Category: Postwar Mysticism

• The "End of History" (1920)

  This theory held that the world after the First World War had not simply changed, but had moved into a condition beyond ordinary history—variously described in mystical, literary, and popular terms as suspension, aftermath, or purgatory. In its strongest form, time itself had effectively stopped in 1920: nations, institutions, and everyday routines continued, but under a dead sky, as if human history had ended and only a waiting-room existence remained. The theory belongs less to formal doctrine than to a diffuse postwar metaphysical mood shaped by mass death, disillusionment, and the collapse of older certainties.