Economic Miracle or Dream State?

Abstract After World War II the tourism promotion of West Berlin advanced the idea of the Wirtschaftswunder, or “economic miracle,” of capitalism. The city’s advertising sold the illusion of the city’s recovery, seducing its audiences to believe in the achievements of the capitalist West as opposed to the communist East. Tourism brochures, magazines, and guidebooks promoting, for instance, hotel Kempinski, the German Industrial Exhibition, and department store KaDeWe, reveal that the narrative of the economic miracle played a key role in the political aims of the Marshall Plan. To integrate Berlin as part of the West, West Berlin had to be presented as a success story of progress, freedom, and abundance, thanks to US intervention and aid. This story included, firstly, a recovery from the Nazi past and the ruins of war, the reconstruction of the city. Secondly, it simultaneously stimulated and sold capitalism as the ideal economic system for the Cold War present. Thirdly, it projected a vision for the future, a seductive capitalist dreamworld. The tourism industry was the perfect vehicle to promote West Berlin as a showcase city of capitalism and its false promise of economic miracles, as it concealed unemployment, low wages, and the subsidies that facilitated the “miracle.”