Konsum und Imagination- Tales of Commerce and Imagination
Das Warenhaus und die Moderne in Film und Literatur- Department Stores and Modernity in Film and Literature
Edited By Godela Weiss-Sussex and Ulrike Zitzlsperger
Until the 1930s department stores provided, in Germany as elsewhere, one of the focal points of cultural and critical engagement with modernity and consumer culture. The authors of this volume explore the diversity of the discourse on department stores in literature, the feuilleton, musicals and film. They demonstrate the scope of the discourse from cultural criticism to more progress-oriented examinations of the theme. Novels by Zola, Brecht and Fallada are discussed, as well as writings by lesser known authors. Attention is paid to the emancipatory potential of department stores as well as to the aesthetics of consumption as reflected in literature, film and other media.
Who’s that Lady in the Window? Department Store Aesthetics and the 1912 Berlin Exhibition Die Frau in Haus und Beruf
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Abstract
Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit der Ausstellung Die Frau in Haus und Beruf, die 1912 in Berlin organisiert wurde, um die Leistungen und das Potential der deutschen Frau in Kultur, Industrie und Wirtschaft hervorzuheben. Die Ausstellung fußte auf der intensiven Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem Lyceum Club Berlin, dem Bund deutscher Frauenvereine und Designerinnen des Warenhauses Wertheim. Es geht hier vor allem darum, diese Kooperation genauer zu untersuchen und zu zeigen, welche Rolle Warenhausästhetik und Schaufensterdesign in der Gestaltung der Ausstellungsräume spielten. Besonders die Schaufenster der Wertheim-Designerin Elisabeth von Hahn, die am Eingang zur Halle I zu sehen waren, dienten als ikonographische Referenz für die Besucher, die Frau sowohl als Objekt als auch Subjekt in ihrem privaten und öffentlichen Leben zu betrachten. Abschließend geht dieses Kapitel auf die zeitgenössische Rezeption der Ausstellung ein.
In the present day, as Rachel Bowlby notes in Carried Away: The Invention of Modern Shopping, ‘the shopper is viewed positively, as the rational planner who knows what she wants and competently makes her selection’.1 Yet, during the debates concerning luxury, consumerism and the department store from the 1890s to the First World War, the female shopper was viewed as a dazed and easily caricatured figure prone to buying cheap, kitschy, foreign products instead of tasteful, authentic, domestic goods. Not only was she falling prey to market forces and foreign influences, but also to the dangers and debauchery of the metropolis.2 ← 125 | 126 → Large urban department...
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