Delicatessen

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Delicatessen stores ( Delikat for short ; colloquially Deli or Freß-Ex ) were retail stores for “high demand” groceries in the GDR .

history

Delicate Argenta chocolate in the GDR Museum Pirna

The first delicatessen shops opened in 1966. From 1978 there was an expansion from 109 to 250 stores. In colloquial language they were sometimes called deli or, in reference to the exquisite shops, Fress-Ex .

In range were mainly food and beverages ( delicacies ), mostly from GDR production, including export to the end of the GDR and western items and other goods often available, partly in West presentation, brands . These products were often manufactured in the GDR in the form of permission production.

The price level of most goods was well above that of normal stores. A quality advantage, however, was not necessarily associated with it. Higher prices and more elaborately designed packaging suggested higher quality. However, the increasing range of the "Delikat" was due to the fact that numerous products disappeared from normal trade, probably in order to undermine the politically desired price stability for food, to reduce the increasing circulation of money and thus ultimately to disguise creeping inflation. From 1974 to 1989 the average prices in the entire retail sector rose by almost three percent annually.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Huebner : Reforms in the GDR in the sixties. Consumption and Social Policy . In: Christoph Boyer (ed.): Socialist economic reforms. Czechoslovakia and GDR in comparison (= studies on European legal history, vol. 210). Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-465-04005-8 , pp. 501-539, here p. 527.
  2. ^ Resolution of the Politburo of the SED of October 12, 1977, quoted in: Burghard Ciesla : A self-sufficient consumer society? In: Thomas Lindenberger (Ed.): Rule and Eigen-Sinn in the dictatorship. Studies on the social history of the GDR Böhlau, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-412-13598-4 , pp. 205–234, here p. 208.
  3. ↑ Annette Kaminsky: Inequality in the Soviet Zone / GDR using the example of consumption . In: Lothar Mertens (ed.): Social inequality in the GDR: On a taboo structural feature of the SED dictatorship. Berlin 2002, ISBN 978-3-428-10523-6 , pp. 57-79.
  4. ↑ André Steiner: From plan to plan. An economic history of the GDR . Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2007, ISBN 978-3-89331-777-6 , p. 217.

Web links

Commons : Delicatessen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files