A in/familiaridade [un/homeliness] do cosmopolitismo do pós-guerra: O caso da alemanha ocidental

During the first fifteen years after the Second World War, a collective myth emerged about West German society and its place in history. At the center of this myth was a belief that the consumption and export of industrial commodities distanced and redeemed West Germany from the Nazi past and placed the country squarely within the present of an evolving postwar “West” that imagined itself as cosmopolitan.

The main protagonists of this mythic story of postwar cosmopolitanism were not humans but the commodities themselves. These commodities were miraculously born out of the impersonal power of machines fed by human creativity and travelled around the world to connect people across national boundaries, creating a peaceful globalized “community” of modern consumers. The vision of capitalist modernity underlying this myth defined itself as both timeless and radically new. In this context postwar cosmopolitan aesthetics contributed to a perception of consumer modernity that effectively tore it out of concrete historical contexts.

The aftermath of the Second World War was not a postcolonial moment, yet it generated myths, including stories about travelling and homecoming, that, consciously or unconsciously, still shape much of our thinking. The attraction of modern cosmopolitanism as a political imaginary in West Germany consisted to a considerable extent in its capacity to obscure its own history and to convey visual and narrative worlds that felt homely because they both contained and concealed the imprints of a violent past and present within themselves.