Co-operatives

Der Konsum leads two lives, and this list needs the less obvious one. In ordinary German it is consumption, often with a disapproving edge: der Konsum von Alkohol, die Konsumgesellschaft. But for generations it was also a shop. The consumer co-operatives that working families founded in the nineteenth century ran their own grocery stores, and people simply said they were going zum Konsum. In the GDR the consumer co-operatives kept the name, and their shops were known everywhere as der Konsum, a usage many eastern Germans still recognise. That is why die Konsumgenossenschaft is not a co-operative that consumes anything. It is one whose members are the customers of its own shop, buying together so that the margin comes back to them rather than going to an outside owner.