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The Eurasian Politician - Issue 4 (August 2001)

"The Righteous Man’s Burden"

Paneuropean Vision and its Sense of Morality in Interwar and Present European Context

By Anssi Kristian Kullberg, 6^th January 2001
University of Tartu, Fac. of Soc. Sc., Dpt. of Politology
"Idea of Europe" by Messrs. Vello Pettai & Hans-Petter Svege

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Introduction

The Paneuropean vision on Europe is based on a set of historical, cultural (including religious) and geopolitical ideas, which have been studied by an again increasing amount of scholars since the break-up of the bipolar world order brought regional ideas of Europe back into political debate. Besides historians, those scholars of political science and philosophy, who have studied the construction of European identity, have been interested in the Paneuropean idea. Main targets of the studies written have been the interwar Paneuropean movement and the original texts of the movement’s founder, Count Richard Nicolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi, the practical shape that Aristide Briand gave to the Paneuropean ideas, and the influence of Paneuropean ideas and tradition in the later development of European integration after the war.

A lot of attention has been paid on the reasons of the relative failure of the Paneuropean movement in its main goals before the war. Studies explaining the "failure" of the "Paneuropean utopia" have appeared during and after the Cold War and have often reflected euro-skeptical views and deep skepticism against the bourgeois and idealistic nature of Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Paneuropean idea. An example is Tuulikki Tuomainen’s study on the Paneuropean idea, where she criticises the "utopia" for example for excluding the Soviet Union from Paneurope (Tuomainen, 1994). A couple of studies on the issue also appeared in "Acta Scientifiorum Hungaricae" in Hungary during the communist era. An article more sympathetic to the Paneuropean idea in Coudenhove-Kalergi’s spirit is Matti Särömaa’s article from 1999. More of sympathetic articles on the idea of Paneurope have of course been published by Paneuropeans themselves, especially in German and Austrian journals. However, most overviews upon the issue basically repeat the same story of the Paneuropean movement, its founding fathers, its relative failure in uniting Europe and saving her from WW2, and perhaps its heritage left for the more pragmatic constructors of European Community and European Union after the war. Thus, there is no need to cross-quote all these studies in respect to the history of the Paneuropean movement and the Paneuropean idea.

What still seems to be missing is an analysis of the continuance of the Paneuropean thought up to our days. It is true that the European integration process has been taken over by others but Paneuropean movement, but the Paneuropean initiative as well as several eminent Paneuropeans (for instance, Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle) have played important roles in the development of European integration. The Paneuropean Union continues to live on, lobbying for European unity, liberation and later integration of Eastern Europe, and the set of moral values of the Paneuropean thought within the discussion concerning European integration. This essay attempts to study the moral undertone of the Paneuropean thought which is reflected in the Paneuropean interpretations of European history, culture and political geography. This is done by comparison between the Paneuropean thought, and choices it has implicated in interpreting current issues, in interwar and present-day contexts. A leading idea here is to point out the moralistic and value basis of the whole Paneuropean thought, idealism of righteousness, which is influenced by the background and reference groups of Paneuropean thinkers as persons, and which influences in its turn the strategies and seemingly elitist image of the Paneuropean movement.

The Paneuropean Movement

In his contribution "The Nation Supreme – The Idea of Europe 1914-1945" in "The History of the Idea of Europe" (eds. Wilson & van der Dussen, 1995, 96), Peter Bugge points out that the origin of the Paneuropean idea lies in the generally idealistic and moralistic tone of European vision after the WW1. European development by and after the war had been pessimistically profiled as "Balkanization" by the liberal Italian ex-premier Francesco Nitti in 1922 (and of course by Eleutherios Venizelos, whom Bugge does not mention but who uttered the thereafter recalled and repeated words that "the war was meant to Europeanize the Balkans [referring to the final collapse of Ottoman power] but it Balkanized Europe instead"). Ideas of European unification were promoted in the contrast of the triumph of nationalism, but the ideals of democracy and Mazzinian republicanism that had triumphed by this nationalism influenced the development of Paneuropean idea as well.

The Paneuropean idea became a very influential and attractive movement of the interwar period – the most influential programme for united Europe, according to Bugge (Ibidem). The Paneuropean movement was founded in 1922, and can be said to represent the oldest modern-time initiative for achieving peace, liberty and unity in Europe. Coudenhove-Kalergi, whose father was an Austrian diplomat and whose mother was a Japanese noblewoman, was a real cosmopolitan who found himself as a citizen of Czechoslovakia after the WW I. During his extensive travels in the post-war Europe he was shocked of the destruction caused by WW I, and inspired by this, he became convinced of the necessity of a common united Europe. His book "Paneuropa" was published in German in 1923, and soon translated into most of important European languages.

Coudenhove-Kalergi was a good friend of the Czechoslovakian President Tomáš Masaryk (who had presented his own European ideas in a more exclusive Central European regional construction), whom he tried to persuade to take the leadership of the Paneuropean movement that was lobbying tirelessly for a united Europe and peace throughout the interwar period. Masaryk, however, considered himself too old, but Coudenhove-Kalergi found an eminent high-level supporter for Paneurope in the French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand. Besides, many eminent European statesmen, diplomats, intellectuals, artists, writers and liberal economists became supporters of the Paneuropean movement – for instance, the German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel, Selma Lagerlöf, Stefan Zweig, Pablo Picasso, Konrad Adenauer, Bruno Kreisky – in Estonia the diplomat Karl-Robert Pusta. Coudenhove-Kalergi’s successor in the Paneuropean Union’s presidency, and the present president, is Arch-Duke Dr. Otto von Habsburg.

The Paneuropean idea, as first presented, failed in its first historical chance, but through Briand, the ideas of Paneurope and the United States of Europe were continued in the West, by the French Prime Minister Edouard Herriot writing his book "The United States of Europe", and the idea of united Europe later being picked up and copied – yet in a very different form – by a French high-level bureaucrat Jean Monnet. Instead of Coudenhove-Kalergi, Monnet became later known as "the father of the European Union". Monnet’s European Union however became in many essential aspects different from Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Paneurope: In contrast to Coudenhove-Kalergi’s idealism, Monnet’s European unity was reached in most pragmatic ways, neutralised of most Paneuropean moralism, and of course, reduced to the torso of Western Europe that the WW II had left free. It is describing that in his memoirs Monnet did not mention Coudenhove-Kalergi with a single word. (Monnet: "Mémoires", 1988.)

In the heyday of the Paneuropean movement, it really seemed to change Europe’s fate. However, as we know, despite all the Paneuropean efforts, European unity was not achieved. What took place instead was exactly what Coudenhove-Kalergi had feared, a deal between Germany and the Soviet Union and consequent destruction and division of Europe in a new world war. One of the main motivations for the Paneuropean movement had been avoiding a new war – still the war came, giving Coudenhove-Kalergi’s pre-war rhetorics a most prophetic meaning.

"Noblesse Oblige"

Considering Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Paneuropean vision as a mere geopolitical construction manifesting "petty-bourgeois", "white", or even "racist" European hegemony over other geopolitical regions (Kövics), or seeing it as a primarily anti-socialist project (Tuomainen) seems rather purposeful misinterpretation of Coudenhove-Kalergi’s moralist view, like does the criticism directed against the Paneuropeans in the interwar period by Italian and German nationalists who, like an arch-enemy of Paneurope, Count von Lerchenfeld, saw the Paneuropean movement as a conspiracy of Vienna-based Jews and Freemasons. (Tuomainen, 1994.) True, many influential participants of the first Paneuropean congresses were Jews, and Coudenhove-Kalergi himself was a Freemason (Prof. Luigi G. de Anna, President of Finnish Paneuropean Union, to me in 1999). The first property to be confiscated by Seyss-Inquart when Austria fell into the hands of Nazis was the Paneuropean Union’s office in the Hofburg Castle. (Marco Pribilla, Secretary General of the Finnish Paneuropean Union, to me after a visit to the annual Paneuropean Assembly in 2000 in Vienna.) Yet the high concentration of certain reference groups in Paneuropean circles was a consequence of the PE’s appeal on high-class noble, cultural and artistic circles rather than a conspiracy.

The biographic information of Coudenhove-Kalergi himself reveals that his leading motives can be supposed to have been moral. Although born for a diplomatic career, Coudenhove-Kalergi was more interested in history and philosophy, completing his doctoral thesis in philosophy with the title "Objektivitet als Grundprinzip der Moral". (Särömaa, 1999) Bugge writes: "Coudenhove-Kalergi’s approach was essentially political: although he frequently used historical analogies and arguments, he did not use the past itself as a basis for his ideas." (Bugge, 1995, 96) Besides Masaryk and Mazzini, it could be supposed that one of the thinkers that made strongest impact on Coudenhove-Kalergi’s thinking was Oswald Spengler, to whose "Untergand des Abendlandes" Coudenhove-Kalergi is indirectly replying in his "Paneuropa", according to Peter Bugge (Ibid.).

Morals of Non-Exclusion

For the very reason that "Europe" has traditionally proved hard to define in exact geographic, cultural or even geopolitical means, the moralistic approach reflected by Coudenhove-Kalergi and Paneuropeans ever since, is actually a very clever one. An appeal based on a set of "European" values generally found attractive – such as liberty, peace and prosperity – is basically a very inclusive model, excellent for purposes aiming at integration, while traditional means of creating an identity – nation, religion, language etc. – are more exclusive, and usually call for fixed borders and definitions. Although Coudenhove-Kalergi excluded at first Russia, Britain and Turkey from Paneurope, he later welcomed both Britain and Turkey (Bugge 98, 101, etc.). Similarly, Paneuropeans ever since have avoided making exclusive definitions of Europe. Despite the often strong Christian bias in Paneuropean thought, Paneuropeans have seldom explicated exclusion of Turkey, let alone Albania or Bosnia-Herzegovina, from Europe on religious basis (this has been done by individuals, but the official PE line has always stayed open). Similarly, Serbia (or even Russia) has not been declared permanently unfitting for Europe, but the arguments of exclusion have always remained political, i.e. connected with the obvious aggressive behaviour and politics of these countries.

Although Paneuropean Union has consistently argued for integration and European unity, this has not stopped it from simultaneously openly arguing in sympathy for secession and national liberation of various entities such as East Europe, Baltic countries, Ukraine, Croatia, Chechnya, and latest Kosova (MEP Bernd Posselt, President of German Paneuropean Union, in Paneuropa Deutschland 4/4 2000, Editorial: "Rugovas Chance"). This line of thought can only be properly understood when it is noticed that the Paneuropean vision is not based on just a vision of a united Europe, but on a strong vision of how the united Europe should be constructed upon the basic values of liberty and non-violence.

Deeply rooted in pacifist values (Tuomainen, 1994), the Paneuropean movement absolutely rejects the idea of forced political unification, which was seen as the method used by the enemies of Paneurope: fascists and socialists. Coudenhove-Kalergi, thus, saw unification as an unavoidable historical development to take place, and persuaded Europe for voluntary and peaceful integration before Europe would be united by force and violence by Russia or the Third International. (Coudenhove-Kalergi, 1926.)

It could be concluded that European unification was by no means the primary value for Coudenhove-Kalergi, but the means of achieving his primary moral goals, which were peace, liberty and prosperity. Bugge remarks that "unquestionably, Paneurope’s main function was to secure the peace", both internally within Europe and externally against the threat constituted mainly by Russia. I would still emphasise more the classical conception of preserving European liberties, in which sense Coudenhove-Kalergi very well repeats the arguments of Pericles, Cicero and the Renaissance humanists. Besides this classical and humanist set of values, the Paneuropeans have been driven by strongly visible aesthetic motives and ideals where the ideas of historical or noble obligation, honour etc. are regularly expressed.

Concluding Remarks

"It is very hard to say anything sensible in ten pages", according to Mr. Svege. Because of that, I have only arrived in some kind of justification for the conclusion that I make that Coudenhove-Kalergi in particular, and the Paneuropean tradition in general, can be best described as a movement driven by moral forces, incarnating in the ideal of a Weberian political hero, anchored in classically and historically expressed aesthetic and heroic ideals of an ideal "European" man: Pericles’s heroes who were saluted in the immortal funeral oratory (Epitafios, 431 b.C.), Cicero’s "vir virtutis", the Renaissance humanists’ "uomo universale", and the later reincarnations of this profoundly European hero, a free and righteous individual, in the political philosophy of Europe. Coudenhove-Kalergi’s rhetoric style recalls nothing as much as his supposed idols in Hellenic Antiquity and Italian Renaissance, or chivalric poetry of the Middle Ages. In this sense, the Paneuropean tradition has always emphasised liberty of European citizens (individuals), and fought the collectivism and nihilism – "gegen Sozialismus und Nazionalismus". Analysis of the Paneuropean movement cannot ignore the certain type of morally driven hero, knight, crusader upon whom the Paneuropean call appeals, and who seeks glory and honour in response for the noble goals and righteous deeds. The goal of European unity seems secondary, the virtuous path and the righteous hero following his obligation the primary thing. "If the men are virtuous, the health of the institutions will be a matter of secondary importance." (Skinner, 1978, 45, describing the tradition represented by i.a. Machiavelli and Montesquieu.) "Wherever virtue is, there is nobleness." (Dante.)

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Peter Bugge: "The Nation Supreme – The Idea of Europe 1914-1945", in "The History of the Idea of Europe" ed. by Kevin Wilson and Jan van der Dussen, London and New York, 1995.

Richard N. Coudenhove-Kalergi: "Paneuropa", Paneuropa-Verlag, Wien & Leipzig, 1926.

Peter Gowan & Perry Anderson (eds.): "The Question of Europe", Verso, London and New York, 1997.

Heikki Mikkeli: "Eurooppalainen identiteetti ja integraation syvenemisen edellytykset", in "Ulkopolitiikka" 3/96, 1996.

Jean Monnet: "Mémoires", Librairie Arthéme, Fayard, Paris, 1998.

J.G.A. Pocock: "Deconstructing Europe", in Gowan & Anderson, 1997.

Quentin Skinner: "The Foundations of Modern Political Thought", Volume I "The Renaissance", Cambridge University Press 1978.

Anthony D. Smith: "National Identity", 1991, Penguin Books, London.

Matti J. Särömaa: "Kirja, joka oli muuttaa Euroopan kohtalon" in "Koulun ja kirjan maailma – Juhlakirja Jukka Sarjalan täyttäessä 60 vuotta 18.12.1999" (Hämeenlinna 1999), p. 290-311.

Tuulikki Tuomainen: "Paneurooppalaisuuden utopia" in Anssi Halmesvirta (ed.): "Eurooppalainen ihminen", 1994, Atena, Jyväskylä, 1994.

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