Biehl, Brigitte. 2021. “Luxury in Germany: Sick Cars and Healthy Bodies.” Society 58 (5): 385–91. doi:10.1007/s12115-021-00610-x.Read Abstract and section on page 386, second paragraph on the right starting "after the second world war"
After the Second World War, Germany was divided into the Western part, the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD), and the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR or ‘DDR’ in German). In the German Democratic Republic (1949-1990), people who had a car drove one of only a few models (e.g., the Wartburg, Trabant or “Trabi”). Any car was seen as a luxury item (Roesler, 2005: 45) as the status of a luxury item typically depends on availability. Cars were rare. For example, a Trabant or Wartburg automobile sold for thou- sands of DDR-Mark with waiting times between 7 and 16 years (MDR, 2020). The situation with other luxury goods was similar. Western products (Milka chocolate, Levi’s jeans) were sought for, and technical devices such as color TVs were rare and expensive. For example, a VCR-recorder was listed for 7350 DDR-Mark, which was half an average worker’s annual income. Social distinction through consumption (Bourdieu, [1979]1984) did not have a place in the DDR “so- cialist workers’ and peasants’ state,” which put first the satis- faction of material needs as a basis for people’s physical and intellectual development (Roesler, 2005: 36). Food, clothing, and housing were cheap, but luxury items were incredibly expensive and very difficult to obtain. This historical pedigree is 'in the DNA' of the nation and persists so that, today, people in Eastern Germany “need less money to be rich,” and reject excessive spending (YouGov, 2019). Germans have experi- enced in many ways how luxury is relative to time and place, and how it always is affected by social change.