“Europeana” by Patrik Ouredník [Excerpt]

Forthcoming in a new “Dalkey Essentials” edition, Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century is an “eccentric overview of all the horrors, contradictions, and absurdities of the past century.” It’s a book that is mesmerizing in its curious patterns, which at times can sound like Snapple Fun Facts—but tend to be about things like fascism instead of dolphins or bananas or archaic laws in Philadelphia—but are also incredibly absorbing when taken as a whole snapshot overview of a war and invention filled hundred years.

It’s also one of George Saunders’s favorite books! He plugged the opening line (“The Americans who fell in Normandy in 1944 were tall men measuring 173 centimeters on average, and if they were laid head to foot they would measure 38 kilometers.”) in Elle, and the book as a whole in BOMB:

It’s an alternate history of the twentieth century, all true, but arranged in a weird way. For example, he starts the fascist era by concentrating on American nationalist groups like the ones Charles Lindbergh was involved with. It throws your whole sense of history off, and yet every word in it is true.

The section below is in honor of Barbie and Oppenheimer. It’s long. It’s worth it. Enjoy.

Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century

by Patrik Ouredník

translated from the Czech by Gerald Turner

With the emancipation of women and the invention of contraception and tampons and disposable diapers there were fewer children in Europe but more toys and kindergartens and slides and climbing frames and dogs and hamsters, etc. Sociologists said that the child had become the center of attention in the family and gradually its most influential component also. And children wanted to be independent and have their own identity and did not want to wear their older siblings’ hand-me-down caps or shoes and they always wanted new caps and shoes and colored pencils and construction sets and teddy bears and dolls. In the European countries twelve-and-a-half thousand times more dolls were manufactured in the twentieth century than in the nineteenth century and instead of wood and sawdust they were made of plastics and in the course of time they learnt to whimper and talk and were more and more independent, and they would say good morning and enjoy your meal, for instance, and some of them could weep and burp after eating or sing part of an aria. The best-known doll was called Barbie and was first manufactured in 1959. It was 30 centimeters tall and had big breasts and hips and a slim waist and was the first doll to behave like an adult. Soon it started to talk too and said i’ve got a date with my boyfriend this evening and what will i wear to the dance? and would you like to go clothes shopping with me? At first she was dressed like a ballerina or an actress or a model, then later as a stewardess, a teacher, a veterinarian, a businesswoman, an astronaut, or a presidential candidate. And in 1986, a Barbie doll appeared dressed in a striped concentration-camp uniform and a striped cap too. Various ex-prisoners associations protested and said it made a mockery of the suffering and the memory of the victims, and the manufacturers answered back and said that, on the contrary, it was an appropriate way of acquainting the younger generation with the suffering in the concentration camps, and that little girls who bought the doll in the striped uniform would identify with it and later, when they were grown up, they would more easily comprehend what sort of suffering there was. And in 1998 the Germans came up with the idea of erecting in Berlin a large monument to the victims of the Holocaust, which was to be visible from afar, because, in addition to celebrating some positive historical event, the function of a monument is also to be a warning to future generations. Some people thought that an art object was not the proper way of expressing the Holocaust, which defies all aesthetic rules, and others concluded that the ideal project would be one that expressed the fact that the Holocaust defied expression. And four hundred and ninety-five artists sent various proposals for expressing a warning to future generations and one proposed manufacturing a large, eight-colored, six-pointed star turning on its own axis, and others proposed constructing an enormous Ferris wheel, on which concentration-camp wagons would be hung in place of the usual fair-ground cars, and others proposed constructing a large bus station with red buses and timetables on which the terminal stations would be the names of concentration camps, and others proposed erecting thirty-nine steel posts on which why? would be written in various languages, warum?, waarom?, varfør?, proč?, pourquoi?, perché?, dlaczego?, cūr?, kuida?, miksi?, miért?, zakaj?, kodêl?, hvorfor?, jiatí?, pse?, niçin?, etc. Some people were of the opinion that it ought to be a monument to the victims not only of the Holocaust, but of all possible genocides, because only in that way would it contain the living historical memory, otherwise it would be simply a heap of steel or iron that would say nothing to anyone within twenty or so years. And some historians said that building monuments was problematic in all events, because preserving the memory of some event did not of itself guarantee that it would not be repeated, and they provided instances of preserving memory that had led to fresh conflicts and wars.

The Jews who survived the Holocaust said that monuments and museums, etc., were important, but that best of all were direct testimonies, and they would visit schools to tell the pupils what they had gone through. And they wondered how to preserve the memory of the Holocaust after their deaths, and the Swedish association of former Jewish prisoners recommended passing on their testimony to some young person, who would learn it by heart and visit schools and tell the pupils that they had known someone who had experienced such and such. And before they died they would pass the testimony on to another young person, etc. And in 1945, the Jews issued an appeal to public opinion, requesting the establishment of an Israeli state in Palestine, where the Jews could be among their own and would not have to fear any more holocausts. And they fought against the Arabs and the English, who were occupying Palestine at the time, and organized assassinations and illicit immigration operations. And in 1939, the English decreed immigration quotas that reduced the number of Jewish immigrants by 75% and enacted a law prohibiting Jews from buying land. And in 1947, a ship docked in Palestine with illegal Jewish immigrants from Germany and the English sent it back again. And in 1938, the Swedish government requested the German authorities to insert a capital J in passports for Jews, so that the Swedish frontier police could recognize a Jew who did not look like one. The ship that docked in Palestine was called exodus after a book of the Old Testament and 4,500 Jews were sailing in her, having survived the concentration camps and wanting to return to the Promised Land. And in November, the United Nations voted in favor of the creation of the State of Israel. And lots of people in Europe traveled to Israel to see the new state in creation. And young people from Europe went to work in Jewish agricultural communes known as kibbutzim, where everyone worked for the good of all. And everything was shared and everyone sang songs together. And the Israeli travel agencies issued posters on which young people with serious expressions observed the sun rising over Jerusalem, and underneath was written our suffering was not in vain and take advantage of low prices.

Sexologists said that the Barbie doll was the first tool for inculcating a feminine identity in young girls, and the doll’s successful reception proved that child sexuality existed. Child sexuality was much spoken about in the twentieth century after it was discovered that little girls would like to have a child with their father, which was actually a substitute penis because little girls would like a penis too, and the doll was a child from their father and a penis at the same time. For a long time only little girl dolls were made but then they started to manufacture little boy dolls, and little girl dolls had a groove between their legs and little boy dolls had a little penis. And in the seventies, they started to manufacture black or brown dolls, although they were mostly bought by white parents who wanted to show their children they were not racists. Racism was a theory from the nineteenth century that said that the human races have immutable characteristics, and they were at different levels of development and the most developed were the white race which had an innate sense of social organization and abstract thought and convivial entertainment, and a racist was someone who feared that mixing between races jeopardized the specific characteristics of the white race and eroded the genetic potential that enabled the whites to continue advancing in the forefront of mankind. People who did not like Jews were not racists but anti-Semites, because the Jews were not strictly regarded as inferior, like Negroes, Indians, Gypsies, etc., but more of a natural aberration. The word anti-Semite appeared at the end of the nineteenth century and denoted a person who did not want the Jews to rule the world and called on their fellow citizens to resist. Racism became a major social problem after the Second World War because large ethnic minorities settled in the rich European countries, and society had to absorb them. There existed two models for absorbing ethnic minorities—integration and assimilation, and integration was adopted by countries that believed that various cultural models could coexist within civil society and that it was better not to mix one with another and for each of them to preserve its specific character, and assimilation was implemented by countries that believed in universalism and were of the opinion that there existed a higher social interest that took precedence over specific ethnic and cultural characteristics. For a long while it looked as if the assimilation model was more successful, because in the countries that implemented it there were no race riots such as there were in England, America, etc., but at the end of the century, when people started to talk about globalism, universalism went out of fashion and everybody wanted to have their own identity and be proud of their race, but not in the sense of race, but civilization and live in accordance with traditions and return to their roots, etc.

Sex became very important in Europe in the twentieth century, more important than religion and almost as important as money, and everyone wanted to have sexual intercourse in different ways and some men rubbed their sexual organ with cocaine to prolong their erection even though cocaine was banned in all circumstances. And after the Second World War films started to include scenes in which the leading characters had sexual intercourse, which was previously considered improper because lots of people still believed in God and sexual intercourse was generally only hinted at by a shot of a bed or a clock or the sky, or it suddenly went dark. And women wanted to have orgasms all the time and that made men nervous and they had problems with erections and tried various aphrodisiacs and attended psychoanalysis to discover where the problem lay, such as whether they might have suffered some childhood trauma that they were unaware of. Psychoanalysis was invented in 1900 by a Viennese neurologist who wanted to study mental processes and evaluate subjects by means of the unconscious, and he came to the conclusion that neurosis, hysteria, etc., were symptoms of sexual traumas in childhood, and he devised for this purpose new methods and concepts such as repetitive compulsion, regression, repression, ego, superego, libido and complexes, which could be either Oedipal or castration complexes. And in 1938 he fled from the Nazis to London and four of his sisters died in concentration camps. And when patients knew why they were depressed and neurotic they immediately felt better because it was normal. Communists said that people who lived in a Communist society had no need for sex because people’s greatest happiness should be from work well done, whereas in capitalism people did not get enjoyment from their work because they were exploited and therefore resorted to various surrogates. And they said that without class consciousness sex could not bring satisfaction even it were repeated endlessly and they were afraid that if people were to attend psychoanalysis and resort to surrogates it would threaten the cohesion of the socialist camp. And they did not want people to read decadent books or wear garish clothes, have eccentric hairstyles, chew gum, etc. Chewing-gum was invented by an American pharmacist and was first sold in Europe in 1903, although its use spread mainly in the fifties and sixties. It was mostly chewed by young people, who thereby expressed their attitude towards society and didn’t have fillings in their mouths yet.

In the fifties film heroes usually had sexual intercourse in cornfields because cornfields were associated with youth and the new life awaiting the young heroes, and wind ruffled the ears of corn as the sun sank on the horizon and women’s bosoms heaved, and in the sixties film heroes had sexual intercourse in the surf on the ocean shore because it was romantic and sand clung to their skin, and their bottoms could be seen, and mist hung over the water. [. . .]