ABSTRACT

In the late 1970s and early 1980s Norbert Reich, 1 Udo Reifner 2 and Günter Hörmann 3 discovered consumer credit legislation in Germany as a prominent field of research. Each Member State has its own pioneers, as documented in the series on Consumer Protection Legislation edited by Norbert Reich and published by van Nostrand Reynolds. 4 A significant number of the founding fathers of consumer credit dedicated their academic lives to this ever-growing field of consumer law. 5 The general discussion in legal scholarship at this time focussed on access to credit, opening the credit market to all consumers, and allowing consumers to use credit as part of their income in order to participate in consumer society. Consequently, much attention was also paid to combating opaque and overpriced credit agreements or agreements which left consumers in debt even after the good that had been bought using consumer credit (usually a car or similarly expensive good) had been repossessed. Whilst this is not the place to recount the history of consumer credit, 6 it is nevertheless important to emphasise that it took some time before the dark side of the consumer credit society and the potential negative consequences of credit became clear.