance of new media.  Another line of
questions invited all three panelists to think more about design
issues.  Finally, the suggestion was made that changes in science and
technology perhaps undermined the notion of male technological expertise
in the home.  As stoves, televisions, and other appliances became more
complicated, the "handyman husband" found himself less equipped to
master the amenities of the domestic sphere.  This enthusiastic
discussion highlighted the richness of the topics presented by the three
panelists.

Brent Maner
Kansas State University


For a complete listing of all sessions at the 2002 German Studies
Association Conference, please visit <http://www.g-s-a.org>.

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