Postwar shared suffering made German strangers unusually open in conversation
Evidence
In railway compartments, discussions often took place in which strangers discussed even the most delicate topics with astonishing openness. … At the time the model was an obvious one, since shared suffering or shared memories of suffering brought people into contact more quickly than usual. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1868
Categorization
- SHARE: A historically-precise slice of postwar German social psychology, interesting to someone studying mid-century Germany.
- SEED: The railway compartment as a research model — the everyday micro-situation chosen as data-collection device — could anchor an essay on how 1950s social science borrowed its instruments from ordinary life.
- XREF: connects to: Postwar Germans discussed sensitive politics openly with strangers in railway compartments. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1868; Postwar German public discussion revealed majority anti-democratic and anti-Semitic sentiment. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1887; Shared humanity overcomes preconceived enemy divisions between strangers — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 190 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Postwar Germans discussed sensitive politics openly with strangers in railway compartments.
#exemplifies(0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1868 - Shared humanity overcomes preconceived enemy divisions between strangers
#corroborates(0.80) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 190 - Postwar German public discussion revealed majority anti-democratic and anti-Semitic sentiment.
#complicates(0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1887