It's also a bit disconcerting to just look at which previous events just seem to resonate with the present moment, get attention and through what lense, not just for direct parallels but in a more amorphous sense.
I mean, obviously there is just the 1618/2018 anniversary aspect, but I remember 1998 when there were celebrations for 350 years of the 1648 peace treaty, and iirc the coverage was all about how it was a negotiated peace, the start of an international order, how the agreements between the confessions still have an influential legacy today... And of course there was some of a "The Thirty Year War was horrible" remembrance, but the narrative was a hopeful success story kind of thing, that after an awful episode we made some progress. The currently popular angle for looking a history seems to be "let's look at how catastrophe unfolded and established order broke down" and I don't think it's just because the dates being somewhat round for the beginning or the end respectively in this particular instance.
It's because the current moment seems fraught and unstable for many people and not unstable in a good way that something better may be happening next either. The ominous zeitgeist is that things are bound to get more awful first (with a wide array of choices for that) and then maybe it might get better again. Or not.
(It is also quite interesting to look at who celebrated that peace, or not, in Germany in the centuries in between, because how it was seen varied wildly over time and with confessional differences too.)
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I mean, obviously there is just the 1618/2018 anniversary aspect, but I remember 1998 when there were celebrations for 350 years of the 1648 peace treaty, and iirc the coverage was all about how it was a negotiated peace, the start of an international order, how the agreements between the confessions still have an influential legacy today... And of course there was some of a "The Thirty Year War was horrible" remembrance, but the narrative was a hopeful success story kind of thing, that after an awful episode we made some progress. The currently popular angle for looking a history seems to be "let's look at how catastrophe unfolded and established order broke down" and I don't think it's just because the dates being somewhat round for the beginning or the end respectively in this particular instance.
It's because the current moment seems fraught and unstable for many people and not unstable in a good way that something better may be happening next either. The ominous zeitgeist is that things are bound to get more awful first (with a wide array of choices for that) and then maybe it might get better again. Or not.
(It is also quite interesting to look at who celebrated that peace, or not, in Germany in the centuries in between, because how it was seen varied wildly over time and with confessional differences too.)