In "After 1945: Latency as Origin of the Present" (2013), Gumbrecht explores the legacy of World War II through an investigation of a widespread cultural mood, primarily in Germany but also relating to a broader response to the aftermath of war. He describes a climate "(Stimmung)" in which "a disposition of violent nervousness permeates the seemingly quiet postwar world, which points to a latent state of affairs." The mood of latency has implications for cultural identity today in the form of a widely felt sense of inertia and a changed relationship to time: the argument is that from the vantage point of the postwar years, the future came to be viewed as a threat.