Politics at the Fairground: A transnational history of the Schueberfouer in the long 1960s

This thesis examines the Schueberfouer as a transnational site of popular culture during the long 1960s. Against the backdrop of Luxembourg's post-war reconstruction and its ambition to present itself as a European capital, the fair provides a unique lens for analysing how local, national, transregional, and transnational dynamics interacted within a single site. Drawing on municipal archives and digitised newspapers from 1945 to 1975, complemented by oral history interviews, the study reconstructs the fair's evolution through a longitudinal dataset of dataset of 1.910 unique fairground operations documented through 4.214 entries across thirty years and an integrated conceptual framework combining transnational popular culture, the culture of attractions, transnational cultural mediators and administrative autonomy.
The analysis identifies three approaches to transnationalism that shaped the fair’s trajectory: the post-war rebuilding of disrupted networks and circuits; the selective regulation of cross-border flows in the 1950s; and the contestation of the fair’s transnational dimension during the 1960s as national distinctiveness was asserted. Central to navigating these dynamics was the Commission de la Foire, whose administrative autonomy enabled pragmatic negotiation between municipal priorities, national regulations and the fair’s structural dependence on foreign operators. While transnational cooperation was indispensable to sustaining a competitive fairground, national interests continuously shaped which flows were restored, regulated or restricted. These institutional negotiations unfolded alongside transnational dynamics operating beyond administrative control, including technological innovations that transformed attractions, youth appropriation of international cultural influences, and intensifying urban spatial conflicts over the fairground's location.
By situating the Schueberfouer within broader transformations of the long 1960s, the thesis reveals how popular culture functioned as a politically contested site where national identity, administrative practice and transnational cultural dynamics were continuously negotiated. It demonstrates how transnational cultural flows functioned through both institutional mediation that shaped which ones were restored, restricted, or contested, and through dynamics operating beyond administrative control.