"Advertising in the German-Zionist Press in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century. A Case Study"
Résumé
Olivier Baisez looks into the kinds of consumer goods advertised in the widely circulated Zionist weekly Jüdische Rundschau in the first decades of the twentieth century, and he asks whether a specific German Zionist consumption regime can be inferred from this marketing. Recording developments in this advertising over time, he first shows how Palestine became part of the German Zionists’ consumer culture and consumption practices. Beyond that, the advertisements suggest to Baisez the existence of a virtual world of consumption that reflected the kind of lifestyle that readers were supposed to desire. The author then turns to the communal function of advertisements and other notices in the Jüdische Rundschau, highlighting the deep social embeddedness of Zionists in German Jewish society’s ways of life. Finally, Baisez offers a typology of advertisements and considers Zionist consumer ethics.