Travel for Everyone? Print
Tourism in the USA and Germany in the Twentieth Century

Panel at the Annual Conference of Historians of Germany, Dresden, Germany, October 02, 2008
Conveners: Heike Bungert (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster), Anke Ortlepp (GHI)
Report by Maren Möhring (Universität Zürich/Universität zu Köln)
Translated by Casey Sutcliffe (GHI)

This panel led by Heike Bungert and Anke Ortlepp asked from a comparative historical perspective to what extent the achievement of mass tourism in Germany and the USA can be understood as a process that democratized travel or that emphasized new distinctions and inequalities. As Bungert highlighted in her introduction, the panel, first of all, merged U.S. and German tourism research, a marginal field, particularly in historical studies. Second, Bungert advocated an approach combining economic, social, and cultural historical methods to examine the historical development and significance of this economic sector, which is the largest worldwide. The case studies on German health-resort tourism, the heritage tourism of the American South, air travel in the USA and all-inclusive package deals in the Federal Republic each focused on very different aspects of travel: the destination, the means of travel, or specific kinds of travel offers. All of the contributions investigated the categories of "class," "gender," and "ethnicity," and thus the central axes of social inequality, though to varying extents with diverging emphases. As a result, there was a basis for comparing the case studies.

WIEBKE KOLBE (Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte Hamburg) gave a concise historical overview of the quantitative and qualitative development of German coastal tourism in her paper, "Equalities and Inequalities on the Beach: German Seaside Resorts and their Guests from the German Empire to the Second World War." She showed that, although the number of visitors rose dramatically during this period, the guests still came primarily from the middle class, leading to a process of differentiation among the resorts as well as within individual spas, which, overall, grew less exclusive. Kolbe assigned only a minor role to "Strength through Joy" (Kraft-durch-Freude, KdF) tourism in transitioning to mass tourism, but she did address the (often hostile) reaction of resorts toward this new group of vacationers. Drastic forms of exclusion that had been developed long before 1933 were limited to Jewish guests, who-as Frank Bajohr has recently shown-were considered "undesirable" at many resorts. Concerning the inequality of the sexes, Kolbe demonstrated that family vacations, which were becoming more widespread at the end of the nineteenth century, perpetuated gender roles on holiday as well, particularly for women who traveled without servants. Housework and childcare structured their vacations. On the other hand, Kolbe asserted that an equalization did occur in swimwear in the 1920s as men's and women's suits grew more similar. Yet the question of whether the similar swimwear fashions can really be understood as a convergence of the sexes remained open. It seemed that they might need to be interpreted as a shift of gender-specific norms from clothing to the body (and thus, perhaps, even as a heightened orientation to feminine and masculine beauty norms).

In his presentation, geographer STEVEN HOELSCHER (University of Texas Austin) addressed "Tourism Inequality in White and Black: Landscapes of Race in the American South." He turned to tourism providers, asking about the (unequal) conditions and effects of production of tourist landscapes. Using Natchez, Mississippi, as an example, Hoelscher looked into the invention and marketing of a specific "white pillar past" for the Southern states, thus pointing to the significance of the (ruling) architecture for tourist landscapes. Above all, it was white upper-class women leading tours through their homes who transformed heritage tourism into an extremely lucrative source of income. Their narratives, which revolve around family genealogies, architectural style and furnishings, came under severe criticism during the civil rights movement if not before. In the last several years, they have led to counternarratives and the establishment of other sites of memory that oppose the one-sided "white pillar past" with the history of slavery. Although Hoelscher persuasively highlighted the entanglement of narration and space (not only) in heritage tourism, the question of the effectiveness of the opposing stories and, above all, their relationship to one another, remained open. He did not discuss models of coexistence, overlapping and suppression, which also would have been of interest for corresponding interpretations of other tourist locations.

In her presentation, "Democracy with Wings? Air Travel in Postwar America," ANKE ORTLEPP (German Historical Institute, Washington, DC) emphasized the advance in mobility that airplanes undoubtedly brought to an increasing part of the population. However, she perceived a democratization of flying only from the 1970s. Incisively, Ortlepp discussed the question of status-specific inequality in light of the cabin classes introduced in 1948. The division of airplane cabins into different tariff and service areas primarily served to widen the customer base. Airlines used advertising aimed especially at women and African Americans to find new customer groups beyond white businessmen. Although African-American travelers were not segregated in the airplane itself, they were confronted with segregated service areas at airports in the American South. These had first been implemented in part as a reaction to increasing numbers in this group of travelers. Even though air travel went from being an elite to a mass means of transportation in the 1960s, the differentiation within it grew, and the patterns of use, too, became more distinct based on gender, social status, and ethnicity.

CHRISTOPHER KOPPER (Universität Bielefeld) directed his presentation, "Travel as a Product: Reflections on a History of All-Inclusive Travel in Postwar Germany," less toward this triad of structural inequalities. Rather, he focused on the question of why all-inclusive travel deals became so popular in the tourist industry in the 1950s and 1960s. However, he, too, attributed little significance to KdF tourism as a precursor of mass tourism. More than the other presenters, Kopper addressed economic aspects of travel such as the low transaction costs of an all-inclusive trip, which, together with sociocultural factors-like the elimination of the (potentially critical) examination of women traveling alone or of unmarried couples when booking rooms-made all-inclusive trips attractive. Moreover, Kopper pointed out the inherent promise this form of travel made to render consumption possible for everyone, which he illustrated with the example of Neckermann.

HARTMUT BERGHOFF (GHI Washington/Universität Göttingen) and HASSO SPODE (Freie Universität Berlin) commented on the presentations afterward, leading to the (unfortunately only brief) concluding discussion. Berghoff asked whether the KdF trips did, indeed, play a significant role in the rise of mass tourism-even if only as a form of virtual consumption that made vacation appear to be an attainable goal for everyone. In this context, he problematized the term "mass," which had remained largely unchallenged in considerations of mass tourism. In the concluding discussion, Till Manning of the Universität Göttingen suggested that "mass" be defined not so much quantitatively as qualitatively on the basis of contemporary perceptions, which, after all, first stimulated the desire for distinction.
In addition, Berghoff and Spode both criticized the ethical impetus that, in their opinion, had formed a basis for discussion in Hoelscher's presentation, emphasizing that the tourist industry is not an agency of historical enlightenment but serves a certain demand. Valid as this objection may be, Hoelscher's method of highlighting the competing demands made on a particular (tourist) locale and the embedded, opposing memories associated with it shows promise. Particularly, it allows us to consider the aesthetics of production in the tourist industry (not only in heritage tourism) in more depth, to prevent homogenizing interpretations of tourist sites, and, overall, to reflect much more and more systematically on the dimension of space in tourism research. After all, whether one investigates the separated women's and men's baths at the Baltic Sea, the segregated service areas at airports in the American South, or the first-class passengers at the front of the plane, social inequalities, as well as the struggle against them, are always reflected spatially, as all of these case studies showed. In this context, the perspective of body history that has sometimes been applied proved to be interesting. It could productively expand tourism research and strengthen its oral history dimension. The tightly packed seats in the tourist class and the difference in meal quality on board that Ortlepp discussed, as well as the convergence of men's and women's swimwear in the 1920s that Kolbe pointed out, suggest possibilities for such a body-history approach. It would allow us to analyze social (in)equalities and attempts at distinction more intensively by examining, for example, different habits.

The comparison of the two countries remained fragmentary on this panel as the topics and time periods were too disparate for that. Nevertheless, it was striking that the presentations on U.S. history dealt much more extensively with the categories or race or ethnicity, whereas those on tourism in Germany particularly emphasized class and status-specific differences. This, of course, reflects the diverging research foci of (not only) tourism history in the U.S. and the Federal Republic of Germany. Even though the combination or overlap of these structural categories was occasionally touched upon, a number of new research desiderata could be ascertained. In the German context, it would be fruitful to extend the question of ethnically or religiously differentiated patterns of tourist consumption not only to Jews, as Kolbe has persuasively done, but also to other "minorities." Ortlepp briefly mentioned the reasonably priced trips to one's country of origin that some U.S. airlines introduced specifically for Puerto Rican migrants, thus pointing to the overlap of race and class. Considering these not well-researched dimensions of tourism history, we also need to inquire into the relationship between individual and mass tourism and analyze the connection between mass tourism and mass migration. In this way, the similarities, differences, and, above all, interactions of the two central types of mobility in the twentieth century can be explored.

Overview of the Panel:
Wiebke Kolbe (Bielefeld): Equalities and Inequalities on the Beach: German Seaside Resorts and their Guests from the German Empire to the Second World War
Steven Hoelscher (Austin): Tourism Inequality in White and Black: Landscapes of Race in the American South
Anke Ortlepp (Washington): Democracy with Wings? Air Travel in Postwar America
Christopher Kopper (Bielefeld): Travel as a Product: Reflections on a History of All-Inclusive Travel in Postwar Germany
Hartmut Berghoff (Göttingen, Washington) / Hasso Spode (Berlin): Comments

Citation
Tagungsbericht HT 2008: Reisen für Alle? Tourismus in den USA und Deutschland im 20. Jahrhundert. 30.09.2008-03.10.2008, Dresden. In: H-Soz-u-Kult, 24.10.2008, <http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/tagungsberichte/id=2303>.
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