The scales

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The Libra was an association of German industrialists who were supposed to use campaigns to influence the opinion of the population and of the companies organized in the Federation of German Industry in favor of the social market economy . The association existed from 1952 to 1965.

founding

The idea of ​​the “scales” arose in the environment of the Catholic entrepreneurs . In 1952 a letter was sent, which u. a. the signature of the Minister of Economics Ludwig Erhard , to German entrepreneurs, with the request to found an initiative to promote the market economy. The result was the founding of the registered association “ Die WAAGE. Community to promote social equilibrium ”, which was initially endowed with a budget of approx. 2 million DM.

Business support

The scale was supported by managers and entrepreneurs from well-known companies in Germany, especially the chemical groups Bayer , BASF and Hoechst . In addition, members of the entrepreneurs were Philipp F. Reemtsma , Wolfgang Ritter, owner of Bremer cigarette factory Martin Brinkmann GmbH , Fritz Burgbacher , the general director of Rheinische Energie AG and Alphons Horten , managing partner of the firm J. Weck & Co . Franz Greiss, the managing director of the Cologne-based Glanzstoff-Courtaulds AG Cologne, was the first chairman of the balance. Mining and heavy industry entrepreneurs, however, were hardly represented.

Goals and procedures

The Libra set itself the long-term task of making the social market economy in Germany more popular both in the population and in the economy. For the purposes of the initiative, advertisements were placed in newspapers, films were shot for the pre-program and posters were designed. In these media, some of which are quite modern for the time, the market economy should be explained to the population and prejudices broken down. The tenor of the campaign was: "The social market economy benefits everyone".

"Die Waage" used the services of the Frankfurt advertising agency "Gesellschaft für Gemeinschaftswerbung" (GfG), founded in 1951 by Hanns W. Brose . Another important tool was the collaboration with survey institutes such as Allensbach and Emnid , which provided demoscopic data for the creation and alignment of the advertising campaigns.

According to political scientists, the initiative was initially about maintaining the bourgeois majority in the elections to the Bundestag in 1953. The association organized three campaigns for this. In these, 17 different advertising motifs were published in up to 460 press organs with a total circulation of over 12 million copies each, as well as posters and short advertising films shown in cinemas. The total cost was 3.78 million DM, of which just under 3 million were for the advertisements.

criticism

Above all, the SPD and the German trade union federation saw themselves as the target of the campaign, since the task was to promote Ludwig Erhard's politics. Due to the method, the use of modern media and survey tools, the SPD and DGB remained largely on the defensive. Political scientists like Wilhelm Hennis saw a loss of the political in the transfer of consumer goods marketing and polling methods to politics.

effect

According to Rudolf Speth, “Die Waage” contributed to anchoring the idea of ​​the social market economy as an ideology that harmonizes conflicting interests and thus helped to create a founding myth for the population of the Federal Republic of Germany. It should therefore be seen as the prototype of the New Social Market Economy initiative founded in October 2000 .

literature

  • Franz Greiß: Erhard's social market economy and DIE WAAGE , in: Gerhard Schröder u. a. (Ed.): Ludwig Erhard - Contributions to his political biography , Frankfurt a. M., Berlin, Vienna 1972, pp. 89-110
  • Dirk Schindelbeck , Volker Ilgen: "Have something, do something!" Advertising for the social market economy , Darmstadt 1999
  • Ralf Ptak : From Ordoliberalism to the Social Market Economy. Stations of neoliberalism in Germany , VS-Verlag Opladen 2004, ISBN 3-8100-4111-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Speth: The political strategies , p. 14
  2. ↑ Joachim Meißner: hot words, cold war ; Ptak: From Ordoliberalism to Social Market Economy , p. 281
  3. ↑ Schindelbeck, Ilgen: Haste something, do something! , Pages 112, 270 and 272, quoted from Ptak: Vom Ordoliberalismus zur Sozialen Marktwirtschaft , p. 281
  4. ↑ Speth: The political strategies , p. 15.
  5. ↑ Speth: The political strategies , pp. 14-16.