Performance, fatigue et style de vie. Ovomaltine et le travail au bureau au début du XXe siècle

Abstract

Ovaltine (Ovomaltine) is a product made of barley malt, eggs and cocoa, created in 1904 by the Swiss company Wander. Initially sold as a medical product for babies and sick people, it has been commercialized as a food product since 1922. This switch gave rise to a significant increase in advertising whose modernity marked an important step towards the professionalization of this sector in Switzerland. Through the study of advertisements published in the Schweizerisches Kaufmännisches Zentralblatt, this article examines how the Ovaltine adverts staged the physical body in the workplace and notes how they borrowed from research on physiology and diet. Ovaltine especially targeted office workers, a sector that had been booming since the end of the nineteenth century. By emphasizing its fortifying qualities, Ovaltine was able to use the medicalization of everyday life in order to take advantage of the theme of physical and moral exhaustion. The image created is not only the positive one of an employee who successfully overcomes the challenges of working life but also the negative one of an individual who succumbs to the frenetic rhythm and uncertainty of life in the modern city. In its conclusive part, this article refers to the aestheticization of everyday life, in which the Ovaltine adverts contributed to the theme of the individual under stress, as a reflection of the new working conditions, and also as a representation of self in front of the triteness and monotony of daily life.