Download or read book Selling the Economic Miracle written by Mark E. Spicka and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through an examination of election campaign propaganda and various public relations campaigns, reflecting new electioneering techniques borrowed from the United States, this work explores how conservative political and economic groups sought to construct and sell a political meaning of the Social Market Economy and the Economic Miracle in West Germany during the 1950s.The political meaning of economics contributed to conservative electoral success, constructed a new belief in the free market economy within West German society, and provided legitimacy and political stability for the new Federal Republic of Germany.
Download or read book The Miracle Years written by Hanna Schissler and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stereotypical descriptions showcase West Germany as an "economic miracle" or cast it in the narrow terms of Cold War politics. Such depictions neglect how material hardship preceded success and how a fascist past and communist sibling complicated the country's image as a bastion of democracy. Even more disappointing, they brush over a rich and variegated cultural history. That history is told here by leading scholars of German history, literature, and film in what is destined to become the volume on postwar West German culture and society. In it, we read about the lives of real people--from German children fathered by black Occupation soldiers to communist activists, from surviving Jews to Turkish "guest" workers, from young hoodlums to middle-class mothers. We learn how they experienced and represented the institutions and social forces that shaped their lives and defined the wider culture. We see how two generations of West Germans came to terms not only with war guilt, division from East Germany, and the Angst of nuclear threat, but also with changing gender relations, the Americanization of popular culture, and the rise of conspicuous consumption. Individually, these essays peer into fascinating, overlooked corners of German life. Together, they tell what it really meant to live in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Volker R. Berghahn, Frank Biess, Heide Fehrenbach, Michael Geyer, Elizabeth Heineman, Ulrich Herbert, Maria Höhn, Karin Hunn, Kaspar Maase, Richard McCormick, Robert G. Moeller, Lutz Niethammer, Uta G. Poiger, Diethelm Prowe, Frank Stern, Arnold Sywottek, Frank Trommler, Eric D. Weitz, Juliane Wetzel, and Dorothee Wierling.
Download or read book West German Industrialists and the Making of the Economic Miracle written by Armin Grünbacher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-07-13 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West German Industrialists and the Making of the Economic Miracle investigates the mentality of post-war German (heavy) industrialists through an analysis of their attitudes, thinking and views on social, political and, of course, economic matters at the time, including the 'social market economy' and how they saw their own role in society, with this investigation taking place against the backdrop of the 'economic miracle' and the Cold War of the 1950s and 60s. The book also includes an assessment of whether the self-declared, new 'aristocracy of merit' justified its place in society and carried out its actions in a new spirit of political responsibility. This is an important text for all students interested in the history of Germany and the modern economic history of Europe.
Download or read book The Economic Consequences of the War written by Tamás Vonyó and published by Cambridge Studies in Economic History: Second Series. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exploration of the statistical evidence on Germany's post-war reconstruction sheds new light on the foundations of German economic power.
Download or read book Rebuilding Germany written by James C. Van Hook and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-05-10 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The social market economy has served as a fundamental pillar of post-war Germany. Today, it is associated with the European welfare state. Initially, it meant the opposite. Rebuilding Germany examines the 1948 West German economic reforms that dismantled the Nazi command economy and ushered in the fabled 'European Miracle' of the 1950s. Van Hook evaluates the US role in German reconstruction, the problematic relationship of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his economics minister, Ludwig Erhard, the West German 'economic miracle', and the extent to which the social market economy represented a departure from the German past. In a nuanced and fresh account, Van Hook evaluates the American role in West German recovery and the debates about economic policy within West Germany, to show that Germans themselves had surprising room to shape their economic and industrial system.
Download or read book Optimizing the German Workforce written by David Meskill and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the twentieth century, German government and industry created a highly skilled workforce as part of an ambitious program to control and develop the country’s human resources. Yet, these long-standing efforts to match as many workers as possible to skilled vocations and to establish a system of job training have received little scholarly attention, until now. The author’s account of the broad support for this program challenges the standard historical accounts that focus on disagreements over the German political-economic order and points instead to an important area of consensus. These advances are explained in terms of political policies of corporatist compromise and national security as well as industry’s evolving production strategies. By tracing the development of these policies over the course of a century, the author also suggests important continuities in Germany’s domestic politics, even across such different regimes as Imperial, Weimar, Nazi, and post-1945 West Germany.
Download or read book West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past written by S. Jonathan Wiesen and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2004-02-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking study, S. Jonathan Wiesen explores how West German business leaders remade and marketed their public image in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. He challenges assumptions that West Germans - and industrialists in particular - were silent about the recent past during the years of denazification and reconstruction, revealing how German business leaders attempted to absolve themselves of responsibility for Nazi crimes while recasting themselves as socially and culturally engaged public figures. Through case studies of individual firms such as Siemens and Krupp, Wiesen depicts corporate publicity as a telling example of postwar selective memory.
Download or read book The Fading Miracle written by Herbert Giersch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fading Miracle provides a lucid account of economic policy in West Germany from the late 1940s up to the present. First published in hardback in 1992, this paperback edition has been updated to include events since then. The authors describe and evaluate the major policy controversies and decisions, and place particular emphasis on the characteristically German institutions of policy counselling and their role in policy formation. The book will be of interest to students and teachers of economics, and to all those with an interest in the development of the greatest economic power in Europe.
Download or read book The Authority of Everyday Objects written by Paul Betts and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-06-09 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Werkbund to the Bauhaus to Braun, from furniture to automobiles to consumer appliances, twentieth-century industrial design is closely associated with Germany. In this pathbreaking study, Paul Betts brings to light the crucial role that design played in building a progressive West German industrial culture atop the charred remains of the past. The Authority of Everyday Objects details how the postwar period gave rise to a new design culture comprising a sprawling network of diverse interest groups—including the state and industry, architects and designers, consumer groups and museums, as well as publicists and women's organizations—who all identified industrial design as a vital means of economic recovery, social reform, and even moral regeneration. These cultural battles took on heightened importance precisely because the stakes were nothing less than the very shape and significance of West German domestic modernity. Betts tells the rich and far-reaching story of how and why commodity aesthetics became a focal point for fashioning a certain West German cultural identity. This book is situated at the very crossroads of German industry and aesthetics, Cold War politics and international modernism, institutional life and visual culture.
Download or read book The Russians in Germany written by Norman M. Naimark and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1945, when the Red Army marched in, eastern Germany was not "occupied" but "liberated." This, until the recent collapse of the Soviet Bloc, is what passed for history in the German Democratic Republic. Now, making use of newly opened archives in Russia and Germany, Norman Naimark reveals what happened during the Soviet occupation of eastern Germany from 1945 through 1949. His book offers a comprehensive look at Soviet policies in the occupied zone and their practical consequences for Germans and Russians alike--and, ultimately, for postwar Europe. In rich and lucid detail, Naimark captures the mood and the daily reality of the occupation, the chaos and contradictions of a period marked by rape and repression, the plundering of factories, the exploitation of German science, and the rise of the East German police state. Never have these practices and their place in the overall Soviet strategy, particularly the political development of the zone, received such thorough treatment. Here we have our first clear view of how the Russians regarded the postwar settlement and the German question, how they made policy on issues from reparations to technology transfer to the acquisition of uranium, how they justified their goals, how they met them or failed, and how they changed eastern Germany in the process. The Russians in Germany also takes us deep into the politics of culture as Naimark explores the ways in which Soviet officers used film, theater, and education to foster the Bolshevization of the zone. Unique in its broad, comparative approach to the Soviet military government in Germany, this book fills in a missing--and ultimately fascinating--chapter in the history of modern Europe.
Download or read book Family Firms in Postwar Britain and Germany written by David Paulson and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2023-02-21 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the culture and conduct of six small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in England and West Germany from 1945 to the late-1970s, drawing on numerous archives in Germany and Britain. This is the first book length study that examines the detailed histories of SMEs in a comparative, transnational manner. Emerging from this study is an evaluation of German and British varieties of capitalism in action, showing that they were not fixed or static, but rather have changed considerably as they evolved over time. The German companies studied formed part of the Mittelstand, the family-owned sector which is unique to German-speaking countries. This book explores whether the principles of a close identification with the surrounding region and a patriarchal culture within a 'family' atmosphere were adopted in practice then, and whether they are still applicable today. Paulson compares the Mittelstand to British SMEs in order to understand how their approach differed from that of their German counterparts. For both countries, the 'ecosystem' which surrounded businesses is examined, paying particular attention to funding and vocational education. The book concludes that the potential for a British Mittelstand existed, but that British companies were often less well managed and had to operate within a less supportive external environment than that which favoured the Mittelstand. Historical lessons learned from the management of these companies still resonate today, and can help us to understand contemporary differences in business performance. This book will therefore be of interest to scholars and students of twentieth-century business and economic history, as well as management studies.
Download or read book Urban and Rural Change in West Germany written by Trevor Wild and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-12 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1983. Attention is focused in this book on the principal functional, spatial and morphological changes which had taken place within West Germany’s uniquely arranged mosaic of cities, towns and intervening rural areas during the postwar period. The topics covered here have been carefully selected as key foci of interest, and their thematic approach is supported by a large variety of detailed, local case studies. This title will be of interest to students of urban geography and urban studies.
Download or read book Pain and Prosperity written by Paul Betts and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The turn of the millennium has stimulated much scholarly reflection on the historical significance of the twentieth century as a whole. Explaining the century’s dual legacy of progress and prosperity on one hand, and of world war, genocide, and mass destruction on the other, has become a key task for academics and policymakers alike. Not surprisingly, Germany holds a prominent position in the discussion. What does it mean for a society to be so closely identified with both inflicting and withstanding enormous suffering, as well as with promoting and enjoying unprecedented affluence? What did Germany’s experiences of misery and abundance, fear and security, destruction and reconstruction, trauma and rehabilitation have to do with one another? How has Germany been imagined and experienced as a country uniquely stamped by pain and prosperity? The contributors to this book engage these questions by reconsidering Germany’s recent past according to the themes of pain and prosperity, focusing on such topics as welfare policy, urban history, childbirth, medicine, racism, political ideology, consumerism, and nostalgia.
Download or read book Europe s Growth Champion written by Marcin Piatkowski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes countries rich? What makes countries poor? Europe's Growth Champion: Insights from the Economic Rise of Poland seeks to answer these questions, and many more, through a study of one of the biggest, and least heard about, economic success stories. Over the last twenty-five years Poland has transitioned from a perennially backward, poor, and peripheral country to unexpectedly join the ranks of the world's high income countries. Europe's Growth Champion is about the lessons learned from Poland's remarkable experience, the conditions that keep countries poor, and the challenges that countries need to face in order to grow. It defines a new growth model that Poland and its Eastern European peers need to adopt to grow and catch up with their Western counterparts. Poland's economic rise emphasizes the importance of the fundamental sources of growth- institutions, culture, ideas, and leaders- in economic development. It demonstrates that a shift from an extractive society, where the few rule for the benefit of the few, to an inclusive society, where many rule for the benefit of many, can be the key to economic success. *IEurope's Growth Champion asserts that a newly emerged inclusive society will support further convergence of Poland and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe with the West, and help to sustain the region's Golden Age. It also acknowledges the future challenges that Poland faces, and that moving to the core of the European economy will require further reforms and changes in Poland's developmental character.
Download or read book Mainsprings of the German Revival written by Henry Christopher Wallich and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1976-11-24 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Exorcising Hitler written by Frederick Taylor and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collapse of the Third Reich in 1945 was an event nearly unprecedented in history. Only the fall of the Roman Empire fifteen hundred years earlier compares to the destruction visited on Germany. The country's cities lay in ruins, its economic base devastated. The German people stood at the brink of starvation, millions of them still in POW camps. This was the starting point as the Allies set out to build a humane, democratic nation on the ruins of the vanquished Nazi state-arguably the most monstrous regime the world has ever seen. In Exorcising Hitler, master historian Frederick Taylor tells the story of Germany's Year Zero and what came next. He describes the bitter endgame of war, the murderous Nazi resistance, the vast displacement of people in Central and Eastern Europe, and the nascent cold war struggle between Soviet and Western occupiers. The occupation was a tale of rivalries, cynical realpolitik, and blunders, but also of heroism, ingenuity, and determination-not least that of the German people, who shook off the nightmare of Nazism and rebuilt their battered country. Weaving together accounts of occupiers and Germans, high and low alike Exorcising Hitler is a tour de force of both scholarship and storytelling, the first comprehensive account of this critical episode in modern history.
Download or read book West Germany and the Iron Curtain written by Astrid M. Eckert and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-02 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West Germany and the Iron Curtain takes a fresh look at the history of Cold War Germany and the German reunification process from the spatial perspective of the West German borderlands that emerged along the volatile inter-German border after 1945. These border regions constituted the Federal Republic's most sensitive geographical space where it had to confront partition and engage its socialist neighbor East Germany in concrete ways. Each issue that arose in these borderlands - from economic deficiencies, border tourism, environmental pollution, landscape change, and the siting decision for a major nuclear facility - was magnified and mediated by the presence of what became the most militarized border of its day, the Iron Curtain. In topical chapters, the book addresses the economic consequences of the border for West Germany, which defined the border regions as depressed areas, and examines the cultural practice of western tourism to the Iron Curtain. At the heart of this deeply-researched book stands an environmental history of the Iron Curtain that explores transboundary pollution, landscape change, and a planned nuclear industrial site at Gorleben that was meant to bring jobs into the depressed border regions. The book traces these subjects across the caesura of 1989/90, thereby integrating the "long" postwar era with the post-unification decades. As Eckert demonstrates, the borderlands that emerged with partition and disappeared with reunification did not merely mirror some larger developments in the Federal Republic's history but actually helped to shape them.
