The nighttime photograph shows a busy West Berlin main street around 1955, whose buildings on both sides are characterized by a dense succession of glowing neon signs and brightly lit shop windows. In the foreground, traffic crowds the street—including a characteristic VW van of the early Federal Republic—while the chains of street lights extend far into the depth of the image. The profusion of commercial neon advertising points to West Berlin’s rapidly advancing economic recovery in the spirit of the economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder). Deliberately staged as a counterimage to the bleak appearance of East Berlin, this nighttime scene embodies the concept of West Berlin as the “showcase of the West”: consumption, mobility, and urban vitality were meant to demonstrate the superiority of the Western way of life during the Cold War.