Europe is still Europe and Culture is at its Heart
Post-Industrial Europe: Much has changed but its center is still culture.
I have been traveling to Europe for the past 20 years, almost always on business. For years, the same impression would dawn on me as soon as I arrived—that I was no longer home but in a distinctly different place. In part, it was the presence of history—the ancient cathedrals, the grand opera houses and museums and the scars and remnants of the great wars. All this combined with the polyglot languages and distinctly European fashions to create for me, and most other Americans, the feeling of a different world. Years ago that impression was reinforced by the need to visit the Bureau de Change each time I crossed a border and the greater sense of distance created by the more primitive telephone technology of an earlier era.
Today, so much has changed for Americans, like me, who visit Europe regularly. With intra-European airfares declining, going country to country today is much more like traveling state to state within the US. The Euro and the ATM machine have eliminated the need for steady trips to the Bureau de Change. To the dismay of many Americans, global business has put a Starbucks next to the Brandenburg Gate and a McDonald’s almost everywhere, making Europe look a little less European, at least on the surface. And with the internet and mobile phones, the psychological distance from home is so much less than it was 20 years ago.
Through all of this transformation, Europe has still retained a particularly European feel that goes beyond the presence of the cathedrals and castles. What is this European feel? The answer is culture. The defining characteristic of European identity is the imprint of a distinct European culture on every endeavor, even as American fast food outlets infiltrate ever deeper into European cities and the European pace and lifestyle becomes more Americanized each day.
European culture is many things, and its particular imprint is everywhere on the continent. First, there is the primary place of culture itself. The presence of museums, galleries, concert halls and theaters is far more evident in European cities than in the US. Clearly one sees museum after museum in New York, but outside of New York and a few other cities like Chicago, there are far fewer cultural attractions to choose from. Even Los Angeles, the second largest city in the US, can boast only a handful of museums of mixed quality. The mid-size cities in the American heartland have at best one or two truly great culture institutions. Even a city like St. Louis—with one of the best symphony orchestras in the US and a place where no less than Max Beckmann spent his last years teaching art—has only one mid-sized art museum. Contrast that with the Frankfurt, a city of similar size, which has its row of museums on the Mainkai and several more across the Main River in the city center. Even tiny Luxemburg has served as the European capital of culture. One could not imagine that happening in a US city of the same size.
There is also, undeniably, a greater respect for the high culture of the past in Europe than in America. Certainly Americans spend more time in museums and concert halls today, but there is nothing like Berlin, with its multiple opera companies and orchestras. Like Americans, Europeans are spending more time with television, movies (often American movies) and rock and roll, but there is a far greater familiarity with the past wherever you go, whether it is Amsterdam or Brussels or Munich or any of a score of what to Americans would be mid-size cities. And it is worth noting that the European anthem is Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. By contrast the Star Spangled Banner, the US anthem, is based on an old drinking song.
Beyond these hallmarks of traditional culture, there is something else that is distinctly European, especially among the younger Europeans that I meet. It is a dedication to a more integrated vision of the European future, based on the values of European life in last two to three decades. These values include what I see as a grand integration of culture that, in many respects, resembles the social and political integration of the European Union itself. This includes the integration of the contemporary culture of digital expression with the traditional culture of music, painting and literature. It is the integration of distinctly German or French or Irish culture with the global culture of Asia and Africa. It is also an integration into artistic expression of what I see as global values of careful use of the resources and the environment and the goal of maintaining political integration in a world of traditionally warring national cultures.
It is this integration that still gives every trip to Germany or Ireland or Italy a distinctly European feel, even as Europe grows more like the US in its superficial characteristics and the world becomes more homogeneous each day. It is this integration and awareness of the global culture that give European culture its particular feel, even as so much culture activity is commoditized by big business. It is this consciousness of culture, which I see at the heart of a genuine European identity. It draws me back trip after exhausting trip.
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