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I worked in the library, where my knowledge of languages was useful, and styled and improved publicity releases – certainly not a glorious occupation, I readily concede, but at least one that seemed to suit me better than pushing a bayonet into the entrails of a Russian peasant.
the German people, a disciplined folk, did not know what to do with their freedom and already looked impatiently toward those who were to take it from them.
I am convinced that when the physical appearance of a man becomes familiar, he is unconsciously tempted to live like – to use Werfel’s title – a “Mirror-man” of his own ego; to assume with each and every gesture a particular manner, and with this external alteration cordiality, freedom and carefreeness of the inner self are usually effaced.
Teachers lead round-cheeked children through the galleries, art comissars explained Rembrandt and Titian to farmers who would listen somewhat embarrassedly and raise their eyes timidly under the heavy lids when some detail was pointed out. Here also, like everywhere there was a slight ludicrousness in this honest and well-meant attempt to elevate the “people” overnight from illiteracy to an understanding of Beethoven and Vermeer; but this endeavor, on the one hand to make the highest values intelligible at the first attempt, and, on the other, to understand them, tried the patience of both
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I thought forebodingly of Shakespeare’s words: “So foul a sky clears not without a storm.”
Before 1914 the earth had belonged to all. People went where they wished and stayed as long as they pleased. There were no permits, no visas, and it always gives me pleasure to astonish the young by telling them that before 1914 I traveled from Europe to India and to America without passport and without ever having seen one.
One embarked and alighted without questioning or being questioned, one did not have to fill out a single one of the many papers which are required today. The frontiers which, with their customs officers, police and militia, have become wire barriers thanks to the pathological suspicion of everybody against everybody else, were nothing but symbolic lines which one crossed with as little thought as one crosses the Meridian of Greenwich.
The humiliations which once had been devised with criminals alone in mind now were imposed upon the traveler, before and during every journey. There had to be photographs from right and left, in profile and full face, one’s hair had to be cropped sufficiently to make the ears visible; fingerprints were taken, at first only the thumb but later all ten fingers; furthermore, certificates of health, of vaccination, police certificates of good standing, had to be shown; letters of recommendation were required, invitations to visit a country had to be procured; they asked for the addresses of
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