Politicizing Consumption: On the Contested Role of the Consumer in the Weimar Republic

Abstract

In the Weimar Republic, consumption served as a vanguard point from which to redefine the relation between politics and economics. This paper traces the way the figure of the consumer was conceptualized in different discursive settings. It is shown how the political prominence of the consumer was strongly invoked in the debate that took place in the period of reconstruction about consumer representation. This failed attempt to institutionalize the consumer interest was superseded by competing visions of consumer society ranging from a co-operative utopia to national socialist ideas of German autarky. The consumers’ rights and duties were of crucial importance to these approaches, however differently they defined them.