High Life. Jet-Setters, Playboys, and the Global High Society, 1950s to 1970s.

In the Golden Age of air travel, a new upper-class elite cultivated a glamorous “jet-set”-lifestyle to circle the globe, from New York to Hawaii, from Tokyo to Paris, and from Acapulco to London. This cosmopolitan elite included US-American and European as well as Latin American and Middle Eastern adventurers. The globally connected Jeunesse dorée visibly staged their eccentric, globe-girdling trips and quickly became a media phenomenon, accompanied by paparazzi while being celebrated in popular culture. This article aims to explore the rise of this luxurious high-speed society – comprising actors and musicians, athletes and politicians, as well as models and playboys – and, thus, particularly focuses on actors, networks and discourses in Western Germany since the 1950s. It exemplarily investigates how the newly minted high society was portrayed in tabloid newspapers, TV-shows and motion pictures, and how their exponents, such as the German playboy Gunter Sachs, and their playgrounds – small, provincial places like Kampen beach – were depicted. With that, this article aims to examine the high society’s geographical and social reach and its limits.