Today one of the great German traditional annual events takes place for what is probably the last time: the start of the Sommerschlußverkauf (summer sales).
This institution is the result of a law (the Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerbs – the law prohibiting unfair competition) passed in June 1909 in which the government determined that sales were Bad Things which needed to be completely regulated in order to protect customers from the retail industry, which would otherwise totally confuse them by offering cheap goods at any time of the year, thus undermining the customer’s understanding of what the correct price is. The law determined that the consumer would be least confused by having sales on the last Monday of July and January each year, when textiles and sports articles could be offered at reduced prices for exactly 12 days – price reductions of other types of goods at any time were strictly forbidden. (There was another law passed in 1933, the Rabbatgesetz (the discount law), which limited the maximum price reduction on goods not offered in the sales to 3%)
Through the regulated summer sale (and similarly, in winter, the winter sale) the customer has long benefited by being able to stock up with winter coats and woolly underwear as early as August each year. The small problem that it was then impossible to buy a t-shirt or sandals from mid-summer onwards was clearly outweighed by the advantage of being able to buy one’s winter boots before the first snow hits the streets in December.
The current “red-green” government coalition, whose main purpose is to annoy the Pentagon by criticizing the George Bush Activity Program for young Americans in Iraq, has decided that life has become too predicable for the solid German citizens and that a structural reform is required to wake them up. Not wishing to be accused of merely tinkering with irrelevant details, they have decided to go to the heart of the matter and revoke the Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb.
This is a great pity – not only because confusion will break out, about the correct time to buy winter clothing, but a whole organisation – The Zentrale zur Bekämpfung unlauteren Wettbewerbs e.V. - will shortly loose its central reason for existence. This worthy organization, founded on 17.07.1912 by a group of dedicated piano-manufacturers, survived the difficult times of the last century with a short break in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, only to be threatened shortly before its hundredth anniversary by the current government.