How German Is She? Postwar West German Reconstruction and the Consuming Woman

In this book, Erica Carter explores how the development of a "social market economy" after 1949 gave a new centrality to consumers as key players in the economic life of the nation, and, in that process, gave women a new public significance. Public attention focused in particular on the nation's housewives, who were to train the populace for entry into a new world of consumer prosperity. Since visual imagery is discussed at length, this book is lavishly illustrated with advertisements, fashion photographs, film stills, and documentary photographs from the period.