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The Eurasian Politician - December 2002

Otto von Habsburg: Life for Europe

by Anssi Kullberg

On 20th November, it will be 90 years from the birth of one of the most prominent Europeans of the 20th century, Archduke Otto von Habsburg. His father, Emperor Charles I, ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1916-1918, but the fall of the double monarchy in the World War I drove the family into exile.

The Crown Prince Otto, who thus did not become the ruler of Austria, dedicated his life to the idea of a united Europe, and was acting as a devoted motor of the Paneuropean Movement, founded by an Austrian cosmopolitan Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, and aiming at peaceful unification of Europe and avoiding the new disastrous war threatening the continent. In 1923 Coudenhove-Kalergi published his famous book "Pan-Europe" where he predicted that if Europe would not be capable of uniting into an economic, political and military union, Pan-Europe, it would be threatened by rising nationalism, Germany’s turning towards an aggressive track, and an alliance between revanchist Germany and aggressive Soviet Russia. This would, according to Coudenhove-Kalergi, inevitably lead into a new catastrophic war, which would end at division of Europe into a totalitarian Eastern bloc ruled by Russia, and a Western protectorate dominated by the United States.

The Paneuropean Movement became a popular movement that was spoken of by the whole inter-war Europe. However, despite the enthusiasm at the beginning, the movement more or less remained as an initiative of the intelligentsia and culture circles, as the interest of politicians towards the movement was superficial, and each politician who presented himself as a "Paneuropean" turned the Paneuropean ideals into interpretations best suiting his own national and political interests.

Unfortunately, Coudenhove-Kalergi’s predictions became reality. Nationalism got ever stronger grip on the politics of European states. The rise into power by Hitler in Germany led to banning of the Paneuropean Movement. Coudenhove-Kalergi as well as Otto von Habsburg had to flee to the United States, as the Nazis had ordered them to be arrested and executed. Paneuropean literature was added to the prohibited books of the Nazis. An alliance between Germany and Russia became real in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and exactly as Coudenhove-Kalergi had feared, Europe was divided by the new World War, even more destructive than the previous, into an Eastern Bloc occupied by the Soviet Union, and a Western Europe protected by the US.

After the war, the Paneuropean Movement continued its work to construct a united Europe. When Coudenhove-Kalergi died in 1973, Otto von Habsburg became the president of the International Paneuropean Union. Now, building a free and united Europe was possible only in the West. The European Communities and later European Union were largely created according to the initiatives presented by Paneuropeans, and the EU also adopted her 12 stars, symbolizing freedom, on a blue shield, from the flag the Paneuropeans had used. The EU also adopted the same hymn that the Paneuropeans had used, Beethoven’s "Ode for Joy".

European Reunification as the Goal

The Paneuropean Movement refused to accept the division of Europe into two, and demanded the return of Central and Eastern Europe to the rest of Europe even when the issue had to be silenced on the arenas of official politics. At the same time the movement supported underground democracy movements in various parts of Central and Eastern Europe.

In August 1989, Otto von Habsburg was one of the initiators of a Paneuropean Picnic in Sopron, Hungary, near the Austrian border. The event contributed to the fall of the Iron Curtain, as 661 East Germans defected to the West through the event. It is said that Erich Honecker then commented: "This is a black day for the DDR, since today the Paneuropean idea has vanquished socialism." In that year, a whole Europe, Pan-Europe, was again possible. A new phase began in the history of the Paneuropean Movement.

Nobody acted as the ideological father of this new wave of Paneuropean thought as much as Otto von Habsburg. He has actively commented European affairs and tirelessly advocated the European Union’s development towards Pan-Europe, i.e. as large and prompt enlargement eastwards as possible. He has also condemned wars and violations against human rights in the Balkans and in the Caucasus, and publicly defended the rights of Kosovars and Chechens for self-determination. He has written more than 40 books and toured all over Europe to give lectures. In Finland he visited last time in summer 2002, when the new edition of Coudenhove-Kalergi’s book "Pan-Europe" was published in Turku.

At Otto von Habsburg’s birthday celebrations in Vienna, one of the honoured guests is the old Paneuropean Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who now leads the European Union’s Future Convention, and who has recently raised criticism for his statements concerning the EU institutions and the membership of Turkey in the EU. Otto von Habsburg’s Pan-Europe is however a whole Europe, where for example the South-East European countries and Moldova naturally belong. In regard to Russia, von Habsburg is doubtful, as he characterizes Russia as the "last of colonial empires", which cannot adapt into the European community unless she cannot give up oppressing the surrounding areas. On Turkey’s role, von Habsburg recently commented [in an interview of the Paneuropa Deutschland magazine] that he sees Turkey to possess a "special duty" to navigate the Caucasian and Central Asian nations liberated from Russia’s power, as well as the Middle East, towards freedom and European values. Thus he seems to see Turkey as a bridge into east, and in his comments he definitely does not exclude such countries from Pan-Europe, who respect the "European values" of freedom, democracy and human rights.

Both the Paneuropean Movement and Otto von Habsburg have come through a long and eventful way, but in the 21st century both the gentleman and the movement are exactly as up-to-date and vital as in the 1920s. Otto von Habsburg, if anyone, has both experience and something to say about Europe.

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