Entanglements of Scale: The Beer Purity Law from Bavarian Oddity to German Icon, 1906–1975

Abstract

Today, the Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot) is presented as a timeless touchstone of German commercial sentiments, but that was not always the case. Until the mid-twentieth century, the law was relatively unknown and unevenly applied across Germany. This began to change thanks to the market protectionism of Bavarian brewers in two conflicts of integration between the 1950s and 1970s. The first was sparked by West German market integration and pitted capital interest Old Bavaria (Altbayern) against consumer practices in Franconia. The second followed a parallel development but was initiated by Western European market integration and set Bavarian and West German brewers and regulators in opposition to Brussels. In both, brewers, fearful that integration threatened their market share, rallied around the Reinheitsgebot to win political allies, cudgel industry outliers and generate popular support through claims to culture and tradition. Analysing the transformation of the Reinheitsgebot, this article theorises the causal ‘entanglements of scale’ by which a little-known provincial law transformed into a German icon.