Since the 1970s, a characteristic attributed to Germans in a very special way – a virtue or flaw, depending on one's perspective - has begun to become unfashionable. This reflects profound processes of social and cultural change in the second half of the 20th century, which can only be classified in terms of the history of mentality, society and culture against the backdrop of the political-industrial double revolution of the 19th century. These changes in dealing with the experience and interpretation and rationalization of scarcity become visible in individual behavior with contextual differences between a fully developed consumer society in the Federal Republic and a real socialist economy of scarcity in the GDR in very different ways, but equally. This is not surprising in the context of a divided German social history, including mobilization for the National Socialist project. Of particular interest, rather, is the question of the mechanisms that were able to deplausibilize a social attitude that was recognized and valued as fundamental in both West and East to such an extent that there can no longer be any question of an explicitly or implicitly binding social norm. A historical view of the social constructions of thrift must take into account three yardsticks that change with society: objective necessity, subjective practice, and collective attitude.

The initial conditions around 1945 were the same for the German collapse society, despite a rapidly developing path divergence in the development of the occupation zones. For survival and the elementary material new beginning, there was no alternative to saving. Initially, this was a matter of thrift without the goal of being able to afford anything later. However, this changed astonishingly quickly in the West from 1950 onward under free-market conditions in the reconstruction society. Saving could now be directed toward concrete goals of material participation: after the "eating wave" came the motorcycle and finally the Volkswagen "standard." The greatest changes can be observed from 1970 onward in the "throwaway society" of the Federal Republic and, more restrained, in the agonal needs-covering economy of the GDR. For the first time in the social history of German consumer society, the idea of abolishing scarcity becomes a reality in the West: being able to afford something without having to save. It is precisely at this time that the Club of Rome report of 1972 makes the 'limits to growth' a global issue.

The monograph is in progress. Among other things, it will draw on the Berlin archive of the Central Association of Savings Banks.

Picture: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Piggy_bank2.jpg [18.04.2023]; Attribution public domain image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Piggy_bank2.jpg.