Summary
Sandor Marai: I wanted to be silent
12. In March 1938, the Wehrmacht entered Austria. That evening, English Prime Minister Chamberlain and his wife hosted German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and his wife at his London residence at 10 Downing Street. During dinner, while Ribbentrop was visibly in good spirits and chatting casually at the table, Chamberlain was handed a telegram. Brzojav announced that German troops had crossed the Austrian border. That same evening, in Budapest, Sándor Marai becomes aware that the end of European civic culture and civilization has come. Budapest began to resemble a boiling swamp. At the bottom of that swamp, a volcano rumbled quietly, which erupted in the following months: the swamp was flooded with a bloody flood of plague. Marai's artistic vision of the era under the title "I wanted to be silent" tells about this frantic and devastating spiritual and political flood.
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