West

Direction

West is one of the four cardinal directions. The adjective is to the west. This direction includes parallel to the equator, against the rotation of the earth, ie towards sunset. Therefore, in many languages ​​downfall is equated with the West (see also West and West ).

Poetic or not more common ways of speaking for the West are: evening or sunset conditions. With regard to the West wind is common: it blows a Western or a violent West.

In ancient Greek is Dysis, goddess of the sunset, even a Roman Hore, for the West, its purpose, among other things was to watch a western gate.

In China, the earthly branch of the Rooster (酉yǒu ) and the trigram sump (兑DUI) is symbolic of the sky to the west.

In Norse mythology, the four dwarves Nordri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri wear the skull of Ymir, from which the Æsir built the vault of heaven, Vestri is the dwarf of the West.

In a figurative sense

Intellectual history of the concept of the West had for Europe emerged in the evening marked as a place of sunset the sky towards the "West", as opposed to the East in the east where the sun rises. Since the times of classical Greece is bordered to the "West" ( Europe) culturally from the "east", the Orient (Asia), from. An important representative of this view is Edith Hamilton.

In the ethnic, historical and techno-historical sense is the "West" the whole of Europe, the Indo-European origins, has been shaped by Greco-Roman culture and Christian religion, and can point to a common history.

After 1938, the usage of the " democratic West " or the Western powers came on as opposed to the non - democratic countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

In the politico - cultural sense is meant by the West primarily Western Europe and North America that have been most affected by the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment, and various liberation movements and revolutions. However, currently the Central and Eastern European countries the same politically and economically more and more in Western Europe, for example, by joining the European Union.

In post-war Germany was "the West" in the parlance as the name of West Germany, the West Zone as the Western powers after the Second World War, assigned parts of Germany. From it, the Federal Republic of Germany emerged. Today, therefore, is still the term " Westerner " derived a jocular to the pejorative term for residents of the Federal Republic of Germany in the former GDR.