Defining Alcohol Problems as a Repressive Mechanism: Its Formative Phase in Imperial Germany and Its Strength Today

Abstract

In Germany, in the takeoff years of industrialization, judgments about drinking, drunkenness, and drunken comportment changed drastically. While for centuries drunkenness had been seen as the transitory effect of too much drinking, it now was perceived as a sign of moral weakness which afflicted most strongly the working class. Naming someone a drunkard, then, was as much a label for denouncement as for a sickness, which since then has been called alcoholism. It can be shown that structurally similar processes are in use in today's debate over the changing drinking habits of women in West Germany.