The world of yesterday

BERLIN – As World War II raged in Europe in the early 1940s, Stefan Zweig’s memoir Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers (The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European) was published by a German exile publisher in Stockholm. Zweig, full of sorrow, describes the “rupture of time” that brought the old Europe to an end in the fury of two terrible world wars. Are Europeans today undergoing another such rupture? Are we once again witnessing the disappearance of the old order – the only one that most of us have ever known? If so, it is an unspeakable loss. The old order guaranteed peace, security, and prosperity – only to Western Europe, initially, but then to the rest of the European continent (with the exception of the former Yugoslavia) after 1989. That happy time now increasingly looks like The World of Yesterday 2.0. It is worth recalling that America’s previous withdrawal from the continent created a fatal opening for radical ideologies and hateful propaganda. Under Hitler and the Nazis, extreme nationalists, glorifiers of violence and racism, enemies of demWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times