The photograph shows a customer’s hand removing egg cartons from a refrigerated supermarket shelf; in the foreground stands a wire shopping cart already containing a package of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and other groceries. The photograph was taken in September 1955 in a West Berlin supermarket and documents the then still novel self-service principle modeled on the American example. The well-stocked refrigerated shelf with eggs and packaged dairy products, along with American branded goods in the shopping cart, symbolize the beginning economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder) and the consumer standard in the western part of the city. West Berlin deliberately fulfilled the function of a “showcase of the West” during this period: the materially visible prosperity was intended to underscore the contrast to the scarcity economy in the Soviet-controlled eastern part of Berlin and to serve as a political signal in the Cold War.