Storm on a Pie Chart

Longtime German infographics company Globus has just re-released an entertaining pie-chart graphic from 1962 which harks back to the day when travelling outside your home country for a vacation was rather a foreign idea, but the economic miracle had creating this new option for middle-income Germans.

The artwork shows a German man in the inevitable Roman sandals smirking on a lounger with a Chianti wickerwork bottle next to him (Italy was the place Germans adored visiting). The graph says: "Per 100 adults in West Germany, 32 plan a holiday abroad this year," and offers a breakdown of why: better weather (8%); to meet foreigners (8%); see foreign sights (4%); it's cheaper (4%); get away from the same-old (4%); other (4%). The source of the survey data is not given.

-- dpa-infografik GmbH

Look closely for what has happened to the rest of the pie: it has vanished into a storm-cloud. Probably an allusion to the summer thunderstorms enjoyed by the stay-at-homes. Incomplete pies are not so common in infographics, but the artist took this liberty because pies were and still are common and familiar in German information visualization.

The art was released in 1962 with the ironic strapline: "Every third adult German wants to shake the dust of West Germany from their feet in the 1962 holiday season. But why? Are the attractions of Germany really used up? (Jeder dritte erwachsene Deutsche will im Urlaubsjahr 1962 den Staub der Bundesrepublik von seinen Füßen schütteln. Warum? Sind die Schönheiten Deutschlands schon allzu bekannt?)

A subtext that is not mentioned: East Germans were mostly forbidden to travel abroad. The Berlin Wall had just gone up. In later years they were able to visit Hungary and the Black Sea.