WWhen people say one thing but do another, you observe their behavior. For 35 years the world looked at a German village in the Palatinate. Its 21,000 inhabitants became proxies for 80 million. The reason: their mediocrity. You notice it when you drive into town from the nearby motorway exit. The path leads inconspicuously through a row of houses with writer’s street names, past a drugstore and a supermarket. In the town center, church towers rise above the 1960s and 1970s economic miracle concrete and medieval half-timbered houses. In the middle is a concrete block with the number 1, the town hall. Welcome to Germany’s most representative village: Hassloch.
In the 1980s, it was established that the population represented a kind of miniature Germany: there were as many rich and poor, young and old, men and women as the country average. That is why the consumer research company GfK – which now calls itself “Growth from Knowledge” – made the people from Hassloch the subjects of their study of German purchasing behavior. But on January 1, 2022, this open-air laboratory experiment ended abruptly – following the large village had been the nation’s taster for three decades.
Next to the kebab shop in the village center, the carpenter’s apprentice Leon Hoffmann stops and drags on his cigarette. For him, the eighteen-year-old, there were basically only two constants in life: GfK and Angela Merkel. Always there, now gone. “The great thing was that there were products that weren’t available anywhere else. That’s why a colleague from the vocational school is always at our Edeka.” Companies like Wrigley, Ferrero and Coca-Cola tested their new products in Haßloch. What was successful here often found its way onto the shelves of the rest of the country.
For the (average) mayor of Hassloch, community life goes on.
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Bild: Ilkay Karakurt
Nevertheless, life here remains average
Specially produced television spots, which were fed into the cable network from a local television studio, ran for this purpose. Not all of the six large supermarkets in the village took part, but many did. And not all Hasslochers, probably around three thousand households, GfK kept a low profile. In selected living rooms there was a TV box that registered what the residents were watching. A magazine with separate advertised the test products. A GfK card collected and transmitted data with every purchase: who bought what, in what size, in what quantity. A system à la Payback, just before it existed. Data worth its weight in gold. And in return, participants might exchange their points for prizes.
Mayor Tobias Meyer sits in the town hall across from the kebab shop, the concrete block. The name Meyer is the sixth most common surname in Germany. “I actually have too many children to be average,” he says, four sons. “If the majority says we’ll vote for Meyer, then I might be an average mayor,” says the CDU man with a laugh. They were surprised in town by the decision to stop consumer research – but life goes on, says Meyer, not only: “The mysticism is lost. But the Hasslochers remain in their averageness.”
A surprising ending
In the Lidl next door, an employee sorts bananas from Colombia into the baskets for 1.09 euros per kilo. “Yes, we used to be a test market. But I’m not allowed to tell you anything regarding it.” The boss doesn’t want to either. Perhaps a remnant of mysticism must be preserved.
