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Americanization through Credit? Consumer Credit in Germany, 1860s–1960s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2011

Jan Logemann
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Abstract

This study of the American impact on German consumer credit reveals that the notion of post–World War II Americanization emerging through credit-induced consumption is more complicated than has been previously acknowledged. The postwar debate in Germany over consumer credit as an American import had antecedents in a longer, previously overlooked, history of consumer credit. Moreover, the concept of Americanization remains misleading from a comparative perspective: First, examples of indigenous German institutional consumer lending predate the postwar period. Second, differences in both the forms and quantitative weight of consumer lending defy the notion of convergence. Third, different social and political contexts prevented a wholesale adoption in Germany of an American model of credit financing, despite repeated transatlantic transfers.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 85 , Issue 3 , Autumn 2011 , pp. 529 - 550
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2011

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References

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10 Civil servants and bourgeois families avoided these as well as any public suggestion that they would buy on credit. See Salewski, Heinz, “Abzahlungsgeschäfte und Finanzierungsinstitute,” PhD diss., University of Königsberg, 1932Google Scholar. During the 1890s, 70 percent of credit house sales were in textiles and manufactured goods, 20 percent in furniture, and 10 percent in luxury goods according to Schneider, Paul, “Konsumfinanzierung,” Zeitschrift für handelswissenschaftliche Erforschung 22, no. 6 (1928): 260Google Scholar.

11 Typical of such critiques, made somewhat later, is a book by Otto Hein, , Abzahlungsgesetz und Kredithäuser (Berlin, 1910)Google Scholar.

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13 See Spiekermann, Basis der Konsumgesellschaft, 346–47.

14 The association of credit houses in Germany (Verband der Kredithäuser Deutschlands) was founded in 1908 and soon introduced the Lichtenthal system of standardized credit contracts and fees. See Krauss, Erich, Der Teilzahlungskauf (Berlin, 1956), 26Google Scholar. The association estimated that around 1,500 credit houses existed in all of Germany in 1913. See Mende, Elfriede, “Der Verkauf auf Teilzahlung im Einzelhandel,” PhD diss., University of Dresden, 1932, 8Google Scholar.

15 On the small-loans legislation in the United States, see Calder, Lendol, Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit (Princeton, 1999)Google Scholar; and Bruce G. Carruthers, Tim Guinnane, and Yoonseok Lee, “Bringing ‘Honest Capital’ to Poor Borrowers: The Passage of the Uniform Small Loan Law, 1907–1930,” Yale Economics Department Working Paper, no. 63, 3 June 2009. On the emergence of consumer credit in the United States more generally, see Calder, Lendol, Financing the American Dream; Martha Olney, Buy Now, Pay Later: Advertising, Credit, and Consumer Durables in the 1920s (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991)Google Scholar; Flam, Helena, “Democracy in Debt: Credit and Politics in Paterson, N.J., 1890–1930,” Journal of Social History 18 (1985): 439–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; as well as Daniel Horowitz, , The Morality of Spending: Attitudes towards the Consumer Society in America, 1875–1940 (Baltimore, 1985)Google Scholar.

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18 Kaminsky, Walter, Gefi: Gesellschaft für Kundenkreditfinanzierung m.b.H. (Leipzig, 1937)Google Scholar.

19 “Wie der Frigidaire im Heim der Frau Claire Rommer Lebensmittel frisch und schmackhaft erhält,” Der deutsche Volkswirt 4 (1929/1930): 909Google Scholar.

20 An August 1926 survey in men's-wear retailing found that 154 of 211 reporting firms sold on credit (100 of them did so on up to 10 percent of all sales; the other 54, up to 50 percent); see Kurt Heinig, “Konsumfinanzierung,” Volkswirtschaftliche Rundschau no. 16 (1926): 65/68, cited in Mende, “Der Verkauf auf Teilzahlung.”

21 See Birnbaum, Bruno, Konsum-Finanzierung (Berlin, 1926)Google Scholar; Salewski, “Abzahlungsgeschäft”; Mende, “Der Verkauf auf Teilzahlung”; and Eberhard, Eugen, “Der Organisierte Kundenkredit,” PhD diss., University of Köln, 1932Google Scholar. One of the most prominent American studies on consumer credit, Seligman, Edwin, The Economics of Instalment Selling: A Study in Consumers' Credit (New York, 1927)Google Scholar, was translated into German in 1930 specifically to ground the debate with the latest available data from the United States. See Seligman, Edwin, Die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung des Abzahlungsgeschäfts: Eine Untersuchung des Konsumentenkredits unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Automobilhandels, 2 vols. (Jena, 1930)Google Scholar.

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23 After Splettstösser, Johannes, Der Einzelhandel (Berlin, 1936)Google Scholar, cited in Kaminsky, Gefi, 27–29.

24 According to Salewski, “Abzahlungsgeschäft,” interest rates under the Königsberg system amounted to anywhere from 35 percent to 53 percent per annum, and the contracts could be considered “unconscionable” and in violation of moral principles (“sittenwidrig”) from a legal perspective.

25 Salewski, “Abzahlungsgeschäft,” 29.

26 “Der Pump ist Vater der Pleite! Werbetrommeln der Borgwirtschaft,“ in Handelschutz 27 (1930): 60–61Google Scholar.

27 On the interwar debate about Americanisms, see Nolan, Mary, Visions of Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar; and von Saldern, Adelheid, “Überfremdungsängste: Gegen die Amerikanisierung der deutschen Kultur in den zwanziger Jahren,” in Amerikanisierung: Traum und Alptraum im Deutschland des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Lüdtke, Alf, Marssolek, Inge, and Saldern, Adelheid v. (Stuttgart, 1996), 213–44Google Scholar. On American advertising and marketing efforts in interwar Germany, see Schlug, Alexander, “Missionare der globalen Konsumkultur: Corporate Identity und Absatzstrategien amerikanischer Unternehmen in Deutschland im frühen 20; Jahrhundert,” in Politische Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit, 1918–1939, ed. Hardtwig, Wolfgang (Göttingen, 2005)Google Scholar; and Ross, Corey, “Visions of Prosperity: The Americanization of Advertising in Interwar Germany,” in Selling Modernity: Advertising in Twentieth-Century Germany, ed. Swett, Pamela E., Wiesen, S. Jonathan, and Zatlin, Jonathan R. (Durham, 2007), 52–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 “Die Morphiumspritze,” Handelsschutz 23 (1926)Google Scholar. Birnbaum and those connected with the credit banks, by contrast, argued that the expansion of credit sales would necessarily lead to expanded retail sales. Birnbaum, Konsum-Finanzierung, 35.

29 See “Die Experimente der Konsumfinanzierung. Eine höchst überflüssige Einrichtung,” in Handelsschutz 23 (1926): 287–88Google Scholar.

30 “Die Morphiumspritze,” Handelsschutz 23 (1926)Google Scholar.

31 “Diskussion über das Abzahlungsgeschäft,” Handelsschutz 24 (1929): 169Google Scholar.

32 See “Kaufe sofort, zahle spatter: Das neue Pumpsystem,” Der Materialist 47 (1926)Google Scholar. Others turned such paternalistic arguments around into one making the case for credit systems, as the “mass” of consumers were faced with “urban needs and desires” and the “temptation of entertainments,” and thus did not have the discipline to save on their own. See Kaminsky, Gefi, 11.

33 “Diskussion über das Abzahlungsgeschäft,” Handelsschutz 24 (1929): 169Google Scholar.

34 This point is emphasized in the research of Josh Lauer, “Making the Ledgers Talk: Credit Management and the Origins of Retail Data Mining, 1920–1940,” paper delivered at a joint conference, “Understanding Markets: Information, Institutions and History,” Hagley Museum and Library and German Historical Institute, 30–31 Oct. 2009, Wilmington, Del.

35 Kaminsky, Gefi, 13. The practice of open-book credit (Anschreiben) remained particularly widespread in the countryside and in small towns, but no reliable data exist.

36 Estimate by Demuth in Berliner Tageblatt, 5 Jan. 1930, cited in Eberhard, “Der Organisierte Kundenkredit,” 7. Reviewing a broader debate on this comparative question, Eberhard concluded that the German numbers were much lower “in absolute as well as relative terms.”

37 On the Crespin and Dufayel System and the Unions Economiques, see Mende, , “Der Verkauf auf Teilzahlung,” 11–12 and Herrmann Schärer, Das Abzahlungsgeschäft: Ein Beitrag zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialproblematik des Konsumkredits (Winterthur, 1960Google Scholar).

38 A relatively recent overview of the historical development of credit buying in Europe is by Rosa-Maria Gelpi and François Julien-Labruyère, The History of Consumer Credit: Doctrines and Practice (New York, 2000)Google Scholar.

39 On the rise of “municipal Socialism” as a European phenomenon, see Kühl, Uwe, Lorcin, Jean, and Fernandez, Alexandre, eds., Der Munizipalsozialismus in Europa (Munich, 2001)Google Scholar.

40 “Elektrische Herde über ‘Eltgas’ in 36 Monatsraten,” Elektrizitätswirtschaft 30 (1931): 353–56Google Scholar. A similar example is the financing system “Electrissima” introduced by the Berliner Städtische Elektrizitätswerke; see Mende, “Der Verkauf auf Teilzahlung,” 35.

41 Scholl, Paul, “Der elektrische Kühlschrank in der Haushaltsstromversorgung,” in Elektrizitätswirtschaft 35 (1936): 86–88Google Scholar.

42 On the American case, see Tobey, Ronald, Technology as Freedom: The New Deal and the Electrical Modernization of the American Home (Berkeley, 1996)Google Scholar.

43 See Olney, Martha, “Avoiding Default: The Role of Credit in the Consumption Collapse of 1930,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 114 (1999): 319–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Eberhard, “Der organisierte Kundenkredit,” 9.

45 On National Socialist retailing policy, see Briesen, Detlef, Warenhaus, Massenkonsum und Sozialmoral: Zur Geschichte der Konsumkritik im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 2001)Google Scholar.

46 This trope is not limited to Nazi Germany, however. Credit houses had long been connected with “Jewish” business practices, and in 1950s Germany such references were similarly present—if in more veiled form. Several publications on consumer credit (e.g., Röpcke, Wilhelm, Vorgegessenes Brot: Kritische Nachlese zu Diskussion über das Borgkaufwesen [Cologne, 1955]Google Scholar, and Ockel, “Zur Volkswirtschaftlichen Problematik des Teilzahlungskredits”) made reference to a passage from Goethe's Faust II, in which the pitfalls of credit are lamented and connected to Jewish moneylenders. Even an East German publication appeared to tap into such sentiments: in a long passage on the abuses of credit houses, the only business clearly identified by name bears a traditional Jewish name (Löwenstein in Hamburg Altona)—although it was an especially prominent operation at the turn of the century serving an estimated 10,000 customers. See also Krauss, Teilzahlungskauf.

47 Amstagerichtsrat Bruniecki cited after Krauss, Teilzahlungskauf, 28.

48 “Kreditverkäufe im Einzelhandel,” Memo of Reichswirtschaftskammer to its members, 9 Sept. 1938, in folder MA-Kl 9-Kreditverkäufe (1938), Archiv der Handelskammer Bremen (AHkB).

49 Reply by Hermann Kallsen to Reichswirtschaftskammer, Oct. 1938, in folder MA-Kl 9-Kreditverkäufe (1938), AHkB.

50 On National Socialist consumer policy, see Berghoff, Hartmut, “Enticement and Deprivation: The Regulation of Consumption in Pre-War Nazi Germany,” in The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America, ed. Daunton, Martin and Hilton, Matthew (Oxford, 2001), 165–84Google Scholar; König, Wolfgang, Volkswagen, Volksempfänger, Volksgemeinschaft: “Volksprodukte” im Dritten Reich, vom Scheitern einer nationalsozialistischen Konsumgesellschaft (Paderborn, 2004)Google Scholar; and Wiesen, S. Jonathan, “Massenkonsum und Unternehmenskultur im Dritten Reich,” in Gibt es einen deutschen Kapitalismus? Tradition und globale Perspektiven der sozialen Marktwirtschaft, ed. Berghahn, Volker and Vitolis, Sigurt (Frankfurt: Campus, 2006), 129–42Google Scholar.

51 On “Americanisms” in Nazi mass production, see Ritschl, Albert, “NS Wirtschaftsideologie —Modernisierungsprogramm oder reaktionäre Utopie?” in Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung, ed. Prinz, Michael and Zitelmann, Rainer (Darmstadt, 1991), 48–70Google Scholar. On perceptions of the United States during the Nazi era more generally, see Dietrich Schäfer, “Amerikanismus im Dritten Reich,” in Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung, ed. Prinz and Zitelmann, 199–215; and Junker, Detlef, “The Continuity of Ambivalence: German Views of America, 1933–1945,” in Transatlantic Images and Perceptions: Germany and America since 1776, ed. Barclay, David and Glaser-Schmidt, Elisabeth (Washington, D.C., 1997), 243–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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53 Kaminsky, Gefi, 28.

54 Since 1953, the Ulbricht regime had allowed the use of consumer credit for needy families in some instances. See Merkel, Ina, Utopia und Bedürfnis: Die Geschichte der Konsumkultur in der DDR (Cologne, 1999), 116CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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56 “Ratenkauf: Ende des Kartensystems?” Der Spiegel, 24 Oct. 1956, 27.

57 Krauss, Teilzahlungskauf, 73–75.

58 The history of installment buying in the GDR is marked by constant back and forth, especially with regard to “luxury wares,” and once shortages became a constant feature in the consumer goods sector. See Merkel, Utopie und Bedürfnis 116–19, as well as Zatlin, Jonathan, The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany (Cambridge, U.K., 2008), 219Google Scholar, on the lack of installment schemes for automobiles.

59 On the broad postwar consensus built around a mass-consumption economy, see Cohen, Lizabeth, A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York, 2003)Google Scholar. On the notion of “growth liberalism,” see Collins, Robert, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

60 Louis Hyman, “Debtor Nation: How Consumer Credit Built Postwar America,” in Enterprise & Society 9, no. 4 (2008): 614–18. On postwar consumer credit in the United States, see also Calder, Lendol, “The Evolution of Consumer Credit in the United States,” in The Impact of Public Policy on Consumer Credit, ed. Durkin, Thomas and Staten, Michael (Boston, 2002), 23–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mandell, Lewis, The Credit Card Industry: A History (Boston, 1984)Google Scholar.

61 “Wer ins Leihhaus geht,” Der Spiegel, 30 June 1949.

62 On the reemergence of installment banks, see Lutz, Friedrich, Der Konsumentenkredit (Cologne, 1954), 14–17Google Scholar.

63 Hallermann, Doris, “Der Teilzahlungskredit: Ein Beitrag zur betriebswirtschaftlichen Absatzmarktforschung,” PhD diss., University of Münster, 1966, 95–97Google Scholar.

64 Selby, Paul, “Consumer Credit and the Standard of Living: Europe vs. America,” in Proceedings of the National Consumer Credit Conference for 1952 (Indiana University Bulletin, 1952): 35–46Google Scholar.

65 Erhard, Ludwig, “Ein Kühlschrank für jeden Haushalt,” in Erhard, Ludwig, Deutsche Wirtschaftspolitik: Der Weg der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft (Frankfurt a.M., 1962), 221–23Google Scholar (originally published in Welt der Arbeit, 16 June 1953). Before a 1954 Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Verbraucherverbände AgV (Council of Consumer Associations) meeting, Erhard further expanded his views on consumer credit. While he sharply rejected the use of consumer credit for such everyday items as “socks” or “pork chops,” he endorsed it for consumer durables. In contrast to many of his more conservative compatriots, the liberal Erhard regarded credit financing as a way to entice broader segments of the population to strive for a better standard of living and a sense of ownership. Consuming and not saving, he asserted, was the ultimate end of all economic processes. See Memo, “Arbeitstagung des AGV,” 30 Apr. 1954, in folder B 102/168666, Bundesarchiv Koblenz (BK).

66 See Fousek, Peter, “Prerequisites for the Growth of Consumer Instalment Credit,” Journal of Finance 13 (1958): 163–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 170.

67 “Ratenschreck: Für Stotterer mitbezahlen,” Der Spiegel, 11 Feb. 1953.

68 See “Teilzahlungskäufe nehmen erheblich zu: Die volkswirtschaftlichen Gefahren sollten aber nicht übersehen warden,” Die Zeit, 12 Dec. 1953.

69 Lutz, Der Konsumentenkredit, 108.

70 Critiquing American material culture and its “alleged” mass character has a long tradition in bourgeois European society (reaching back to de Tocqueville), and while it reached a crescendo in interwar Germany, such sentiments lingered. On West German views of American culture in the postwar years, see Stephan, Alexander, ed., Americanization and AntiAmericanism: The German Encounter with American Culture after 1945 (New York, 2005)Google Scholar, especially the essays by Michael Ermath and Jost Hermand. On the ambivalence of intellectual elites toward the United States, see also Schildt, Axel, Zwischen Abendland und Amerika: Studien zur westdeutschen Ideenlandschaft der 50er Jahre (Munich, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 See Röpke, Wilhelm, Vorgegessenes Brot: Kritische Nachlese zu Diskussion über das Borgkaufwesen (Cologne, 1955), 16Google Scholar; and Röpke, Wilhelm, Borgkauf im Lichte der sozialethischen Kritik (Cologne, 1954), 9–11Google Scholar. Although Röpke prefaced his book with the statement that he was not generally opposed to all forms of credit purchase (conceding its usefulness in the case of consumer durables), his writings in general were sweeping indictments of consumer credit.

72 See “Ratenkauf—Ein Feinds des Spargedankens?” Teilzahlungswirtschaft 4 (1954): 112–13Google Scholar, and citation in Bley, Curt, Tatsachen über Kredit und Kreditmissbrauch: Anregungen an den Gesetzgeber (Cologne, 1954), 16Google Scholar. On the centrality of savings for the economic debate on consumer credit (including the question of what actually constituted saving), see Wagner, Franz, “Die volkswirtschaftliche Kontroverse über die Wirkung des Teilzahlungskredits,” PhD diss., University of Freiburg, 1957Google Scholar. Moral appeals to save were commonplace in 1950s Sparkassen (public savings banks) rhetoric and were seen as an expression of these banks' public mission to encourage a culture of saving. Only with the emergence of a new leadership generation by the mid-1960s did savings banks become more marketing oriented and begin to reevaluate consumers as “economic citizens” who could handle their money responsibly. See Belvederesi-Kochs, Rebecca, “Von der ‘moralischen Anstalt’ zum vertriebsorientierten Finanz dienstleister,” Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 53 (2008): 192–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 See, for example, the long-running series “Der Konsumkredit in den USA,” beginning in Teilzahlungswirtschaft no. 3 (1954): 94–95.

74 “Bericht der deutschen Studiengruppe über das Ergebnis einer Reise in die USA zum Studium der amerikanischen Teilzahlungsfinanzierung,” Teilzahlungswirtschaft no. 5 (1956): 156–59. The subsequent issue featured an editorial that celebrated a vision of modern, creditfinanced mass consumption, arguing that Germany's future mirrored the current situation in the United States. See “Hat die Zukunft schon begonnen?” Teilzahlungswirtschaft no. 6 (1956): 166–67. A more detailed report of this study trip is Rationalisierungskuratorium der Deutschen Wirtschaft, Teilzahlungsfinanzierung in den USA (Munich, 1956)Google Scholar. Even a critical 1956 Fortune series, which did not go unnoticed in the West German trade press, was seen primarily (and by and large correctly) as a technical debate about the right level of consumer indebtedness, which—considering the large discrepancy between Germany and the United States in this regard—has little relevance to the German case.

75 See Horvath, “Teilzahlungskredite”; Stücker, “Konsum auf Kredit”; and Effer, Franz, “Die Bedeutung des Konsumentenkredits für den deutschen Einzelhandel,” in Die Finanzen des privaten Haushalts, ed. Schneider, Franz (Frankfurt, 1969), 99Google Scholar.

76 See Hallermann, “Der Teilzahlungskredit,” 96–97.

77 Ibid., 119. On this development, see also Fritz Weiss, “Die Entwicklung und wirtschaftliche Bedeutung der Teilzahlungskreditwirtschaft in der Bundesrepublik,” in Die Finanzen des privaten Haushalts, ed. Schneider, 105–20.

78 See Jörn Schmidt-Wegenast, “Der Wandel in der Einstellung des Kreditwesens zum Konsumenten,” in Finanzen des Privaten Haushalts, ed. Schneider, 121–41. In part, the move to extend cash credit was facilitated by the high cash liquidity of banks that resulted from the dramatic increase in household savings after 1957. It also followed a policy change by the oversight commission, the “Anordnung der Bankenaufsichtsbehörde über die Kosten für Kleinkredite mit Verpflichtung zur regelmäßigen Tilgung.” See Stücker, “Konsum auf Kredit” and Beier, Joachim and Jacob, Klaus-Dieter, Der Konsumentenkredit in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Frankfurt a.M., 1987), 39–43Google Scholar.

79 “Diners' Club—Planziel 50,000,” Der Spiegel 39 (1963)Google Scholar. In 1965, German and Scandinavian companies cooperated to introduce the Eurocard. However, it had not become as widely used as its counterparts in the United States by the later 1960s. Nor did the Eurocard offer revolving credit; instead all charges were deducted on a monthly basis from a bank account to which the card was linked. See Mandell, Credit Card Industry, 44. On the slow expansion of consumer credit cards in Germany, see also König, Detlef, Konsumentenkredit: Neuordnung in den USA und deutsche Reformprobleme (Stuttgart, 1971), 7–8Google Scholar.

80 See Ockel, “Zur Volkswirtschaftlichen Problematik des Teilzahlungskredits,” 243.

81 If credit extended by retailers was included, the Bundesbank estimated, the amount of average per capita debt would rise to DM 200–220 in Germany, compared to DM 1,780 in the United States. See “Der Konsumentenkredit in Westdeutschland,” Neue Züricher Zeitung, 17 July 1966. Such numbers in particular led the Federal Ministry of Economics to discount the need for regulation of consumer credit throughout the 1960s. See “Schlussbericht der Arbeitsgruppe IX,” 3 Apr. 1962, in folder B126/48652, BK, and a memorandum dated 22 Aug. 1966, in folder B 126/48653, BK.

82 For a more detailed discussion of these factors, see Logemann, “Different Paths to Mass Consumption.”

83 In the United States, too, class biases against mass consumption had been prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After World War I, however, a new morality of spending and a more benign view of consumerism had taken hold in American society. See Horowitz, Morality of Spending.

84 On the general liberalization and change in attitude toward consumption by the generation that came of age during the more affluent 1960s, see Siegfried, Detlef, Time is On My Side: Konsum und Politik in der westdeutschen Jugendkultur der 60er Jahre (Göttingen, 2006)Google Scholar.

85 On the notion of American peculiarity in financing consumption in a global context, see also Garon, Sheldon and Maclachlan, Patricia, eds., The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West (Ithaca, 2006)Google Scholar, especially Charles Horioka, “Are the Japanese Unique? An Analysis of Consumption and Saving Behavior in Japan,” 113–36.