“My father was killed in Russia. The war turned me into a cosmopolite and opponent of all nationalisms and all politics while just a schoolboy.”

The last year, however, has thrown even cosmopolites back on small areas and local attachments.

It favored rural Germans and targeted supposed forces of modernity: liberal media members, Jews, cosmopolites.

In one scene, the function of food as a status symbol for globe-trotting cosmopolites becomes clear.

That vaudevillian public disdain for East Coast intellectuals, Ivy League blue bloods, cosmopolites — all of it started with Nixon.