"Distinguirt, fashionabel, splendid"

Florian Knotz
2014 unpublished
Using various extensive analyses, this Master Thesis deals with multiple aspects of consumption and advertising in the years before and during World War I. The corpus of sources consists of advertisements placed in three Viennese magazines (Allgemeine Sport-Zeitung, Sport & Salon, Wiener Salonblatt). Within the period of 1900 to 1918, 99 issues of those magazines and a total of 5.199 advertisements were analysed. The results are presented in two blocks. Within the quantitative block four
more » ... are examined: portion of advertisements, advertised groups of consumer goods, illustration of advertisements and strategies of advertising. Stressing mainly linguistic characteristics of the advertisements, the second block deals with detailed analyses regarding three aspects: target audience (gender, high society [Gehobene Gesellschaft], health), generated aura of the products (foreign countries, sports, legitimation of the product, brands) and effects of World War I on language and subjects of advertisements. The focal point throughout these analyses is the potential target audience, the high society, i.e. a socially and/or financially privileged class within the Habsburgermonarchie, the main goal is to approach the subject of elite consumption before and during World War I. As a result, advertisements within magazines seemed to be tolerated by the high society. The tone of the studied advertisements can be described as rational, businesslike and sober, occasionally even obedient and servile. Considering the advertised consumer goods it occurs that consumer needs have already been developed, the primary objective of advertisements was therefore rather to inform, not to create new needs. The outbreak of World War I has only marginable impacts on tone or range of consumer goods throughout the analyzed advertisements. Summing up, elite consumption in the latter stages of the Habsburgermonarchie can be characterized as a well established field, in the social as well as in the consumptive order the roles were set. F [...]
doi:10.25365/thesis.34976 fatcat:lc4txjf6f5cavdi4lrukxxe4jm