Conclusion: Black Market Trading as a Radical Experience of a Free Market

Abstract

Werner Abelshauser once remarked, “German history since 1945 has been above all economic history.” According to Abelshauser, nothing “shaped the West German state more than its economic development.” The East German state, too, linked “its fate from the very beginning to the promise of economic success.” Prosperity became “one of the most important criteria of success in the East-West competition.” For the contemporary history of the two German states, economic prosperity played the role of a “vehicle” of national identification and of the state’s self-understanding. “The economic success of the early years,” following this interpretation, served as the “material basis for the rich consensus that made balancing the interests of social groups possible.”¹