As a schoolgirl, my suspiciousness about those who attack American “materialism” was first aroused by the refugees from Hitler who so often contrasted their “culture” with our “vulgar materialism” when I discovered that their “culture” consisted of their having had servants in Europe, and a swooning acquaintance with the poems of Rilke, the novels of Stefan Zweig and Lion Feuchtwanger, the music of Mahler and Bruckner. And as the cultural treasures they brought over with them were likely to be Meissen porcelain, Biedermeier furrinture, oriental carpets, wax fruit, and bookcases with glass doors, it wasn’t too difficult to reconstruct their “culture” and discover that it was a stuffier, more middle-class materialism and sentimentality than they could afford in the new world.
