Figure 1.-- A charming image of a German family Christmas in 1950. Grandmother is seated in the corner with one of the girls' presents. One sobering aspect of this image, is the fact that here are no men in the scene. This may explain the sadness we see on grandmother's face. The snapshot was probably taken by mother. The older children are seated on the floor--a girl of about 13 years wearing a dress, a boy of about 12 years, and a girl (with pigtails) of about 6 years. The boy is wearing a suit over what appears to be a black sweater (buttoned to the neck with a white button). He is wearing short trousers with black long stockings. The girl in pigtails wears a patterned sweater. The children are playing with their new toys. Notice the accordion that the boy is experimenting with. The older girl is reading a new book, and the younger girl seems to be playing house with a toy three-sided little room in which one can arrange toy furniture or perhaps toy figures. This could be a miniature theatre also. One interesting feature of the room, apart from the Christmas tree, is the large tiled stove in the corner. This functions as a space heater for the room, and has a metal door in the side for adding fuel (probably coal) to keep the stove burning. Such room stoves were still quite common in German homes in the 1950s. (Central heating began to become standard in the 1960s.) The family looks prosperous and well dressed, especially considering the devestation cased by the War only 5 yeaes earlier.

The free market reforms and American aid very quickly resulted in the German Economic Miracle which trasformed West Germany. The German economy responded amazingly rapidly. To those who saw the emense piles of ruble which had once been thriving cities, the speed of change was breath taking. Amazingly the piles of rubble disappeared more rapidly in Germany than Britain. (Surprising because the damage in West Germany had been on a much more massive scale. Progress in East Germany was also slower.) The German consumer who once faced shortages and emply shelves, not only found increasingly well-stocked shops and had the money to buy all kinds of consumer goods. No time is this more apparent than at Christmas. We see family Christmas images with loads of presents under the tree. And the trees are larger and more heavily decorated. Often before the War, Working class families often had small rather basic trees for the home. Sadly many fathers and older sons are absent from these 1950s Christmas photographs. In some cases father took the snapshots, but many others were lost in the War. And notably this is not only middle-class family, but working-class families as well. By the end of the decade, not only had the damage in German cities been repaired and ecnomic activity resumed, but German workers were much more prosperous than they had been before the War. One subject we are not sure about is how Christmas was affected in the DDR (East Germany) by the Communist regime's athiest campaign. We note the Storre family in the DDR during 1958.

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Created: 5:37 AM 1/19/2011
Last updated: 4:06 AM 10/12/2011