Expo E42B: Writing in the Social Sciences
October 23, 2021
As an American we’ve always taken for granted our ability to go to the dealership and purchase a new vehicles. Americans on average purchase a vehicle every 3-4 years. But imagine being an Eastern German citizen in 1977.[1] As a car buyer, your choices are limited to a handful of East German and other Eastern bloc vehicles, the most popular of which was the Trabant. In order to purchase a vehicle you would have to sign up to be on a waiting list which took on average thirteen years. Now imagine you’ve waited that thirteen years; it’s now 1991 and the Berlin Wall has fallen. Access is opening up, to not only the Trabant and Wartburg, but also the West German Volkswagen and other western-made vehicles. It was the end of the Eigen-Sinn era, and the dawn of the nostalgic fetishization of the Trabant, with its plastic body and chassis[2] and “synthetic PVC leather interior upholstery,”[3] and “two-stroke” “lawn-mower” engine.[4] At the same time, Eastern Germans finally had access to the legendary German engineering of Volkswagen, Mercedes, and BMW, as well as other western-made vehicles.
Bernhard Rieger’s chapter “Icon of the Early Federal Republic” in his book The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle, Eli Rubin’s academic essay “The Trabant: Consumption, Eigen-Sinn, and Movement”, and Jonathan R. Zatlin’s scholarly article “The Vehicle of Desire: The Trabant, the Wartburg, and the End of the GDR” all discuss these iconic cars of their respective national origins as emblematic of culture and society. However, Zatlin does this most convincingly with his inclusion of the philosophical foundations of Cold War East German economics. Moreover, Rieger only utilizes quotes from journalists and press sources. Rubin only quotes secondary sources or scholarly articles. Meanwhile, Zatlin does this most compellingly through his use of concrete solid evidence from primary sources, such as historical documentation, government statistics, and published petitions.
In the chapter “Icon of the Early Federal Republic” from the book The People’s Car”: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle, Bernhard Rieger uses press reports and journalist accounts. Through these primary sources, he establishes the Volkswagen as being emblematic of individual freedom. In addition, he disassociates the Volkswagen from its Nazi origins.[5] The VW vehicle became a “symbol”[6] of West German financial, social, and economic recovery, which Rieger suggests is from the constant belligerence and fighting under the National Socialist regime and/ or is a result of the changes enacted by economics minister Ludwig Erhard’s “vision of a ‘social market economy’”. The state’s responsibility is to foster healthy competition and “free enterprise,” as well as to encourage a “sense of social responsibility” within “entrepreneurship.”[7] The goals of the social market economy were to expand “property ownership” amongst more people as well as provide economic safety nets for the most vulnerable in society: all of these economic endeavors were successful in capitalist post-war West Germany.[8] But, Rieger argues, none of West Germany’s economic boom would have been possible were it not for American support for “fundamental reconstruction” in the aftermath of World War II.[9] West Germans were invited back into the international market through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the subsequent creation of the European Economic Community in 1957.[10]
The Volkswagen Beetle drove West Germans towards the future and away from its Nazi past. The Beetle’s design reflected a pivot in the economy and politics of West Germany, from chaos and violence to stability and prosperity. Additionally, the design reflected the ethos of stability and concrete results, in sharp contrast to the opulent and false promises made under the National Socialist regime. Where the Nazi’s fell short, the economic market of post-World War II West Germany realized the dream of a car for every person–originally instilled in Germany by Hitler–but “moved beyond the recent past.”[11] To parallel the stability and solidity of this new economic era changes to the design of the Volkswagen were kept to a minimum, to exude “honest dependability”. “Improvements” to the car’s design were restricted to its engineering, and its iconic body style remained unchanged for fifty-eight years.[12] Thus, “invisible” developments “allowed the company to sell ease of mind.”[13] Rieger posits that “the car’s technical and optical characteristics came to reflect a collective desire for lasting postwar normality. Rather than make false promises, here was an honest, resoundingly unflashy, reliable, and immediately recognizable product.”[14] Rieger states that “against the backdrop of recent existential hardship and insecurity, the solid and reliable Volkswagen appeared as the epitome of trustworthiness.”[15]
Finally, on a personal level––the car was to the average citizen and owner a testament to “personal success and status,” and served as a demonstration to peers ones family’s financial robustness.[16] The VW’s affordability illustrated that a large percentage of West Germans “benefited from the economic miracle directly.”[17] In the socio-political sphere, the VW represented individual liberties in opposition to the “collectivist ethos” of the Socialist Bloc.[18] The word “freedom” granted by the liberties of driving reverberated in the atmosphere of “the American-led collation of the ‘free world.’”[19] Rieger quotes Wilhelm Ropke, “one of Erhard’s most influential economic advisers” when he “elevated the ability “to satisfy one’s transport needs in accordance with one’s wishes” to a “basic and inalienable right of the individual.”[20] Even automotive writers described driving as the “essence of one’s personal freedom,” which Rieger argues utilizes a “key term of West Germany’s political language” and thus aligns the car with “the Federal Republic’s liberal political values.”[21] Driving thereby served as proof and physical manifestation of political ideals in West Germany.[22]
While Rieger explores the significance of the Volkswagen to West Germany, Eli Rubin studies the cultural and social significance of the Trabant in East Germany in his article “The Trabant: Consumption, Eigen-Sinn, and Movement”. He highlights the importance of “context” when viewing the Trabant and purports that to view the Trabant correctly one must view it through a “’decentred’” lense; in other words “not to look at them as embodiments of value, but rather as having value through their place in the broader socialist society.”[23] Rubin organizes the rationale for using plastics in the Trabant in three ways: firstly the pressure to develop a uniquely socialist product that stands up against “the Federal Republics’ ‘economic miracle’”; second the “fascination” with novel technology, particularly developments in “polymer chemistry”; and lastly, the ‘Eigen-Sinn’ or “’gumption’, or ‘dogged and creative self-reliance’” of East German workers.[24] Regardless, Rubin explains, the utilization of plastic instead of sheet metal due to a dirth in the latter’s supply was rooted in a Cold War embargo wherein the US refused to export material with potential military use to countries in the Eastern Bloc.[25] On the other hand, plastic could be “produced entirely domestically,” and therefore, Rubin argues, the Trabant was not a shoddy attempt to copy the West, nor “even a particularly socialist car”; rather it was East Germany’s attempt to maneuver both a competition with West Germany as well as meet “Moscow’s demands.”[26]
The shortage of consumer goods, including and especially cars like the Trabant in West Germany stemmed from governmental strategy: the Communists, taking notes from Stalin, kept their constituents in a constant state of “want”, even for food, in order to firstly reorganize society to become more proletarian by “building up massive heavy industry” and secondly to place ideological controls upon the populace by giving certain demographics privileges over others.[27]Rubin summarizes many historians whom he lists when he states that the desire for a “’good life’” “comparable” to West Germany was “central” “to the narrative of the GDR.”[28] Not only was there a shortage of consumer goods (the waiting list for the Trabant “stretched up to thirteen years,”[29] but the “tertiary, or service, sector of the economy” was “virtually non-existent”[30] This meant the citizens of East Germany had to rely on their own hands and know-how, fixing not only their own cars (following the detailed car manual), but also televisions, leaky roofs, etc. on their own.[31] Thus East Germany’s citizens developed a sense of “independence” from the market as well as from the government, and the Trabant was a perfect reflection of that.[32]
Rubin describes the juxtaposition between West and East Germany:
Especially before the border was sealed and the wall built in 1961, nowhere on Earth afforded a more dramatic and immediate side-by-side comparison between the two systems. From the eastern side of the border the success of the West German consumer society was visible in three main ways: the advertisements on the sides of buildings and on billboards and vehicles; the clothing worn by people walking along; and the number and quality of cars on the streets. The east, by comparison, seemed gray, barren and backward.[33]
Zatlin, like Rubin, discusses the Trabant in a culture of “desire” or “want,” in other words, in a climate of lack: lacking basic and “luxury” essentials, goods and services. However, unlike Rubin, Zatlin delves further into the philosophical background and reasoning behind this culture of shortages and therefore desire. East Germans were fully aware of what the West had, due to “West German television and radio.”[34]
Zatlin describes how the “squalor of the socialist present” was ultimately meant to be sacrifice for the greater promised good of society.[35] The leaders of the SED had good intentions: they wanted to “eradicate poverty” and provide bare essentials such as food at low prices while putting a restraint on “bourgeois consumption ideologies.”[36]“Yet the planned economy proved incapable of producing and distributing consumer goods in the quantity and quality desired by the population,” which led to rampant “dissatisfaction” and “discontent.”[37] This lack of satiety led to political insurrection against a government that insisted on its “ethical superiority over its capitalist neighbor.”[38]If there was any sense of camaraderie in this culture of lack, it dissipated when the populace saw its leaders and those with money or connections in the West flaunting their cars and other privileges.[39] With “one car for every two West Germans compared to one car for every 44 East Germans,”[40] Zatlin depicts a socio-economic climate that resulted in the exact opposite of what was intended: the shortage not only “sharpened” the desire for cars, it led to a two tiered system which differentiated those with “status and prestige” and those without.[41] Moreover, the anti-capitalist socio-economic climate only manifested in unintended consequences and capitalist rebellion: a black market for “queue-jumping”[42] and second hand cars, where a second hand car was often twice the price of a new car.
Ultimately, Marxism-Leninism attempted to “provide a politically stable solution to the problem of consumer desire”; however, it failed where capitalism succeeded in its “ability to manufacture desire and sell it as needed”: “the SED produced shortages which led to an inflation of desire” and the “accrual of desire” finally led to the downfall of the socialist system.[43]
While Rieger sees the car of the West, the Volkswagen, as emblematic of personal freedom and liberal ideologies of the West, and Rubin sees the car of the East, the Trabant as a symbol of the Eigen-Sinn can-do attitude,[44] as well as pride in technological innovation.
Rubin and Rieger both agree that the Trabant is a symbol of “want” or “desire” that stemmed from government-manufactured demand. However, Zatlin delves deepest into the philosophical “why’s” behind this culture of scarcity in quality and quantity. Thus he builds a solid historical foundation upon which to build the story of the East Germany’s iconic car and how it spells out the end of the GDR. To Zatlin, the symbol and story of the Trabant is iconography for the downfall of the GDR: the systematic creation of lack––and thus desire––spelled out the end of East Germany’s entire political, economic, and social system.
While Rieger focuses on many primary sources, mostly press releases and journalists, and Rubin relies on many secondary sources, or other historical studies, Zatlin relies on many primary sources, from petitions to statistics from the SAPMO, or translated in English, the Foundation Archive of Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR in the Federal Archives. Thus, while Rieger mostly sings praises of the Volkswagen, he denies the reader a more objective view, perhaps from a “moral” perspective: how does the Volkswagen’s roots in Nazi Germany lend to its success? How can he so easily divorce the Volkswagen from its problematic origins? Rubin’s essay, which relies solely on secondary sources, reads as a wholistic view of the Trabant as a literal vehicle and metaphorical vehicle for East Germany’s ideological policies; however, what Rubin’s essay lacks is the philosophical (Marxist-Leninist) explanatory backbone and the solid primary sources provided by Zatlin’s evidence.
In Rubin’s article, he mentions that the Eastern bloc was often compared to the Federal Republic and its experience of the ‘economic miracle,’ which he mentions in parenthesis is “driven in part by the groundwork laid by the previous Nazi Regime, in part by the Marshall Program, and in part by the success of the Volkswagen Beetle as West Germany’s number one export.”[45] By mentioning the reasons for the Federal Republic’s success in such a manner, he partially absolves East Germany for its shortcomings and inherently points a finger to West Germany; by juxtaposing the two Germanies he does not completely absolve East Germany for its technological and economic failures, but he paints a picture of why the socialist car with its plastic body and two-stroke engine was as it was. I would compare Rubin’s comment to Rieger conceding that indeed the car had “Nazi origins,” but he expounds on this fact with further analysis that its birthplace in history was “no obstacle in” its “ascent.”[46] He focuses on the “public stories that presented the car’s history in largely depoliticized terms,” focusing instead on its engineering prowess born from Ferdinand Porsche, who was also painted in a largely apolitical manner, despite his associations with the Nazi party.[47] Rieger furthermore focuses on the failures of the Third Reich which had originally dreamt of “individual car ownership” to its afterwar- realization of that dream as a point of breaking away from its troubled historical past.[48]Rieger states that the VW “drew attention to new personal liberties at the height of the Cold War without becoming entangled in overtly partisan political debates.”[49] He contends that “by delivering on the enticing promise of an affordable automobile for the wider population, the Federal Republic proved is superiority over the Third Reich…as it inextricably intermeshed the recent past and the historical present, the Volkswagen emerged as an unlikely survivor of the Third Reich that thrived in the Federal Republic, a trait that it shared with the numerous West Germans who viewed their own biographies in very similar historical terms.”[50] I contend that Rieger is rationalizing a cold, hard truth. The Volkwagen would not have reached the pinnacle of success without its birth in Nazi Germany. Its attempts to extricate itself from its troubled past does not erase the fact that often capitalism works more efficiently when the people involved are amoral.
This conundrum between idealistic Communism and pragmatic Capitalism that defined the Cold War is compellingly resolved by Zatlin, who spells out, with Marxist-Leninist philosophical inquiry, the hypocrisy and failure of Communism with the Trabant (and Wartburg) as concise metaphors for East Germany. Despite the amorality of Capitalism, the greater of these two evils is the incompetence of Communism in attempting to create a utopian society free from wants and desires, which, according to the picture painted by Zatlin, simply is not possible.
Further inquiries into the metaphor and utility of the Volkswagen and Trabant in their respective two Germanies necessarily includes the story of the fall of the Berlin wall and East Germany’s sudden access to West German cars. How did East Germans react to having their desires and wants answered after reunification? Zatlin’s article, written in 1997, and Rubin’s article, written in 2009, as well as Bernhard Rieger’s The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle, published in 2013 were all written well after the fall of the Berlin wall, but it is important to take a look at the years 1990 and 1991 during which East and West became united again.
What is further missing from the aforementioned articles is a similar philosophical reading of Capitalism. Rieger sings his praises of the fruits of capitalism as exemplified by the success story of the Volkswagen. We get a glimpse into the philosophical undertakings and failures of Communist Socialism in Zatlin’s article. But none of these articles discuss the philosophical underpinnings of its opposition: Capitalism and Democracy.
Despite Capitalism’s seeming amorality and pragmatism, in which ways do we build a concrete connection to the socio-economic history of the Western world, and why has this system been so successful in comparison? Is there any validity to the drawbacks sensationalized by Socialism? How do we contend with Capitalism’s greater problematic past, such as colonialism and slavery or more recently, the Cold War technological advancements with their roots in the Nazi science?
I appreciate the arguments developed by Rieger, Rubin, and Zatlin that purport cars to be drivers of and metaphors for culture, society, and politics. Now I would like to further their arguments by delving into latter years of the Reunification era, as well as examining philosophical backbone of the Western economics.
Bibliography
Rieger, Bernhard. “Icon of the Early Federal Republic.” In The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagon Beetle, 123-87. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/lib/harvard-ebooks/reader.action?docID=3301270&ppg=187
Rubin, Eli. “The Trabant: Consumption, Eigen-Sinn, and Movement.” History Workshop Journal 68, no. 1 (2009): 27-44. https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbp016.
“Volkswagen Beetle.” Autoevolution. Last modified October 16, 2020. https://www.autoevolution.com/volkswagen/beetle/
Zatlin, Jonathan R. “The Vehicle of Desire: The Trabant, the Wartburg, and the End of the GDR.” Germany History 15, no. 3 (1997): 358-380. https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1093/gh/15.3.358.
[1] Eli Rubin, “The Trabant: Consumption, Eigen-Sinn, and Movement.” History Workshop Journal 68, no. 1 (2009): 35, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbp016.
[2] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 31.
[3] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 32.
[4] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 31.
[5] Bernhard Rieger, “Icon of the Early Federal Republic.” In The People’s Car: A Global History of the Volkswagen Beetle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 145, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/lib/harvard-ebooks/reader.action?docID=3301270&ppg=187.
[6] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 146
[7] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 129
[8] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 129
[9] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 129
[10] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 130
[11] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 128
[12] “Volkswagen Beetle,” autoevolution, Last modified October 16, 2020, https://www.autoevolution.com/volkswagen/beetle/
[13] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 159
[14] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 160
[15] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 184-185
[16] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 165
[17] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 185
[18] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 175
[19] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 175
[20] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 175
[21] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 176
[22] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 176
[23] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 28
[24] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 28
[25] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 31
[26] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 34
[27] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 32
[28] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 32
[29] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 35
[30] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 37
[31] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 37
[32] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 37
[33] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 33
[34] Jonathan R. Zatlin, “The Vehicle of Desire: The Trabant, the Wartburg, and he End of the GDR,” German History 15, no. 3 (1997): 359, https://doi-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/10.1093/gh/15.3.358.
[35] Zatlin, “The Vehicle of Desire,” 360
[36] Zatlin, “The Vehicle of Desire,” 360
[37] Zatlin, “The Vehicle of Desire,” 360
[38] Zatlin, “The Vehicle of Desire,”360
[39] Zatlin, “The Vehicle of Desire,” 360
[40] Zatlin, “The Vehicle of Desire,” 361
[41] Zatlin, “The Vehicle of Desire,” 373
[42] Zatlin, “The Vehicle of Desire,” 374
[43] Zatlin, “The Vehicle of Desire,” 380
[44] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 36
[45] Rubin, “The Trabant,” 33 (emphasis added).
[46] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 185
[47] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 185
[48] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 186
[49] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 186
[50] Rieger, “Icon of Early Federal Republic,” 186