Casino Gambling in the Federal Republic of Germany (1949-2020): A History of Emotions

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Cornelius Torp
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 526389960

The research project explores the history of gambling in the casinos and gambling halls of the Federal Republic of Germany since the mid-twentieth century. After the Second World War, casino gambling witnessed a considerable push for deregulation and commercialisation but, beginning in the 1980s, also came under psycho-medical criticism, which established ‘pathological gambling’ as a mental disorder. The project’s chronological frame starts in 1949, with the first wave of casino foundings, and it ends in the year 2020 when Covid 19 accelerated the long-emerging trend of casino gambling moving online. Whilst keeping the transnational flow of capital, actors and concepts in view, the project’s regional focus is on the Federal Republic of Germany. Using this case study, the project traces how casino gambling gained wide social acceptance in the 20th century as a leisure activity, well beyond world-famous casino cities like Las Vegas and Macau. It therefore makes an important contribution to the barely researched history of gambling, bringing together several key issues of contemporary history such as consumerism, risk, addiction, therapeutical cultures, and the state’s ambivalent role from setting norms to pursuing fiscal interests. The project approaches the history of casino gambling as a history of emotions. This perspective is ideally suited to analyse the interrelation of the economic, societal and medical developments that are central to the history of gambling. In this context, emotions appear as resources to be monetised, experienced and treated. The project will examine how emotions are managed along these three central lines of approach: first, it asks how emotions were assessed within the economic thinking of casino operators and how casinos were designed as a commercially usable site of different emotions. Secondly, it investigates the motives that led individuals to spend their leisure time in casinos and gambling halls and whether gambling can be understood as a practice through which certain emotions could be experienced. Third, it tracks the development of so-called gambling addiction as a scientifically defined disorder and the establishment of therapeutic treatment methods designed to render ‘pathological gambling’ manageable. The project’s goal is to uncover the historical processes and mechanisms that have made casino gambling the lucrative economical sector, mainstream leisure activity and psycho-therapeutic problem that it is today. It aims to show the historical development of a certain emotional style within the leisure and consumer society, in which the modification of emotions became the key to economic success, personal happiness and mental health.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Netherlands, United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Sytze F. Kingma; Privatdozentin Dr. Gerda Reith