GERMAN TOYS

A friend is in Germany right now and I wish I could have gone with him. I yearn to see real traditional architecture, even if it exists mostly in out-of-the-way rural spots or in touristy pockets like the village above. A commenter has some interesting things to say about this. 

If I was there I'd hit the toy stores first. I want to see the latest designs in wooden blocks.

I also want to see the latest Lego designs. Lego's a Danish company but I'm told that German stores are full of Lego toys that you can't get in America.

Here's (above) a Lego train.

And here's (above) a prototype steampunk locomotive. The design doesn't work but I'm glad the company experiments like this.

 Here's a great wolf toy designed in the North European style for the Disney film, "Pinnochio." It's by Gustaf Tenggren who was a Swedish American steeped in the Old World sensibility.

 German traditional costumes are wonderful! Here's some Tyrolean costumes with the distinctive wide-brimmed Tyrolean hat.

Good Lord! Is it possible that cowboy hats of the American West originated in Germany or Austria?

 We all know that a lot of American Christmas traditions started in Germany, but it's less well known that the same goes for Halloween. When I was a kid the stores were full of German Halloween dye-cuts like the one above. Wow! High art for a price that kids could afford!

Here in California there are stores that sell Halloween items all year 'round. I wonder if that exists in Germany?

German design (above) still influences Halloween in the U.S.

Boy, that country loves its witches!

I wonder if posters of traditional architecture are for sale over there?

There must be lots of old photos that would make interesting posters.

Pictures like this Austrian interior (above) would make great posters, too. Does anybody sell posters like this?

HOW GERMANY GOT OUT OF THE DEPRESSION

How about a serious post for a change?

If I were an economist the area I'd focus on would be the quest for a market driven method of providing full employment, which I define as voluntary employment at a living wage for everybody who is willing and able to work. That doesn't sound like it would be too difficult to achieve but, believe it or not, no modern economic system, including our own, has ever pulled it off. Even communist countries which call themselves "workers' states" haven't been able to do it. There's plenty of unemployment in those countries, they just don't report it.

Oddly enough, the only country which is widely believed to have achieved it was Germany in the 1930s. But is that true? And if it is true, how did they manage to do it? How did they get out of the Depression so quickly and then create full employment besides? I know nothing about economics, but I just read a book on the subject, and I'll pass along the opinions of the author.

The book is "The Nazi Economic Recovery 1932-1938" by R. J. Overy (1982). Overy believes the recovery was a fake. Unemployed people were simply drafted into The Labor Service, where they were forced to work for an extremely low wage, usually on farms. Once they were in the service they weren't classified as unemployed anymore. According to Overy the real German economic miracle occurred in the 50s, and had nothing to do with Nazi policy.

The Nazis were said by some to be Keynesians because they also believed in big government spending to handle unemployment. The author, who's a Keynesian himself, was revolted by the idea. He says Keynes strongly believed that big government spending had to be accompanied by low taxes. The Nazis believed in high taxes. They didn't want consumers to spend money on things, they wanted them to save their money in banks where the Nazi's could make use of it.

Apparently the Nazis inherited what today we might call a "progressive" agenda from the Wiemar Republic. In Wiemar the government owned or controlled some big industries and when the Nazis took over they simply amplified that policy, gradually expanding it til even small business came under their control.

Add that to fact that Germany didn't try to export or import much during this period and was concerned mainly with self sufficiency wherever possible. Overy says this was disastrous for the country because it cut them off from foreign competition which, if they had engaged in it, would have forced the country to increase efficiency and to modernize. No wonder wartime Germany used slave labor. They were too inefficient to produce enough goods by normal methods.

Overy's book left me feeling sad for the Germans. They had a cruel leadership to be sure, but they were also an energetic, educated people handicapped by a system that just didn't work.