At the checkout of a Berlin supermarket, a customer places packaged groceries—including American brand products such as “Sunshine Hi Ho” crackers and Corn Flakes—on the register counter, while a cashier in a white apron operates the mechanical cash register. The scene conveys a shopping experience modeled on the American example: self-service, branded goods, and a modern checkout system represented in mid-1950s West Berlin a new consumer model. In the background, well-stocked shelves are visible, documenting the variety of goods and supply security. The image stands emblematically for West Berlin’s role as the “showcase of the West”: the supermarket as a site of consumption and the abundance of merchandise were meant to make visible the contrast to the shortage economy in the East. Such photographs served consciously in the context of the Cold War as propaganda media for the Western economic model.