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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

202246

Bombing beyond democracy

remembering the ruins of Europe

Birthe Hoffmann

pp. 213-226

Abstract

The Second World War is often seen as a victory for democracy, but at the same time represents the final bankruptcy of those humanistic ideas that seemed so deeply rooted in European tradition. The idea of a European community of democratic civil institutions is based on the fact that the Second World War was the peak — or rather the "point zero" — in the history of mutual destruction. Never in the history of Europe had so many Europeans been killed, never had so many civilians become the victims of war and totalitarian regimes. And by 1945, a very large part of Europe, from London to the Ural, from Northern Germany to Athens and Naples, was literally in ruins, leaving the smell of death hanging over the former cities, their inhabitants being thrown back to a kind of pre-historic existence. One can get a pretty good impression of this situation by reading Hans Magnus Enzensberger's anthology Europa in Trümmern (1990), which gathers accounts of the state of Europe from 1944 to 1948, written by journalists and authors most of whom had not themselves been affected by the destructions, and who therefore looked upon the ruins from the perspective of an outsider. Whether reporting from a small Dutch Town like Nijmengen or from the city of Warsaw, they tried to imagine the life and appearance of these cities with their historic centres and proud inhabitants before they had been turned into rubble and lunar landscapes.

Publication details

Published in:

K Bruun Lars, Srensen Gert, Lammers Karl Christian, Sørensen Gert (2013) European self-reflection between politics and religion: the crisis of Europe in the twentieth century. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Pages: 213-226

DOI: 10.1057/9781137315113_11

Full citation:

Hoffmann Birthe (2013) „Bombing beyond democracy: remembering the ruins of Europe“, In: L. K Bruun, G. Srensen, K. Lammers & G. Sørensen (eds.), European self-reflection between politics and religion, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 213–226.