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German History in Documents and Images
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Shoe Shopping (1959)
By the end of the 1950s, the Federal Republic was the second most powerful economy in the world after the United States. This period saw the beginnings of a widespread consumer society in which ever larger segments of the population were able to participate. The pathway from a postwar shortage-economy in which everything was lacking to a consumer society in which everything was coveted extended into the 1980s. This photo shows a fashionable female customer buying new shoes in a Hamburg shop. Photographer unknown.