Locals as Migrants in German Unification and Acculturation: How Nostalgia Enchants the Former East

Consumer acculturation is commonly understood as a process of physical movement and the resulting adaptation to the cultural environment in one country by persons from another country (Peñaloza 1994). However, acculturation processes may take place even without migration. This project analyses such consumer acculturation instantiated in the specific institutional context of Germany’s political unification in 1989. With the fall of the wall, consumers in former East-Germany were—metaphorically—‘being crossed by the border’ becoming local migrants exposed to Western consumer culture and an inescapable process of cultural learning and adaptation. This particular acculturation process is intertwined with a specific form of nostalgia. Emically glossed by the term ‘Ostalgie’—a combination of Ost (east) and Nostalgie (nostalgia); or Eastalgia— we witness an increasing nostalgic revival of East-German brands and consumptionscapes. Although East-Germans considered their products of low quality as well as unattractive back then and aspired Western brands as the ‘real things’ (Veenis 1999), today, many of these previously disliked commodities are cherished.