Rationalizing Family Life — Stabilizing German Society: The ‘Golden Twenties’ and the ‘Economic Miracle’ in Comparison

Abstract

Europe’s economic development after 1945 has been characterized as the ‘short-lived dream of never-ending prosperity’ (Burkart Lutz).2 In West Germany, the ‘economic miracle’ was over by 1975 at the latest, although it took a while for the population to believe it. But if it was short-lived by one definition, the miracle had at least been incomparably more enduring than the ‘golden’ years of the Weimar Republic. Weimar had managed to maintain a ‘semblance of normality’ (Heinrich August Winkler) for at most five years, from 1924 to 1929.3 The Federal Republic not only experienced over 25 years of sustained growth but, after the end of the economic miracle, remained far more stable than the Weimar Republic had been even in its few ‘normal’ years. In 1989/90, with unemployment over the two million mark, West Germany’s image of freedom, prosperity and social security still proved extraordinarily attractive for the majority of East Germans. They hoped that their willingness to work in ‘Germany, united fatherland’ would enable them to partake of all the benefits of western modernity. Disappointment followed quickly and stayed. But this chapter will not speculate as to whether the second German democracy will successfully integrate the newcomers from the East. Nor does it aspire to predict the likely shape of the post-Cold War epoch. Instead, its aim is to compare the epochs after the two ‘hot’ wars. Using the example of one societal sector, the family, it seeks to answer the question why it proved possible only at the second attempt, and only in the western part of Germany, to create a democratic society with enduring social and political stability.