Gender and Eurocentrism: A Conceptual Approach to European History 9783515114615

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Wolfgang Schmale

Gender and Eurocentrism A Conceptual Approach to European History

SGEI – SHEI – EHIE

EI SGEI HEI SHEI HIE EHIE Geschichte

Franz Steiner Verlag

Wolfgang Schmale Gender and Eurocentrism

Studien zur GeSchichte der europäiSchen inteGration (SGei) ÉtudeS Sur l’hiStoire de l’intÉGration europÉenne (ehie) StudieS on the hiStory of european inteGration (Shei) Band / Volume 29

Herausgegeben von / Edited by / Dirigé par Jürgen Elvert In Verbindung mit / In cooperation with / En coopération avec Charles Barthel / Jan-Willem Brouwer / Eric Bussière / Antonio Costa Pinto / Desmond Dinan / Michel Dumoulin / Michael Gehler / Brian Girvin / Wolf D. Gruner / Wolfram Kaiser / Laura Kolbe / Johnny Laursen / Wilfried Loth / Piers Ludlow / Maria Grazia Melchionni / Enrique Moradiellos Garcia / Sylvain Schirmann / Antonio Varsori / Tatiana Zonova

Wolfgang Schmale

Gender and Eurocentrism A Conceptual Approach to European History

Translated by Bernard Heise

Franz Steiner Verlag

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über abrufbar. Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist unzulässig und strafbar. © Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2016 Druck: Bosch Druck, Ergolding Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier. Printed in Germany. ISBN 978-3-515-11461-5 (Print) ISBN 978-3-515-11462-2 (E-Book)

CONTENTS

Preface .................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER I: Performative Acts and Gender .......................................................... 9 CHAPTER II: The Meaning of “Europe” in Historiography ................................ 29 CHAPTER III: “Eurocentrism”—The Performative Act of the Eighteenth-Century Republic of Letters ................................................................ 61 CHAPTER IV: Aftermaths of the Eighteenth-Century’s Performative Act Case Study I: Eastern Europe – Part of “Eurocentrism”? ................................. 77 Case Study II: The Gender of Eurocentrism: Homo Europaeus ....................... 96 Case Study III.1: The Holy Alliance and the Rise of Christian Imperialism ................................................................................. 126 Case Study III.2: Imperialism and Colonialism in the Early Discourses of European Integration ................................................................ 138 Case Study IV: From (Christian) Imperialism to European Identity .............. 149 CHAPTER V: Towards Post-Performativity....................................................... 163 Documentation Primary Sources ............................................................................................ 175 Research Literature ....................................................................................... 179 Abstracts Deutsche Zusammenfassung ........................................................................ 193 Résumée français .......................................................................................... 197 Index .................................................................................................................... 207

PREFACE How can one write European history? This question is raised quite frequently and answered in very different ways. My own answers to this question are distributed among many individual studies that, for me, link together like a hypertext. The nodes in this hypertext consist of three monographs: Geschichte Europas (Europe’s History, first published in 2000); Geschichte der Männlichkeit in Europa, 1450– 2000 (History of Masculinity in Europe, 1450–2000, first published in 2003); Geschichte und Zukunft der Europäischen Identität (History of European Identity and its Future, first published in 2008). With this present volume, which combines original texts and earlier studies that have been thoroughly revised for this current English-language edition, I endeavor to concisely elaborate the connections between Europe, gender, identity, performativity, and other key concepts. For me as an historian and author, achieving this concision has also meant pausing to take stock and clarify the profile of the hypertext. I have viewed Europe from continually changing perspectives, which are expressed broadly in the titles of my books and in greater detail in my essays and contributions to anthologies, but what this produced? The result consists of a conceptual approach that can be used in an effort to elucidate that which is European in history in Europe. The first core component is the concept of the performative speech act, which I expand in this book into the concept of the “collective historical performative speech act.” The second core component lies in the rigorous integration of the gender approach. But how does the concept of “Eurocentrism” enter here? In this book, “Eurocentrism” designates a fundamental performative act, whose prehistory must be considered along with its “afterwards,” referred to here as the post-performative epoch. I would like to thank my faculty—the Faculty for Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna—for helping finance the translation. I heartily thank my translator, Bernard Heise, for his excellent work. I thank Jürgen Elvert for his willingness to accept the manuscript for the current book series. I am grateful to the Franz Steiner Verlag and specifically Katharina Stüdemann for their smooth collaboration and to Şahin Mavili for preparing the typescript.

CHAPTER I PERFORMATIVE ACTS AND GENDER I After 1945, the idea strongly prevailed that for the sake of the future any recurrence of a catastrophe like the Second World War had to be prevented. At the time, people basically entertained two conceptual models as to how this could be achieved. Some felt that Europe in 1945 had reached such a nadir that the nation state model could be abolished in favor of a European state or community of states with predominantly supranational institutions, to a degree that has not been attained to this day. Others believed that the avoidance of such a colossal catastrophe could be ensured only by reconstructing the nation states and through the regulated and institutionalized collaboration of these states, by all means also in supranational structures. The latter model prevailed and determined the path, one that undeniably has been lined with many successes. But this model inevitably meant that Europeans—in both the Western and Eastern Blocs—retained or reconstructed the national character of their states as institutions.1 States that view themselves as nation states are very obstinate. While certainly not the same as nationalism, national obstinacy nonetheless has proven counterproductive in an epoch characterized by not only European but also global interconnectedness—an epoch so aptly described by Zygmunt Bauman as “liquid modernity.”2 National obstinacy simulates a secure national identity that promises to provide people with a secure and stable foundation during difficult times, such as now. But this identity is a deception. National obstinacy no longer even works as a corrective, a function performed much more effectively by globally networked and interconnected so-called anti-globalization activists, precisely because they are global. Even small countries such as Cyprus can no longer simply adopt a strategy of national obstinacy without potentially endangering the greater whole. During recent times, people have increasingly declared that Europe is standing at a crossroads. Europe will either progressively develop its qualities as a state (meaning first and foremost the EU) or succumb to overwhelming tensions and disappear like the sunken city of Atlantis. Although this scenario usually refers to the EU, it also includes quite a few non-EU states that want to become EU members, thus applying to virtually all of Europe. In this respect, the issue is not about immediate urgencies but rather primarily about the joint determination of solid objectives. In my opinion, such a determination—and subsequent realization—of a solid 1 2

See Alan S. Milward, Rescue of the Nation-State, London 1994. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, Cambridge 2000/2008.

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objective has occurred only once, namely, the Common Market of the EEC Treaty. Admittedly, this refers to a framework outlined by considerations focused on the EU. Other goals of the 1957 EEC Treaty—in particular, “approximating the economic policies of Member States,” the “harmonious development of economic activities” throughout the community, and “increased stability”—have not been reached to this day. Quite obviously, none of these conditions obtain in the current crisis because efforts to realize them have failed due to national obstinacy. Other basic “solid objectives,” such as the elimination of border controls, only affect the Schengen states, and not all EU countries use the common currency, and EU objectives formulated in the Maastricht, Amsterdam, and Lisbon treaties contain too many national exceptions.3 Of all places, the socioeconomic sector features the fewest common principles. This is because, despite the noble goal of generally increasing affluence by means of joint institutions and the redistribution of funds within not only the EU but also to non-EU states, this sector remains the purview of individual states. Thus far, no social union has emerged. The socioeconomic dimension—that is, the dimension in which the economy, social structure, and specific social practices most closely intertwine—has not only remained the purview of the nation state but also tremendously strengthened it. After 1945, this dimension became one of the nation state’s main responsibilities, whereas other responsibilities became progressively less important in the nation state itself, being assumed instead by supranational institutions or mitigated by numerous self-imposed commitments as states participated in intergovernmental organizations. Globally, the EU accounts for 7% of the population, 25% of net product, and 50% of all social welfare spending4—and the latter is the preserve of the nation states. Social structures, as well as social practices and relationships, are part of culture; they form culture. In other words, viewed socioculturally, Europe does not constitute a culture in the singular. Sociocultural systems that differ too strongly from each other are not suited for the goal of unity. The financial and debt problems have rendered obvious something that has long been known in sociology and other academic disciplines, namely, the parallel existence of very different sociocultural systems in Europe and the EU. These are sociocultural systems that remain largely closed to the outside; they are not structured horizontally but rather hierarchically and characterized by a heterosexually connoted hegemonic masculinity. Consequently, they risk being simply swept away by liquid modernity if their pace of adjustment remains too slow. Meanwhile, the discussion of Europe’s possible “solid objectives” goes nowhere. One could demur, arguing that the Final Act of the Conference on Security

3

4

German version of the treaty according to the Bundesgesetzblatt dated 19 August 1957: (the accessibility of all URL quoted in this book has been controlled 22 May 2016). The treaty was officially published in German, French, Italian, and Dutch. (13 October 2012).

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and Cooperation in Europe in 1975, as well as German reunification in 1990, constituted solid European objectives that were also achieved. But in these cases, the international embeddedness of these specific objectives played a very major role; they were not primarily objectives of the European Community (EC). The transformation of the EC into the EU, as well as the small expansion in 1995 and large expansion in 2004, constituted substantial and realized goals, but they were qualitatively different from the Common Market in its day. The above applies for the Europe of the European Union. Meanwhile, for greater Europe, discussions about solid objectives have virtually ceased, even though the Council of Europe continues to remain the institutional expression of joint European objectives. Proposals to further develop the EU into a federation of states fail to gain any traction. Neither do proposals to revert the EU to a free-trade zone. Efforts to create an EU constitution were abandoned when referendums held in Netherlands and France on the proposed constitution failed in 2005. Since the EU’s legal status—namely the applicable Lisbon version of the underlying international treaty—nonetheless amounts to a kind of constitution, ongoing discussions have focused on how this constitution could become more democratic. It must be concluded that efforts to formulate and declare plans, important solid objectives, and potential constitutional and state models are evidently running into difficulties and do not work. Some of these efforts have been met with indifference on the part of Europeans; others—as in 2005—have faced clear rejection. The skepticism is clearly reflected by the lack of enthusiasm during the European parliamentary elections, judging by the low voter turnout (in 2014, 42.54% for Europe as a whole). Looking toward Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and the Ukraine, where the EU is actively involved as a major player, the problems admit to no foreseeable solutions—no ideas or plans have thus far gained sustainable traction.5 This is not because ideas and plans don’t exist but rather because of pragmatic impossibilities that perplex us because they escape our basic rationalistic attitude. We are loath to admit that the traditional rationalistic approach—namely, developing a model from a comprehensive analysis of the problem, the implementation of which amounts to the problem’s solution—isn’t working. Nonetheless, the public media resounds with calls for iconic leaders with groundbreaking ideas and objectives, not to mention vision. But such iconic figures do not exist—nor can they exist anymore. These heroic stories are over, no longer possible. In France, people are looking once more to Nicolas Sarkozy, despite the failure of his policies, because he knows how to exploit the heroic model. Viktor M. Orbán, who according to the well-known US senator John McCain is treading the path toward a neo-fascist dictatorship,6 is also using the heroic model to make a go of it in Hungary; and that leaders are presenting themselves as heroes applies even more so to Vladimir Putin 5

6

. Voter participation fluctuates strongly among the countries. Belgium: 89.64%; Slovakia: 13.05%. Handelsblatt, 3 December 2014: .

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and President Recep T. Erdoğan of Turkey. Right-leaning politicians like Marine Le Pen in France, Heinz-Christian Strache in Austria, and formerly Silvio Berlusconi in Italy are operating according the same heroic schema. This lineup also includes the former regional president of Catalonia, Artur Mas.7 In the United States, Obama was set up as a democratically operating hero—in principle, an antitype to the “strong men” mentioned above: the motto “yes, we can!” amounts to nothing less than a heroic slogan. We have also seen it fail. Most self-stylized hero politicians are right-wing nationalists, but this does not apply to President Obama. Indeed, it is the model itself—which can contain a wide range of political content—that no longer works. There are reasons why the postwar strategy of developing plans for European integration that are jointly implemented by heroic civilian politicians no longer works. The times are wrong and we need to ask ourselves: why? My answer is that we have entered into a post-performative era, which we would do well to accept and to adjust European actions accordingly. This book facilitates a reflection on this problem against the background of a “longue durée.”

II The situation analysis sketched out above demands that we view European history “differently” than is usually the case. I combine a gender-historical approach with the approach of performativity, taking seriously the original core of latter, namely, the performative speech act, which needs to be expanded here, however, into a collective historical performative speech act. In this respect, I focus on the performative act of Eurocentrism. This combination of approaches seeks not to displace other strategies that approach European history in terms of conceptual, intellectual, or political history or general structuralism, but rather, to expand and, where possible, sharpen such strategies. After all, political history and gender history have long ceased to be mutually exclusive concepts. Of course, European history as gender history is also more than “Europe in Love, Love in Europe,” to quote the title of Luisa Passerini’s very good and insightful book, which pursues a very specific interwar period debate.8 More than the history of women9 or the history of manliness10 in Europe, it pertains to something quite fundamental: the ancient world featured the development of a relationship model, inasmuch as Europe, in connection with the long developmental phase from matrifocal—and also at times egalitarian and warrior-masculine—societal configurations to patriarchal societal configurations, became a woman, whose

7

For a critical view on Mas and his nationalism, see: Nuria Amat, Das Gift des Separatismus, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung Nr. 251, 31.10–02.11 2014, 31. 8 Luisa Passerini, Europe in Love, Love in Europe. Imagination and politics in Britain between the wars, London 1998. 9 Olwen Hufton, Frauenleben. Eine europäische Geschichte, Frankfurt on the Main 2002. 10 Wolfgang Schmale, Geschichte der Männlichkeit in Europa (1450–2000), Vienna 2003.

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eroticized portrayal as Europe with and on a steer became embedded within abundant public visualizations of the patriarchal order. The source material allows us to clearly trace this development into late antiquity. This relationship possesses a heterosexual-patriarchal connotation. This development resumed in the Middle Ages, particularly after the turn of the millennium. The ever more recurrent use of the name Europe and the female form appeared in the semantic field of men. The most important narrative in this respect—based on the Old Testament—was that of Noah’s son Japheth, whose descendants ostensibly populated Europe, his sons becoming the ancestral fathers of Europe’s most important nations. Custom went so far as to refer to Europe as “Japheth land,” but this re-designation failed to vanquish the name of Europe and was abandoned in the early modern period. Declared saints such as Martin of Tours were understood with reference to their importance for Europe. This was also especially true with regard to the fame and power of “individual rulers,” among whom Charlemagne enjoyed a certain preeminence.11 This development intensified immensely during the Renaissance, while America and the figure of America12 received a treatment similar to that of Europe and the figure of Europe, preserving the heterosexual-patriarchal connotations from antiquity. Without naming it as such, the Enlightenment developed the concept of hegemonic masculinity, which would situate masculinity in relation to Europe in a manner quite different than before.13 What failed to happen with the Japheth legend happened now: Europe as a “culture” became masculine. The relationship was connoted in terms of heterosexual-hegemonic masculinity and explicitly conceptualized as Eurocentric. Today, this idiosyncratic connection, which initially projected the transformation of societal relationships onto a continent comprehended as a female body and later during the Enlightenment disembodied them, seems to have dissolved. Europe as a female character is now used only as a watermark depicting a “mythical figure” on Euro banknotes or occasionally reduced to a caricature for other minor purposes. Behind such developments are performative acts: one during antiquity, one in the late-eighteenth century, and none today (hence, the post-performative). I call antiquity’s performative act “homocentrism.” It can be followed, among other places, in the myth of Europe, for this myth, in conjunction with a series of other myths in which Europe’s brothers and other relatives or descendants play important roles, ranks among the most important sources that attest to the performative act. The myth refers to the societal transformation mentioned above. It is important to understand that myths differ substantially from invented histories. The interesting aspect of myths lies not in the burnished transmissions one finds with someone like Ovid but rather in their dissection into temporal and symbolic layers that over time 11 Klaus Oschema, Bilder von Europa im Mittelalter, Ostfildern 2013. Quote on page 219. 12 Essential: Sabine Schülting, Wilde Frauen, Fremde Welten. Kolonisierungsgeschichten aus Amerika, Reinbek 1997. 13 Schmale, Geschichte der Männlichkeit in Europa, Ch. 4.

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merged into a smooth history—a history that, quite literally, is invented. In contrast, the myth’s elements, rendered distinct by the dissection, are like empirical primary sources and can be analyzed. However, the performative act becomes just as evident in an analysis of the invention of the alphabet, which constitutes quite literally a performative act (see below). I call the eighteenth century’s performative act “Eurocentrism,” which characterizes the core of this performative act. The fact that these performative acts existed means that they were possible. Today such performative acts are no longer possible, a situation that ultimately finds expression in the change of gender roles, their relationships, and their decoupling from “Europe.” A retrospective view reaching back as far as antiquity reveals the fundamental importance of this decoupling, because it explains why something that still functioned well into the middle of the twentieth century no longer works. “Europe” is no longer the same female figure who provides a reference point for heroic deeds, the one who was conquered or taken as a bride. “Europe” is no longer the same female figure that one disembodies and replaces first with “European culture,” conceptualized as masculine and in the singular, and then in the nineteenth century with the masculine culture of masculine nations that, within the ideal construct, were supposed to relate to each other as brothers. With good reason, the European Union does not want to imagine itself as a replacement for the female figure of “Europe,” for the abstract flag was chosen as a symbol on purpose. Europe also no longer means culture per se but rather now constitutes only a component of a global culture and designates only one world region among many.

III One might perhaps ask why I identify only two performative acts, for is not history replete with performative acts? But while the inflationary use of concepts like “performative” and “performativity” might suggest as much, my usage of the concept of “performative act” restores its essential content. The concept of performativity developed from speech-act theory, which assigned a central role to performative speech. Proceeding from the work of John L. Austin14 and John R. Searle15 in the 1950s and 1960s, for quite some time—in large part due to the influence of Derrida16 and Butler17—the concept has been broadly applied not only in linguistics but also in gender research, theater studies, art theory, historical scholarship, and communication and media studies. The concept can be elastically deployed in a broad range of cultural studies, for its essence exists in

14 John Langshaw Austin, How to do Things with Words, Cambridge 1962. 15 John R. Searle, Speech Acts. An essay in the philosophy of english, Cambridge 1969. As an introduction into speech act theory see James Loxley, Performativity, London 2007. 16 On Derrida see Loxley, Performativity, Ch. 4 and 5. 17 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter. On the discursive limits of “sex”, London 1993. See also Loxley, Performativity, Ch. 6.

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multiple formulations with slight variations.18 Admittedly, its influence on historical scholarship has not been especially strong, for apart from historical gender research (the reception of Butler), the performativity approach has not prevailed here. Nonetheless, the approach enables a productive perspective on European history.19 Applied to history, the performative is apparently not limited to performative speech acts. Rather, scholars have used an expanded definition of performativity that views “society and culture as the result of performative actions,” the decisive aspect being the “constitutive character of social actions.”20 Scholars in the SFB research project “Culture of Performative” noted: “Judith Butler, Pierre Bourdieu, and Slavoj Žižek refer to the cultural constituting of certain phenomena as ‘performative’ in order to emphasize that they have no ontological (or biological, etc.) antecedence but rather are produced through cultural processes.”21 Incidentally, it appears that the notion of the “formative phase,” a popular concept used for periodization in scholarship about early cultures, did not figure in the recent development of the concept of performativity. However, the concept of performativity is becoming blurred due to the pronounced expansion of the fields that apply the performativity approach, as well as the growing permeability in terms of meaning between “performativity” and “performance.” Instead of referring to precisely those phenomena that cannot be adequately described through other concepts, the concept of performativity is developing into a synonym for social constituting or the formation of the social and cultural world by means of performance. This is also demonstrated by the quotation above, insofar as it states that “society” and “culture” are generally described as the “result of performative acts” and refers to the “constitutive character of social actions.” These statements are so general that they explain any cultural result whatsoever. Performative action, I propose, should not be disconnected from the concept of the speech act. At their core, performative actions are speech acts, which, to be sure, are embedded in a performant environment. Also, they do not merely involve “speaking,” but rather the combination of various different performant media— above all visual, theatrical, auditory, and textual media. If we return to the theory’s origins, performative speech acts are special speech acts, meaning also that they are decidedly non-routine. Therefore, the concept of performativity seeks to classify a special—as opposed to a general—speech situation. Typical performative acts include naming, gender allocation (previously at birth, now usually already during ultrasound exams), and the pronouncement of ritual acts that occur through the pronouncement itself (naming, marriage, divorce, 18 See “SFB 447” (special research focus) “Kulturen des Performativen”, Freie Universität Berlin, completed 31 December 2010: Erika Fischer-Lichte and Christoph Wulf (eds.), Theorien des Performativen, in: Paragrana. Internationale Zeitschrift für Historische Anthropologie 10/1/2001. 19 Wolfgang Schmale, Geschichte Europas, Vienna 2000, Ch. 1. 20 Christoph Wulf, Michael Göhlich and Jörg Zirfas, Grundlagen des Performativen. Eine Einführung in die Zusammenhänge von Sprache, Macht und Handeln, Weinheim 2001, 13 and 12. 21 Sybille Krämer and Marco Stahlhut, Das “Performative” als Thema der Sprach- und Kulturphilosophie, in: Erika Fischer-Lichte and Christoph Wulf (eds.), Theorien, 2001, 35–64, 45.

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etc.). The special feature of the performative speech act is that, because of the speech attitude, it engenders an awareness of an (imputed) identity. However, seen in contrast from a scientific perspective, the speech act itself produces that identity. The speech act expressly establishes the identity, namely, in such a way that it is. The performative speech act is thus ambivalent because within the same action something is ascribed and, with regard to this something, the assertion is simultaneously made that this something is already there, such that the speech act only “engenders an awareness” thereof but does not create it. The performative speech act avails itself of freedom from doubt. Here and in the following, sometimes I use words like “constitute” or “ascribe,” while at other times I write “engender awareness,” depending on the situation. When referring to the speech attitude, I write “engender awareness” because the speech attitude in the performative speech act is such that an imputed identity is posited as true and the speech act “merely” engenders an “awareness” of this identity. But when I refer to the scientific attitude, I write “ascribe,” “constitute,” “create,” or “produce.” The expression “engender awareness” always connotes that the speech act “engenders awareness” of an identity posited as antecedent. This sets the performative speech act apart from all other possible (non-performative) speech acts that undoubtedly also can engender an awareness of something by establishing it, but which acknowledge the act of establishment. In contrast, with regard to the performative speech act, engendering awareness means that the identity already is. Somebody needs only to declare it. It is a “swindle”—to use a word from the title of a book by Christina von Braun22—because, viewed scientifically, there is no admission that the speech act itself attributes or constitutes the identity, that it creates the identity. The pretense is that the performative speech act merely declares something that is ontologically antecedent. In reality, the identity is created in the moment of performative speech act itself, but the performative speech act is not acknowledged as an act of creation. One is not asked whether one views this identity the same way. The newborn cannot be asked, but neither will the child be asked later on. Rather, once it is made, the speech act remains in effect. Throughout history, any reversal of the performative speech act has involved immense effort. This applies for changing gender, once it has been assigned; it also applies for changing one’s name or (in modern terms) civil status; in part, it also applies for reversing one’s religious affiliation. There are numerous reasons why this is very difficult and laborious. In any case, the powerful nature of an existence that has been “brought to awareness” of social participants by the performative speech act plays a substantial role. Reversing or changing this existence requires substantial personal effort and is often a very painful act, because it can involve detaching close social connections and always means repositioning the Self within one’s environment. The hurdles are so high that most people during the course of their lives offer no resistance against the implemented performative speech acts that very strongly determine their existence. 22 Christina von Braun, Versuch über den Schwindel. Religion, Schrift, Bild, Geschlecht, Zürich 2001.

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Performative speech acts install a very specific and largely canonized identity in individuals and, as the case may be, groups. In so doing, the consummators of speech acts do not execute any arbitrarily formulated speech acts; rather, they execute socially conventionalized or canonized speech acts (the quality of citability). The implementation of the speech act also follows a ritual (the ritual character of the performative speech act), whereby this ritual need not be elaborate and admits to slight deviations that do not impair the speech act’s validity. These preconditions and terms of execution form the basis of performative speech act’s property of reiterability. Consistently the same or largely similar repetitions that span space and time comprise the power of the performative speech act. Whereas every person carries out speech acts, the speakers of performative speech acts are invested with authority and power. Authority and power can be public or private, but they are not socially exclusive. The (historical) paterfamilias carried out performative speech acts regardless of whether he presided over a family of day laborers or was duke with a lengthy pedigree. The speaking person acts in a functional capacity. The social reference need not necessarily be an entire given society; it can also be a gentlemen’s club, bowling club or family, just as long as the specified properties that turn a speech act into a performative speech act are provided.

IV Proceeding on this basis, applying the concept of performativity to the study of history proves useful. At the same time, we must remember that performative speech acts are special speech acts, and that not every speech act is performative. When the concept of the performative speech act is transposed to historical events, its properties and circumstances outlined here, including the “swindle,” remain the same. One can well imagine viewing culture, society, etc. as the result of speech acts, that is, as proceeding from the constitutive or productive character of communication. But an identity—a cultural identity, for example—is established only through a performative speech act, or, more precisely, a multitude of interconnected performative speech acts. The intention in this case is to discuss a collective historical performative speech act. For the sake of brevity and simplicity, the following shall simply use the term performative act. Before further elaborating this aspect, we need to address the concept of “history,” as it has already been deployed. “History” is understood here as a transcultural hypertext. This hypertext is not self-contained but rather open; it continues to be written and new links continually accrue, but links and texts are also being lost. The concept of hyper refers to the circumstance that many texts form the hypertext. Text is understood in a Derridean sense as a semiotic term.23 A text constitutes a 23

Doris Bachmann-Medick, Culture as Text. Reading and Interpreting Cultures, in: Birgit Neumann and Mirjam Horn (eds.), Travelling Concepts for the Study of Culture, Berlin 2012, 99– 118.

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nexus of sense and meaning that in each case is jointly formed by a very large number of signs—in fact, an immeasurable or innumerable number of signs. It is the collaboration of people—very different in each respective case—that produces a text. I have described such texts in my book Mein Europa: Reisetagebücher eines Historikers (My Europe: Traveloques of a Historian, first published 2013). The book selected “cultural texts” that were produced in the space between Uzbekistan and Quebec, between Denmark and Morocco. One could include many others. The spatial demarcation is actually weaker than it appears, for the texts are linked primarily through mobile people within that space. Nonetheless, the text-bearing media are often firmly situated materials, such as specific buildings, cities, etc. that can be read and understood as texts. Some of these text-bearing media can be accurately described as “sites of memory.” At these places, various different texts are linked together. This can be clearly demonstrated with the Basilica of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Vézelay, Burgundy, for example.24 The basilica marked the beginning of the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela; here is where Bernard of Clairvaux invoked the second crusade in 1146; here is where a number of kings assembled for the third crusade; Louis IX (Saint Louis) departed from Vézelay in 1248 and 1270 for the sixth and seventh crusades; in 1946, on the 800th anniversary of Bernard’s crusade sermon held 800 years earlier, organizers mounted a “crusade for peace” at the basilica, which among its 30,000 participants also included German prisoners of war. Today the basilica is a UNESCO world cultural heritage site. We might also remember Prosper Mérimée, who visited the church in 1834 as a general inspector and examined its condition. Mérimée represents the nineteenth century’s powerful historicist interest in the Middle Ages and the reconstruction or completion of medieval cathedrals and churches. The concrete events and persons in themselves are references to extremely diverse and numerous texts. Specific to certain epochs, they link together to become larger texts: texts, for example, that demonstrate how Europe was anchored in salvation history through Christian structures and pilgrimage routes, as well as the crusades; texts that designate the shift from war to peace as a central theme in Europe (1946); texts that produce a global dimension (UNESCO); texts that lead into the historicism of the nineteenth century, and so on. It is precisely in this sense of textual concatenation that the basilica constitutes a site of memory. Such places are points or nodes of concatenation in a hypertext. The hypertext is composed of these texts or nexuses of sense and meaning, which are linked or knotted together at site of memory. But this does not mean that the hypertext itself has a single meaning or single significance. As a hypertext, it does not automatically constitute or express a monolithic meaning, like that of a master narrative. It acquires this function only by means of collective historical performative speech acts. With regard to Europe, this gets at the heart of the matter: Europe does not possess any ontological antecedence, so only performative acts from many texts linked together into hypertext can “engender awareness” of a hypermeaning and hyperrelevance. 24 Wolfgang Schmale, Mein Europa. Reisetagebücher eines Historikers, Vienna 2013, 175–178.

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This approach stands in opposition to most historiography about Europe. With regard to the course of European history, preconceptions with rarely disclosed theoretical implications play an important role.25 The discussion about the “roots of Europe”—which follows from the tree metaphor that broadly informs the EU’s European discourse—has been widely disseminated into public political discourse. To help visualize the tree metaphor, Britta Orgovanyi-Hanstein elaborated a “history tree” of Europe’s history and printed it as a poster.26 With aid from the concept of epigenesis, Paul Veyne has entered his objection to the idea of roots, using the example of “Christian roots.”27 Another presumption is the “birth of Europe” (Bartlett28) from this or that constellation; a third is that of a development from A to Z, as expressed in his time by Denis de Rougemont in his book Vom Mythos zur Realität (From Myth to Reality)29 and more recently by Michael Gehler in his book entitled Europa: Von der Utopie zur Realität (Europe: from the Utopia to Reality).30 Other material refers to an assumed European “singularity” that, when viewed critically, is also seen as a “special path”31; meanwhile, other accounts are based on the firm belief in the effective power of the ideas that supposedly led to the emergence of at least present-day Europe. These all constitute theoretical presuppositions, inasmuch as they conceptualize Europe’s history as a biography: it starts with an act of birth or possibly a complex beginning with a complicated initial or originating constellation, or with roots from which something develops, grows, and eventually—despite all of the adverse circumstances in the course of history— flourishes. Sometimes, as in the 1998 book by Hagen Schulze entitled Phoenix Europa32, authors use the model of rebirth or reiterative biography. Already in 1990, on the occasion of the fall of the wall and opening of the Iron Curtain, this same author published Die Wiederkehr Europas (The Return of Europe).33 Representations of recent European history, which lead Europe from its absolute low point in 1945 to prosperity and freedom, follow this same biographical pattern. None of these approaches can simply be declared right or wrong. They always explain only certain aspects from European history, but not the whole. They also

25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33

For a critical view see: Michael Mitterauer, Entwicklung Europas – ein Sonderweg? Legitimationsideologien und die Diskussion der Wissenschaft, Vienna 1999. . Paul Veyne, Hat Europa christliche Wurzeln?, in: Paul Veyne (ed.), Als unsere Welt christlich wurde. Aufstieg einer Sekte zur Weltmacht, Munich 2008, Ch. XI, 140–152. Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe. Conquest, colonization and cultural change, 950– 1350, Princeton 1993. Denis de Rougemont, Vingt-huit siècles d’Europe, Paris 1961. Michael Gehler, Europa. Von der Utopie zur Realität, Innsbruck 2014. Fernand Braudel, Europa – Bausteine seiner Geschichte, Frankfurt on the Main 1989; Hubert Kiesewetter, Das einzigartige Europa. Zufällige und notwendige Faktoren der Industrialisierung, Göttingen 1996; Michael Mitterauer, Warum Europa? Mittelalterliche Grundlagen eines Sonderwegs, Munich 2003. Hagen Schulze, Phoenix Europa, Berlin 1998. Hagen Schulze, Die Wiederkehr Europas, Berlin 1990; Hagen Schulze, Die Identität Europas und die Wiederkehr der Antike, Bonn 1999.

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blend together with performative acts that make Europe into the entity they describe. All of these approaches operate implicitly or explicitly with delimitations and with the assumption of fixed boundaries. In part, these involve geographical boundaries (Europe as a continent); in part the boundaries are religious (Europe as a Christian continent) or cultural (Europe as a culture); in part, they pertain to a mixture of politics and international law, as when, for example, the European Union is referred to succinctly as Europe. All of these approaches reach their respective limits because ultimately they postulate a definable entity named Europe, which they seek to explain. The texts linked together in a hypertext originate in a broad expansive space that exceeds what is generally understood as the continent of Europe. They are linked by those people who, for very different reasons, move within this space, who migrate and communicate and set in motion cultural transfers, exchanges, and translations. That these texts are interlinked as a hypertext is neither theoretically assumed, nor does it occur automatically. The hypertext does not need to cover the entire space in which texts are accrued and linked. Losses of linkages and texts occur on an ongoing basis; the dimensions of the hypertext depend on courses of time. The term transcultural refers back to a multitude of cognitive categories that shape current historical scholarship. Primarily it involves dissolving working methods that rely on fixed identifying categories or the formation of fixed demarcations that are presented as compulsory but in reality are not compulsory at all. Space, culture, and society are open and relational categories. This does nothing to alter the fact that during an era of nationalism a society could define itself as a culturally, ethnically, politically, etc. homogenous society that is clearly distinguished from other nations and base collective action on this self-deception and faux history. But at least today we understand the connections differently, or perhaps we actually know better today, namely, that these were invented communities, self-deceptions, faux histories, and constructed legends. Historical actuality is based not least on uninterrupted migrations and cultural transfers, on métissages, on the dissolution of boundaries. No formation is final. It would be dubious to take at face value not only self-defined nations but also other seemingly fixed categories, such as (ancient) “Greece.” In order to name this unfixed and unfixable, this never finalized quantity, the term transcultural in connection with hypertext seems well suited. The formation of fixed categories in scholarship and also in people’s practice of self-definition both as individuals and as groups naturally has its own (deep) meaning. One assumes an individualized self, a collective self that can be explained and understood not only in mundane but also scientific terms. The individual and social need for this is comprehensible and quite understandable, but does this mean it cannot be questioned? At any rate, even if we can declare and understand the individual and the particular as an identitary Self, there is no compelling reason to conclude that the “greater whole” also constitutes an identitary Self. Recent historiography is gradually starting to take this into account (see chapter 2). The individual text can be explained and understood; it is recognizable as an individual text, which does not mean that it is completely delimited and isolated. But this does not

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yet—and by no means necessarily—turn the hypertext into an entity with an overall meaning or overall significance. In the first instance, the hypertext evades such an exact designation. It is the hypertext that forms the historical site of the performative act.

V On the basis of the above discussion, I arrive at the following theoretical sentence: in that transcultural hypertext called “European history,” performative acts engender an awareness of “Europe.”

VI Naturally: somehow we want to understand “Europe”—the Europe that we know or presume to know from history and present. The “continent” has borne the name for 2,700 years or more. This seductively leads to the assumption of an ontological antecedence, as was vividly demonstrated during the sixteenth century by the understanding of the continent as a female body in the famous 1537 woodcut by Johannes Putsch.34 A later variation of the woodcut by Heinrich Bünting in 1587/89 included a caption that in a certain sense formulated the associated speech act: “Europa prima pars terrae in forma virginis.”35 Yet even so, Europe as such does not exist. Insofar as we have available sources, when we look upon the migrations, transfers, etc., never do we find any clearly defined spaces where “some people are like this” and “others are not like this.” Even today, this is reflected by the very history of the name of Europe itself: only the female form, derived as an icon from mythology, does not appear to change. But the specific application of the name to the so-called continent was and remains unstable, not to mention the name’s figurative uses that refer back to a community of values, among other things. The long history of the name of Europe suggests merely constancy; but what it actually means changes continuously to this very day. Performative acts imbue the transcultural hypertext as a whole with sense and meaning. As indicated above, this hypertext does not inherently possess them. That historical performative speech acts occur with reference to a (supposed) entity named Europe presumably follows from motives similar to those associated with performative speech acts in a narrower sense of the term. Performative and histori-

34 35

Figure see here: . Scroll down to page 1192. Detail: Wolfgang Schmale, Europa – die weibliche Form, in: L’Homme. Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 11/2/2000, 211–233. See also Peter Meurer, Europa Regina. 16th century maps of Europe in the form of a queen, in: Belgeo 3–4 2008, .

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cal performative speech acts create order on both a small and large scale. They uphold this order through citability, rituality, and reiterability. Since performative (speech) acts are primarily social phenomena, they are tenacious. They cannot simply be abolished like a government that has lost the basis of its legitimation. They continue to work even if they have been exposed as “swindles.” “Hypertext as a whole” does not mean being self-contained or “fulfilled,” for by definition a transcultural hypertext is never self-contained—new links and expansions as well as the loss of texts and links are always possible. This makes necessary the constant repetition—reiteration—of the performative acts that create the particular Europe that again and again appears to us as the expression of a secured identity and induces an ontological view. Performative acts are tied to groups or collectives of people. Historical performative acts are implemented by speaker collectives. Should the speaker collective’s composition change—for example, through the movement of people, upward social mobility, decisive changes in available media, or new social practices—other performative acts can take the place of previous ones. Performative acts are not the same as the discourses that Hayden White36 considered essential for the contemporary construction of Europe. Discourses play their role as “preliminary discourses” prior to performative acts; but the process in the proper sense occurs in the performative speech act. The theoretical sentence, “performative acts engender an awareness of ‘Europe’ in that transcultural hypertext that is designated ‘European history,” does not claim to explain every history in Europe, for not every history in Europe is also European history. This distinction needs to be made. The sentence provides a decisive analytical instrument if it is repeatedly reviewed with respect to its validity for specific time periods. The sentence should be accompanied by a hypothesis: for a number of decades, its validity has been limited and it is becoming less and less valid in the present. History remains a transcultural hypertext, but since the end of the narrowly defined postwar period a new historical constellation has emerged where engendering or implementing Europe through performative acts is becoming less successful or no longer occurs. Since Europe does not possess any ontological antecedence, the absence of such performative acts—which, through an act of swindle, would “engender an awareness” of such a purported antecedence as a supposedly given identity—creates a kind of vacuum of meaning, one that is filled by authoritarian politicians. Some hold power, like Putin and Orbán; others are close to holding power, like Marine Le Pen in France and Heinz-Christian Strache in Austria, to mention just a few. With members distinguished by authoritarian personality structures, right-wing parties, like AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) in Germany, are making gains throughout Europe. Performative speech acts have “always” existed, and very specific acts of this type, such as naming, will presumably always exist. However, performative acts do not exist only in this simple form. Rather, as “collective historical performative 36

Hayden White, The Discourse of Europe and the Search for a European Identity, in: Bo Stråth (ed.), Europe and the Other and Europe as the Other, Brussels 2001, 2nd ed., 67–86.

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(speech) acts” they are often very complex. The performative acts of “homocentrism” and “Eurocentrism” evince the identity of a dying epoch, whose passing we are experiencing as contemporaries. We live not in a postmodern time but rather— to vary MacIntyre’s “after virtue”37—in a time “after performativity.”

VII Even if the ability to transfer the concept of performativity to history may seem obvious at first glance, as a rule we are dealing with complexities that feature the implementation of countless many speech acts with various different and differently weighted consequences. Performative acts are speech acts that establish identities. If an identity of “Europe” is established successfully, then we are dealing with a performative act that occurs not only in the individual moment of speech acting but rather in countless moments throughout a specific and sometimes long period of time. To characterize the result, in earlier studies I used the concept of sedimentation, derived from semiotics, in order to capture the performative act’s character of innumerability. But it remains a performative act. Performative acts in history—referred to here as historical performative acts—are complex in the sense that they are implemented by very many speakers at very different locations and very different times. Often they are the result of preceding discourses. Performative acts like gender determination at birth—which consists of the speech act: “that is a girl, that is a boy; you have a girl; you have a boy” (or something similar during an ultrasound) also presumably had a preliminary discourse that persisted for a longer period of time until the assertive speech act turned into a performative speech act that accommodated all of the features of reiteration, citation, and ritual. I find the term “archetypal performativa”38 less well-suited than the term “preliminary discourses,” which prepare speech acts over the course of time such that they become performative. “Archetypal” is nothing in cultural history. We do not exactly know the historical period of the preliminary discourses with regard to the speech act cited above as an example, but it nonetheless predates by far the periods we will be examining with regard to European history. Here we are dealing with preliminary discourses that in part still remain open-ended, so the division between preliminary discourses and performative acts is not absolutely sharp. This especially applies for European history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—consequently, for contemporary history and the history of the present. The need to contemplate whether we are dealing with preliminary discourses or performative acts increases the precision with which we can classify the history of the present. The same applies to questions regarding the relationship between the 37 38

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue. A study in moral theory, London 1985, 2nd rev. ed. Mats Furberg, Meaning and Illocutionary Force, in: K. T. Fann (ed.), Symposium on J. L. Austin, London 1969, 445–468, 452; quoted by Jürgen Villers, Die performative Wende. Austins Philosophie sprachlicher Medialität, Würzburg 2011, 74.

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integration of political communities and myth formation, which I raised in 1997 in the book-length essay Scheitert Europa an seinem Mythendefizit? (Is Europe Collapsing due to a Deficit of Myths?).39 Myths narrate conditions that have been established through a process of assertion against something else. They refer to specific results of historical processes of change that can be very long. In this sense, they mark a successful development, whereby “success” in this case is neither “good” nor “bad.” Presumably, performative acts similarly mark successfully concluded preliminary discourses, which is why they can “engender an awareness of something.” Collective historical performative speech acts require the existence of a speaker collective, which is based on social relations.40 Prerequisites include central binding interests and corresponding structures for networking and communication. Otherwise it would be impossible to agree on the “swindle” (which is not consciously made as such and is probably also not known as such). Such speaker collectives appear in every epoch of European history. As a rule, some of the collective’s members are closely and others more distantly linked to the holders of political power (the European demos41). “Court society,” whose amazing degree of differentiation and social range was very well recognized by Norbert Elias, can serve as a reference point.42 Since the French Revolution, we can observe a differentiation within the speaker collective that often leads to conflicting worldviews. One particular speaker collective prevailed in the eighteenth century, and until the second half of the twentieth century, despite the presence of multiple speaker collectives, there was always one that has prevailed and repeated the performative act of eighteenth century. But this collective is increasingly disintegrating. This has become especially evident since 2008 and the onset of the financial crisis, which also, however, elucidated the crisis of Europe’s various sociocultural systems. But the disintegration began earlier.

VIII Still a crucial factor today, the performative act that occurred in the eighteenth century consisted of allocating to Europe an identity as a “culture” — “Europe is a culture” (in the singular). Europe and culture or, respectively, “civilization” became synonymous. More precisely, the speech act states: “You, Europe, are the epitome of culture, you are genuinely Christian, you are the culture of homo europaeus, of 39 40 41 42

Wolfgang Schmale, Scheitert Europa an seinem Mythendefizit?, Bochum 1997. Klaus Eder, A Theory of Collective Identity. Making sense of the debate on a ‘European Identity’ in: European Journal of Social Theory 12/4/2009, 427–447. I refer to my “Geschichte und Zukunft der Europäischen Identität” (2008) where I amply deal with the question of European “Demos”. Norbert Elias, Die höfische Gesellschaft. Untersuchungen zur Soziologie des Königtums und der höfischen Aristokratie, Frankfurt on the Main 1983. On Elias’ Opus see: Claudia Opitz (ed.), Höfische Gesellschaft und Zivilisationsprozess. Norbert Elias’ Werk in kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive, Cologne 2005.

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the white Christian male, you are homo europaeus.” It could be briefly formulated as follows: “You, homo europaeus, are the culture of Europe.” This de facto equivalency of Europe=culture=homo europaeus possesses a heterosexual, masculine hegemonic connotation. We can call this performative act “Eurocentrism” (see chapter 3).43 Eurocentrism is more than just an attitude, as usually suggested by the use of the word. It is a historical collective performative speech act of the eighteenth century. It presupposes the displacement of the conception of world history as a history of salvation. The speaker collective that implemented this performative speech act can be reconstructed quite accurately. At its heart lay the république des lettres, which through books, print media, correspondence, and all sorts of societies branched out deeply into society and through cultural mediators—who were literate but not necessarily members of the république des lettres—extended its influence into the farthest villages. Furthermore, we can precisely reconstruct how this performative act proceeded.44 The identification of Europe with culture in the singular already in itself expresses that the cultural texts of a specific space are seen as linked into hypertext named culture. This hypertext obtains the name of culture or civilization and this is Europe, Europe is this. The fundamental tendency to actually acknowledge only Europe as culture or civilization in the full sense of the word, while disqualifying all other cultures or civilizations, as inferior, as still inhabiting an earlier stage of development or even being incapable of developing to a higher cultural level, persisted well into the twentieth century. The effective force of the eighteenth century’s performative act through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries proved itself once more after the Second World War, when links were purposely established to the Enlightenment’s understanding of Europe, referring not only to shared values as central components of cultural understanding but also to the hyperbole of the Enlightenment’s concept of culture or civilization. This is revealed by looking at the specific sources from the early stages of postwar European integration that pertain to the relationship with still existing colonies and other parts of the world. It applies for all of the other elements of the performative act formulated above: the postwar sources include the homo europaeus—the “European human”—which almost invariably means the man; and they include the attribute of Christian. Europe’s identification as the civilized continent and moreover as a Christian continent signifies a sustained performative act: the creation of the concept of culture that we still find familiar today proceeded from a transformation of concepts of culture and civilization that occurred in the eighteenth century.45 The understanding of Europe as a culture in the singular—as a cultural system—first developed over the course of the eighteenth century. This systemic approach was applied not 43 44 45

Samir Amin, Eurocentrism, London 1989/2011. The essay does not use the performativity or gender approach. Wolfgang Schmale, Europe: 18th-Century Definitions, in: Maria Baramova, Grigor Boykov and Ivan Parvev (eds.), Bordering Early Modern Europe, Wiesbaden 2015, 79–93. Jörg Fisch, Art. Zivilisation, Kultur, in: Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhard Koselleck (eds.), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Vol. 7, Stuttgart 1992, 679–774.

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only to Europe but also globally. The highest level of development—namely, the European—was closely associated with Christendom. Thus, furthering civilizational progress was linked with Christendom, which compared to the early modern period somewhat shifted the significance of the “Christianizing of the World as a European mission.” No longer did missionary efforts primarily serve the purpose of opening the gates of salvation history to converted “heathens,” as had been the case during the Age of Exploration; rather, they now served the purpose of civilizational progress, insofar as (to put it another way) the highest attainable level was that of Christian Europe—thus a Christian level. The actual implementation of this fundamental idea, which was elaborated within the context of the Holy Alliance (see chapter 4, case study III.1), occurred with fervor in the nineteenth century as the “mission” of the imperial powers.46 In the eighteenth century, various religious movements emerged—pietism, revivalism—that in one or another promoted the internalization of Christianity and thus worked toward the individual’s Christian self-identification. In principle, this should be viewed as analogous to Europe’s Christian self-identification as a culture or civilization, insofar as Europeans were by definition Christians. Even eighteenthcentury travelogues and fictional literature—which were by no means compelled to adopt a religious focus—described Europeans in precisely such terms in order to distinguish them from indigenous populations. We are dealing with processes of fundamental Christian self-identification that applied both to individuals as well as to the large cultural collective of Europe. The fundamentality of the processes had a trans-denominational character and thus possessed a trans-denominational potential, which later among imperialists like Cecil Rhodes would bear racist features. In Europe, the new understanding of Christendom also had an internal effect, constituting a connection between individual believers within the various congregations and imperialism in the world beyond. There is something quite ironic about the fact that so many people today undertake pilgrimages to the Sacré-Cœur basilica in Paris (consecrated in 1919), because, apart from its internal national relevance for France, this building is also a monument to Christian imperialism. In 1856, Pope Pius IX had declared the veneration of the Heart of Jesus to be a matter for the universal church. The architect Paul Abadie adopted the style of a mosque. While not uncommon for the period, due to its use for a Catholic church this style nonetheless had the effect of a conquest over Islam. François Loyer notes that the interior layout of Sacré-Cœur stands in clear opposition to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, a church that was transformed into a mosque.47 Moreover, built of naturally white stone, the basilica is dedicated to the heart of Jesus—the heart of the Christian God, masculine and represented as a (white) man. We will repeatedly encounter these elements of meaning.

46 47

The following sections are taken from: Wolfgang Schmale, Die Heilige Allianz und die Entstehung des christlichen Imperialismus, in: HMRG 26, 2013/14, 169–186. François Loyer, Le Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre, in: Pierre Nora (ed.), Les lieux de mémoire. Vol. 3, Paris 1997, 4253–4269, 4266 et seq.

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The collective performative act of the eighteenth century affiliated itself with hegemonic masculinity. Homo europaeus—the European human/man—appears as the bearer of the supposedly highly advanced and superior culture. (see chapter 4, case study II) The Latin term appears, in fact, to have been coined by Carl Linnaeus in 1735 in his famous and influential text Systema Naturae. During the subsequent course of the eighteenth century, it turned into the white Christian and masculine European. With the historical performative act of the eighteenth century—Eurocentrism: Europe is the most highly developed culture/civilization and has a civilizing mission to fulfill—“Europe” was changed from virgo, a feminine object in a patriarchal environment, into an actor, one that is male—in the same way that culture for the Enlightenment is masculine. The performative act can also be formulated as follows: “You, homo europaeus, are Europe.” The ancient world did not go that far. It is no coincidence that the use of the continental allegory significantly declined during the first intense phase of practiced hegemonic masculinity, namely, during the French Revolution. It would return during the course of the nineteenth century but without assuming its previous functional capacity, which if anything was taken over by national allegories. As mentioned earlier, Europe as figure turned increasingly into a caricature. A decisive element of the performative act was the emancipation from antiquity, which occurred in the so-called Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, which lasted into the early nineteenth century (see chapter 3). The fundamental importance of this process can hardly be overestimated. As far as I can tell, research into the Quarrel has not paid any attention to whether this emancipation process as such also opened up the space that must have been necessary to transform Europe from a woman (based in antiquity) into masculine culture (which can nonetheless be viewed allegorically as feminine) and to facilitate the quasi synonymy of Europe and homo europaeus. In any case, the foundations of this performative act did not come from antiquity. Later, during the course of the twentieth century, this element of being Christian on the part of Europeans receded, but the responsibility of the global civilizing mission remained, especially within the context of European integration. It is no coincidence that “European man” (the expression is common in various European languages) played an important role in this regard well into the 1960s and continues to be used. If one applies the conditions of reiteration and citation to the eighteenth century’s performative act, we can easily demonstrate that its validity persisted well into the twentieth century. This can be illustrated, for example, in historiography— pars pro toto. But one can also sound out the print media—studies are currently focusing on this matter in the print media during the First World War and the interwar period.48 One can also examine political speeches, while the work of literati has already been extensively researched in this regard. 48

See as an example: Florian Greiner, Wege nach Europa. Deutungen eines imaginierten Kontinents in deutschen, britischen und amerikanischen Printmedien 1914–1945, Göttingen 2014.

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IX The performative act of “Eurocentrism” can no longer be cited in the twenty-first century; it can no longer be reiterated; the ritual no longer has any speakers. The ancient performative act of homocentrism—the precondition for the act of Eurocentrism—thereby pretty much resolves itself. In this sense, there can be no return of the antiquity; nor would this be desirable. In the present, the heterosexual/masculine-hegemonic connotation of Eurocentrism does not sufficiently correspond to the world of lived experience. Cultural diversity is too great for it to be successfully reduced to a singularity. The idea of the civilizing mission no longer resonates among the majority. Europe is less and less dominated by Christianity. In the twenty-first century, “liquid modernity” is not a metaphor but rather everyday life for many people. Globalization is not a futuristic project but rather a fact. Hybrid identities are more likely than essential identities. The desire for orientation and direction remains strong, but it should not be confused with a fixation on an essential objective. The current historical phase can be described as “post performative,” because no historical performative act dominates and establishes a specific meaning of the transcultural hypertext. These ideas will be developed in chapter 5. The following chapters will first analyze “Europe” as a narrative in the historiography (chapter 2). Chapter three will examine the eighteenth century’s performative act of “Eurocentrism.” Its components and subsequent history will be explained in chapter 4 by means of case studies, which will address both preliminary discourses and reiterations and citations until into the twentieth century. Chapter 5 focuses on a further analysis of the post-performative situation. It also re-examines the performative act of antiquity.

CHAPTER II THE MEANING OF “EUROPE” IN HISTORIOGRAPHY1 I Historiography contributed at an early stage to the formation of various different ideas of Europe. Nonetheless, Herodotus’s Histories (ca. 450 BCE) still do not contain any formal systematized approach to anything that could have been called “European history.” Such an approach does not become evident until the eighteenth century, when historiography began participating in the performative act of Eurocentrism, with “historians of Europe” forming part of the speaker collective that carried it out. Previously, studies of historiography have hardly ever raised the question in any comprehensive manner about Europe as a narrative or topic in historiography. This issue fails to arise in general histories of historiography.2 Some research has dealt with the historiographical modeling of Europe as a problem posed3 by the historiography practiced during various respective periods.4 The three volumes published by Duchhardt on historians of Europe since the Renaissance provide a 1

2

3

4

I have worked on Europe as a topic in historiography over nearly 20 years, publishing several books and review articles on this subject. My book Geschichte Europas (Vienna 2000 and 2001) also includes a chapter on historiography. The present chapter is based on these texts, which I have reworked; it further benefits from an unpublished lecture on “Europe in Twentieth-Century Historiography”. In detail: Geschichte Europas (2000/2001), 137–144; Europa, in: GWU (Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht) Vol. 66/2015, 461–487; Literaturbericht Europäische Geschichte, Teile I–V, in: GWU, part I in Vol. 60/2009, 517–530; part II in Vol. 60/2009, 594–603; part III in Vol. 60/2009, 660–683; part IV in Vol. 60/2009, 744–758; part V in Vol. 61/2010, 58–75; Literaturbericht Europäische Geschichte, part I–III, in: GWU Vol. 55/2004, 454–470, 625–636, 697–707; Europa als Topos der Geschichtsschreibung, in: Georg Michels (ed.): Auf der Suche nach einem Phantom? Widerspiegelungen Europas in der Geschichtswissenschaft, 45–67, Baden-Baden 2003; Das 18. Jahrhundert, Vienna 2012, 325–328. Not mentioned in: Eduard Fueter, Geschichte der neueren Historiographie, Munich 1911; Mirjana Gross, Von der Antike bis zur Postmoderne. Die zeitgenössische Geschichtsschreibung und ihre Wurzeln, Vienna 1998; Karl Kaser, Südosteuropäische Geschichtswissenschaft und Geschichte. Eine Einführung, Vienna 1990; some authors such as Völkel (2006) and Iggers et al. (2013) deal with “Western historiography” within a global context. Wolfgang Schmale, Europäische Geschichte als historische Disziplin. Überlegungen zu einer Europäistik, in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 46/1998, 389–405; Wolfgang Schmale, Die Komponenten der historischen Europäistik, in: Gerald Stourzh (ed.), Annäherungen an eine europäische Geschichtsschreibung, Vienna 2002, 119–139. Rainer Hudemann, Hartmut Kaelble and Klaus Schwabe (eds.), Europa im Blick der Historiker, Munich 1995; Heinz Duchhardt and Andreas Kunz (eds.), „Europäische Geschichte“ als historiographisches Problem, Mainz 1997.

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broader overview,5 proceeding from assumption that declaredly European historians have existed since the beginning of the early modern period. Peter Pichler takes an interesting approach, having created the concept of “episodic historiographical narration” with regard to today’s historiography concerning European integration. He has identified eight conventionalized episodic narratives, attributing four of them to the discipline of history: new cultural history, the history of media and communications, historical anthropology, and universal history.6 Along with Western European historiography about European integration, Russian historiography is drawing more attention again, confronting European integration under very different auspices. Martin Weber’s investigation of Russian historical works has identified arguments in favor of “Europhile-Eurocentric” positions, on the one hand, and “Russophile-Russocentric” positions, on the other.7 One line of research that has made a strong appearance in the last ten to twenty years focuses on the universal history of historiography, but it works less with the category of Europe than with that of the “West.”8

II Herodotus, however, did not yet have the “Europe” thought pattern at his disposal. His work most clearly reveals an effort to define Europe geographically.9 Herodotus’s belief that Europe was the largest of the three known continents may be assessed as an indication of a cultural preference for Europe that was also otherwise obvious in his writing. Essentially, however, he assigned positive cultural or ethnographic connotations only to Greek civilization. Everything else mostly blurred into a montage of legends, myths, curiosities, obscurities, and the uncivilized, which he viewed as belonging to Europe because he proceeded from an a priori geographical definition. His reiteration in the Histories of the traditional abduction myths—the rape of Io, the rape of Europe—may indicate a sort of cultural border of perception that separated Greek from Persian culture. But this is quite different from the denigration of Persia that has long been attributed to Herodotus, an interpretation now

5 6

7 8 9

Duchhardt et al (eds.), Europa-Historiker. Ein biographisches Handbuch, 3 Vols., Göttingen, 2006–7. Peter Pichler, Acht Geschichten über die Integrationsgeschichte. Zur Grundlegung der Geschichte der europäischen Integration als ein episodisches historiographisches Erzählen, Innsbruck 2011. Martin Weber, Ein Europa? Die europäische Integration in der russischen Historiographie nach 1985, Cologne 2013. Georg G. Iggers, Q. Edward Wang and Supriya Mukherjee, A Global History of Modern Historiography, Abingdon 2013. See Wido Sieberer, Das Bild Europas in den Historien. Studien zu Herodots Geographie und Ethnographie Europas und seiner Schilderung der persischen Feldzüge, Innsbruck 1994; Michael Rathmann (ed.), Wahrnehmung und Erfassung geographischer Räume in der Antike, Mainz 2007; Reinhold Bichler, Herodots Historien unter dem Aspekt der Raumerfassung, in: Rathmann (ed.), Wahrnehmung und Erfassung geographischer Räume, 67–80.

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clearly disputed by Erich S. Gruen.10 Later epochs easily transferred the valorization of Greek culture to a civilized Europe, which encompassed more than Greece. Herodotus—insofar as he represents a historiographical origin—already established a number of the core elements of the later topos of Europe: geographical boundaries, cultural superiority, and self-definition through cultural distinction. All three elements remain in use today. They are not specific to historiography but are common knowledge, although they continue to be found in the scholarly writing of history. Because of their methodology, Herodotus’s Histories count among the ancient world’s fundamental historiographical texts as written by methodologically trained and literate personalities, regardless of whether, based on standards developed since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we refer to them as pre-scientific or scientific. At the same time, the Histories established elemental meanings for what would later become the topos of “Europe.” Nonetheless, identifying Herodotus with the start of the topos of Europe in historiography would amount to an overinterpretation of the facts, especially given the absence of an uninterrupted trajectory from Herodotus’s historical writings to modernity. In ancient Rome, the paramount concept with regard to civilization—or, more precisely, the ecumene—was not Europe but rather Imperium Romanum.11 As a subject, “Europe” had more to do with the development in the ancient world of geographical perceptions and interpretations.12 A few texts, some of which have survived only in fragments, make you prick up your ears, such as About Asia and Europe by Demetrios of Kallatis on the western shores of the Black Sea (around 200 years/ first half of second century BCE). A little later, Agatharchus of Cnidus dealt with Asia and Europe in a similar way from his universal-historical perspective.13 These texts almost immediately bring to mind Enea Silvio Piccolomini and his two tracts, De Asia and De Europa,14 written more than 1600 years later. Even so, none of these sources contain anything resembling “European history,” their interest lying in what is often called universal history, as well as in local or regional history. Europe did not become a concept for a civilization until the transformative Merovingian and Carolingian periods—namely, as the Christian civilization that set itself apart from the non-Christian “Mohammedans”.15 The identification of Europe

10 Erich Stephen Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity, Princeton/NJ 2011; on Herodotus 21– 39. 11 As examples: Kai Brodersen, Terra cognita. Studien zur römischen Raumerfassung, 2nd rev. ed., Hildesheim 2003; Christian Hänger, Die Welt im Kopf. Raumbilder und Strategie im römischen Kaiserreich, Göttingen 2001. 12 I’m grateful to my colleague Roland Steinacher, Austrian Academy of Sciences, for his bibliographical advice. 13 Johannes Engels, Demetrios von Kallatis “Über Asien und Europa” (FGrHist 85 F 1–6). Universalhistorie und Kulturgeographie zwischen Ephoros und Strabon, in: Michael Rathmann (ed.), Studien zur antiken Geschichtsschreibung, Bonn 2009, 187–202, 188. 14 See the new edition: Enea Silvio Piccolomini and Adrianus van Heck (ed.), Enee Silvii Piccolominei postea Pii PP. II De Evropa, Città del Vaticano 2001. 15 Franco Cardini, Europa und der Islam. Geschichte eines Missverständnisses, Munich 2000.

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with Christendom qualified the concept of Europe such that it could—but did not need to—be used alongside a few others, such as Christianitas, for example, and the Occident.16 But Europe could also take on political content, which prepared its position as a key political concept later on.17 Only at a very late point in time does Europe also come to serve as a guiding or key concept in historiography. Medieval historiography doubtlessly provided geographical-cultural descriptions of Europe,18 but not any “history of Europe.” European history existed only via the “detour” of salvation history, but did not appear as such with its own designation. The reason why this could not actually have been any different can be seen from some of the medieval period’s world maps, such as the famous Ebstorf world map (first half of the thirteenth century):19 The entire world forms a kind of Corpus Christi, with all of the abundantly present geographical details subordinated to this fundamental world view. The Augsburg world map created by Hans Rüst around 1490 called Europe “europa jabet land”—Europe as the land of Japheth.20 In the Middle Ages, Japheth, son of Noah, was identified as the patriarch of European Christians. The references to Christ and the Old Testament allowed Europe to appear as an integral part of salvation history. Consequently, an independently conceivable “history of Europe” did not exist. Only the geopolitical changes of the fourteenth century made such a perspective possible, because they in fact initiated Europe’s self-discovery. This self-discovery was closely linked to the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, which triggered mechanisms that achieve self-definition via the distinction from the Other and the Foreign, perceived as threats. The military threat, at least, was not simply imagined but very real indeed; thus the religious threat to (European) Christianity posed by the “unbelievers” seemed real as well. The image of the world as Corpus Christi, which until then had subsumed Europe, gave way to a new image of Europe, namely, the personified Respublica Christiana. Europe received its own body in the form of a crowned female figure, through which it became describable for the first time separately as Europe.21 While the framework of the religious worldview was not hereby abandoned, it was nonetheless altered.

16 Still relevant: Jürgen Fischer, Oriens – Occidens – Europa. Begriff und Gedanke „Europa“ in der späten Antike und im frühen Mittelalter, Wiesbaden 1957; Oschema, Bilder von Europa, 2013. 17 Wolfgang Schmale, Geschichte Europas, Vienna 2000, 30. 18 Oschema, Bilder von Europa, 2013. 19 „Ebstorfer Weltkarte“: . Research and interpretation: Hartmut Kugler (ed.), Ein Weltbild vor Columbus. Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte, Weinheim 1991. Hartmut Kugler (ed.), Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte, Berlin 1995. 20 Figure in: Ivan Kupcik, Alte Landkarten. Von der Antike bis zum Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts, 7th ed., Prague 1992, 45; Peter H. Meurer, Cartography in the German Lands, 1450–1650, in: David Woodward (ed.), Cartography in the European Renaissance. The History of Cartography, Vol. 3, Chicago 2007, Ch. 42. . 21 For details see Schmale, Europa – die weibliche Form, 2001.

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Other factors involved the discovery of America and incursions in Africa and Asia, events that also accelerated Europe’s self-discovery. In the course of the confrontation with the non-European world, they initially led to the very strong conviction of Europe’s superiority over other continents and societies. Europe became describable. But a history of Europe in its own sense of the word, one that was no longer embedded in salvation history, had not yet been invented. The legend of Japheth remained widespread, functioning like a story of European origins. A history of Europe based, for example, on the material emergence of European culture existed only in its rudimentary and incipient stages. Urban, regional, and national history had advanced considerably further. The epoch of the Renaissance does not provide an unambiguous profile: historical myths continued to circulate as before, competing with empirical archeological findings, even as scientific empiricism managed to work toward creating an understanding of both European culture and national culture. But what about the extent to which “European history”—in contrast to urban or “national history”—signified a historiographical subject? We basically need to recall that, during the fifteenth century, the cities of northern Italy constituted laboratories for a new empirically based historiography, and that Italian historiographers streamed forth into numerous European countries, all the way to Poland and Hungary, Spain and England, where they composed historical works related to these respective geographical regions. In principle, these Italian historiographers acted much the same as their mercantile compatriots: they possessed a new technology, which they schematically applied on location in other European countries. Naturally, they sometimes encountered national historiographical traditions, but these were often still modeled on chronicles and salvation history. Later, these regions and countries would cultivate a revitalized national historiography written by indigenous authors. Eventually— especially starting in the eighteenth century, as part of process of cultural transfer— national histories would be written by non-indigenous authors for non-indigenous publics: thus, for example, English history would be written from the French or German perspective not so much for an English public but rather for the public of the author’s own nation. During the entire Middle Ages, various aspects of antiquity had been present, not to mention rediscovered. The latter applies, for example, to Roman law and the writings of Aristotle. But these two “legacies” were not understood as temporally specific intellectual monuments but rather as expressions of timelessly true knowledge. To medieval contemporaries, Roman law initially looked like a “bible of law” sent from heaven. According to general opinion, Aristotle’s texts formed the expression of political reason in and of itself. Similar attitudes prevailed with regard to antiquity’s countless architectural remains, which provided a stock of building material for new constructions like churches, palaces, and city walls. However, in late-medieval Italy, scene of the change in mentality known as the “Renaissance,” these intellectual and material monuments were increasingly historicized: that is, they were understood as witnesses of a past historical epoch that needed to be understood not only in the sense of timelessly valid truths but also in the sense of being temporally—that is, historically—specific and isolated. It was not without

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reason that the first works initiating the quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, such as Guido Panciroli’s “comparison” between ancients and moderns in 1598, derived from late-sixteenth century Italy.22 This type of historical discernment contributed to the formation of critical methods in the philologies—indeed, in all disciplines that would today be considered the humanities—as well as in archeology and biblical studies. This led to the discovery of an ancient pre-history of Europe; likewise, the Renaissance also basically “invented” the historical periodization— Antiquity, Middle Ages, Modernity—that we still commonly use today. Archeological finds were placed in repositories and inscription directories were produced. The popes successfully endeavored in the sixteenth century to exercise a certain degree of control over excavations in Rome in order to counter the unmonitored dissipation of historical cultural assets and to fill their own coffers. The key figures involved in historicizing the ancient world also included antiquarians, who excavated, collected, learned classification methods, made repositories, and traded in archeological treasures.23 Italy forged the way; other countries followed. For a time, these threads converged on Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc (1580– 1637) in France. Driven by an insatiable curiosity and a boundless need to expand and supplement knowledge, he most importantly created a scholarly information network regarding all kinds of archeological finds. We encounter such people everywhere during the sixteenth century. In Britain, for example, we find the antiquarian William Camden (1551–1623), who in 1586 provided a county-by-county historical-geographical description of Great Britain and Ireland from Roman antiquity to the Middle Ages. We can identify similar developments in parts of Europe that lay beyond the ancient Roman limes; but, admittedly, antiquarian and scholarly interest concentrated on the remains of Celtic, Germanic, and even older protohistorical cultures. Scholars were obsessed with the discovery of urnfields, stone tools and weapons, and the mysteries of megaliths. Pre- and protohistorical finds were made everywhere, not only east and north of the limes. In this way, pre- and protohistory also supported the discovery of a history of Europe. But antiquity’s inevitable material absence beyond the limes, particularly in Scandinavia, undeniably contributed to the perpetuation of Europe’s bipartite regional division into a Roman and Germanic Europe.24 In Scandinavia,

22 Guido Panciroli, Raccolte breve d’alcune cose piu segnalate c’hebbero gli antichi, e d’alcune altre trovate da moderni, Venice 1598/London 1715. . 23 Wolfgang E. J. Weber, Zur Bedeutung des Antiquarianismus für die Entwicklung der modernen Geschichtswissenschaft, in: Hilmar Kallweit and Wolfgang Küttler (eds.), Geschichtsdiskurs. Vol. 2 Anfänge modernen historischen Denkens, Frankfurt on the Main 1994, 120–135; Ingo Herklotz, Der Antiquar als komische Figur. Ein literarisches Motiv zwischen Querelle und altertumswissenschaftlicher Reflexion, in: Ulrich Heinen (ed.), Welche Antike? Konkurrierende Rezeptionen des Altertums im Barock. Vol. 1, Wiesbaden 2011, 141–179. 24 Critical view: Markus Völkel, “Romanität”/“Germanität”, in: Wolfgang Schmale (ed.), Kulturtransfer. Kulturelle Praxis im 16. Jahrhundert, Innsbruck 2003, 247–260.

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archeological findings were exploited for propaganda purposes within the context of the political competition between the dual monarchies of Denmark-Norway and Sweden-Finland. In both monarchies, archeological and historical findings served—not only, but also—to ascribe independent histories to the early modern period’s proto-national monarchies and republics. But in the process, enough remained left over for a transnational European cultural history. In 1594, Nathan Chitraeus (1543–1598)25 published a collection of inscriptions from all across Europe—from Denmark to Italy, England to Poland. Born in the Palatinate, Chitraeus spent a large part of his life in Rostock and Bremen and received his doctorate in Tübingen in 1562. From 1565 to 1567, he travelled through England, France, and Italy. His collection includes, among others things, inscriptions honoring individuals who had earned their merits in the defense against the Turks. Indeed, more than anything else, the Turkish threat motivated the period’s elite to think about Europe as a unified body. To be sure, there was something like a “contemporary history” of Europe (which, naturally, did not refer to itself as such), as exemplified by Lodovico Guicciardini’s (1521–1589) Commentarii delle cose più memorabili seguite in Europa, specialmente in questi Paesi Bassi (Commentary on the most important events in Europe, especially the Netherlands, 1566), a political chronicle that covered far more than the Netherlands.26 Other titles even promised a “history of Europe,” such as Pier Francesco Giambullari’s (1495–1555) Historia dell’Europa published posthumously in 1566 and Alfonso de Ulloa’s (ca. 1530–1570) Le historia de Europa, which appeared in 1570.27 But neither “histories” of Europe were actually histories, confining themselves instead to the period around 900 (Giambullari) or offering a selection of events (Ulloa). Nonetheless, one must concede that these and other works collected and published material that was used to gradually replace the notion of Europe as a body with that of Europe as a culture.28 The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries provided future historical scholarship with an immense body of inventoried empirical material that ranged (in modern terms) from prehistory in Europe to ancient Greek and Roman artifacts, medieval documents, and other written sources, including for the early modern period. Reflected by a new kind of historical periodization, the secularization of historical thought laid additional foundations for systematizing accumulated knowledge.

25 Ad personam: Thomas Elsmann, Nathan Chytraeus, 1543–1598: Ein Humanist in Rostock und Bremen. Quellen und Studien, Bremen 1991. Ad scriptum: Nathan Chytraeus, Variorum in Europa itinerum deliciae [...], Corvinus 1594. 26 Christiane Coester, Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540), in: Heinz Duchhardt et al. (eds.), Europa-Historiker. Ein biographisches Handbuch Vol. 3, Göttingen 2007, 1–27. 27 Volker Reinhardt, Pierfrancesco Giambullari (1495–1555), in: Heinz Duchardt et al. (eds.), Europa-Historiker. Ein biographisches Handbuch Vol. 2, Göttingen 2006, 1–28; Volker Reinhardt, Alfonso de Ulloa (ca. 1530–1570), in: Heinz Duchhardt et al. (eds.), Europa-Historiker. Ein biographisches Handbuch Vol. 1, Göttingen 2006, 1–22. 28 Wolfgang Schmale, Körper – Kultur – Identität. Neuzeitliche Wahrnehmungen Europas, in: Wiener Zeitschrift zur Geschichte der Neuzeit 1/2001, 81–98.

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However, in the sixteenth century, the actual loci of historiographical systematization were not so much works that presented themselves as history but rather cosmographies,29 whose “flagship” can be considered Sebastian Münster’s (1488– 1552) Cosmographia Universalis, first published in German in Basel in 1544 (a first edition in a vernacular language was unusual at the time).30 In principle, it constituted a universal history, one that admittedly assigned a central role to European countries, especially the territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Along with the map of the European continent, Münster’s work also included a few pages of text describing Europe in general terms. Translated into multiple European languages, by 1628 this cosmography had gone through at least 30 editions. The work’s broad dissemination and the European-wide correspondence network established by Münster during his life time31 turned the Cosmographia into a historiographical model. “The whole of Europe” partook in this scientific adventure (in the positive sense of the word) via the correspondence network and the judgments that highly praised— and sometimes spitefully denigrated—the work. The work was a political issue, not only because Münster’s correspondents included kings, electoral princes, and archbishops, but also because, due to the non-arrival of information, a few chapters in the first two editions were somewhat short, which was assessed—by Spain, for example, and hence also the imperial family—as a deliberate political affront. The Cosmographia took an interdisciplinary and cultural-historical approach; however, it dealt with the material according to separate continents and countries—basically, according to nations. Jacques-Auguste de Thou’s (1553–1617) Historia sui temporis (Paris, 1604 et seq.) reached back to the Middle Ages. Even though France became ever more central during the course of this account, the author nonetheless looked at Europe as a whole. The Geneva edition of 1620—just one of many—consisted of four folio volumes with more than 4000 pages of text.32 The Merian firm published the last edition of Münster’s Cosmographia in 1628 and introduced the first volume of the Theatrum Europaeum to the market just a few years later. At first, the Theatrum Europaeum amounted to a chronicle of the Thirty Years’ War, but further volumes in the second half of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century dealt with the postwar periods, until the publishing house

29 Denis E. Cosgrove, Images of Renaissance Cosmography 1450–1650, in: David Woodward (ed.), Cartography in the European Renaissance, The History of Cartography, Vol. 3, Chicago 2007, Ch. 3. . 30 Ad personam: Wolfgang Schmale, Sebastian Münster (1488–1552), in: Duchhardt et al. (eds.), Europa-Historiker. Vol. 1, Göttingen 2006, 29–49; Ad scriptum: Sebastian Münster, Cosmographei oder Beschreibung aller länder, herrschaften, fürnehmsten stetten, geschichten, gebreuchen, hantierungen [...], Basel 1544; original edition online: edition Basel 1545 . 31 Karl Heinz Burmeister, Sebastian Münster. Versuch eines biographischen Gesamtbildes, Basel 1963; Sebastian Münster, Briefe Sebastian Münsters. Latin and German, ed. Karl Heinz Burmeister, Frankfurt on the Main 1964. 32 For details see bibliography.

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went bankrupt. The frontispiece33 of the first volume provided a map of Europe and two brief texts to attune the reader to Europe “as a whole.” In the beginning, the work tracked events back and forth across the European landscape, but later volumes organized their reports according to countries and nations. The Theatrum Europaeum was the seventeenth century’s most comprehensive work about European contemporary history and its ongoing publication evidently inspired imitations, such as the Diarium Europaeum and the Neuer Europäischer Florus.34 In the seventeenth century, numerous explicitly or implicitly historical works appeared in England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the Holy Roman Empire, but they rarely went beyond the scope of contemporary history.35

III Before people could imagine or write a conceptually systematic “history of Europe”, they first had to have the ability to imagine Europe as a whole, something that emerged in the sixteenth century with the help of the religiously connoted female form. Thus as of 1588, editions of Münster’s Cosmographia also featured the by-then famous map of Europe depicting the European continent in the form of a queen.36 The step toward an explicit historiography of Europe and the foundation of Europe as a topos of historical writing—usually within the context of a more comprehensive “history/cultural history of humanity”—only became possible with changes to the concept of culture, which occurred above all in the eighteenth century. This is the point when one can also refer to a performative act with regard to Europe in historiography. The change in the meaning of “culture” referred to the fact that the “specifically human achievement” for the “process of history” was to be conceptualized in a manner that was “new and detached from theological traditions and filled with meaning.” This was summarized in the concept of culture.37 Developments in the writing of cultural history—which was basically geared toward universal history—paralleled the evolution of the concept of culture. The terms “culture” or, respectively, “civilization” made it possible to systematize the 33 For details see bibliography. 34 On Theatrum Europaeum and other periodicals: Wolfgang Schmale, Das 17. Jahrhundert und die neue europäische Geschichte, in: Historische Zeitschrift 264/1997, 587–611, especially 588–597, frontispiece and map of Europe: 592 and 593. 35 Cf. “Europabegriffe und Europavorstellungen im 17. Jahrhundert”, dir.: Wolfgang Schmale: . 36 The first map „Queen Europe“ (not the original title but attributed through common usage) was created by Johannes Putsch in 1537. Under Emperor Rudolf II, after 1570, the map was often reprinted with various modifications. 37 Fisch, Art. Zivilisation, Kultur, 1992, here part VI, 707 (emphasized W.S.). For a global historical comparison of 18th-century historiography see Iggers, Wang and Mukherjee, A Global History, op. cit., Chapter 1.

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results of historical developments, that is, also to join them into an internal structural nexus. This relationship could be understood in terms of universal or human history as well as in terms of continents and—on a smaller scale—nations. Most Enlightenment authors published articles on cultural history. For a few decades, Bossuet’s Histoire universelle,38 a work that fully followed the salvation history model, shone in the publication firmament. The English Universal History from the Earliest Times to the Present by George Sale (1697–1736), supplemented by additional volumes until 1765, still remained beholden to the cosmographic model.39 This cosmographical/salvation schema was completely overturned by Montesquieu (Esprit des Lois, 1748), Turgot (Sur les progrès successifs de l’esprit humain, 175040), and Rousseau (Discours sur l’origine … de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, 1754)41, as well as by scholars teaching later at the University of Göttingen.42 Abbé Raynal developed a very self-contained and critical approach with his Histoire philosophique et politique Des Etablissemens & du Commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (1773), whose first volume effectively provided an outline of European and universal history.43 The following discusses a number of major eighteenth-century historiographical works, looking at the extent to which they elaborated a European history—that is, a “history of Europe” with performative intent. Research into eighteenth-century historiography abounds; but the types of questions that I deal with here regarding the “history Europe” have rarely or never been posed.44 Planned in 1741 as a universal-historical project, Voltaire’s Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l’histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à Louis XIII, [Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations…] can serve

38 Jaques Bénigne Bossuet, Discours sur l’histoire universelle, Paris 1681. 39 Iggers, Wang and Mukherjee, Global History, 29 et s. Iggers does not carry out a comparison with the genre of cosmographies. 40 Printed in: Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Œuvres. Vol. 2, 1844, 587 et seq. 41 See bibliography. 42 André de Melo Araújo, Weltgeschichte in Göttingen. Eine Studie über das spätaufklärerische universalhistorische Denken, 1756–1815, Βielefeld 2012. See also Karen O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment. Cosmopolitan history from Voltaire to Gibbon, Cambridge 1997. 43 Guillaume Thomas François Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes. Vol. 1, Amsterdam 1773, Link: ; Guillaume Thomas François Raynal and Alexandre Deleyre, Tableau de l’Europe. pour servir de supplément à l’Histoire philosophique & politique des établissements & du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, Amsterdam 1774, Link: . On Raynal and Deleyre/Raynal see: Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Manfred Tietz, Lectures de Raynal. L’ “Histoire des deux Indes” en Europe et en Amérique au XVIIIe siècle, Oxford 1991; Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Anthony Strugnell, L’ “Histoire des deux Indes”. Réécriture et polygraphie, Oxford 1995. 44 In Vol. 2, Pocock deals with Voltaire and Robertson: John Greville Agard Pocock, Narratives of civil government. Barbarism and Religion, Vol. 2, Cambridge 1999. Karen O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment, 1997.

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as a historiographical model for the eighteenth century.45 Voltaire completed the text’s final revision just a few months before his death in 1778: the initial draft had turned into a monumental historical work that preoccupied the European public. Originally, Voltaire had been interested in a history of the “human spirit” [esprit humain], which he sketched out in his “Philosophy of History.” To be sure, the work grew far beyond that over the years, but in the conclusion at the end of his universal history, Voltaire advanced this basic idea as the quintessence of the whole. For Voltaire, history, in the sense of a reflective process that is historiographically written down, started in China. History began in China at a time when in Europe—geographically conceived—knowledge or awareness of the written form did not yet exist. European history did not begin until the fall of Rome; only then, in the “chaos of our Europe,” did a “form” become apparent.46 Voltaire accredited “our Europe” of having made immense progress since Charlemagne (“more people,” “more civilization,” “more wealth,” “more knowledge”), raising it to a level even higher than the Roman Empire.47 In the chapters entitled “État de l’Europe,” that is, the “state of Europe,” which begin with the division of the Carolingian empire among the Charlemagne’s sons, Voltaire summarized the stages of European history. État de l’Europe consequently refers to the political circumstances, to the—“avant la lettre”—emerging European system of states. Yet Voltaire did not limit himself to political history; he also wrote about cultural history and the history of everyday life, and about progress in the arts and sciences. In Voltaire’s universal history, Europe meant: (1) during the Middle Ages, Christianity; (2) during the late Middle Ages, the Christian Republic, including the corresponding corporeal imagery; (3) in the early-modern period, a political system. In addition, even though its geographical dimensions fluctuated, Europe was always (4) a memoryscape; and, last but not least, 5) a “civilization.” The awareness that Europe constituted a political system was particularly manifest during the eighteenth century, expressing itself in the concept of the balance of power. It seems significant that the formation of a euro-political consciousness and historiographical reflections—engaged in backward projection—on these processes henceforth occurred simultaneously. The reason for these new circumstances, due also to the emergence of Europe as a subject of historiography, was formulated by Herder in Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit 45 François-Marie Arouet Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l’histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à Louis XIII [1742–1778], 2. Vols. ed., René Pomeau, Paris 1963 (quotations are from this edition). See now the most recent critical edition: François-Marie Arouet Voltaire, Bruno Bernard and Nicholas Cronk, Les œuvres complètes de Voltaire, Vols. 22–26, Oxford 2009. On Voltaire as a historiographer of Europe see: Wolfgang Schmale, Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) (1694–1778), in: Heinz Duchhardt et al. (eds.), Europa-Historiker. Vol. 3, Göttingen 2007, 29–41; Antoine Lilti, La civilisation est-elle européenne? Ecrire l’histoire de l’Europe au XVIIIe siècle, in: Antoine Lilti and Céline Spector (eds.), Penser l’Europe au XVIIIe siècle. Commerce, civilisation, empire, Oxford 2014, 139– 166. 46 Ibid., 1963-edition, Vol. 1, 203. 47 Ibid., Vol. 2, Chap. 197, 810 et s.

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(Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, 1784), a work whose approach became a model: Already at an early age…the thought frequently occurred to me whether—since everything in the world has its philosophy and science—that which concerns us most closely, the history of humanity as a whole, should not also have a philosophy and science?48

Herder began his history of humanity with observations regarding earth as a star among stars, linked his analysis of the nature of man with his historical achievements, and finished with Europe as a culture: “How did Europe attain its culture and the rank that, for this reason, it is due above other peoples?”49 Europe as culture: that was the subject bequeathed to the nineteenth century by eighteenth-century historiography (via Herder, who formulated this succinctly as the sum of a comprehensive work). The great historiographical works of the second half of the eighteenth century include Edward Gibbon’s fiercely discussed and controversial work entitled the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.50 One of the most urgent questions posed starting in the eighteenth century pertained to progress and decline in human history.51 By and large, the period was informed by an optimistic sense of progress, but when Montesquieu set about writing not only about Rome’s grandeur but about Rome’s grandeur and decline (Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur et de la décadence des Romains, 1734), a problem became obvious. What lay ahead for Europe, given that it was now considered so prosperous and so superior with respect to the rest of humanity? As rule, human progress was considered irreversible—an eighteenth-century version of Oswald Spengler who might have challenged this understanding did not exist. But ever since Montesquieu, the problem was there, at least subliminally. The subject of the fall of Rome had already been dealt with during the Renaissance, and the problem of decline—referred to as decadence—also featured in the seventeenth century. But a concept of progress that bore within the assurance that humanity could shape the future like a creator arose specifically in the eighteenth century. Against this background, historical questions about the decline of a 48 Johann Gottfried von Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit [1784– 85], ed. Heinrich Kurze, n. d. Leipzig. Introduction, 10. The German version of Herder’s Menschheit was widely distributed in Europe; in 1820, for example, it was printed in German in Stockholm und Uppsala, after it had already appeared in Swedish translation in 1814–1816. A French translation by Edgar Quinet appeared in 1834. 49 Ibid., book 20, VI, concluding notes, 711. 50 Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [1787], Chicago 1984. See the general characterization in Karl Christ, “Edward Gibbon”, in: Karl Christ (ed.), Von Gibbon zu Rostovtzeff. Leben und Werk führender Althistoriker der Neuzeit, Darmstadt 1972, 8–25. The seminal work on Gibbon is Pocock’s 4 Vols. on “Barbarism and Religion”; John Greville Agard Pocock, The First Decline and Fall. Barbarism and Religion, Vol. 3, Cambridge 2003 and John Greville Agard Pocock, Barbarians, Savages and Empires. Barbarism and Religion, Vol. 4, Cambridge 2005 focus directly “Decline and Fall”. 51 Walter Rehm, Der Untergang Roms im abendländischen Denken. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichtsschreibung und zum Dekadenzproblem, Leipzig 1930; Wolfgang Drost (ed.), Fortschrittsglaube und Dekadenzbewußtsein im Europa des 19. Jahrhunderts. Literatur, Kunst, Kulturgeschichte, Heidelberg 1986.

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culture like that of the Romans, which, according to eighteenth-century beliefs, had determined the progress of human history for centuries, came uniquely to a head. Gibbon labored on the book for twenty years, citing the date of completion as June 27, 1787. Still impressive today due to its narrative strength and rigor, the work gave an account of the history of the Roman Empire from the imperial era to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, thereby covering the formation and impact of Christendom as well as its significance for the so-called fall of Rome, and the formation of an Islamic world and culture. Following pertinent events and actors, it reached all the way to China and India. To be sure, Gibbon maintained the façade of his two main concepts—“decline” and “fall”—but, in truth, he described fifteen hundred years of constant change, researching and revealing its driving forces and actors. For long stretches of text, one witnesses not a decline but rather the author’s fascinating attempt to clarify a massive amount of material and one of the eighteenth century’s most important questions. The result was a comprehensive history of Europe until the middle of the sixteenth century, framed by the worlds that surrounded and co-determined this Europe. The fact that the work was not merely about what had been lost but also about contemporary Europe is readily apparent; moreover, Gibbon himself made this unmistakably clear. Chapter 38 incorporated an interim summary entitled “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West” that explicitly referred to the present. He viewed Europe as “one great republic, whose various inhabitants have attained almost the same level of politeness and cultivation.” Admittedly, there was continuous change, even with regard to the “balance of power.” But “these partial events cannot essentially injure our general state of happiness, the system of arts, and laws, and manners, which so advantageously distinguish, above the rest of mankind, the Europeans and their colonies.”52 The defining characteristics of the Republic of Europe resembled those identified by Gibbon in the first chapter as characterizing the Roman Empire in the second century AD: “The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury.”53 As with Rome so also with Europe, Gibbon saw, apart from internal conflicts, the main danger as external: threats by uncivilized “savages.” Gibbon—as did Voltaire—included natural catastrophes, climactic and other environmental influences in his inquiry into the causes of transformation and decline. This kind of holistic and complex perspective was what constituted the late eighteenth century’s concepts of civilization. The salvation-historical explanation of Christianity, on which the well-behaved Voltaire tirelessly slaved away in his historical work, represented a comparably simple matter, whereas Gibbon’s link between the transformation of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christendom— indeed, transformation in the sense of decline—was incomparably more complex and required its own parameters of research and inquiry.

52 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 632. 53 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 1.

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The subject of decline and losses that could perhaps never be restored was dealt not only with reference to the ancient Roman Empire but also with reference to Europe. It involved an approach that likewise led to thinking about Europe as a historical unity, albeit one that had passed. This was especially pronounced in Novalis’s small text entitled Die Christenheit oder Europa (1799), which sketched the image of a unified Christian medieval Europe, but a Europe that had been lost.54 The concept and understanding of Europe as a historical, cultural, and religious unity became clear in the exact historical moment when this unity—at least for the time being—was essentially gone, namely, during the phase of Europe’s political reorganization in the course of the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna. Above all, Novalis expressed a longing for this unity, and in so doing he basically tapped into the spirit of the age, even if, already then, his interpretation of medieval history could not stand up to the facts. Without this longing, which in 1848/49 would develop into a vision of the United States of Europe, the idea of Europe might perhaps have succumbed to nationalist realities. But in this way, it asserted itself. Already elaborated by Voltaire, the topos of Europe as a political system existing since Emperor Charles V was successfully expanded by the Scottish historian William Robertson (1721–1793) in his History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles the Fifth (1769).55 Robertson mentioned Voltaire’s Essai only very generally as a source, but praised the validity of his conclusions: “I have often, however, followed him as my guide in these researches; and he has not only pointed out the facts with respect to which it was of importance to inquire, but the conclusions which it was proper to draw from them.”56 Whether he owed his idea of Europe as a political system to his readings of Voltaire’s Essai cannot be determined. Robertson described the age of Charles V as a historical period “in which, the several states of Europe having become intimately connected, the operations of one power are so felt by all as to influence their councils and to regulate their measures.”57 The words “intimately connected” formed an expression well suited to the lofty aspirations of Enlightenment cultural historiography. Robertson did full justice to the concept of system, explaining his reasons for choosing this era in particular as follows: Some boundary, then, ought to be fixed, in order to separate these periods. An era should be pointed out, prior to which each country, little connected with those around it, may trace its own history apart; after which the transactions of every considerable nation in Europe become interesting and instructive to all. With this intention I undertook to write the History of the

54 See: . 55 William Robertson, History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles the Fifth [1769]. With an Account of the Emperor’s Life After His Abdication by William H. Prescott, London 1902 (quoted edition); Ad personam: Joachim Berger, William Robertson (1721–1793), in: Heinz Duchhardt et al. (eds.), Europa-Historiker. Vol 2, Göttingen 2006, 23–48; László Kontler, Translations, Histories, Enlightenments. William Robertson in Germany 1760–1795, New York 2014. 56 Robertson, History of the Reign, 151 (Note XLV. – Sect. III., 89). 57 Robertson, History of the Reign, Preface.

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Emperor Charles the Fifth. It was during his administration that the powers of Europe were formed into one great political system....58

This system persisted until his day (1769): “The political principles and maxims then established still continue to operate. The ideas concerning the balance of power then introduced, or rendered general, still influence the councils of nations.”59 The latter term—balance of power—appears to interpretively transform the peace congresses of the eighteenth century into the particular institution of a European council demanded by William Penn, John Bellers, Abbé de Saint-Pierre, and others in their European peace plans.60 Works of lesser quality also advanced the historiographical configuration of Europe. The multi-volume work by William Guthrie and John Gray entitled A General History of the World, published in London (1736–1765) and “translated” into German, among other languages, was not without influence. The “translation” amounted in part to the production of new version of the work, which then inspired additional national histories (Hungary, Serbia, etc.) rendered separately from world history. According the authors’ principle, only by first knowing the parts was it possible to understand the whole. Contemporaries approvingly attested that the authors made Europe look like a “republic.”61

IV To pursue these aspects more deeply, our focus now shifts to Russia and its historiography.62 After the fall of Constantinople, a specific awareness that Russia would become Byzantium’s successor spread throughout the country. This awareness was

58 Robertson, History of the Reign, emphasized W.S. 59 Robertson, History of the Reign, London 1902. 60 Derek Heater, The Idea of European Unity, London 1992. This book is also available in a German translation with expansions and annotations: Derek Heater, Europäische Einheit. Biographie einer Idee, Bochum 2005. 61 Monika Baár, From General History to National History. The transformations of William Guthrie’s and John Gray’s “A General History of the World” (1763–1765) in Continental Europe, in: Stefanie Stockhorst (ed.), Cultural Transfer through Translation. The circulation of enlightened thought in Europe by means of translation, Amsterdam 2010, 63–82. 62 Alexander von Schelting, Rußland und der Westen im russischen Geschichtsdenken der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. Hans-Joachim Torke, Wiesbaden 1948/1989; Hans Hecker, Russische Universalgeschichtsschreibung. Von den “Vierziger Jahren“ des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur sowjetischen Weltgeschichte, Munich 1983. On Ukrainian or Galician historiography see Burkhard Johannes Wöller, “Europa“ als historisches Argument. Fortschrittsnarrative, Zivilisierungsmissionen und Bollwerkmythen als diskursive Strategien polnischer und ukrainischer Nationalhistoriker im habsburgischen Galizien, Bochum 2014; Dimitrij Tschizewskij and Dieter Groh (eds.), Europa und Russland. Texte zum Problem des westeuropäischen und russischen Selbstverständnisses, Darmstadt 1959; Martin Weber, Ein Europa? Die europäische Integration in der russischen Historiographie nach 1985, Cologne 2013.

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formulated in the understanding of Moscow as a third Rome,63 which also began to be reflected by Russian historiography. Since this very much involved a succession understood in terms of ecclesiastical history and in opposition to the western Church, some attention was likewise paid to the reformation movement that began with Jan Hus in Bohemia. Consequently, Western European polemic pamphlets were translated into Russian, admittedly under official supervision. In Russia, Protestant texts about human history enjoyed attention in the eighteenth century. Hence, Russian interest in the West already existed far back in the early modern period, but under Peter the Great (Czar 1689–1726) this interest received broader foundations. A few of Peter’s diplomats—such as Prince Boris Ivanovich Kurakin (1676–1727) who worked in London, among other places—authored historical texts that reveal a specific interest in English history and the English constitution, viewing English developments in a certain sense as a Western European special path. At the same time, the period witnessed an incipient reception of German-language historiography, which would intensify until the nineteenth century. G. Buzinskij provided a Russian edition of Samuel Pufendorf’s diplomatic didactic text Einleitung zu der Historie der vornehmsten Reiche und Staaten so itziger Zeit in Europa sich befinden (Frankfurt 1681), printed in St. Petersburg in 1718. As with historiographies written in Western Europe, Russian historiographies, too, expanded their focus to cover human history, with most authors assigning central importance to Europe: Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev (1686–1750) integrated Russian history into a concept of human history informed by Enlightenment rationalism. Conversely, August Ludwig Schlözer (1735–1809), who lived in St. Petersburg from 1761 to 1769, worked lifelong to include Russia in European historiography as a part of Europe. In addition, he endeavored to introduce critical and historical methods to Russian historical writing. Finally, a brief chapter about the Slavs from Johann Gottfried Herder’s (1744–1803) Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit was broadly received in the eastern European regions. Ivan Petrovic Šul’gin (1795–1869) then managed in a certain sense to reap the benefits of these cultural contacts between Russian and Western Europe. In 1837 in St. Petersburg he published a universal history that was also approved for use at schools. Šul’gin assigned to Europe a central role in world history since antiquity. From European history he derived the world-historical epoch of what he called “recent history,” which defined the period from 500 to 1800 AD. He subdivided this epoch into the Middle Ages and a “most recent history,” which started around 1500. During this latter period, European states, according to Šul’gin, had taken on their characteristic features. The subsumption of European history into universal/human history and the organization of universal/human history according to markers de-

63 Hildegard Schaeder, Moskau das Dritte Rom. Studien zur Geschichte der politischen Theorien in der slawischen Welt, Darmstadt 1957; Wilhelm Lettenbauer, Moskau das dritte Rom. Zur Geschichte einer politischen Theorie, Munich 1961; Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza (ed.), L’ idea di Roma a Mosca: secoli XV–XVI, Rome 1993. Alar Laats, The Concept of the Third Rome and its Political Implications, in: KVÜÕA toimetised Issue 12/2009, 98–113.

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rived specifically from European history touched upon cultural-anthropological aspects that went beyond the narrower boundaries of historiography. As in the rest of Europe, the Middle Ages played a central role in the Russian historiographical vision, as has been noted by Alexander von Schelting with reference to Tatishchev’s understanding of history, namely, that Tatishchev had comprehended the “nations of Europe as members of single social body” in the Middle Ages.64 Particularly because of increased interest and a better exchange of information, the eighteenth century was also the time when Western European intellectuals began dealing with Eastern Europe as a subject. The descriptions of Poland, Russia, Hungary, and the Danubian Principalities provided by famous and not-so-famous travelers, geographers, and Enlightenment proponents sometimes conveyed the impression of cultural declivity or backwardness in the East. As part of the (not entirely new) distinction between Europe and Asia, Europe’s general cultural border was drawn between European Muscovy/European Turkey, on the one hand, and Asiatic Muscovy/Asiatic Turkey, on the other. This Europe already encompassed an inner diversification according to cultural progress or backwardness. Some travelers, coming from Poland in the East, testified that they only felt like they had returned to the familiar soil of European culture once they had reached Prussia.65 On the other hand, we should recall famous Enlightenment figures like Diderot, Rousseau, and Voltaire. In part based on their personal local inspections and in part based only on literary reception and their quills, these men also wrote about Poland and Russia, thereby securing for these lands in particular a special place in the memory of the European Enlightenment. These aspects will be examined more closely in the first case study in chapter 4.

V The politician and historian François Guizot (1787–1874) formed the connecting link between the Enlightenment’s writing of cultural history and its accentuation in the sense of the concept of the “West” in the nineteenth century. I am referring here to his lecture entitled Histoire générale de la civilisation en Europe, first published in 1828 and gaining fame later on:66 I have used the term European civilization, because it is evident that there is an European civilization; that a certain unity pervades the civilization of the various European states; that, notwithstanding infinite diversities of time, place, and circumstance, this civilization takes its first

64 Schelting, Rußland und der Westen, 57. For 19th century see also Dieter Groh, Russland und das Selbstverständnis Europas. Ein Beitrag zur europäischen Geistesgeschichte, Neuwied 1961. 65 Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The map of civilization on the mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford 1994. I discuss Wolff’s results in chapter 4, case study I. 66 François Pierre Guillaume Guizot, Cours d’histoire moderne. Histoire générale de la civilisation en Europe, Paris 1828. Quoted English edition: François Guizot, The history of civilization in Europe, ed. Larry Siedentop and transl. by William Hazlitt, London/New York 1997.

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Put in simple terms that reveal an eye for essentials and the artful ability to limit himself to stating those essentials, Guizot formulated here the theory of cultural structural attributes universally distributed in Europe, a theory that still today provides the basis for the expression “European culture.” In contrast to Voltaire or Herder, Guizot did not write a cultural history of humanity; instead, he very strictly confined himself to “Europe.” The fourteen lectures feature an impressive internal coherence that would not have been possible without the achievements of cultural historical writing since Voltaire. At the same time, Guizot established certain points of emphasis with regard to content, thereby remodeling the topos of Europe in ways that in many respects have been passed on to us today. He so greatly restricted himself to Europe that he did not even particularly touch upon European expansion, dealing even less with its repercussion on Europe itself. His eleventh lecture, dedicated to the fifteen century, did not even find the fall of Constantinople worthy of special comment. This amounts to an exaggerated Eurocentrism. As if this was not enough, Guizot’s Europe essentially spatially encompassed France (which he arbitrarily elevated to the model for Europe)68, England, Spain, Italy and the Holy Roman Empire. This Western and (limited) Central European concentration had longterm influences on the historiography about Europe. For Guizot, Europe as a civilization existed only after the fall of the Roman Empire, emerging from the legacy of the Roman Empire’s urban society and from the Christian and barbarian societies.69 He imagined the period from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries as a very long-lasting transformational epoch, at the end of which, in the sixteenth century, stood the European civilization that—notwithstanding the upheavals of the French Revolution—still continued to inform his own times. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries appear as the key period; here Guizot joins with Voltaire and, with regard to his emphasis on the sixteenth century, Robertson. However, Robertson primarily highlights cultural structural attributes that apply throughout Europe: The fourteenth century closed. Europe entered naturally, and, as it were, instinctively, the path which led to centralization. It is the characteristic of the fifteenth century to have constantly tended to this result; to have laboured to create universal interests and ideas, to make the spirit of specialty and locality disappear, to reunite and elevate existences and minds; in fine, to create, what had hitherto never existed on a large scale, nations and governments. The emergence of this fact belongs to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.70

The additional cognitive steps in the eleventh lecture built up the topos of Europe as a system of states, modeled by Voltaire and Robertson. Guizot addressed the emergence of alliances whose purposes were partially those of war and partially of peace: ultimately the system of equilibrium emerged. In the early modern centuries, according to Guizot, international relations constituted the main subject of history. 67 68 69 70

Guizot, The history of civilization, 1997, First lecture, 10. Guizot, The history of civilization, 1997, First lecture, 11. Guizot, The history of civilization, 1997, Second lecture. Guizot, The history of civilization, 1997, Eleventh lecture, 183.

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Europe understood in Eurocentric terms; Europe reduced to Western and Central Europe; Europe with a focus on France; Europe with a focus on the relations among European powers—this, in the first instance, formed, the topos of Europe for Guizot. What is more: the broad inclusion of material culture still found with Voltaire was increasingly displaced by the topos of “great men”: Finally, there was a fourth cause of civilization, a cause which it is impossible fitly to appreciate, but which is not therefore the less real, and this is the appearance of great men. No one can say why a great man appears at a certain epoch, and what he adds to the development of the world; that is a secret of Providence: but the fact is not therefore less certain.71

While Guizot’s modeling of Europe remained beholden to the Enlightenment’s idea of progress, it no longer primarily concerned the progress of the human spirit. He defined “civilization” as the development of sociability and the formation of civil society, on the one hand, and as the development and formation of the individual, on the other.72 That is to say, he set up the relationship between the society and the individual as a problem for a history of European culture, considered from a liberal perspective. What is the “final purpose” and what is the “means” of civilization, he asked, deciding that the answer was both. But, as opposed to the transitory nature of society, for the individual he counted upon the promise of life after death.73 The liberally informed historiography of someone like Guizot should—in his words—be viewed as the measured continuation of the “struggle between the unlimited power of the government and the unlimited power of the human spirit” (in the eighteenth century). But when written, it portrayed only one—albeit, the most prominent at the time—of numerous trends with increasingly sharp political distinctions. This kind of liberal historiography of Europe, standing most assuredly in the Enlightenment tradition, appeared in places other than France. But in light of his work’s success, we can perhaps view Guizot as the genre’s figurehead.

VI We now shift our attention to another phenomenon. The search for linguistic origins—for the original language—preoccupied scholars since the sixteenth century. For the longest time, the problem was considered solved, since the Bible contained everything one could know about the subject. But as early as the seventeenth century, with the emergence of scientific research, such answers appeared inadequate. The late-eighteenth century dared to go further, abandoning the notion that Hebrew was an original language. The development of etymology and comparative grammatical research produced—along with numerous blind alleys—also the hypothesis of Indo-European as the original language for not only most European languages but also Sanskrit, Persian, and other languages. On 2 February, 1786, addressing the British Asiatic Society in Calcutta, Sir William Jones gave what would become 71 Guizot, The history of civilization, 1997, Third lecture, 58. 72 Guizot, The history of civilization, 1997, First lecture, passim. 73 Guizot, The history of civilization, 1997, First lecture.

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his famous speech formulating this hypothesis for the first time. According to his research, Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin had to come from the same common language, which presumably no longer existed as such. The Gothic, Celtic, and Persian languages, according to Jones, probably derived from the same original language.74 Jones’ hypothesis became embedded within a European-wide research context that featured the names of almost every major researcher and Enlightenment proponent. Yann-Arzel Durelle-Marc has linked this research hype, which he locates between 1786 and approximately 1816, to the European turbulence during the period of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, arguing that the assumptions of Indo-European linguistic origins of European languages and an Indo-European people indicated a European commonality that the epoch lacked: Indo-Europe seems to offer a possibility of merging the Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman, and Celtic-Germanic heritages into one, that is to say, to transcend the characteristic Roman-Germanic duality with its multiple manifestations (political, religious, cultural, and linguistic): no more victorious Franks or Germans and vanquished Gauls, but rather a single melting pot.75

The fascination with such an origin continues to operate in the media—something we will examine in case study no. II of the fourth chapter about homo europaeus. But in the general historiography about Europe, the Indo-European thesis no longer plays a prominent role, primarily because this historiography rarely goes back further than Greek and Roman antiquity.

VII In his study about Europe in British Historiography, Robert J. W. Evans cites a passage from Robert Vaughan’s inaugural lecture at the new University College, London in 1834: “[Europe is] the centre of everything of importance in the future history of the world”; and in 1849, Thomas Arnold said similar words to that effect in his inaugural lecture at Oxford.76 Such sentiments describe basic prevailing attitudes at the time regarding Europe, not only in Britain but widely throughout historical scholarship. Working in a national context, historians adopted each other’s ideas. Not least, historians throughout Europe took up the ideas of German historians like Ranke, most certainly the most prolific nineteenth-century historian with 74 Sir William Jones, Discourses III, delivered February 2, 1786, in: James Elmes (ed.): Discourses Delivered Before The Asiatic Society […], Vol. 1, London 1824, 20–37, 28–29; . 75 Yann-Arzel Durelle-Marc, L’invention de la culture indo-européenne au tournant des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. Naissance d’une alter-mythologie?, in: Boris Bernabé and Olivier Camy (eds.), Les mythes de fondation et l’Europe. Actes du colloque international de Dijon 18 et 19 novembre 2010, Dijon 2013, 253–280, quotation: 277. 76 Robert J. W. Evans, Europa in der britischen Historiographie, in: Heinz Duchhardt (ed.), Nationale Geschichtskulturen – Bilanz, Ausstrahlung, Europabezogenheit, Stuttgart 2006, 77–93, 80, 81.

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regard to researching and writing European history. Historians developed a high level of scholarly competence with reference to both other countries as well as their own. In this respect, historical scholarship became Europeanized, a development that benefited the increasing institutionalization of historical scholarship at the universities. Flourishing scholarly journals and the publication of comprehensive transregional reference works for entire historical periods—the Cambridge Modern History, for example—also did their part. An “extension” of European cultural-historical writing, basically rooted in eighteenth-century anthropology, transformed perversely into racist historical writing, starting with Gobineau.77 However, it is questionable whether scribblers like Gobineau should even be considered historians, since they fell outside the bounds of scholarly historical writing. It is not possible here to trace in detail any further ramifications—including among different nations—of Europe-focused historiography and thus the development of the topos of “Europe” in nineteenth-century historical writing. In Southeastern Europe (the Balkans), the adoption by some elites of the Balkan topos also became noticeable in the region’s historiography.78 In other respects, the tendency to understand “Europe” as a sum of nations increased. In contrast to national historiographies, pan-Slavic ideas, and concepts of the “West,” the “history of Europe” as an independent field of findings became increasingly neglected. What remained, however, was a European understanding of cultural epochs like the Renaissance, the Baroque, and so on. Especially influential in this respect was Jakob Burckhardt (1818–1897). At the same time, certain fields of interest, such as “absolutism” or “enlightened despotism,” fostered European and international research discussions,79 indicating that European historical research was increasingly focused on specific themes.

VIII Georg G. Iggers concluded his Historiography in the Twentieth Century with a final chapter addressing the three following questions: “End of History?”; “End of History as a Scholarly Enterprise?”; “End of Enlightenment?” The starting point for his inquiry formed the topic of the “posthistoire,” namely, the idea “that there is no longer the possibility of a grand narrative that gives history coherence and meaning.”80 This interpretation brings me back to the idea of hyper-text, introduced in

77 Schmale, Geschichte Europas, 2000, chapter 6, especially 6.4. 78 Plamen Mitev, Europa in den politischen Vorstellungen der Bulgaren zur Zeit der Nationalen Wiedergeburt, in: Harald Heppner and Rumjana Preshlenova (eds.), Die Bulgaren und Europa von der Nationalen Wiedergeburt bis zur Gegenwart, Vienna 1999, 5–26, shows in how far Europe has become a topic in school books with a geographic focus, 22 et ss. 79 Wolfgang Schmale, Das 18. Jahrhundert, Vienna 2012, chapter 1.4. 80 Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century. From scientific objectivity to the postmodern challenge, Hanover, NH 1997, 141.

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the first chapter. Indeed, while a “grand narrative” might now be impossible, “coherence” and “meaning” do not depend on the possibility of a grand narrative. Separate texts can be coherent and meaningful, while the hyper-text allows individuals to follow narrative paths of their own (see below, X). Nonetheless, historiography has at the very least switched to post-performative approaches. Apart from the special historiographical subfield dealing with European integration,81 the current debate regarding how to write Europe’s history in the twentieth century has been dominated by a large number of critical contributions that endeavor to bring an end to former master narratives. Mark Mazower’s book entitled Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (1998) can serve to exemplify historiographical trends that have or seem to have prevailed during the last one or two decades. Mazower argues as follows: The intellectual tradition which identifies Europe with the cause of liberty and freedom goes back many centuries. But if we face the fact that liberal democracy failed between the wars, and if we admit that communism and fascism also formed part of the continent’s political heritage, then it is hard to deny that what had shaped Europe in this century is not a gradual convergence of thought and feeling, but on the contrary a series of violent clashes between antagonistic New Orders. If we search for Europe not as a geographical expression, but as what Federico Chabod called ‘an historic and moral individuality’, we find that for much of the century it did not exist.82

To Mazower’s book, one can add Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes: the Short 20th century 1914–1991 (first published in 1994), Tony Judt’s Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (first published in 2005)83, and many studies that have dealt with ethnic cleansing in Europe, as synthesized by works like Benjamin Lieberman’s Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe (2006) and Philipp Ther’s Dark side of the Nation states” (2011).84 Judt concludes his book as follows: If in years to come we are to remember why it seemed so important to build a certain sort of Europe out of the crematoria of Auschwitz, only history can help us. The new Europe, bound together by the signs and symbols of its terrible past, is a remarkable accomplishment; but it remains forever mortgaged to that past. If Europeans are to maintain this vital link—if Europe’s past is to continue to furnish Europe’s present with admonitory meaning and moral purpose— then it will have to be taught afresh with each passing generation. ‘European Union’ may be a response to history, but it can never be a substitute.85

Never before have historians pronounced such unmistakably damning judgments upon Europe and its history as they do in these books, all of them written and published after the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event that symbolically marks the end of

81 See Pichler, Geschichten, op. cit. 82 Mark Mazower, Dark Continent. Europe’s Twentieth Century, London 1998, 403. 83 Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes. The short twentieth century, 1914–1991, London 1994; Tony Judt, Postwar. A history of Europe since 1945, London 2005. 84 Benjamin Lieberman, Terrible Fate. Ethnic cleansing in the making of modern Europe, Chicago 2006; Philipp Ther, Ethnische Säuberungen im modernen Europa, Göttingen 2011. 85 Judt, Postwar, 831.

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the Cold War. Meanwhile, the field of Cold War Studies86 is off to a dynamic start, facilitating a more objective view of the second half of the twentieth century. One of the more recent syntheses, Konrad Jarausch’s Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (2015) imparts a less pessimistic vision, insofar as the author focuses on the apparently paradoxical course of European history during the 20th century.87

IX The transformation of the political, social, and economic systems in Eastern and Southeastern Europe has generated a new debate regarding national and European memory,88 one that gets at the heart of the debate concerning the writing of history at the national and the European levels. Let us briefly look back upon development in the subfield of European historiography that deals specifically with Europe. The interwar period was still dominated by the understanding of Europe’s history as the cultural history of European mankind and civilization. In this respect, it remained within the tradition of Enlightenment historiography. Some authors—not necessarily professional historians working at universities—gained renown across Europe and exercised great influence on the debate. Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West (1918)89 advanced a pessimistic interpretation of the European world, influenced very much by impressions from the First World War. In 1935, Paul Hazard published La crise de la conscience européenne, 1680–1715, which was not translated into German until 1939 (!). From an opposite position, authors like Denis de Rougemont tried to find Europe’s essence in a specific European meaning of love. He wrote L’amour et l’Occident in 1938; as has been shown by Luisa Passerini,90 the book formed part of a large European debate during the interwar period with protagonists from Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria and other countries. Others like Dawson, who in 1932 published the The Making of Europe: An Introduction to the History of European Unity, presented more neutral scientific assessments of the history of European issues. Paradoxically, even as political friction grew within Europe and fascist and Nazi violence dominated both the streets and international relations, a new constructive approach to European history was born. Gonzague de Reynold, a 86 Journal of Cold War Studies, since 1999. Book titles dealing with “Cold War and …” are innumerable. 87 Konrad Hugo Jarausch, Out of Ashes. A new history of Europe in the twentieth Century, Princeton/Oxford 2015. 88 As an overview see: Claus Leggewie and Anne Lang, Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung. Ein Schlachtfeld wird besichtigt, Munich 2010; Stefan Troebst, Postkommunistische Erinnerungskulturen im östlichen Europa. Bestandsaufnahme, Kategorisierung, Periodisierung, Wrocław 2005. 89 English translation by Charles Francos Atkinson, New York, 1926–28. 90 Passerini, Europe in Love, London 1998.

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rightwing author, began his seven-volume history of Europe—La formation de l’Europe—in 1944, the final volume appearing in in 1957; during the Second World War, the Polish historian Oskar Halecki, living in North American exile, laid the groundwork for his later book on the Limits and Divisions of European History (1950); and during the same time the German Heinz Gollwitzer wrote his advanced doctoral dissertation (Habilitation) on the idea of European unity in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany, first published in 1951. In 1953 his older colleague Kurt von Raumer collected, translated and commented on ten plans for European peace since the Renaissance, put forth by various persons from Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1517 to Friedrich Gentz in 1800. A few years later, in 1957, Denis Hay published his very influential book entitled Europe: The Emergence of an Idea; and in 1961, Denis de Rougemont completed Vingt-huit siècles d’Europe, an anthology of primary texts from antiquity to the postwar period that dealt with the idea of Europe.91 All these books intellectually accompanied Europe’s economic and political integration as embodied by the Council of Europe (founded in 1949), the European Federalist Movement (strongly active until the 1960s), and the Inner Six (countries that in 1951 signed the treaty creating the ECSC). Although at the time Great Britain did not belong to the latter group, it had participated in most of the diplomatic initiatives of the 1940s and early 1950s to create European institutions and applied to join the Inner Six in 1961. During these years, the writing of Europe’s history tended to focus on positive aspects, essentially on the idea of European unity, thereby joining the political discourse. The task of elaborating the dark sides of this history—fascism, National Socialism, war crimes, and genocide—was neglected or left to nationally focused historiographies. Although the 1961 Eichmann trial in Jerusalem spurred more international research on the Holocaust, such research would be predominantly pursued in the writing of national histories.92 Until the early 1970s, a more or less unreflective or even naive view of Europe prevailed, based on the idea of European unity. Some authors even expected Europe (the Europe of the Inner Six) to become the third superpower, alongside the United States and the Soviet Union. The starting signal for a more critical view of European history came from the field of early modern European history, when Soviet and Eastern European Marxist interpretations93 met up with the western transformation of traditional historiography into a historical social science. The debate arose with the 1963 translation into French of Boris Poršnev’s study—first published in 1954—of popular uprisings in early modern France under the reign of King Louis XIII. Ever since publishing one of his articles in 1948, Poršnev had been calling for the reinterpretation of early modern uprisings and peasant wars in terms of class struggle. The French 91 With the exception of von Raumer, all these historians are treated in Heinz Duchhardt et al. (eds.), Europa-Historiker, 2006–2007. 92 For the connection between the Eichmann-trial and international research on the Holocaust see Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, Erinnerung im globalen Zeitalter. Der Holocaust, Frankfurt on the Main 2001. An English translation was published 2005. 93 See Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century, Chapter 7.

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version of his book on French uprisings from 1623 to 1648 provoked a lively debate, first in France and then in Europe, returning the people—le peuple—to the stage of history as a political actor. The practice of “history from below” freed the lives of ordinary people from Western and Eastern historiographical disdain, fostering the acknowledgment of popular uprisings, protests, revolts, and resistance as decidedly European phenomena in need of Europe-wide interpretation. Hence, this need gave rise to new and innovative views regarding issues in European history. Instead of favoring a discourse solely concerned with issues of European unity, historians learned to understand Europe not only as an arena featuring the circulation of common ideas like those of European unity and peace, but also as one characterized by intertwining trans-European historical phenomena that cannot be explained from purely national or regional perspectives. From among the large range of historiographical issues resulting from the change of European historiographical paradigms, we can selectively focus here on “ordinary people as historical actors.” Emancipated from the nimbus of non-importance and thus negligible relevance, they shed their status as elements of an anonymous mass, ascribed to them in sociology by Gustave le Bon and others in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. They were rediscovered as responsible, important, and even influential political actors, living in a complex political culture. They were rediscovered as individuals who left behind “ego-documents”—that is, autobiographical pieces and writings demonstrating their self-reflection and rationality. The attention garnered by the latter epitomizes the evolution of this historical approach. The Poršnev generation still looked at classes and social collectives; only more recently have historians really focused on ordinary people as individuals. This change of paradigm affected historiography in general, influencing the writing of the history of twentieth-century Europe as well as that of the early modern and other periods. With regard to the twentieth century, Christopher R. Browning’s book entitled Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, (1992) effectively articulated the new direction of thought and research. Numerically, Browning argued, most fascists, Nazis, and collaborators were “ordinary men”; there was no reason to release them from their culpability for violence, war crimes, and the Holocaust. The men chosen for Reserve Battalion 101 were “middle-aged, mostly working class, from Hamburg” and 25% of them were Nazi party members.94 To quote Browning: “In short, Reserve Battalion 101 was not sent to Lublin to murder Jews because it was composed of men specially selected or deemed particularly suited for the task. On the contrary, the battalion was the ‘dregs’ of the manpower pool available at that stage of the war.”95 From a more general perspective, as shown by Benjamin Lieberman in his aforementioned book, ordinary people participated voluntarily in ethnic cleansing right from the outset, starting in the early nineteenth century. He concluded that 94 Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men. Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland, New York 1992, 164. 95 Ibidem, 165.

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“European ethnic cleansing is not just something that bad states have done to good people. Ordinary people themselves have helped to create cleansed nation-states.”96 The findings of recent historiography contrast with earlier flattering ideas of Europe and its history. After World War II, the fascist and Nazi views of Europe, which can be considered anti-European and anti-liberal,97 were cast aside by emphasizing what was taken for granted as the positive results of European civilization: human rights, democracy, rule of law, and the like were labeled as the European cultural heritage. Even official documents such as the 1948 Brussels Treaty used this label. “Cultural heritage” became—and continues to be—a label for the “good” and enlightened Europe. European unity became the leading idea, as best represented by the opus of Walter Lipgens. In particular, Lipgens investigated ideas and plans for European unity by authors affiliated with various national resistance movements during World War II. Like many other historians, Lipgens wrote from the perspective of occidental Christianity, that is to say, the Christian idea of the Occident. European unity and the Occident were closely linked. The failure of the planned European Defense Community in 1954 and the crisis of the European Economic Community in the 1960s convinced him that Europe needed a clear political objective. He found this objective in European unity and began his fascinating research into twentiethcentury sources related to this political idea. He very soon focused on various European movements, especially during World War II, looking through clandestine documents and all kinds of archives and personal papers. Over the years, he published an impressive collection of resistance-related documents and postwar papers dealing with the idea of European unity, crowning his work with the publication of four volumes in English with an appendix of primary sources in the original language (he died in 1984 and could not finish the series himself; it was completed by Wilfried Loth).98 Lipgens was one of the founding fathers of the European University Institute in Florence; thanks to him, the European Union archives were relocated to the EUI and are now housed in Florence. He also co-founded the European Union Liaison Committee of Historians.99 Lipgens and other scholars from the 1940s through to the 1980s hoped that the quest for European unity and research into the history of the idea of such unity would serve European consciousness and self-assertion. This was placed into the perspective of postwar Europe’s role in the world (see chapter 3, case studies III and IV).

96 Lieberman, Terrible Fate, 332. 97 Dieter Gosewinkel (ed.), Anti-liberal Europe. A neglected story of Europeanization, New York 2015. 98 Walter Lipgens and Wilfried Loth, Documents on the History of European Integration, 4 Vols., Berlin 1985–1991; see especially: Walter Lipgens and Wilfried Loth (ed.), Continental Plans for European Union 1939–1945. Documents on the History of European Integration, Vol. 1, Berlin 1985. 99 Wilfried Loth, Walter Lipgens (1925–1984), in: Heinz Duchhardt et al. (eds.), Europa-Historiker. Vol. 1, Göttingen 2006, 317–336.

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Is it possible to strike a balance between the critical, or even hyper-critical view of Europe’s history, on the one hand, and the flattering hyper-positive self-invoked image of Europe as the civilization that invented human rights, democracy, and the state governed by (and only by) law?

X What is the ‘true’ Europe? And related to this question: what does it mean to write the history of twentieth-century Europe? This brings me back to the aforementioned historiographical transformation resulting from the “history-from-below” approach. Thinking about European history from the bottom-up perspective involves large-scale research into ordinary people and their lives in Europe. Hartmut Kaelble has spoken of “Europe vécue” (lived Europe) in comparison or sometimes in contrast to “Europe volue” (intended Europe) and “Europe pensée” (thought Europe).100 So, let’s turn to “lived Europe.” “Lived Europe” involves migrations, transcultural histories, and transnational families. It is not so much about plans for European unity, regardless of the form in which this unity may potentially exist— whether unity in the interest of peace, a liberal and democratic unity, or an antiliberal unity fabricated through violence as per fascist and Nazi intensions. “Lived Europe” is therefore not so much about ideologies that prescribe how one must live and what one must leave undone. Traditionally, plans for European unity—such as those put forward during the interwar period by the French minister of foreign affairs and/or prime minister, Aristide Briand, and Richard Nikolaus Eijiro, Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi—were developed as a counterweight to nationalism and national divisions in Europe. Even if the plans were motivated by legitimate concerns, they were overwhelmed by fascism and National Socialism. Some plans were serious, others rather strange but popular, such as the intension to create Eurafrica by drying out the Mediterranean, a mega-project advocated by the German engineer Hermann Sörgel and inspired by a boundless confidence in technology.101 I don’t believe that these plans constituted a counterweight to nationalism. But such a counterweight did exist, formed by people who believed in Europe and the unity of European civilization. Many of these people later joined resistance movements or belonged to circles of exiled persons forging political networks for Europe after the war. They were “lived Europe.” The first generation of politicians after the Second World War encompassed a great number of names that appeared among resistance or exile circles during the interwar period or World War II. Despite enor-

100 Hartmut Kaelble, L’Europe vécue et l‘Europe pensée au XXe siècle. Les spécificités sociales de l’Europe, in: René Girault (ed.), Identité et conscience européennes au XXe siècle, Paris 1994, 27–45. 101 See Michael Halbritter, Das technische Zeitalter – die europäische Integration durch Manifestationen und Visionen technischer Megaprojekte. Atlantropa, Atomkraft, EURATOM, Pan-Europa und der Versuch Utopien umzusetzen (unpublished PhD-thesis), Vienna University 2010.

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mous difficulties, dangers, and persecution, they succeeded in building communication networks during the war. After the war, these networks spread via politicians and the European Federalist Movements to reach tens of thousands of citizens in European countries and featured the participation of Christian democrats, socialists, and liberals. This is one of the pillars of “lived Europe.” The many migrations and ethnic cleansings occurring in European history impacted a phenomenon that seems properly European, namely, transnational families: transnational families102 have been a constantly present phenomenon in European history. Transnational families consist of members living in two or more countries who maintain contact and often form family networks providing jobs, material goods, important information, connections, and so on, for family members. They meet, travel, or migrate. Women play an essential role in making and keeping together transnational families. As such, “lived Europe” is a field strongly constituted by a gender perspective. During the early modern period, most (but not all) transnational families belonged to the upper social classes. This changed in the nineteenth century (Europe-Americas; Habsburg monarchy; and so on). The end of the Second World War resulted in the separation of tens of thousands of families from all social classes, which intensified with the construction of the Iron Curtain. During the Cold War, others would later flee their countries for political, religious or other reasons, thereby engendering new transnational families. Despite their separation, family members kept in contact in various different ways and by various different means, thus providing for a lived—that is, transnational—Europe even during the Cold War era. Of particular concern (during this period) were families of German origin, but also Austrian, Yugoslavian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Russian, Greek, Rumanian, Bulgarian, and many more. Families were not simply transnational—a status often forced upon them by Cold War circumstances—but, more precisely, east-west transnational, manifesting geopolitical fault lines at the level of individuals and families. Sometimes, family members were spread out over several different countries; insofar as they lived in Europe, they represented “lived Europe.” Despite all of the difficulties, repressive measures, and threats, despite the bodily harm and violence, they were able to penetrate the Iron Curtain, their sheer existence having a clear impact upon politics and economies, not to mention culture and religion. If the hypothesis is correct that these east-west transnational families represented “lived Europe,” what happened to them and this Europe after 1989? Did the “lived Europe” of transnational families come to an end because these entire families now tried living under better social and economic circumstances in the West? Did new (but often historically rooted) seasonal migrations of workers, business travelers, Erasmus students, politicians in European affairs, etc., come to take their place? Or did these families contribute to greater European integration on a personal and private level? Or did they collapse because liberty undermined their raison d’être inherited from the Cold War? What is the answer to the question about a 102 See as an example Roswitha Breckner (ed.), Biographies and the Division of Europe. Experience, action and change on the ‘Eastern Side’, Opladen 2000.

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European demos or people? Was the transformation period after 1989 a period of European biographical disintegration while, on an institutional level, the enlargement of the European Union suggested that this transformation brought and brings more European integration? Is “lived Europe” a guarantee against nationalism and anti-liberalism? “Lived Europe” goes hand in hand with the problem of European memory, which has become a key concept since 1989. While common European memory was laid out in a common European culture, the transformation process after 1989 suddenly shed light on the fact that the equation “European culture (or civilization) is European memory” was not true. The historical experiences of the respective national collectives and of individuals in the twentieth century differed too much. European history as the history of European culture or civilization, sometimes seen as part of the cultural history of mankind, is an invention of the eighteenth century, which focused on making common structures and institutions, Christianization, manners and attitudes, common values and competencies, and so on. Properly speaking, European civilization sprouted out of the declining Roman Empire, as Gibbon put it in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, finished in 1787 (see above). The fiction of a common culture or civilization, in the singular, was maintained for nearly two centuries. Even after the Second World War, the fiction persisted under the label of “European cultural heritage.” The good and enlightened sides of European history were subsumed into this expression. While the Western democracies considered themselves the heirs of European culture, the eastern socialist countries mentally migrated to an area of their own. Geographically speaking, it was Europe—Eastern Europe—but, considering its history, something not really European. This explains why, with the revolutions in 1989 and the EU’s expansion in 2004, politicians and intellectuals spoke about returning to Europe, to the common house, to the family. Pope John Paul II resorted to a historical metaphor, namely, that of Europe as a single body, an allusion to the medieval idea of a mystic and political body. Notwithstanding this belle named Europe, politics and individual everyday experiences differed from this ideal. In Eastern Europe, memory was besieged not by the remembrance of an ideal historical European past, but by the victims of the Nazi occupation, the victims of Stalinism and communism in general, by the difficulties that beset the transformation period. These Eastern European nations saw themselves as victims over and over again. They still suffer from the temptation to conceal their own collaboration with fascism and the Holocaust.103 103 See among others: Christoph Cornelißen, Roman Holec and Jiří Pešek (eds.), Diktatur – Vertreibung – Krieg. Erinnerungskulturen in Tschechien, der Slowakei und Deutschland seit 1945, Essen 2005; Matthias Weber et al. (eds.), Erinnerungsorte in Ostmitteleuropa. Erfahrungen der Vergangenheit und Perspektiven, Munich 2011; Etienne François et al. (eds.), Geschichtspolitik in Europa seit 1989. Deutschland, Frankreich und Polen im internationalen Vergleich Göttingen 2013; Agnieszka Gąsior, Agnieszka Halemba and Stefan Troebst (eds.), Gebrochene Kontinuitäten. Transnationalität in den Erinnerungskulturen Ostmitteleuropas im 20. Jahrhundert, Cologne 2014; Birgit Schwelling (ed.), Reconciliation, Civil Society, and the Politics of Memory. Transnational initiatives in the 20th and 21st century, Bielefeld 2012.

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Western Europe was occupied with the memory of the Holocaust, the debate on the collaboration with fascists and Nazi Germany, and, to some extent, the debate on colonialism. The Armenian Genocide104 is discussed with regard to creating legislation that prohibits the denial of the genocide, but the involvement of the European powers in the genocide never seems to be taken into account when discussing European collective memory. Other aspects of the Dark Continent’s twentiethcentury history have slowly been making their way into memory: for instance, the tens of thousands of children born from sexual unions between the soldiers of occupying armies and local women, hidden and disdained by their nations, uninformed about their fathers, and still suffering today from an ever-darkening history.105

XI The memory of individuals may deviate fundamentally from official memory and official master narratives. Expulsions, political emigration, the forced creation of transnational families, the destruction of spheres of intimacy and individual careers, persecution and torture by security services, and so on, occupy the memories of hundreds of thousands of individuals. We do a great service to these individual and/or family memories by studying them and granting them the same legitimacy as official memory. Members of civil society can be emancipated from collective memory and its political constraints. They are free to be and to act differently in the realm of memory. They are free to distinguish their own history from that of the collective master narrative. Where did this evolution that brought individual memories into consideration come from? Does it constitute an advancing individualism in an age of globalization? Or is it due to the rehabilitation of the memories of Holocaust survivors and the reconstruction of the lives of hundreds of thousands of murdered Jews via the collection of personal documents and things they left behind, from hearing accounts related by survivors, relatives and children? To name a few: Yad Vashem, the Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum, Steven Spielberg’s huge collection of audio files, the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin and its documentation center, the Holocaust Memorial in Paris with its Documentation Centre, and so on. For about two decades, history has been interested in collecting written and oral autobiographical material related to ordinary men and women. It has been interested in the letters soldiers wrote or received from relatives during World War I and 104 See Lieberman, Terrible Fate. See also Philipp Ther’s comment on the issue: . 105 This constitutes a recent research field. See Yara-Colette Lemke Muniz de Faria, Zwischen Fürsorge und Ausgrenzung. Afrodeutsche “Besatzungskinder” im Nachkriegsdeutschland, Berlin 2002; Kjersti Ericsson and Eva Simonsen, Children of World War II. The hidden enemy legacy, Oxford 2005; Jean-Paul Picaper, Le crime d’aimer. Les enfants du STO, Paris 2005; Silke Satjukow and Rainer Gries, „Bankerte!“. Besatzungskinder in Deutschland nach 1945, Frankfurt on the Main 2015.

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World War II; although interpreting these letters is somewhat delicate because of censorship, they comprise a crucial primary source that helps reconstruct how individuals experienced the wars outside of official propaganda, the extent to which individuals had “deviant” insights into “history” and politics, not to mention their other preoccupations, such as the intimate sides of life, family issues, etc. My hypothesis is that the global quest for memorializing the dead has had— and will continue to have—a general and deep impact on the emergence of individual memory and individual historical narratives. Taking ordinary men and women into serious consideration—not as classes, collectives or other social groups but as individuals—is having a profound impact on the writing of history; it amounts to a revolution in historical methods and concepts and should become part of the writing of Europe’s twentieth-century history. Finally, one must also mention the rise of deconstruction. This philosophical current prepared the ground for new and skeptical insights into collective plans and ideologies: if, as Hobsbawm argues, the twentieth century has been an age of extremes, this is also due to the struggle between culture or civilization understood as a hyper-text that produces sense on both the collective and individual levels, on the one hand, and ideologies that prohibit any legitimacy to the individual production of meaning, on the other. Consequently, deconstruction results in an understanding of history as a hyper-text that packages individual historical narratives and individual productions of meaning so that they become culturally coherent. This might be an interesting way to view Europe’s twentieth-century, which conforms to the described tendencies toward a post-performative understanding of history.

CHAPTER III “EUROCENTRISM”—THE PERFORMATIVE ACT OF THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY REPUBLIC OF LETTERS I In the eighteenth century, the concept of an estate-based social order, which had provided the standard for several centuries, noticeably eroded.1 To be sure, it by no means disappeared; feudal structures or their remnants showed signs of life not only in the eighteenth century but even during the early twentieth century, more vigorously at first and later less so. Bourgeois society, however, developed into the new social model, extending from North America, Western Europe, and Atlantic Europe, to Eastern Europe. Atlantic Europe, with its close global ties, promoted the formation of consumer societies in the Netherlands, England, and France, countries that counted among the precursors of bourgeois society. In spatial terms, bourgeois society advanced unevenly. In North America and western and central Europe, it characterized both urban and rural regions; in eastern-central Europe, northern Europe (Scandinavia), and the Mediterranean, bourgeois society proved to be a predominantly urban phenomenon; meanwhile, it failed to develop in Russia and south-eastern Europe until the second half of the nineteenth century. Within bourgeois society, the century’s cosmopolitan ambitions came to life. This can be discerned in the “ease” with which intense contacts, based on correspondence and personal in nature, were cultivated between Europe and the European societies of North America, extending beyond Europe’s western coast and deep into the interior. Connections with South America were more distant, yet they nonetheless formed part of the Atlantic historical and social region, sufficing to convey the fundamental objectives of the French Revolution and to actively contribute to the fermentation fueling the rapid movements toward independence. Freemason associations and Illuminati orders extending all the way to Irkutsk provide well-known examples of expansive European-based networks. Structurally, this was not completely new, since transregionally established social groups— even ranging across extreme distances—had already existed during the Middle Ages, made up of members of religious orders, knights and nobles, “artists” and 1

This chapter represents the last and completely revised version of two anterior conference papers which meanwhile have been published: Wolfgang Schmale, Moderne und Definition(en) Europas im 18. Jahrhundert, in: Olaf Asbach (ed.), Europa und die Moderne im langen 18. Jahrhundert, Hanover 2014, 85–103; Wolfgang Schmale, Europe. 18th-Century Definitions, in: Maria Baramova, Grigor Boykov and Ivan Parvev (eds.), Bordering Early Modern Europe, Wiesbaden 2015, 79–93.

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merchants, for example. During the course of the eighteenth century, however, the social base of such transregional actors significantly broadened. Purely in quantitative terms, the “Enlightenment” featured the active or passive participation of more people than any other historically documented transregional—that is, European— social group. They were connected through the print media, wide-ranging correspondence, travel (which grew faster thanks to the constant improvement of infrastructure—roads, shipping routes, technological innovation in carriage and barouche construction), and all kinds of associations and societies. We may, in fact, be justified to speak about a “European collective of speakers” with reference to the second half of the eighteenth century. This European collective expressed itself as a self-described Republic of Letters, constituted by virtue of shared interests in social philosophy, the sciences, and literature and utilizing the instruments of correspondence, travel, personal relationships, and various forms of sociability.2 Nowhere was the “citizen of the literary republic” a stranger. Knowledge of more than one language, translations, reports and critiques in periodicals, exchanges of letters, and recommendations created this concrete European collective of speakers. These active people are our speakers of performative acts.

II The eighteenth century’s texts became—and still are today—visually comprehensible. The performative act of the eighteenth century repeats itself through constant visualization: Were we to adopt a bird’s-eye view and watch for signs and artifacts of the eighteenth century, we would be able to see that almost all European cities are characterized by a mixture of cultural and temporal strata, noticeable with varying degrees of clarity. Among the temporal strata dating prior to the era of profound dynamic urban development between 1850 and 1910, the eighteenth century stands out. Whether Saint Petersburg, Potsdam, Paris, Bordeaux, or Philadelphia— to mention but a few notable examples—even today such cities emphatically remain cities of the eighteenth century. The characteristics of eighteenth-century urban development—mostly from the second half of the century—stand out clearly, having shaped basic city layouts. Viewed semiotically, the eighteenth century is very much present, and not only in urban environments. Indeed, the eighteenth century still dominates entire cultural landscapes, such as Lower Austria, for example, whose large convents and monasteries, like Melk Abbey3, were completely renovated during this time. The eighteenth century’s enduring presence extends right down to the villages with their churches and chapels, and to the many pilgrimage churches, roadside crosses, palaces, and special-purpose structures.

2 3

On the “Republic of Letters,” see Daniel Roche, Les circulations dans l’Europe modern. XVIIe– XVIIIe siècle, 2nd ed., Paris 2011, 698–728. Werner Telesko, Kosmos Barock. Architektur – Ausstattung – Spiritualität; die Stiftskirche Melk, Vienna 2013.

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The eighteenth century distributed its distinctly European architecture throughout the world, creating important buildings that still testify to this century’s processes of globalization. Even in areas less subject to European influence, historical interdependencies led to innovations in urban construction. Many Moroccan cities received their imposing city walls, still standing today, in the eighteenth century. In Khiva in the Middle East, after a long dry spell in the khanate’s history, the late eighteenth century featured the beginning of efforts to restore the region’s many religious structures. Indeed, numerous examples bear witness to dynamics outside of Europe that distinguish the eighteenth century as a period whose defining characteristics applied not merely to narrowly European developments but extended to vast regions. Yet as significant as the eighteenth century was for the spread of European influence throughout the world, its visually similar features—in Europe and beyond—also marked the formation of a European cultural hyper-text. The century’s enduring presence is not merely visual in nature; rather, it persists in other less visual sectors as well, for it generated new ‘identifications’ of Europe and what it meant to be European.

III The eighteenth-century conceptualization of human history as cultural history and the debate regarding the difference between the “ancients” and the “moderns” helped develop ‘identifications’ of Europe that for the first time strengthened the understanding of Europe—for all of its plurality and diversity—as a “unity.” What I call “texts” and “hyper-text” is understood as forming a unity, that of Europe in singular. To a certain degree, these were idealistic constructions, but they had empirical foundations and referred to real circumstances. Real processes of Europeanization—I use the word in the meaning of “weaving the hyper-text”—, were underway—not only with respect to the rest of the world but most profoundly within Europe itself—and many developments featured structural similarities. Such processes of Europeanization included acculturation processes, which, as initially in the case of Russia, could be politically desired or staged, or should be viewed as the result of socio-cultural exchange and transfer. The latter applies particularly to the Enlightenment, any narrowly defined cultural and intellectual products, and styles and aesthetics. Other Europeanization processes resulted from economic developments that permanently impacted the restructuring of legal, social, and economic constitutions all across Europe, as in the case of the feudal system and estate-based society. At the same time, these developments were underpinned by global economic relations. Europeanization or the weaving of the hyper-text was forcefully advanced by the expansion of media—above all, the print media. Whether involving books, encyclopedias, newspapers, periodicals and journals (such as fashion journals and scientific and intellectual periodicals), pamphlets and printed illustrations, this expansion always entailed the development of distribution structures. The weaving of the

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hyper-text relied upon the extremely well-organized circulation of ideas and images (which ultimately left the censors helpless), complemented by the willingness to change, to reconfigure existing conditions according to principles held to be better and more viable for the future—by the “view into the future.” An orientation based on function and purpose replaced fixed guidelines based on religion or simply centuries-old traditions. During the first half of the eighteenth century, people still looked upon France as the exclusive cultural model4, but during subsequent decades a growing number of other models became worthy of emulation. With its constitution elevated to the level of myth, England and its bourgeois and consumer society became emblematic of progressive future-oriented principles that led to more freedom, equality, and affluence. The United States of America, predicted already in 1800 to become a— if not the—leading economic and military power, supplied what was seen to be the model of a large democracy. Germany was held up as the leading model in philosophy and—as in the case of Prussian—rational state expansion. Science and technological innovations enabled enormous bursts of growth and economic booms, which, of course, were necessary in order to remain successful in the competition between nascent national states.

IV During the course of the eighteenth century, aspects of modernity, innovation, and rapid change accumulated. The period’s popular fashion journals provide a suitable metaphor, insofar as they facilitated the implementation of seasonal changes in fashion. One needed to change one’s visible external appearance in order to remain on the cutting edge. The eighteenth century’s valorization of change and innovation was also reflected by the period’s antiquarian comedies. Highly specialized in finding, describing, and cataloguing artifacts of Antiquity, antiquarians stood for what was old and past. In the eighteenth century they were easily viewed as comic figures, the proverbial followers of the ancients who were left far behind compared to those who followed fashions.5 In this respect, the famous literary and artistic debate known as the “Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns” extended even to fashion. The concern was not always in the first instance about the mere acceleration of change but rather about planned and, in principle, systemically based alterations and changes, as with fashion. How could an age so pervaded by this paradigm shift not also have produced an altered or even a new ‘identification’ of Europe expressed by the above-mentioned performative act?

4

5

Fernand Braudel, Out of Italy. 1450–1650, Paris 1989; Olaf Asbach, Die Erfindung des modernen Europa in der französischen Aufklärung, in: Francia 31/2/2004, 55–94; Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, Le mythe de l‘Europe française au XVIIIe siècle. Diplomatie, culture et sociabilités au temps des Lumières, Paris 2007. Herklotz, Der Antiquar als komische Figur, 2011.

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All things considered, the eighteenth century sought to ‘bring to knowledge’ or to ‘identify’ Europe in a form that had never previously existed, even though, judging by external appearances, nothing was really new. The most important aspect in this respect was the ‘identification’ of Europe as a culture. This occurred most explicitly in the development of the concept of culture, in cartography and historiography, in the field of anthropology, and in iconography. It is worth emphasizing that we need to go beyond the narrower range of conceptions and ideas of Europe, since the process of ‘identifying’ Europe in the eighteenth century involved performative acts that produced long-lasting effects. One aspect of the performative act has been redefining Europe in relation to Antiquity. We begin by taking up a few suggestions and ideas from the book Anciens, modernes, sauvages by François Hartog, published in 2005, and enriching them with additional materials.6 The classicist Hartog deals here with the late seventeenth century’s “Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns,” as well as its reiterations and repercussions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The “quarrel” contributed to a redefinition—or indeed a definition—of Europe in the eighteenth century. Hartog focuses first on Charles Perrault’s Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes, published in four volumes between 1688 and 1697. Perrault had already presented his important basic positions in his poem “Le Siècle de Louis le Grand” in 1687 at the Académie Française, but, if we take a broader view, this by no means marked the beginning of the quarrel. We can already see its basic structure in the ancient debates about the fundamental contrasts between the old and young, while the Latin adjective modernus was evidently first coined in late fifth century A.D. Pope Gelasius apparently used the neologism for the first time in two letters in the years 494 and 495.7 Modernus meant “current,” “belonging to the present,” and the adjective took its place in the great debate regarding the differentiation between epochs, which ultimately always served the purpose of self-positioning. The quality of the present and one’s contemporaries in comparison with Antiquity was also the subject of the late seventeenth century’s “Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.” Only one opinion could actually take shape within the proximity of Louis XIV, namely that the people of the present were more perfect than the people of Antiquity in all fields from literature, art, and science to architecture. Perfect or parfait, incidentally, was a key concept in the contemporary definition of monarchie absolue, as was also— in France—the adjective français.8 Here the national context was already present in more than merely suggestive terms. When Richelieu—to follow Hartog’s thread once again—founded the Académie Française in 1635, he wanted French to become the “Latin of the Moderns,” an 6

7

8

François Hartog, Anciens, modernes, sauvages, Paris 2005; also interesting in this regard is Veit Elm, Günther Lottes and Vanessa de Senarclens (eds.), Die Antike der Moderne. Vom Umgang mit der Antike im Europa des 18. Jahrhunderts, Hanover 2009. On the history of the term and its object, see Jean-Robert Armogathe, Postface, in: Anne Marie Lecoq (ed.), La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles, Paris 2001, 799– 849. Details in Chapter 1 “Absolutismus,” in: Schmale, 18. Jahrhundert, op. cit.

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ambitious undertaking that was pursued all the more under Louis XIV. The Ancients vs. Moderns debate ultimately came to an end, according to Hartog, in the early nineteenth century with the recognition by Benjamin Constant, for example, that the perspective of the “parallèle,” that is, the comparison between Antiquity and the present, was misleading. This recognition entailed a radical change in the understanding of the ancient world and its ascribed significance for one’s own time. Hartog demonstrates that the quarrel involved a three-way relationship, hence the “savages” as the third concept alongside “ancients” and “moderns.” The three concepts mark a certain path of knowledge that, by and large, was probably western European in nature and led to the definition of Europe as a civilization or culture. The definition of Europe developed a new quality that set it apart from traditional definitions, known since Antiquity, which had been based on geography and enriched by elements of civilization. Perrault emancipated the “modern” from its ancient model. The “moderns” were no longer the famous dwarves who stood on the shoulders of knowledgeable giants (representing Antiquity) and thus saw further from those heights, as graphically conveyed by Bernard of Chartres in the twelfth century. Instead, the “moderns” were not merely on par with the ancients but better and more perfect (and, naturally, French). Over a century later, a more accurate understanding— namely that key concepts concerning Antiquity meant something different than previously thought—would grow out of the conservative critique of the French Revolution (or its caricature), pertaining to key concepts like democracy and freedom. The critique would reveal that democracy in one’s own present could substantially only be representative democracy, not direct democracy as modeled by Athens or even Sparta, which the Jacobins had supposedly emulated too closely, inevitably leading to the Terror. Freedom was that of the individual, but not that of the Athenian citizen, whose freedom existed only within the framework of the collective of the free citizens of Athens. And so on. Here Antiquity no longer served as a model for emulation; it was no longer even being used in the sense of historia magistra vitae (history is life’s teacher). Rather, it constituted something past and finalized. This did not mean that people rejected other insights gained through scholars like Winckelmann; indeed, nobody questioned the notion that freedom’s only appropriate aesthetic form possessed the dimensions developed by Greek sculptors for the beautiful body. Instead, a connection was established between the degree of perfection of the arts and freedom. Without freedom, no artistic perfection. What, then, did “savages” have to do with all of this? In the sixteenth century, when Europeans needed to assign America’s inhabitants to their places within the European world view, the writings of Antiquity, replete with helpful expositions on barbarians and strange peoples, aided their comprehension. Following Aristotle, Europeans interpreted the developmental stage of so-called Indians as “childish,” which, if nothing else, provided arguments to justify slavery. In the eighteenth century, however, views changed radically. “Savages” became not merely “noble savages” but constituted a phenomenon designated in the subsequent scientific language as the “primitive,” that is, people who remained in an original state. In 1724, Joseph-François Lafitau, a Jesuit who worked as a missionary in Canada, published

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the book Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times [Mœurs des sauvages amériquains comparées aux mœurs des premiers temps], in which he compared the “American savages” with the barbarians described by the ancient Greeks and Romans.9 This act of comparison, as opposed to merely using the insights of Antiquity to help him understand, set Lafitau’s approach apart from those of the past. According to Hartog, Lafitau came to the conclusion that the savages of his time in many respects resembled the barbarians of Antiquity. This developed into a model of thought, firmly established by the late eighteenth century, according to which civilizations advanced through various life stages from childhood to adulthood.10 This naturally also included the idea of decline in old age, as evident in the extensive literature on the question of how Rome could collapse. The peculiar thing about this model of thought was that humanity as a whole did not move through these stages of life at the same time but rather each civilization advanced through them on its own. From the perspective of human history as whole, this meant a basic simultaneity of the non-simultaneous. With respect to the ‘identification’ of Europe, as a result of this model Europe no longer merely functioned in the traditional schema of the four continents as the demographically, economically, scientifically, artistically, and militarily dominant continent but rather constituted a distinct civilization and/ or culture of its own: it was the only civilization in a state of mature adulthood and thus unique in the world. We find this model of thought not only among French writers but also, for example, with Herder, even if this model was sometimes challenged.

V Europe was thus left on its own in two different ways. Antiquity was over—it was recognized as something historically distinct, whose individual aspects, such as sculpture, might still be worth emulating with the goal of outperforming them, of being better; but it was no longer the giant whose shoulders supported contemporary Europe. At the same time, among the world’s remaining cultures or civilizations Europe was supposedly unique because it had presumably reached the highest developmental stage of the human spirit and thus the stage of mature adulthood in the development of civilization.

9

French edition of 1724: (vol. 1); (vol. 2). The work also appeared in German translation in 1752–53; see Joseph-François Lafitau, Die Sitten der amerikanischen Wilden im Vergleich zu den Sitten der Frühzeit, 1752–1753, ed. Helmut Rein, Weinheim 1987. 10 A good overview of the most important eighteenth-century works on this issue is provided by Rein’s commentary in Lafitau, Die Sitten der amerikanischen Wilden, 1987, 42–44. Also worthwhile is Iwan-Michelangelo D’Aprile and Ricardo K. Mac (eds.), Aufklärung, Evolution, Globalgeschichte, Hanover 2010.

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VI The development of the meaning of the concept of culture went hand-in-hand with the eighteenth century’s cultural-historical writing, which basically had a universalhistorical orientation. The discovery of concepts like “culture” and “civilization” allowed for the systematic organization of the results of historical developments, making it possible to arrange them with an internal structural coherence. This coherence could be conceptualized both in terms of universal history or the history of humanity or, on a smaller scale, at a national level. Most Enlightenment authors published articles and/ or monographs on cultural history as it has been shown in chapter 2. This was carried out not only in cultural historical writings but also embodied in images. The frescos by the famous painter Tiepolo in the Würzburg Residence can be served as an example. Essentially, the allegory of the continent, which generally appeared not on its own but rather together with the allegories for Asia, America, and Africa, fulfilled this purpose well.11 The continental allegories of the eighteenth century expanded on models from the second half of the sixteenth century, often distancing themselves from the specific models canonized by Cesare Ripa’s De Iconologia, which generations of artists had found especially useful in the period around 1600. Proceeding from the two Jesuit churches in Rome, the theme of civilization played an important role. Initially, it was associated with the pretensions of the Christian mission, thus even at this stage involving more than simply the succinct allegoricalemblematic representation of the continents. To be sure, the civilization allegories, as I like to call them, were widely used throughout Europe, but they were directed at various types of publics. Churches that were generally accessible probably represented, comparatively, the greatest degree of publicity. Such allegories abound above all in churches found in core Baroque regions,12 which is especially noteworthy in light of Peter Burke’s oft-cited question—“Did Europe exist before 1700?”13— since in certain respects they popularized the representation of Europe as a culture in comparison to Asia, America, and Africa. Not all continental allegories of the eighteenth century can be classified as civilization allegories. Nonetheless, their appearance almost en masse demands attention and needs to be addressed. Continental allegories feature as frescoes, stucco work, faience, wooden sculptures on ships, terracotta figures, on maps and frontispieces, and as drawings in churches in villages, monasteries, and towns, in the homes of citizens and in aristocratic and princely residences, and in royal and imperial palaces. But this sheer quantity—which incidentally is difficult to measure— evidently also contained a new quality that reflected a cultural self-awareness of Europe and Europeans. The coexistence and juxtaposition of elements describing 11 The continental allegories have a complicated early history. See the research project report: Wolfgang Schmale et al., Continent Allegories in the South of the Holy Roman Empire. A pictorial discourse, in: Wolfgang Schmale (ed.), Time in the Age of Enlightenment, Bochum 2012, 295–297. See also the database . 12 Ibid. 13 Peter Burke, Did Europe exist Before 1700? in: History of European Ideas 1/1980, 21–29.

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Europe in both traditional (not to mention stereotypical) and modern terms represented the transformation of Europe’s self-conception. This is exemplified by Giambattista Tiepolo’s ceiling fresco in the entrance staircase of the prince-bishop residence in Würzburg. Completed in 1752–1753, Tiepolo’s fresco is presumably the most famous representation of continental/ civilization allegories of the eighteenth century. Admittedly, this is not an example of the popularization of continental allegories, since the entrance staircase served only ceremonial purposes. Nonetheless, its central statements are probably representative for this era—the content displayed in epic breadth in Würzburg is elsewhere highlighted emblematically. Continental allegories with such broad narrative elements would not reappear until the era of Imperialism, as exemplified in the Paris Stock Exchange (Bourse de commerce, 1888–89).14 Tiepolo’s ensemble of the four continental allegories yields a cultural history of humanity that, in terms of content, basically uses components consolidated during the eighteenth century. Europe represents the pinnacle of the history of civilization, and the path from the vestibule from the lowest step to the first landing, where Europe takes up the entire view, in itself leads to this conclusion.15 At the bottom, the visitor mounting the stairs looks first upon America, which represents human history’s lowest level of civilization. The figure of America, largely unclothed and riding on a giant, frightening alligator, dominates this civilization allegory. In so doing, she is situated near the ground. Everything is natural and wild; architecture is absent; a group of men stoke a fire that symbolizes the origins of civilization. Above the scene around America, a dark cloud rises toward the heavens. Closer inspection reveals a European, voyeuristically observing both the scene around the fire and a naked, light-skinned woman; but it also discloses representatives of widely varied world regions and continents. Thus the men at the fire are not America’s original inhabitants but rather stem from other continents, presumably leading to the interpretation that all peoples of humanity once stood at this point of origins. With an outstretched arm, America points toward Africa; Africa indicates toward Europe, as does Asia, on the opposite side. “Architecturally,” Africa is assigned a tent; the people wear more clothes than in the America allegory; scenes of commerce are depicted. The figure of Africa sits on a camel or a dromedary—it is difficult to tell—but in any event comparatively higher than America. In contrast to 14 Reproduced in Christian de Bartillat and Alain Roba, Métamorphoses d’Europe. Trente siècles d’iconographie, Turin 2000, 126. 15 On the ceiling fresco, see Peter O. Krückmann (ed.), Der Himmel auf Erden. Tiepolo in Würzburg, 2 Vols., Munich 1996; For interpretations of the ceiling fresco (apart from the images) see—in the same volumes— in particular Peter O. Krückmann, Tiepolo in Würzburg. Fürstbischöfliche Repräsentation und die Kunst der Inszenierung, in: Peter O. Krückmann (ed.), Der Himmel auf Erden. Vol 1, Munich 1996, 29–44, 98–121; Frank Büttner, Ikonographie, Rhetorik und Zeremoniell in Tiepolos Fresken der Würzburger Residenz, in: Peter Krückmann (ed.), Der Himmel auf Erden. Vol. 2, Munich 1996, 54–62; Matthias Staschull, Das Gewölbefresko im Treppenhaus der Würzburger Residenz. Maltechnische Untersuchung, in: Krückmann (ed.), Der Himmel auf Erden. Vol. 2, 128–147.

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the America allegory, for the most part the figures are fully clothed. Appearing here, too, are representatives of various peoples and world regions, indicating that this second scene is relevant not only for the history of Africa but for human history in general. The African scene includes the three male Europeans situated near the tent, one of whom, stretched out and kneeling on the ground, is looking into the tent from below. The European is evidently a very curious creature, but keeps himself hidden. Asia represents the third level of the history of human civilization. She sits, fully clothed, on an elephant, thus higher than Africa, who in turn is already higher than America. A pyramid elevates her to an architectural level significantly above America and Africa; crucifixes refer to the origins of Christendom; a large ashlar with written characters—presumably Armenian—tells of the origins of writing. European-looking figures, including a regally clothed European woman, possibly meant allegorically, stand near the pyramid and the inscribed stone. A blond European—Tiepolo refers to him eponymously with a sign—looks toward the hill of crosses. The final and highest level is represented by Europe, both visually and spatially, for at this point the observer has reached the grandiose story—the festive staircase proceeds no higher. The stately architecture in the allegory speaks for itself. All of the figures are luxuriously clothed; the usual attributes of European civilization are fully assembled: a book, musical instruments, painter’s tools, military attributes, etc. Unlike her three counterparts, Europe no longer sits on an animal but on a throne, which in turn is mounted on a stone dais. Beside her stands a white bull, her attribute from mythology. While colouring a globe at the feet of a stately and powerful Europe, the painting’s allegory gazes up at Tiepolo’s patron Prince-Bishop Karl Philipp von Greifenclau, ascending to the heavens like Apollo. Apart from Europe, numerous female allegories are also depicted, in contrast to the other civilization allegories. Nonetheless, the represented activities—the concrete tasks—are performed by men, who are not allegories. The entire scene lacks any uncivilized wildness. Unlike in the other three allegories, the civilizing activities no longer refer to actions that ensure life and survival—that are close to nature, so to speak—but rather to the sublime, to culture. The fresco clearly illustrates the features we have identified above: Europe is represented with the depiction of the highest level of civilization presently attained. The ceiling painting purposefully distinguishes the European man through his explorative curiosity. He is to be found in every scene, not as a passive or affected party but as an agent of discovery and consummation.

VII Interestingly, the collective of speakers of the performative act, the Republic of Letters, made some new efforts to define geographically the area of the culture or civilization named Europe. They reformulated the old question regarding the continent’s eastern boundaries on the basis of new criteria. Meant here is the debate regarding the Urals as the eastern geographical and natural boundary of Europe,

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sparked by the Swedish officer Strahlenberg, who was captured in the Battle of Poltava in 1709.16 He travelled throughout the czarist empire and published his findings in Stockholm in 1730. He based his thesis regarding the Urals as a natural boundary on observations of the physical geography, vegetation, animals, and minerals.17 Although he made an effort to reconcile his own views with Antiquity’s definitions of the eastern boundary, this did not change the fact that Strahlenberg deployed qualitatively new arguments derived from empirical, scientific observations. The steps required to turn the natural region into a cultural region were obvious and they soon were taken. Kant, for example, viewed the Urals as the eastern boundary in terms of geographical-physical, economic, and anthropological aspects. Geography and anthropology stood in close proximity to each other during the eighteenth century. According to the basic school of thought, the conditions created by the natural space of certain continents or partial continents, together with climatic conditions, profoundly influenced the people. The categorizations of human beings undertaken during this century always also included a geographical component. Kant’s writings on anthropology and geography exemplify the extremely close connection between the two perspectives.18 The year 1735 witnessed the publication of one of the major works of the eighteenth century, Carl von Linné’s Systema Naturae. During the course of the century, it appeared in an almost endless number of editions and versions, provoking extensive deliberations about the “European human,” the homo europaeus. Linné largely based his own distinction of the homo europaeus from the homo americanus, asiaticus, and africanus (afer) on the traditional stereotypes that underlay the schema of the four continents. Yet his work nonetheless marks the beginning of anthropology as an independent science, which, through Blumenbach and many others, already developed racial (though not racist) approaches during the eighteenth century. But the simplistic continental schema continued remaining influential as late as the 1780s. Samuel Thomas Soemmerring, for example, in Über die körperliche Verschiedenheit des Mohren vom Europäer [On the physical difference of Negroes from Europeans] (Mainz, 1784) wrote in broad terms about the Europeans and the “Negroes [Mohren].” While he and his colleagues proceeded with precision (according to the standards of the time) in their dissection of corpses and descriptions of skin, organs, skeletons, and brains, their creation of empirically based knowledge ceased in areas where their prejudices went unrecognized as such; instead, they

16 W. H. Parker, Europe: How Far? in: Geographical Journal 126/3/1960, 278–297; Philipp Johann von Strahlenberg, Das Nord- und Ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia […], Stockholm 1730. Regensburg, Staatliche Bibliothek: . 17 Ibidem, 1730 ed., Introduction, Sectio VI, pp. 91–112. 18 Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, The Color of Reason. The Idea of ‘Race’ in Kant’s Anthropology, in: Katherine M. Faull (ed.), Anthropology and the German Enlightenment. Perspectives on humanity, London 1995, 200–241.

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conveyed such prejudices as apodictic truths. “The European” did not merely constitute a formulaic phrase but rather corresponded to an idea of unity that, for the time being, seemed not to require any further differentiation. With regard to anthropology, which rapidly mutated into racial anthropology, E.C. Eze speaks of an intertextuality that formed during the course of the eighteenth century from the reciprocal and multi-reciprocal readings and citations among a rather large number of people interested in anthropology and advocating enlightenment. Apart from Linné, participants included (arranged chronologically according to their relevant writings) Buffon (1748), Hume (1748), Kant (1764, 1775), Beattie (1770), Blumenbach (1776), Herder (1784–1791), Soemmerring (1784 and more frequently), Jefferson (1787) and Cuvier (1797). The intertextuality also extended as far as Hegel.19 Following J.I. Israel, we also must include Lord Kames.20 The self-image of the homo europaeus was completely internalized during the eighteenth century. Europeans were no longer merely the inhabitants (lat., incolentes) of the European continent; in this sense of the term, “Europeans” had already existed in the Middle Ages. Rather, they now constituted either their own species, with their own customs and practices, within the human mammals category, or they were already culturally-racially encoded and therefore superior to others, as demonstrated by countless eighteenth-century texts with reports or narratives from various regions throughout the world. Even though Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Portuguese, for example, still make their appearance, the general category of the “European” seems to have become indispensable, especially when dealing with the representation of culturally different forms of behavior. The assumption of a single origin of the human species—as also found, for example, in the Encyclopédie—did not prevent, as Buffon explained, the formation of great differences due to climactic and natural-geographical circumstances. For most authors, skin color played a decisive role in the classification of people. White, as in the case of Hume, was often developed into a characteristic of cultural distinction in favor of the Europeans. Yet in contrast, according to Kant, the “white race” included not only Europeans but also Arabians, Turks, and many others. Blumenbach (1776) selected the “Caucasian race,” which for him also included Europeans, as the most eminent of all the supposed human races. Lord Kames assigned less significance to climactic differences for variations among peoples in various world 19 Emmanuel Chukwuzi Eze (ed.), Race and the Enlightenment. A Reader, Oxford 2000, particularly the introduction. See also Katherine M. Faull (ed.), Anthropology and the German Enlightenment, London 1995; see also Mario Marino, Noch etwas über die Menschenrassen. Eine Lektüre der Kant-Herder-Forster-Kontroverse, in: Simone de Angelis, Florian Gelzer, and Lucas Marco Gisi (eds.), “Natur”, Naturrecht und Geschichte: Aspekte eines fundamentalen Begründungsdiskurses der Neuzeit (1600–1900), Heidelberg 2010, 393–413 20 Jonathan Irvine Israel, Democratic Enlightenment. Philosophy, revolution, and human rights 1750–1790, Oxford 2011, 248–256; The reference here is to Lord Henry Home Kames, Six Sketches on the History of Man, Philadelphia 1776; See also Henry Vyverberg, Human Nature, Cultural Diversity, and the French Enlightenment, New York 1989; as an overview see Fransisco Bethencourt, Racisms. From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century, Princeton/Oxford 2013.

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regions, assuming polygenetic origins instead. The younger Georges Léopold Cuvier took up Blumenbach’s hypotheses in 1797. It should be noted that the concept of race did not automatically lead to a single cultural identity of one and the same supposed race; to arrive at such an identity, subdivisions were assumed within a “race,” so that, in the end, one nonetheless arrived at the European as something unique. The boundaries between a general anthropology of humanity and a more specialized anthropology of “European humanity” were fluid, and anthropology fanned out in multiple directions, with countless pedagogical works, investigations into the supposedly wild children in Europe that promised to produce inferences about human “cultivability,” and research about the soul, the senses, and more.21 One could, perhaps, dismiss the sources invoked above as examples of oneupmanship. But they can all lay claims to having been widely received in Europe during their time. Above all, they also summed up a state of knowledge, that is, in this respect we can go so far as to view them as being representative. In other respects, they were innovative and advanced the meaning of “modern.” And because of their wide public audience, they did so more effectively than the period’s lesser known and appreciated texts and iconographic representations.

VIII Samir Amin, the author of the most important book thus far about “Eurocentrism,” has defined “Eurocentrism” as follows: Eurocentrism is a culturalist phenomenon in the sense that it assumes the existence of irreducibly distinct cultural invariants that shape the historical paths of different peoples. Eurocentrism is therefore anti-universalist, since it is not interested in seeking possible general laws of human evolution. But it does present itself as universalist, for it claims that imitation of the Western model by all peoples is the only solution to the challenges of our time.22

Cultural centrism or ethnocentrism does not, in the first instance, apply only to Europeans. According to Amin, the phenomenon called Eurocentrism distinguishes itself, however, by the fact that it is “specifically modern” and constitutes “one dimension of the culture and ideology of the modern capitalist world.”23 It runs

21 Among others, Julia V. Douthwaite, The Wild Girl, Natural Man and the Monster. Dangerous experiments in the age of Enlightenment, Chicago 2002; Richard Nash, Wild Enlightenment. The borders of human identity in the Eighteenth Century, Charlottesville 2003. 22 Amin, Eurocentrism, 1989/2011, p. VII (all quotations are from the 1989-edition). The debate on Eurocentrism is still vivid: Marta Araújo and Silvia Rodríguez Maeso (eds.), Eurocentrism, Racism and Knowledge. Debates on history and power in Europe and the Americas, Houndmills 2015; Nick Hostettler, Eurocentrism. A Marxian critical realist critique, New York 2012; Georg Kreis (ed.), Europa und die Welt. Nachdenken über den Eurozentrismus, Basel 2012. 23 Amin, ibidem. Also with focus on “modernity“: Asbach, Europa und die Moderne, Hanover 2014.

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through the “dominant social theories and ideologies.”24 For the author, Eurocentrism is tied to capitalism; in addition “Eurocentrism is … a recent mythological reconstruction of the history of Europe.”25 The irrevocable connection between Eurocentrism and capitalism results from “that capitalism has created a real objective need for universalism, both at the level of scientific explanation of the evolution of human societies (in particular, the explanation of different courses of evolution by means of a single conceptual system) and the elaboration of a program for the future which addresses humanity as a whole.”26 Amin has recognized the significance of the eighteenth century for the emergence of Eurocentrism, 27 but the Enlightenment’s writing of cultural history by no means univocally ruled out the existence of “universal laws of human evolution.” The Enlightenment recognized a developmental model—from the invention of fire to civilization’s highest level—that was combined with the traditional model of life stages: from the childhood of humanity to the maturity of a fully-developed, adult humanity. However, even if one can also cite the clearly more differentiated conception of Abbé Raynal (see chapter 2), the most frequent interpretation of this thought model stated that only Europe had proceeded through the stages to the highest level. My interpretation of “Eurocentrism” differs from Amin’s. I use the word to conceptually summarize the performative act of the eighteenth century that has continued to operate—that is, has been cited and reiterated—up to the present. The eighteenth century’s performative act of “Eurocentrism” comprises of the following elements, which have been outlined in this chapter: (1) Europe is one culture. (2) Europe is not only one culture, but also the most highly developed culture in the world. (3) The actor in this culture is homo europaeus; the “European human being” is male, white, and Christian. He is European culture. This gives rise to various contents associated with the speech act of the République des Lettres: (1) The historical development of world civilization is Europe’s responsibility. (2) Europe as a culture presupposes emancipation from the world view of salvation history and likewise emancipation from antiquity, as expressed in the “quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.” The “being culture” of homo europaeus relied on hegemonic masculinity. The Christian aspect underlay various interpretations. Voltaire and Raynal may have held a very critical position with regard to Christendom and the Church, but by no means did they overlook the associated long-term influences. The reference to Christendom and Christianity did not depend on the speaker’s critical, non-critical, or neutral position but rather was always viewed as given. Amin is interested in “real historical” developments, which is why, for him, “capitalism” and “Eurocentricism” belong together. I am interested in the performative act that engendered, in the hypertext, a newly defined Europe as the culture of 24 25 26 27

Amin, ibidem, p. VII s. Ibidem, p. IX. Ibidem, p. XI. Amin, Eurocentrism, Part 2, Ch. 2.

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homo europaeus. The eighteenth century featured the formation of a global hypertext whose nodes between individual texts in Europe were densely distributed. In the course of what is often referred to as “Europeanization,” an increasing number of texts and nodes outside of Europe joined this hypertext. They were relatively dense in many regions of the Americas, but far less so in Africa and Asia, since here the texts were often local or at most occasionally regional. The performative act of the eighteenth century could be rhetorically simulated, as in chapter 1, as follows: “You, Europe, are the epitome of culture, you are genuinely Christian, you are the culture of homo europaeus, of the white Christian male, you are homo europaeus.” One can even turn the sentence around: “You, homo europaeus, are the culture of Europe.” The performative act is gender specifically male. Eurocentrism is, to put it in these words, the ‘being male’ of the culture or civilization named Europe. The following will present a number of case studies that further elaborate a few lines of this performative act. Eighteenth-century historiography and writing of cultural history has been discussed in chapter 2. The subject of homeo europaeus will be examined in detail in case study II (chapter 4), while that of Christendom will be looked at in case study III.1 (chapter 4). Case study I focuses on a problem that remains hotly disputed today, namely, how far into Eastern Europe did the conception of Europe extend? Was “Eastern Europe” invented in the eighteenth century, as stated by the thesis of Larry Wolff, and did this entail an independent performative act? Or was it included, as understood by Strahlenberg, in the performative act of Eurocentrism? The Eurocentrism of all elements resulted from the focus of speakers in the eighteenth century on Europe; Europe was considered the center of the world, and this was repeatedly “brought to awareness” in many different ways. The speech act was not implemented word-for-word in the rhetorically form simulated above; in this case, the speech act—which, as shown in the first chapter, was a collective historical performative speech act—was constituted by mass. It bundled the countless preceding discourses and constructions into a simulated statement, whose performativity manifested itself in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

CHAPTER IV AFTERMATHS OF THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY’S PERFORMATIVE ACT CASE STUDY I: EASTERN EUROPE—PART OF “EUROCENTRISM”? I According to Larry Wolff, “Eastern Europe” was invented in the eighteenth century.1 This raises the question whether the performative act of “Eurocentrism” outlined in the third chapter excluded Eastern Europe and whether Eastern Europe was instead the object of a totally different and separate performative act. Without at this point addressing details and differences, it should be noted that the question takes on even greater importance when considering developments in Russia under President Putin and in the Ukraine, White Russia, and Trans-Dniester. Within the structures of academic disciplines and among historical scholarship’s areas of specialization, Eastern Europe forms its own separate field, which only relatively recently has been again more strongly included in general overviews of Europe.2 Even so, Eastern Europe—in Central and Western European scholarship—remains a clearly distinguished independent field of research, above all for linguistic reasons. Images of separation or differentiation can also be easily evoked, such as: (1) the development of the orthodox churches in the Middle Ages and a (2) non-Latin, Cyrillic script; (3) the long-time inclusion of large parts of Southeastern Europe in the Byzantine and Ottoman empires; the (4) Western rejection of the Soviet Union and the (5) deadly border between the Eastern and Western Blocs, created after the Second World War and lasting until 1989/90. A closer look reveals, however, that such vividly evocative borders are not drawn linearly. At the very least, they are porous, by no means clearly dividing East from West but instead meandering through the broad region. Views regarding the extent to which Eastern Europe is “European” have changed over the last 500 years and remain largely ambiguous. In the following, “Eastern Europe” should be understood as an abbreviating term that includes the Southeast.

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Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, Stanford 1994. Part I–VI of this chapter is based on an unpublished conference paper: Wolfgang Schmale, Das östliche Europa: (Fremd-?)Bilder im Diskurs des 18. Jahrhunderts und darüber hinaus. Eine Keynote, unpublished conference paper, Vienna 2013. Philipp Ther, Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent. Eine Geschichte des neoliberalen Europa, Berlin 2014.

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In contrast to Larry Wolff, I think that, for the eighteenth century, Eastern Europe was part of the performative act of “Eurocentrism” and not the object of an independent act that, according to Wolff, was called “Inventing Eastern Europe.” To be sure, cultural texts undoubtedly emerged that were identified through spatial designations—Eastern Europe, Balkans, Eastern Central Europe, Southeastern Europe, Central Europe. But they remained part of the same general European hypertext. For its part, Larry Wolff’s thesis has drawn a lot of attention and still evokes debate today, because it calls for changes to traditional perspectives. The question regarding Eastern Europe’s Europeanness has been dominated by views of the relationship between “Russia and Europe,” “Europe and Russia.” Many studies have amounted to discussions of the issue of Russia’s Europeanization, which underwent advances and regressions. There has been a relative consensus regarding the assumption of Russia’s increasing Europeanization from around 1700 under Czar Peter the Great until the First World War. Even so, this Europeanization took shape unevenly.3 To this day, scholarship has retained its chief focus on the role of czarist Russia in the European system of powers from the eighteenth century to the First World War, along with many cultural interrelations. At the same time, it is evident that positions in the debate regarding whether Russia belonged to Europe already varied in the early modern period, a time when interests focused on evaluating the orthodox churches. Only with the formation of the Holy Alliance (see case study III.1) did positions relax in this matter. With the formation of the Soviet Union, opinions may perhaps have tended to drift towards negative positions again, but this did nothing to change the “objective” fact that the Soviet Union played a central role in the European system of powers and that the political objectives of socialism and Marxism were no less Enlightenment offspring than were liberalism and democracy. Even so, twentieth-century historiography exhibited phases during which “Russian” was deemed oriental and Orthodox Christianity was understood not as a unifying but rather as a divisive element.4

II Appearing in 1994, Wolff's book can be included among a series of other publications, such as Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978),5 Benedict Anderson’s Imagined

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Among others: Dieter Groh, Russland und das Selbstverständnis Europas, 1961; Fernand Braudel et al. (eds.), La Russie et l'Europe. XVIe—XXe siècles, Paris/Moscow 1970; FrancineDominique Liechtenhahn, La Russie entre en Europe, Elisabeth Ire et la Succession d’Autriche (1740–1750), Paris 1997; Marshall T. Poe, “A people born to slavery”. Russia in early modern European ethnography 1476–1748, Ithaca New York 2000; Marie-Pierre Rey, Le dilemme russe. La Russie et l’Europe occidentale d’Ivan le Terrible à Boris Eltsine, Paris 2002. Cf. Susan Rößner, Die Geschichte Europas schreiben. Europäische Historiker und ihr Europabild im 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt on the Main 2009, 170–181. Edward Said, Orientalism, New York 1978.

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Communities (1983),6 Stephen Greenblatt’s Marvelous Possessions (1992),7 and Maria Todorova’s Imagining the Balkans (1997),8 each of which deals with imagining a region or historical actor in a unifying manner. The motives behind this unifying imagination vary dramatically. In part, they involve the construction of something “Other” and/or “Foreign,” which is used to construct “one’s own,” a self, or an identity. The term “invent” indicates that these are non-objective intellectual and mental operations, by means of which objects are constructed for certain purposes and instrumentalizations. This approach reflects the fundamental epistemological problem of the possibility or impossibility of objectivity and truth, as well as Michel Foucault’s epistemological approach as developed in Les mots et les choses (1966) and L’archéologie du savoir (1969).9 Peter L. Berger’s and Thomas Luckmann’s reference work entitled The Social Construction of Reality (1967) comes from this same period.10 This approach holds an obvious attractiveness for the humanities, especially for historical disciplines. Even so, critiques of Said’s Orientalism, for example, have raised the question of whether this approach is actually useful for scholarship. Jürgen Osterhammel has attempted a different path using the Weberian concept of “demystification.” In his book Die Entzauberung Asiens: Europa und die asiatischen Reiche im 18. Jahrhundert (The Demystification of Asia: Europe and the Asiatic Empires in the Eighteenth Century, published in 1998),11 which contains plenty of material about Russia and the Ottoman Empire and in this respect is also relevant here, he understands “demystification” as an “ambiguous process of contradictory significance,” by which he means a “loss of pre-modern diversity’s troves of meaning,” on the one hand, and a “gain in rationality,” on the other.12 Reviewing the results of his research, Wolff writes: “Inventing Eastern Europe was a project of philosophical and geographical synthesis carried out by the men and women of the Enlightenment.”13 Nonetheless, the authors he consulted did not arrive at formulations so unanimous that they can be summarized with notions like “inventing Eastern Europe” and “project.”

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism, London 1983. Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions. The wonder of the New World, Oxford 1992. Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, Oxford 1997. Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines, Paris 1966; Michel Foucault, L'archéologie du savoir, Paris 1969. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality. A treatise in the sociology of knowledge, Garden City, New York 1967. Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Entzauberung Asiens. Europa und die asiatischen Reiche im 18. Jahrhundert, Munich 1998. Osterhammel, Die Entzauberung Asiens, 12. Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 356.

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III “Eastern Europe” was not an act of naming or performative act implemented by the eighteenth century’s Republic of Letters. Because of political changes that began in the late seventeenth century, Eastern and Southeast Europe were once again drawn tighter into the European sphere of communications; the entire region also became more accessible, first to people associated with court culture and then more broadly to growing number of persons associated with the Enlightenment. This alone already produced a very specialized hierarchical/asymmetric perspective, one that becomes evident as a pattern not only for descriptions of Eastern Europe but also (for example, with French authors) for descriptions of an author’s own country and its villages and rural population. Enlightenment discourses appropriated this terra incognita in order to turn it into a terra cognita, but the lines of arguments that stand out here were by no means newly developed for this specific purpose. The same kinds of descriptions of slavery, the lack of freedom, and the lack of civilization, etc., cited by Wolff with regard to Eastern Europe are also found in the Enlightenment discourse pertaining to Western and Central Europe. Did the meaning of the term “Volk” when used in reference to this part of Europe and as it developed in the discourse about “Volksaufklärung,” for example, differ substantially from the term’s meaning when used in the description of Eastern and Southeastern regions? Were there no barbarians in Enlightenment historiography about Western and Central Europe? What about the identification of the French “peuple” with descendants from the Gauls? And that of the French nobility with the descendants of the noble Franks? And so on. Claims that the Enlightenment discourse pertaining to Eastern Europe worked with entirely different specific patterns still needs to be proven. Nonetheless, it remains clear that, during the eighteenth century, a large region underwent discursive development here, and that much appeared strange or seemed to be consistent with observations made about other cultures at a certain level of development. Wolff points out comparisons with Africa, for example, or with American Indians. The fact that many observations made on trips through Poland en route to St. Petersburg or to the Southeast on the Black Sea or to Constantinople led authors to resort to characterizations such as “Asiatic” or “oriental” needs to be interpreted carefully, for such terms were not automatically pejorative. Wolff also cites Linné, who still proceeded from the assumption of the traditional four-continent model for his classification of peoples, which forms the beginning of his Systema Naturae, published in 1735. The four-continent model with four different classes of humanity remained relevant throughout the entire eighteenth century and was reproduced en masse in the visual arts. The historiographical genre of human history also essentially followed this model and situated European culture—in the singular—at the top level of the history of civilization. It comes as no surprise that the eastern and southeastern terra incognita was often identified as Asia, because the model did not feature any cultural transition zones. This is not contradicted by occasional allocations to the “Orient”; Wolff provides citations according to which authors also wrote about the Orient with reference to a number of

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observations in Russia. The Orient and Asia are not different schemata, for the continental iconography sometimes outfitted Asia with oriental characteristics and sometimes with Asiatic ones. The iconography of the four-continent allegories, as cultivated in the eighteenth century, teaches us something else as well: The four corners of the world and the four cultures were different, and this was made clear. But in larger, more detailed representations, such as those in the Würzburg Residence (Tiepolo, 1752–1753), they are narratively linked; and in simpler emblematically abbreviated representations, the certainty remains that, despite all of the differences, only the four of them combined comprise the world. We can read the empirical findings and historiographical queries communicated in the texts examined by Wolff as an attempt to loosen the rigid four-continent schema and think about cultural transition zones. In general, it is striking that Wolff fails to ascribe much importance to chronology and to the fact that his sources are distributed across virtually the entire eighteenth century; nonetheless, he cannot avoid the conclusion that, at the beginning of the century, Poland and Russia were basically allocated to the North—to Northern Europe. Indeed, underlying this allocation was an ancient/medieval tradition, one that has been studied by Piotr Kochanek, who included it under the term of “Eurocentrism.”14 The defeat of King Charles XII of Sweden, especially at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, and the policies of Peter the Great led in the mid-term to a change of the mental map: Russia became an entity in its own right, one with European and Asiatic parts, as later described by Strahlenberg. The identification of Europe thereby became complete and more fixed than ever before, even if the Urals as Europe’s eastern boundary and as the boundary between the European and Asian parts of Russia did not provide reason for total consensus. Let us take a look at Maria Todorova’s book about the “Invention of the Balkans.” She proceeds with a stricter methodology than Wolff, and it is not without reason that she begins with a deconstruction of Said’s approach, which led him to assume a Western construct called Orientalism. Painstakingly following the history of the name Balkans, she shows how the first steps toward the construction of a large region named the Balkans—a name derived from that of a mountain or, respectively, mountain range—did not occur until after 1800. She cites August Zeune, who supposedly first mentioned the “Balkan peninsula” in 1808.15 The mountain range separated the land to the south, which formed a peninsula between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean similar to the Iberian peninsula, from the rest of Europe.16 In 1827, a British traveler named Walsh described the peninsula as a whole as the “Balkans.”17 However, the proverbial Balkans were by no means fully constructed as a result; that would occur significantly later, with the region encompassing more than what these early sources referred to as the Balkans. 14 Piotr Kochanek, Die Vorstellung vom Norden und der Eurozentrismus. Eine Auswertung der patristischen und mittelalterlichen Literatur, Mainz 2004. 15 Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 46. 16 Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 47. 17 Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 46.

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Let us take a third step to Ivan Parvev’s book entitled Südosteuropa in den deutschen politischen Zeitschriften des 18. Jahrhunderts (Southeastern Europe in the German Political Journals of the Eighteenth Century).18 Naturally, “Southeastern Europe” is not a term used by the sources, as the author makes clear, which raises the question regarding the appropriateness of this rather current encapsulation of a region under a geographical name, precisely as in the case of L. Wolff. With the journals, Parvev seizes upon a series of sources that, particularly in the old empire during the eighteenth century, was especially common and seems well-suited for collecting a spectrum of opinions and arguments on specific issues in the eighteenth century. He creates a classification of their contents, which first pertains to the compilation of source comments regarding eight Southeast European nations, and then to “Southeastern Europe as a foreign policy problem,” which essentially means the conflicts between the Holy Roman Empire or Habsburg Monarchy with the Ottoman Empire, but now and then also includes Russia. He links the source contents back to reading public—to homo politicus as the addressee and reader of political journals—which provides the study’s social connection. The type of source material used by Parvev leads to different conclusions regarding Eastern Europe than do the texts cited by Wolff. From the perspective of the journals, Russia appears to be a major power and is considered a civilized country, one that, prior to Peter the Great, had undoubtedly been backward but had long since caught up. The judgments regarding the Ottomans or Turks, the Albanians, Serbs, Vlachs, Montenegrins, Bulgarians, Moldovans, and the Mani people cannot be lumped together. It becomes clear that a judgment’s positive or negative quality very much depended on how parties sided during war and how reliably they complied with conventions and peace treaties. Labels used repeatedly, such as bandits and/or barbarians were often relativized, since the same characterizations could also be applied to Western and Central European groups and nations, especially if they just happened to be waging war against the empire or the Habsburgs. For a long time, religious affiliation, too, still continued to function as a perceptual filter. The fact that negative observations and judgments regarding Southeastern Europe can be supplemented with comparable negative observations and judgments regarding Western and Central Europe should make us sit up and take notice, because this levels out supposed differences. In the appendix to his book, Parvev cites a lovely source from the Historisches geographisches Journal (Halle, Leipzig, Jena) from 1789. Here under the enquiring title “Should one chase the Turks out of Europe?” we witness an exemplary leveling of supposed inequalities with regard to civilization, performed on the basis of a very rational consideration of advantages and disadvantages. And: in one’s own well-understood self-interest, one should not drive out the Turks ... Parvev asks whether something like a discussion about Southeastern Europe existed for the homo politicus, that is, the reader of the old empire’s political journals. While he considers an unequivocal answer to be impossible, occasionally a 18 Ivan Parvev, Land in Sicht. Südosteuropa in den deutschen politischen Zeitschriften des 18. Jahrhunderts, Mainz 2008.

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comprehensive report can be found that goes beyond the coverage of war declarations, battles, sieges, defeats, peace treaties, and legations, and delivers—cum grano salis—insights into the people and lived environments of Southeastern Europe. Incidentally, one particular fact deserves mention: the powers pursuing geopolitics in Eastern Europe asked very few questions about its state of civilization. Such questions were irrelevant for securing and expanding power; nor does it look as if these powers were any more concerned about potential or newly acquired subjects—referred to in some sources as barbarians—than they were about the subjects they already previously had: the universally applicable stereotype of potentially insubordinate and rebellious subjects supplanted all other possible stereotypes. In other words: even clearly pejorative statements regarding the backwardness of the regions or peoples of Eastern Europe cannot be posited so absolutely that one can derive from them the “invention” of a region in an asymmetric perspective. An attentive and critical reading of these three books alone, which have become landmarks during the last fifteen years or so, allows for only one conclusion: in the eighteenth century, neither an Eastern Europe, nor a Southeastern Europe, nor a Balkans was invented or constructed. The observations, opinions, and evaluations of materials such as travel reports were too complex and too strongly shaped by context-dependent points of view and certain variability of perspectives. This undoubtedly had to do with the fact that matters in Eastern Europe were in a state of flux. Educated eighteenth-century contemporaries wanted to grasp this in an observant and discerning manner, but in certain respects they were far from developing a one-dimensional perceptual pattern. They used traditional perceptual patterns, such as the four continents understood as four major cultures; religion and denominational affiliations were and remained in place as filters and identifying features; other factors included efforts to elaborate distinctions on the basis on conveyed empirical observations. One also needs to ask about the supposed motives and purposes behind certain “inventions,” for there is the risk of transporting motives to this period that demonstrably existed only since the second half of the nineteenth century.

IV Basically, it makes a difference whether one draws upon sources from the Atlantic region of Europe or those from the Habsburg Monarchy. Also, compared to the French- or English-language Enlightenment, the German-language Enlightenment was much more closely linked with large sections of northern and central Eastern Europe—say, from the Baltic region to the Habsburg Monarchy’s military border. The German-language Enlightenment viewed this as a developing region that at the same time was being sustained by German-speaking elites. For others in the West, the region perhaps actually seemed further away than English and French North America.

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In light of the fact that the Enlightenment’s respublica literaria even extended into the Ottoman Empire, one also needs to investigate reciprocal sources such as correspondences and translation activity. If one also focuses on networks and interrelationships, on the creation during the Enlightenment of Europe as a large region of communication from France to the Ukraine—hence, on real historical developments—it becomes difficult to discern anything like “projects of invention.” The motive is lacking. To be sure, our concerns here do not center on real historical developments, but rather on perceptions; yet the latter cannot be detached from real historical developments. This therefore raises the question of Eastern Europe’s Europeanness.19 To begin with, we need to remember (see chapter 3) that a concept of Europe as a singular culture was developed in the course of the eighteenth century. This singular culture referred to a region defined geographically as Europe. With regard to the discussion about the eastern border, one needs to pay attention to more than just references to the Urals; the discussion was more complex, with the Ukraine playing a major role as well.20 During the eighteenth century, the Ukraine was defined in the various ways. Geographically, its name essentially corresponded with today’s Ukraine; in this respect, it applied without regard to whether or not the Ukraine was a state. The actual “Cossack Republic” consisted only of the Hetmanate (approximately one-sixth of today’s Ukraine), an autonomous state under Russian suzerainty. “Cossack Republic” was commonly described as a border or border region, referring to its function for Poland and Russia, which divided the region between them. As a border or defensive region, the “Cossack province” or “Cossack Republic” was situated between civilized Europe and the uncivilized “Other” and “Foreign”. As Tatiana Sirotchouk writes: “The Cossacks are thus the real and effective protectors of Europe against all kinds of invasions. As far the Ukraine, it becomes the vanguard of Western Civilization.”21 One of the most important figures of the Ukrainian Enlightenment, Gregor Skovoroda, expressed the Ukraine’s European membership as follows: “Nous sommes Européens!”22 Occasionally, the impression arises that the eighteenth century featured the replacement of the older function of the antemurale christianitatis (bulwark of Christianity),23 a status previously claimed by multiple regions or countries, by the modern function of the bulwark of European civilization—a function that could also 19 Wolfgang Schmale, Die Europäizität Ostmitteleuropas, in: Jahrbuch für Europäische Geschichte 4/2003, 189–214. 20 The following (concerning Ukraine) is based on Schmale, Das 18. Jahrhundert, 2012, Ch. 6.4; on Ukraine, among others: Andreas Kappeler (ed.), Die Ukraine. Prozesse der Nationsbildung, Cologne 2011. 21 See Tatiana Sirotchouk, La vie intellectuelle et littéraire en Ukraine au siècle des Lumières, Paris/Geneva 2010, 33. On the Ukraine: Andreas Kappeler, Culture, Nation, and Identity. The Ukrainian-Russian encounter (1600–1945), Edmonton 2003. 22 Sirotchouk, ibidem, 9. 23 Cf. state of the art: Agnieszka Gąsior, Agnieszka Halemba and Stefan Troebst (eds.), Gebrochene Kontinuitäten, Transnationalität in den Erinnerungskulturen Ostmitteleuropas im 20. Jahrhundert, Cologne 2014.

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very well have been assumed by Russia following what contemporaries viewed as its Europeanization.

V In the eighteenth century, the most powerful European pictorial world—one that had actually just been created—must be that of ancient Greece. This pictorial world—despite clearly available knowledge about the coloring of antique architecture and sculptures—was one of white marble, on to which Europeans projected all of their idealized notions of civilization.24 However, many connecting threads to Alexander literature and the activation of its role in Europe involved not the color white but an idealization of Alexander the Great and his legacy—I will come back to this later. The exploitation of these imaginings drew into the singular culture of Europe not only Greece itself—that is, a part of Southeastern Europe ruled by the Ottomans—but a broader and wider Europe. Europe as a singular culture was visualized by means of a broadly similar pictorial language. Russia took on this pictorial language as its own, while in the central and southern parts of Eastern Europe it is following the tracks of the Habsburg Monarchy’s expansion. As examples, one can cite the iconographic program in the Alba Carolina Citadel (1715–1738)25 or look at the transformation of Timișoara, which began shortly after the conquest in 1716.26 Undergoing constant expansion during the eighteenth century, the monarchy underwent an iconographic standardization that above all expressed the belonging of various diverse regions to one and the same monarchy. In many cases, the iconography remains visible to this very day. Pursued above all by Joseph II,27 in practice this standardization was realized by builders, artists, specialists, engineers, etc. from many different European countries—in purely practical terms, it was a “European project.” Common practice in the eighteenth century employed multiple iconographic references that—depending upon the number of gold pieces in one’s pouch and one’s ability to spend them on such things—visually displayed the world comfortably at home within the smallest possible space. This is exemplified especially well by the iconographic development of Potsdam, which began in the eighteenth century and continually expanded until around 1900: the Dutch, French, Bohemian, 24 Philippe Jockey, Le mythe de la Grèce blanche. Histoire d’un rêve occidental, Paris 2013. 25 Nicolae Sabău, Le programme iconographique de la citadelle d’Alba Iulia (1715–1738), in: Harald Heppner and Wolfgang Schmale (eds.), Festung und Innovation, Bochum 2005, 73–92, fig. pp. 236–266. 26 Horst Fassel, Strukturierung des Kulturlebens in der ehemaligen türkischen Festung Temeswar im 18. Jahrhundert (Schwerpunkt Theater), in: Heppner and Schmale (eds.), Festung und Innovation, Bochum 2005, 93–104. 27 Christian Benedik, Die Normierung der Idee – Der Verlust der graphischen Individualität im habsburgisch-staatlichen Bauwesen des 18. Jahrhunderts, in: Wolfgang Schmale, Renate Zedinger and Jean Mondot (eds.), Josephinismus – eine Bilanz/Échecs et réussites du Joséphisme, Bochum 2009, 175–185.

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and Russian cultural references refer to specific people and social groups who came or were brought to Potsdam. The French references are practically self-explanatory—for example, in the New Palace (1763–69) designed by Gontard (among other architects) and in the form of the French Church for the French (Huguenot) colony.28 Created for the Sanssouci Park in 1768, a reduced-scale replica of the Roman pantheon exhibited the Hohenzollern collection of antiquities. In the park of Sanssouci, one also encountered a “Chinese Teahouse.” The Marble Palace at the Heiligen See built for Friedrich Wilhelm II between 1787 and 1789 contained a room designed as an “oriental” tent (Zeltzimmer). In Babelsberg, a few structural elements have survived that testify to the presence of former Bohemian weavers. Corresponding with the town’s Dutch quarter were the Dutch-style houses of the Holländische Etablissement (1789–90) in the New Garden, which also featured an imitation of an Egyptian pyramid. The New Garden and Babelsberg Park adopted the model of the English country garden. Proceeding from Russian soldiers captured in 1812 who were detained in the country and subsequently remained, the Russian Colony (1827) brought to Potsdam a piece of Russia.29 In the Potsdam of the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, West and East, antiquity and the present, intermingled structurally and aesthetically, without any evident hierarchies or particular valorizations or devalorizations. Let us take a look at a different pictorial world. The decades of the Polish-Saxon Union occasioned a voluminous production of imagery. The complex iconographic representations of Saxony and Poland individually, ranging from veduta paintings to printed graphics, coins, porcelain figures, models, utensils, textiles, and so on, lent a helping hand to the powers of imagination. Some of these productions depicted joint Saxon-Polish elements. Already by the seventeenth century, Poland played an important role in travel literature and other literary genres. Many printed texts conveyed an “image” of Poland not only through texts but also in the form of frontispieces and other illustrations.30 Hence, visually, the Polish-Saxon Union had ample material to start from. In 1731, Johann Alexander Thiele created an oil painting that depicted the socalled Zeithain Encampment of 1730, where August the Strong presented his now reformed and “magnificent army” to the “European powers,” displaying, among others, “Polish Uhlans,” Hajduks, Janissaries, and “troop units with ‘Turkish insignia’” before hundreds of guests. Thiele himself made smaller scale reproductions

28 On the Hugenots in Potsdam see: Silke Kamp, Die verspätete Kolonie. Hugenotten in Potsdam 1685–1809, Berlin 2011. 29 The paragraph on Potsdam is taken from: Schmale, Mein Europa, Vienna 2013, chapter „Die Mitte. Europa zwischen Berlin und Wien“; Theodor Fontane describes in his famous „Wanderungen in der Mark Brandenburg“ (1850s and 1860s) Potsdam and its surroundings in-depth. Theodor Fontane, Wanderungen in der Mark Brandenburg, Munich 1969. 30 With a lot of material: Włodzimierz Zientara, Sarmatia Europiana oder Sarmatia Asiana? Polen in den deutschsprachigen Druckwerken des 17. Jahrhunderts, 2nd ed., Toruń 2003.

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of this 2x3 meter painting; a medallion and additional pictorial references and artifacts have also survived.31 In the context of pictorial worlds, the example of Saxony/Poland and Poland/Saxony points toward cultural transfer and cultural exchange as cultural practice. In 1737, August III had Louis de Silvestre paint him in the “oriental-appearing noble clothing” of the Polish nobility. Subsequently finding its way into printed graphics, by which it was further disseminated, this portrait apparently cleared the way for Polish and masculine traditional aristocratic costumes not only at the Saxon court but also in France. In 1732, Pöllnitz articulated a very positive image of Polish aristocratic women at court that attested to their direct comparability with French women in Paris.32 The Polish entourage installed at the Dresden court—at least, parts thereof—escorted, among others, the electoral prince, Friedrich August, to Italy and France, and the royal heir, Prince Friedrich Christian, to Venice, for example, journeys that everywhere provided the occasion for pictorial representations that also included representations of Poland. Like other painters, Polish painters also trained in Rome; Polish architects also collaborated on new building projects of the union period. Polish was learned at the Dresden court; in 1722, Polish was evidently offered at the University of Leipzig, where approximately 350 Polish students, mostly from aristocratic families, enrolled between 1695 and 1800—not a huge number, but even so. Starting in 1729, Leipzig publishing houses began publishing works in Polish, including a French-Polish-German dictionary.33 In the 1770s, Canaletto created portraits of Warsaw. An etching from 1774, for example, shows small and large wooden houses in the foreground, and in the background a number of palaces, the royal castle, and the old and new towns. When visiting Warsaw, a few travelers cited by L. Wolff seem to have been negatively astonished by the close proximity of simple homes and palaces. However, Canaletto did not draw dilapidated huts but rather solid wooden homes, forming a logical transition from the noble representational town to the left foreground’s rural idyll. As do many other of Canaletto’s veduta, the picture works with positive clichés.34

31 Werner Schmidt and Dirk Syndram, Unter einer Krone. Kunst und Kultur der sächsisch-polnischen Union, Leipzig 1997; Quotations p. 208, catalogue numbers 329–332. 32 Jerzy Kowalczyk, Die Bedeutung des wettinischen Königshofes für den kulturellen und künstlerischen Austausch – Polen in Sachsen, Sachsen in Polen, in: Rex Rexheuser (ed.), Die Personalunionen von Sachsen-Polen 1697–1763 und Hannover-England 1714–1837. Ein Vergleich, Wiesbaden 2005, 201–219, 203–4. 33 Siegfried Hoyer, Polnische Studenten an der Universität Leipzig im 18. Jahrhundert, in: Verein für sächsische Landesgeschichte e. V. (ed.), Sachsen und Polen zwischen 1697 und 1765, Dresden 1998, 328–337. 34 Bernardo Bellotto (Canaletto): Vue de Varsovie prise depuis le palais dit de l’Ordinat ..., 1774. Etching 49.6 x 62 cm. Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett, Inv.-Nr. 127948. See catalogue Werner Schmidt and Dirk Syndram (eds.), Unter einer Krone. Kunst und Kultur der sächsisch-polnischen Union, Leipzig 1997, No. 35. p. 93.

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As Polish kings in personal union, the electors of Saxony, August II and Friedrich August III, and the king of Saxony and grand duke of Warsaw, Friedrich August I, had a special interest in Poland’s positive representation. Sarmatism, which is usually fielded as an argument for a kind of foreignness, would hardly have fulfilled this purpose in the pictorial world of the eighteenth century. Orientalist elements as depicted in the visualization of Sarmatism had long formed part of European iconography. Representational architecture fell back on the same models, signs, and elements of meaning that were used elsewhere in Europe.35 Historiographically, the Sarmatians were closely tied to the history of Rome, and in salvation history, like other European nations, their patriarch was a son of Japheth. Both of these inclusions counted among the standard techniques for situating oneself within European history. In the case of Saxony, without a doubt there were special motives for dealing with Poland constructively; the Wettin dynasty had a major interest in securing the Polish kingdom on a long-term basis. One could say that reasons of state co-determined the image of Poland. The same holds true analogously for the Habsburg Monarchy and its relationship with the Ottoman Empire. It is true that none of these examples leave the field of court and Enlightenment culture; but all of the high culture sources used in cited scholarship also come from this field. Different types of sources allow for different types of conclusions; if one brings them together, what emerges is a differentiated eighteenth-century perspective upon Europe’s eastern regions that is anything but standardized.

VI References to the Sarmatians constituted no less of a reference to Roman antiquity than did references to the Gauls, Franks, Batavians, and Germans, and so on. They were invoked with view toward ancient Thrace and the contemporary Bulgars— Parvev cites here a range of journal articles from the eighteenth century. The scholarship about central Southeastern Europe deals with Poland’s Sarmatism in tandem with Illyrianism, which often combined quite similar salvation-historical, ancient, and independent elements.36 Noteworthy eighteenth-century historiographical constructions also included the literature dealing with Alexander the Great. A comprehensive synthesis on this topic by Pierre Briant has been available since 2012: Alexandre des Lumières: Fragments d’histoire européenne.37 Briant describes how this Alexander literature functioned within the eighteenth century’s construction of a veritably European 35 Isabella Woldt, Sobieskis Königsresidenz in Wilanów und Krasińskis Palais in Warschau. Architektur im Spannungsfeld von Antikenrezeption und Sarmatismus im Barock, in: Ulrich Heinen (ed.), Welche Antike? Vol. 1, 397–429. 36 Zrinka Blažević, Ilirizam prije ilirizma [Illyrism before Illyrism], Zagreb 2008; Zrinka Blažević, How to Revive Illyricum? Political Institution of the ‘Illyrian Emperors’ in Early Modern Illyrism, in: Ulrich Heinen (ed.), Welche Antike? Vol. 1, 431–444. 37 Pierre Briant, Alexandre des Lumières. Fragments d’histoire européenne, Paris 2012.

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history, shaping not only interpretations of the past but also visions of the future. A broad spectrum of eighteenth-century writers engendered an understanding of history that emphasized how Europeans gained the initiative as a result of Alexander and the successful foundation of his empire; for the first time, power shifted from the Persians and the Orient to Europe. During the eighteenth century, people usually interpreted this as a pivotal moment and event in world history; at the same time, they also felt the need for history to repeat itself in a certain sense: the Ottoman Empire had to be expelled from Europe, and Russia was supposed to play a leading role in this effort. In other words, the Alexander literature and its adaptation for the political goals of the eighteenth century had ample space to accommodate everyone in Europe. The material and its interpretations contributed to the definition of Europe as a singular culture. Homo politicus distinguished between the influences of antiquity in particular regions and those elements of these influences that he could still or once again observe in the eighteenth century; but antiquity and its remnants in the form of both artifacts and language comprised a perceptual and interpretive model that became increasingly important, alongside the religious-confessional and power-political organization of space and the perceptions based therein. Antiquity helped reincorporate regions still under Ottoman rule into the vision of a singular Europe. The main result of this constellation emerged only in combination with the French Revolution’s theme of freedom, which preceded the support of freedom movements of ostensibly or actually oppressed nations during the first decades of the nineteenth century. The clearest case was Greece, and the Polish and Serbian cases were similarly situated. What people invoked here in support of these movements, however, was not an idealized antiquity but basically the themes of freedom and national sovereignty, which for a long time managed to overlay—indeed, even obscure— the divergent developments of the nineteenth century as manifested by the various different paces of industrialization and other modernization factors. In any case, during the nineteenth century, Felix Kanitz (1829–1904) recorded antique inscriptions in his large description of Serbia and dedicated a separate text solely to “Roman finds.”38 Imagining Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and other regions as an image of the Other only makes sense given the consolidation of a contrasting construction–– namely, that of Western Europe, which was joined by that of a German-speaking “Mitteleuropa” and a multilingual “Central Europe,” which conceived most broadly extends from the “Baltic to the Black Sea.”39 In the nineteenth century, social, economic, governmental, political, and legal developments became more uneven and sometimes drifted apart, something that was grasped by the cited constructions of partial regions. 38 Felix Philipp Kanitz, Serbien. Historisch-ethnographische Reisestudien aus den Jahren 1859– 1868, Leipzig 1868; Felix Philipp Kanitz, Die römischen Funde in Serbien, Vienna 1861. 39 Catherine Horel, Cette Europe qu’on dit centrale. Des Habsbourg à l’intégration européenne 1815–2004, Paris 2009; Stefan Troebst, “Intermarium” und “Vermählung mit dem Meer”. Kognitive Karten und Geschichtspolitik in Ostmitteleuropa, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 28/2002, 435–469.

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All in all, Osterhammel’s concept of “demystification” appears to aptly describe the phenomenon also with regard to Eastern Europe when associated with the iconography of the continental allegories and their near disappearance for a time during the first half of the nineteenth century. This iconography inserted what Osterhammel calls “pre-modern diversity’s troves of meaning” into the picture, while the political-economic rationalization of the European world rendered it obsolete and instead created space for schematizations: Western Europe, Central Europe, Balkans, Eastern Europe.

VII Let us jump ahead to the twentieth century, where the division between Western and Eastern Europe––and thus a parallel performative act––seems to be a fact.40 However, the closure and sealing of the border between Western and Eastern Europe, including former Yugoslavia, was never “instantaneous” and never a uniform phenomenon. It was an uneven process. At first there were physical permeabilities, especially between East and West Germany, until the wall was built and the border fence erected. There were communication-related permeabilities, which grew stronger starting in the second half of the 1960s and intensified in the course of the CSCE process41 in the 1970s. Right from the outset, there were certain permeabilities in both directions due to family ties, which were admittedly severely hampered but existed nonetheless and were filled with life by people. The sealing effect of the border between East and West should not be minimized; in European history, such a border was virtually unprecedented. But seen against the long duration of European history, it appears as a temporary phenomenon that could not prevail against the power of generations as communities of shared experiences. Even persons born after 1940 and who were around 40 or 50 years of age when the border opened up— hence, they experienced their socialization entirely or almost entirely under the auspices of the relatively sealed border––were able to adapt to the new borderless situation. Not all of them, but a significant many. Older persons had still known a different Europe and in 1989/90 remained sufficiently enthusiastic to tie into their— now sometimes nostalgic––memories of prewar Europe. Meanwhile, generations had subsequently grown up that had actively witnessed 1968 (let us take the Prague Spring as its symbolic beginning), participated in the citizens’ rights movements of the Eastern Bloc states, and in 1989/1990 seized upon the historical opportunity to realize what had long been systematically thought through, namely, democracy. The meshing of these generations, each with specific shared historical experiences, prevented the Iron Curtain from fully developing its intended effect––an effect that 40 Sections VII to IX are based on: Wolfgang Schmale, „Osteuropa“. Zwischen Ende und Neudefinition?, in: José M. Faraldo, Paulina Gulińska-Jurgiel and Christian Domnitz (eds.), Europa im Ostblock. Vorstellungen und Diskurse (1945–1991)/Europe in the Eastern Bloc. Imaginations and Discourses (1945–1991), Cologne 2008, 23–35. 41 Peter Schlotter, Die KSZE im Ost-West-Konflikt. Wirkung einer internationalen Institution, Frankfurt on the Main 1999.

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might possibly have been achieved if the Iron Curtain had endured for a longer time. The question must be: can we correctly understand the Eastern Bloc as its own hypertext or does it indeed form only a text within the European hypertext? Naturally, one should not overlook the consequences of the different economic systems in the East and West; and, even today, the shaping of societies according to the principles of socialism and market economic principles manifests clearly noticeable differences between the societies. But how broad or deep did these systemdependent differences go? How strongly did they impact or alter value systems? How permanently were value systems potentially changed? In Western Europe, the international organizations that successively emerged from the Marshall Plan, the Brussels Pact, and the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) aligned themselves expressly according to specific values. This is not so clearly the case for the EFTA (European Free Trade Association). The Council of Europe counted among the first European value-oriented organizations and has reached far beyond Western Europe. In terms content, the reconfiguration of the EEC into the EC and finally the EU was explicitly value-oriented, with democracy and human rights forming the core values of this orientation. Expressed very briefly, within the framework of the aforementioned and other European and/or international institutions and organizations, Western Europe underwent, viewed structurally, a normative, institutional, and systemic integration; viewed in terms of content, it underwent an economic, political, and cultural integration. These processes were supported by a policy for the integration of transnational and shared basic values. How did matters develop on the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain? Viewed in formal terms, some approaches appeared similar, such as the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, which at its 25th meeting in July 1971 in Bucharest resolved the Comprehensive Program for the Further Extension and Improvement of Cooperation and the Further Development of Socialist Economic Integration by Comecon Member Countries. Even so, the Eastern Bloc never featured any integration policy comparable to that of Western Europe, neither from a structural perspective nor in terms of content.42 Even the initiatives by the Soviet Union since the mid-1950s with regard to a joint European security system never attained any sufficient structural or content-related coherence to be able to develop an integrative effect within the Warsaw Pact (let alone beyond its borders) in the sense of formulating a value-oriented guiding objective. Without delving into details here, we can note that the common designation “Eastern Bloc––the emphasis is on Bloc––suggests a systemic and communicative unity in Eastern-Central and Eastern Europe which is very difficult to document as such. At times, the borders between the socialist countries were sealed off almost as strongly as those toward the West, and countries tenaciously held fast to their national, non-socialist historical myths. Shared European fundamental values were by no means completely swept away. As paradoxical as it might sound, the socialist 42 Cf. the chapter on “Modelle des totalitären Sozialismus und die Integration im Osten Europas”, in Alexander Tschubarjan, Europakonzepte von Napoleon bis zur Gegenwart. Ein Beitrag aus Moskau, Berlin 1992, 165–172. Translated from Russian by Reinhard Fischer.

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value system basically differed little from the western value system because, in part, it possessed the same historical roots and the same goals, such as economic affluence. Only a social minority consisting of specific social groups actively and positively established the de facto systems of oppression and kept them alive. That is why, after 1989, the path toward establishing democratic constitutions could be traveled relatively quickly. This path proceeded in parallel with the rapidly developing desire to join the EC or, respectively, EU, which helped materially and conceptually advance its realization. Had the visions of worthwhile values been essentially different, this would not have been possible. Incidentally, it seems clear to me that the EC/EU integration process set in motion after 1989 with regard to Eastern (Central) Europe basically already began with the CSCE process. One can see— not only retrospectively––the close connections of the communication networks, both at the level of politics and state institutions as well as at the level of civil society. Communications at the level of civil society––for example, represented by Charter 77 and various NGOs on the Western side––were subject to severe repression in Eastern (Central) Europe. But the transnational communicative negotiation of orienting values at various different levels––something that the CSCE both stood for and facilitated––could be neither prevented nor reversed. Nonetheless, the list of arguments intended to prove the continued existence after 1989 of a kind of border between civilizations is long. The common designations referring to countries as “post-socialist,” “reform,” and “transformation,” or “post-transformation” states sum up all of the corresponding arguments and draw a clear boundary between Western and Eastern/Eastern Central Europe. We may need to come to terms with the idea that the tendencies of mutual dissociation established after 1989 are far more serious than previous ones. On the part of the populations—that is, beyond the sphere of power politics—the “views toward the East” and “views from the East” had been strongly laden with emotion. These emotions bound people from both sides of the Iron Curtain relatively closely together. This had a lot to do with family ties, in the West with funded charitable institutions, also with Germany’s civil-social restitution strategies, which were mixed up with charitable attitudes and emotions that arose from an assessment of the situation of German minorities who remained in Eastern Central Europe and Russia. Upon close consideration, the immense involvement of German civil society during the period of the Solidarity Union exhibits all of these elements. Conversely, the view toward the West as a consumer’s paradise, where everything could be had in abundance without standing in line, was heavily charged with emotion. The freedom of movement and travel prevailing in the West triggered corresponding longings that were satisfied as much as possible after the border opened in 1989. The wheezing Trabi in the passes of the Alps came to symbolize the released flood of emotions and the determined satisfaction of longings. However, the border crossings of 1989 formed the strongest emotional focus. What in 1989/90 was often titled as a “return to Europe” was primarily a unification of emotions. It began with the dramatic pictures of the German embassy in Prague. With nothing but the clothes on their backs, people climbed over the embassy’s walls and bars; under unavoidably dramatic circumstances, they passed a time of

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worry and waiting that seemed never to want to end until the redemptive message arrived, bringing freedom. The following months brought enormously strong emotional images of openings of the East-West border poured in concrete or fortified by steel barbed wire, of crowds of people who with their feet walked the path of freedom through the fields of blood from the East to the West. For those involved, these images continue to be present, but the emotionality has long since subsided. A new generation has also long since grown up, one that wasn’t there—after all, “everything” happened 25 years ago. The boom of emotions, which at the level of the population followed almost logically from the decidedly emotional situation prior to 1989, was followed by the bust of disillusionment. The bust of anxieties—but unequal anxieties. The West was afraid of migrations, because some forecasts referred to an expected 25 million migrant workers or relocating persons; in Eastern Europe, shock and uncertainty about the future ran rampant. The most immediate consequences—apart from the initially desired presence of Western consumer goods—included, namely, rapidly increasing inflation (if not hyperinflation, as in Bulgaria with a rate of 480% in 1991), rapidly increasing unemployment (especially among women), the collapse of entire industrial regions, the access by members of the former—and already privileged—nomenklatura to commercial enterprises and land in the course of privatizations, the critical security situation that followed from the break-up of the Soviet Union, revelations concerning dangerous environmental damages that had previously been concealed, and other such consequences. It makes a huge difference, whether I look over the particular border that separates me from “paradise,” or whether this border has fallen and I now see, first, that there is no angel standing at the gates of paradise, motioning with a friendly smile for me to approach and enter, and, second, that the path to this paradise leads through an unexplored swamp, with only forecasts and strategies available, like grab rails without a boardwalk. Hence, by no later than 1991, a historical shift of mental paradigms from positive to negative emotions occurred on both sides, from a relatively stable framework of bloc formation to the amorphousness of what has become an uncertain future. In the meantime, in the course of the transformation, new problems have emerged in the former socialist states that can only be interpreted indirectly as consequences of socialism. New conditions arose during the transformation processes, that is, conditions with their own very recent history, a history whose specific form in Eastern (Central) Europe and the former socialist states is occurring only because this history is turning against, for example, the de facto societal changes that had occurred during the socialist period. A few aspects: In all of the socialist countries, workers’ status was highly ranked and internalized through suitable political and propaganda measures. The Heroes of Labor epitomized a system that combined subtle ideology, propaganda, congenial individual charisma, and reward and motivation mechanisms.43 The same applied for female occupational activities, which 43 Silke Satjukow and Rainer Gries (eds.), Sozialistische Helden. Eine Kulturgeschichte von Propagandafiguren in Osteuropa und der DDR, Berlin 2002.

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were supported by a full-time daycare system. With regard to these matters, significant differences existed between various individual countries, but at the core lay clear and de facto—not only ideologically extant—features that marked a difference between Eastern European and Western European societies (Scandinavian societies are excluded here). The transformation processes have largely annulled these conditions—with all of the social, familial, and mental consequences that this must have entailed. Meanwhile, a profound transformation admittedly occurred—or is occurring—in the West, but not any sort of annulment within an extremely short time. Other differences become evident when comparing the old and new EU member states, when looking at national product, per capita income, productivity, unemployment rates, etc. Less clear—and less convincing, one should add—are arguments that refer to political culture. References are sometimes made to the central roles played by ex-Communists or ex-Socialists, to rightwing radicals and openly anti-Semitic tendencies, to the mostly high level of importance of a national consciousness that from Western perspectives seems anachronistic, to the instability of governing majorities, etc. Of course, upon closer consideration, here the differences compared to the “West” are already significantly smaller than those pertaining to economic parameters.44

VIII In Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia, we are dealing with quite stable civil societies whose strongest roots reach back at least to the 1970s or 1980s. The findings regarding the stability of civil society can be extended to the Baltic states, but the latter need to confront two problems that do not (or no longer) arise in the same manner in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovenia. I am referring here to powerful Russian minorities and unresolved attitudes toward collaboration and the persecution of the Jews during the Second World War. Every country in Europe also contains minority populations, but the presence of Russian minorities has come to take on far greater political importance (see the case of East Ukraine) than, say, the presence of German minorities in Poland and Hungary. An area exists where a new East-West division could take hold, namely, that of the culture of remembrance.45 The issue of how twentieth-century state and societal injustices are being dealt with requires special attention. The West and East feature dissimilar structures of mental experiential environments. In Western Europe, the historical-political and sometimes still prosecutorial confrontation with perpetrators—relevant for a great many states—relates to National Socialism, fascism, and collaboration; as a result of state crimes, it relates to restitution—that is, especially in the case of Germany and Austria, it relates to compensating forced laborers and 44 Ther, Die neue Ordnung, 2014, deals with these economic aspects (keyword “neoliberalism”). 45 A good synthesis of this extraordinarily rich field of research is: Claudia Fröhlich, Harald Schmid and Birgit Schwelling (eds.), 25 Jahre europäische Wende, Stuttgart 2014, 15–41.

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returning illegally expropriated property (“Aryanized property”) to Jews. In part, it also involves reappraising appraisals, which, incidentally, manifests itself in very different memorial landscapes against the background of the national states. Alltoo-simple clichés, which here only recognized victims and there only perpetrators, have been replaced by more differentiated views, despite occasional efforts to revive them. Other factors include, above all, the nationally relevant situations of the appraisals, which would sometimes suitably benefit from a transnational dimension: Franco, the Falange, and the 1938 civil war in Spain; the Vichy regime and the Algerian war in France; the Salazar regime in Portugal and the end of Portuguese imperialism; and, somewhat more generally, the end of the colonial age for Atlantic Europe. Playing into this was the general European discussion—peaking around 1992 (500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage to America)—about European culpability in the course of European expansion and about postcolonial failures. Notwithstanding immense difficulties, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary have started to critically discuss issues of collaboration and the persecution of the Jews during the Second World War, as well as injustice and violence after 1945, and to make a series of political gestures. These countries and their populations have consequently entered into the European network engaged in processing Europe’s historical memory.46 This cannot be said thus far for the Baltic countries. The fact that many people compromised themselves by working as spies or assistants for security agencies is admittedly not universally but frequently suppressed. In Eastern Central Europe, Southeastern Europe, and Eastern Europe, the critical discussion of state injustice, illegal state violence, and state criminality is simultaneously relevant for all of the states. In the successor states of former Yugoslavia, people need to come to terms with the war crimes of 1990s, but only certain parts of the political spectrum find this acceptable, while nationalists such as those in Serbia and Croatia refuse. Historical-political appraisals contribute in part to the formation of historical memories, and the latter are long-lived. If historical appraisals do not occur jointly among Europe’s nations, this will lead to formation of new memorial landscapes that are not interlinked. As a countermove, new mediating groups are evidently forming. From the 1970s to 1989 and beyond, the generation of civil rights activists had constituted a bridge, but now they are increasingly receding into the background. But new mediating groups are forming within the context of the EU, its institutions, and structureforming measures such as the Socrates, da Vinci, and Minerva programs, etc. Reference should also be made to women’s networks, scholarly networks, and networks within Europe’s large political party formations. These mediating groups will ultimately also manage to interlink the cultures of memory.

46 More literature has already been quoted in Ch. 2.

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IX How do things now stand regarding Eastern Europe? As the year of the October Revolution, 1917 symbolized the start of the West’s derecognition of Russia’s Europeanness, a derecognition that later, during the phase of the formation of the Eastern Bloc and Stalinization of Eastern European countries, also came to be applied to Eastern Europe. But the older historical-cultural differentiations that found expression, for example, in the various terms for Central Europe or in the Pan-Slavism debate should not be held responsible for this; the Eastern Europe of the Cold War by no means follows from the logic of historical developments that can be traced back to the nineteenth or eighteenth centuries or even the Middle Ages. It was essentially an artificial political product. Many speeches delivered on 1 May 2004— the year of EU expansion—described 2004 as the year of the “return to Europe.” Viewed symbolically, this is even true. The year 2004 marked the irreversibility of the involvement of many—in a geographical sense—Eastern European countries in that European communications infrastructure required by mediating groups in order to successfully perform their mediating function. “Eastern Europe” as a historically coherent entity is ultimately a historical episode that—should one desire to assign dates—lasted from 1917 to 2004. The transfer of the Iron Curtain metaphor to the EU’s border enclaves in coastal North Africa in 2005 sealed the end of this episode. Yet how does one categorize Russia and other countries, like the Ukraine, White Russia, Moldova, etc., that, unlike the Balkan states, currently have no prospects for joining the EU? For countries like the Ukraine, the EU has brought to the discussion the status category called “privileged partnership”; in meantime, matters have advanced and association agreements are under realization—and encountering fierce resistance from Russia. From a cultural studies perspective, both the Ukraine and Russia constitute transition or middle zones that, viewed from one direction, lead to Europe, and, from the other direction, lead out of Europe, as do a series of other countries (White Russia and Georgia, to mention just two). An impartial consideration reveals that the performative act of the eighteenth century, which includes the creation of Europe as a singular culture, continues to be effective and, despite many controversies regarding points of view, remains in place. The following case study about homo europaeus will show that the heterosexual hegemonic-masculine performative act, which is part of the performative act of Eurocentrism, can be documented for both Eastern and Western Europe.

CASE STUDY II: THE GENDER OF EUROCENTRISM: HOMO EUROPAEUS I The “European human being” or, more precisely, “European man” was an object not merely of rhetoric but also of pictures. We have seen how Tiepolo situated a pair of Europeans in three respective pictures of America, Africa, and Asia. The

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European in the sense of the homo europaeus was represented above all in public space, constituting a visual aspect of hegemonic masculinity as the latter began taking shape in the later eighteenth century. At the same time, such representations tied into traditional visualizations of masculinity that reached back to antiquity and the emergence of the patriarchal heterosexual performative act. I have dealt with the development of hegemonic masculinity in the Enlightenment in my book Geschichte der Männlichkeit in Europa (History of Masculinity in Europe): The Enlightenment epoch witnessed the development of a comprehensive concept of masculinity. It involved a concept of ideal masculinity based on the principle of gender identity.47 Ever since the Enlightenment, everything assumed to be essential was expressed by the biological categorization as man or woman. All other categories of differentiation took a backseat. Anthropologically, the Enlightenment epoch therefore signified a fundamental change in the conception of man and woman. ... The idea of the hegemonic concept of masculinity48 is meaningful only since the Enlightenment. ... The preconditions for the hegemonic model only become fully developed during the course of the eighteenth century. The basic precondition is systemic thought and wide ranging cross-border communications, including their media, such as the printing press and the innumerable societies that ensured a relatively broad distribution of Enlightenment contents. Additional factors are the institutions of the school and education system, and finally the barracked military based on general conscription and the systemically efficacious notion of the state as a nation state. The latter is conceptualized as an organism in precisely the same way as the human body in anthropology, medicine, and pedagogics. To be sure, the effectiveness of all of this should not be overestimated, but in the nineteenth century the instruments and media are continually expanded to the point of achieving an actual effect on the masses. The Enlightenment’s essentially hegemonic concept of masculinity is closely linked to the rise of the model of civil society. ... The existence of a hegemonic concept of masculinity does not mean that—in practice or even just as an aspirational ideal—it applied for all men. But it structured the manner in which practical masculinity was negotiated in society, because it—and this is basically what I mean by “hegemonic”—is persuasively disseminated by the ruling strata or class through the socially decisive communication channels. Other masculinities are not by any means socially impossible, but they are exposed to the threat of stigmatization or need to be deployed in conscious opposition against the dominant concept of masculinity. ... Hegemonic masculinity manifests itself in the “mode of evidence”; it becomes somatized,49 which amounts to a dichotomously gendered visual and communicative separation of public and private space. Through predominant masculinity, everything—absolutely everything: ideational, material, physiological, moral, habitual—becomes marked in dichotomously gendered and asymmetrical terms.50

The following will look into the “evidence,” in the sense of the public visualization of homo europaeus, the man.

47 On this see also Andrea Maihofer, Geschlecht als Existenzweise. Macht, Moral, Recht und Geschlechterdifferenz, Frankfurt on the Main 1997. 48 Raewyn Connell, Masculinities, Berkeley 1995. 49 Pierre Bourdieu, Die männliche Herrschaft, in: Irene Dölling and Beate Krais (eds.), Ein alltägliches Spiel. Geschlechterkonstruktion in der sozialen Praxis, Frankfurt on the Main 1997. 50 Schmale, Geschichte der Männlichkeit, 2003, 152–154.

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Laid out in Naples in 1778, today’s so-called Parco Municipale51 extends from the Piazza Vittoria to the Piazza della Repubblica and is separated from the Gulf of Naples only by the Via Francesco Caracciolo. After the erection of its first structures around 1697 (none of which remain today), the Bourbon Ferdinand IV arranged for the installation of a garden, which naturally could not yet be accessed by the general public, that is, the ordinary individual. During a festive celebration in 1782, the garden was opened to the public. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the park enjoyed an excellent reputation among poets, novelists like Alexandre Dumas, and artists like Paul Klee. Two fountains display rape scenes (the rape of Europe; the rape of Sabine women). Standing in the park are numerous reproductions of ancient Roman and Renaissance statues, while other monuments also honor “great men” such as Giambattista Vico and other important men of the city of Naples. The entrance to the Piazza Vittoria is decorated by a phalanx of male statues, which naturally also includes Hercules and Apollo. All of this masculine sculptural ornamentation comes from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. It should be noted: first, that the logic underlying this representation of men and masculinity remained uninterrupted for more than 200 years; and, second, that over the course of history this representation assembled a very broad palette of masculine characteristics. The position of the rape of Europe within this ensemble seems especially profound when one considers the myth’s core narrative as revealed in the first chapter, although this undoubtedly would have escaped the awareness of its late-eighteenth-century patron. The rape of Europe, with the example of Zeus, illustrates the uninhibited male sexual drive; the rape of the Sabines does so as well, albeit against a somewhat different background, for the event did not so much pertain to sex for the sake of sex but rather to the reproduction of the womenless “Romans.” Figures of Hercules illustrate heroism, while the Vico memorial expands the palette to include philosophy and, broadly speaking, science: during the age of hegemonic masculinity, only men—not women—were declared capable of practicing science. Founded in 1872 by Anton Dohrn and located in the park, the Stazione Zoologica updated this assumption for the late nineteenth century. The large memorial for Giovanni Nicotera (1828–1894) honors one of Garibaldi’s supporters and comrades-in-arms (he fought in the battles in Naples in 1848), hence freedom-loving patriots fighting for freedom. In 1892, Benedetto Croce compared this park to the Tuileries in Paris.52 In Padua one encounters the Prato della Valle, a plaza created at almost the same time on the site of the former Roman amphitheater. Starting in 1775, the town

51 Stella Casiello, “Le Real Passaggio” de Chiaia. De la “Villa Reale” à la “Villa Comunale” de Naples; promenades et jardins publics dans l’Italie du Sud de la fin du XVIIIe au début du XIXe siècle, in: Daniel Rabreau (ed.), La nature citadine au siècle des Lumières, Bordeaux 2005, 101–111; Andrea Maglio, La Villa Comunale di Napoli e gli “uomini illustri”, in: Mario Giufffrè and Fabio Mangone (eds.), L’Architettura della Memoria in Italia 1750–1939, Milan 2007, 317–323; Electa Napoli, Parchi e giardini di Napoli, Naples 1999. 52 Cf. Parchi e giardini di Napoli, 159, 149–160 for the history of the park.

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governor Andrea Memmo began having the plaza remodeled, above all by the architect Domenico Cerato. It was furnished with 78 statues that together represented the city’s historically important male personages. The reasons behind the selection of these personages were wholly pragmatic, the plan being to represent the families financing the plaza’s redesign. But why not also erect a statue of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, who upon earning her doctorate at the University of Padua in 1679 became one of the first women to receive a Ph.D.? This would not have conformed to the concept of history that increasingly prevailed toward the end of the eighteenth century, namely, history as the “history of great men.” This concept applied for local history as well and reinforced the thought model of hegemonic masculinity.53 There is a general acceptance of the virtual omnipresence of the visualization of masculinity—a presence far greater than that of femininity—in Europe’s public space, as exemplified by Naples and Padua, for it seems that its foundations derived from Greek and Roman antiquity. Indeed, in both major cities and small towns, public space has been under masculine hegemonic occupation, which ever since the eighteenth century typically followed the simple maxim that history is properly the “history of great men.” Even the notion of what constitutes a “great man” would become greatly simplified when compared to the eighteenth century and early modern period: he was a war hero and ruler. This notion has persisted until the very recent past, when one looks at the monuments honoring Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill erected just a few years ago in Paris at the Grand Palais (de Gaulle) and the Petit Palais (Churchill). The meaning of the “great man” as a war hero and ruler applies quite concretely to de Gaulle, insofar as he was a general—hence, a military man—and supporter of a constitution that declaredly established the state president as a ruler. By comparison, Churchill is viewed less as a ruler, but still as a war hero whose political genius and almost superhuman tenacity contributed decisively to the victory over Hitler. Historically, the omnipresence of publicly represented masculinity has been a European phenomenon. Admittedly, the phenomenon can also be observed outside of Europe as part of growing globalization since the eighteenth century, but it is not as extensive even today. In contrast, the public representation of femininity in European public space was and remains still today less of a priority. Public urban spaces as places of visualization that at the same time always involve the artistic staging of masculinity can rarely be surveyed with a single gaze; they need to be traversed. They are almost impossible to capture with a single photograph, for they are too spread out. In cities such as Florence, Vienna, Belgrade, and Paris, entire urban cores and central ruling districts are encoded in masculine terms. This occurs not only by means of male sculptures, reliefs, and monuments but also, as in Vienna and Paris, through architectural gestures of power. But figurative sculpture also plays a central role.

53 See Schmale, Geschichte der Männlichkeit, 176.

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Before the debates about “grands hommes” began in the eighteenth century and the visualization of masculinity started dominating public space (illustrated extremely symbolically by the hilltop Pantheon in Paris, which during the French Revolution was dedicated to the grands hommes of France)54, the foundations for the modern visual masculinization of public space were laid in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Florence. At times, depending on the epoch, the nude male body played an important role in this process. This development climaxed around 1900, as Europe’s inner cities overflowed with pompous and palatial public and private buildings that stood in relation to the countless statues honoring (national) historical heroes.

II The Piazza della Signoria in Florence is one of Europe’s most powerful tourist magnets. 55 No other public square in Europe displays as much masculine nudity as the Piazza, which constructs a masculine symbolic space via nakedness. And this has been the case for centuries. The first Renaissance example of the visual reiteration of antiquity’s masculine heterosexual performative act was elaborated not only in the Piazza but throughout all of Florence. A long series of European cities—not all of which deployed male nude sculptures to the same extent as in Florence or Trieste, towns that we will examine below—has extended the Florentine example into the present time. Masculine symbolic space is generated when a sequence of squares and streets, façades, and fountains―in this case those of a city―is more or less densely decorated with a configuration of statues, busts, or monuments depicting men. All of these artifacts say something about men and, in many cases, about masculine ideals; in particular, they anchor masculinity as a determinative trait in and for public space. No one can pass through these spaces without being confronted with statements about masculinity. The Piazza della Signoria in Florence represents an original ensemble that renders “legible” a historic highpoint among definitions of masculine identity, that is, the phase of this identity’s conceptualization in terms of a “New Adam,” which formed the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century version of masculine “hegemony.”56 Encountered in public space for the first time here in Renais-

54 Jean-Claude Bonnet, Naissance du Panthéon. Essai sur le culte des grands hommes, Paris 1998. 55 This sub-chapter is based on parts of my article: Nakedness and Masculine Identity. Negotiations in public space, in: Tobias G. Natter and Elisabeth Leopold (eds.), Nude Men. From 1800 to the Present Day, Munich 2012, 27–35; I have reworked and shortened the original text, it has undergone a complete linguistic revision by the translator Bernard Heise. 56 With regard to the history of the sculptures, the following discussion is based on Martha Alice Agnew Fader, Sculpture in the Piazza della Signoria as Emblem of the Fiorentine Republic, Diss. Univ. of Michigan 1977; with regard to the Fountain of Neptune, on Loretta Cammarella

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sance Europe, Florence formed an authoritative, fundamental statement about masculine identity and its presentability, one that especially exploited the resources of the nude male figure. Thus there are good reasons to closely study the case of Florence before looking elsewhere in Europe. In terms of urban topography, the Piazza represents the center point of an extended spatial representation of hegemonic masculinity, one that emerged over the course of three centuries and reaches from the cathedral across the Piazza to the Palazzo Pitti. Until the early sixteenth century, the cathedral and the Piazza stood in close relation to each other, after which an elongated space laid out in the course of this century came to encompass the Piazza, the Uffizi, and the Palazzo Pitti. At first, the site for the depiction (albeit clothed) of celebrated men was the cathedral, while Michelangelo’s David initiated (1504) a phase involving the display of nude sculptures on the Piazza della Signoria.57 But even prior to that point, masculinity had been a theme on the Piazza and within the Palazzo Vecchio. If we stand before the main entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio and begin by looking left (north), the series of masculine thematizations starts with the equestrian statue of Cosimo I (Giambologna, 1594), and continues with the Fountain of Neptune (Ammannati and others, 1565–1575), Donatello’s Marzocco (1420) and his Judith and Holofernes (ca. 1459),58 Michelangelo’s David (1504), and Hercules and Cacus (Bandinelli, 1534). Making a half-turn toward the right, we see the Loggia dei Lanzi, where Cellini’s Perseus (1553)―which has always stood in the Loggia―catches our eye, followed by Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women (1582). The other sculptures in the Loggia were installed at different times (during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries); Giovanni da Bologna’s Hercules and the Centaur dates from 1594, but it was not installed in the Loggia until the nineteenth century. The equestrian statue, the Fountain of Neptune, David, Hercules, Perseus, and the Rape of the Sabine Women still occupy their original positions. Except for Cosimo, all of these male figures are nudes dating from the sixteenth century. Visitors who enter from the Piazza from the Via dei Calzaiuoli and let their gaze wander across the square in the direction of an imaginary “¬” along whose two perpendicular straight lines the sculptures are arranged, gain roughly the same impression as that of a late-sixteenth-century visitor (especially since the much more recent buildings are located behind them).

Falsitta and Alessandro Falsitta, Cellini, Bandinelli, Ammannati. La fontana del Nettuno in piazza della Signoria a Firenze, Milan 2009; and with regard to the history of masculinity on Schmale, Männlichkeit, Vienna 2003; The architectural history of the Loggia dei Lanzi was reconstructed by Carl Frey on the basis of replicas of the relevant sources, but is touched on here only briefly, cf. Carl Frey, Die Loggia dei Lanzi zu Florenz. Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung. 2 Vols., Berlin 1885. For the figures decorating the Uffizi, see Magnolia Scudieri and Aurelio Amendola (eds.), Gli uomini illustri del loggiato degli Uffizi. Storia e restauro, Florence 2001. 57 The statue displayed today is a 19th-century copy in stone and not in marble. 58 This sculpture stood on the spot later occupied by David although it has changed location a number of times, it has generally remained in the Piazza.

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Forming part of this symbolic masculine space, the Loggia dei Lanzi displays the Seven Virtues, produced between 1383 and 1395. The Piazza della Signoria leads toward the two wings of the Uffizi, which are connected by a gallery on the side toward the Arno River. The statues of famous men set up in the niches of the Uffizi date from the nineteenth century, but they (though not their details) can be traced back to Vasari’s sixteenth-century plans. Topographically, the nudes on the Piazza della Signoria occupy the center of the masculine symbolic space that extends from the cathedral to the Arno River and the Palazzo Pitti; hence, they are embedded within a multitude of elements expressing a standardized and idealized masculinity. Finally, the numerous lions and lion’s heads decorating the Piazza are also significant. (Donatello’s Marzocco at the Palazzo Vecchio―only a copy is displayed there today; more heads at the Loggia, erected at the location of the former lion kennel). The town has been identified with lions since the Middle Ages. Consistent with this symbolism is the fact that the biblical David is closely associated with the lions of Judah, while the mythical Hercules wore a lion’s pelt with head. One hardly needs to emphasize that the nudity of David, Hercules, Perseus, and the Fountain of Neptune conforms to the rules governing the application of idealized nudity in art, especially in sculpture. Here, they also serve to emphasize specific aspects of masculine identity. A long-standing controversy exists concerning the significance of how masculine genitals were displayed in sixteenth-century art. With regard to the Fountain of Neptune, David, and Hercules on the Piazza della Signoria, it is clear that, compared to the antique sculptures used as models by the former’s respective artists, the genitals are elaborated with greater precision in relation to the bodies as a whole, which also means they are larger. This is true in particular for Giambologna’s Hercules and the Centaur of 1594. Although not displayed on the Piazza back then, this figure nonetheless respects the applicable boundaries for conveying the ideal of virtuous sexuality, a purpose for which Hercules in particular was often chosen. With the relatively small genitals of his Perseus, Cellini remained in the classical tradition. In accordance with tradition, the genitals of the fauns and satyrs on the Fountain of Neptune are elongated, but not erect as is frequently the case in frescoes; they stand for sexual lust. In the sixteenth century, masculine figures―whether theological (saints, for instance), biblical (David, for instance), or historical (rulers, for instance) in origin―were indeed men, that is, masculine sexual beings. This was even true for Christ; one could easily cite a substantial series of sixteenth-century examples, including Michelangelo’s nude Christ and Cellini’s originally wholly nude sculpture of the Savior. In 1495, Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes occupied the place that would later be taken over by David in 1504, after which the group formed part of the fountain in the inner garden of the Palazzo Medici. In 1506, it was transferred to the Loggia, yielding its place once more in 1582 to the Rape of the Sabine Women, although remaining within the Loggia. Its public installation in 1495 was explicitly linked to the expulsion of the Medici, which was also true for Michelangelo’s David. These biblical themes, both of which, moreover, represented individuals regarded as historically real, symbolized topoi of successful resistance against highly threatening

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tyrannical forces (Holofernes; Goliath; historically, the Medici). The moment when Michelangelo’s David was installed coincided with a number of threatening situations faced by the town, as in 1501, for example, when Cesare Borgia reached Florentine territory. At the time, David may have stood for a Florence that sought to defend itself against menacing tyrannies. Judith and David can be related to the virtues displayed in the Loggia: Temperantia, Justitia, Fides, and Spes are also characterized by Judith, who numbered among the small group of frequently depicted “strong women” of the Bible. Fortitudo, Prudentia, Fides, and Caritas are characterized by David, while Caritas can be related to both figures, since both performed their acts out of love for their people and patria. While working on the David, Michelangelo was at the same time also occupied with designing frescoes for the Sala del Consiglio Maggiore in the Palazzo Vecchio: the famous cartoon for the Battle of Cascina, which survives only in copies, dates from 1503–1504. In the same contractual context, Leonardo da Vinci worked on a cartoon for the Battle of Anghiari. Also belonging to this series of depictions of naked men from various perspectives and in all possible positions are works such as Antonio Pollaiuolo’s Battle of the Naked Men (ca. 1465). Thematically (as a topos), David is bound up with the Republic of Florence; Donatello’s celebrated sculpture of the youthful, naked David had been set up in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio already in 1416. The installation in 1534 of the group of Hercules and Cacus as a second sentinel figure at the entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio was due to Alessandro I de Medici. The commission for the Fountain of Neptune was awarded by Cosimo once Florentine territory reached all the way to the sea and the city enjoyed the prospect of becoming a naval power. The Medici therefore gave preference to mythological figures (cf. also Cellini’s Perseus), while the Republic adhered to biblical models. Whether satisfying the wishes of the Republic or those of the Medici, these masculine (with the exception of Judith) figures stood for a strong, assertive, wellfortified Florence; to some extent (David, Hercules, Perseus), they represented the positive virtues that formed the foundation for town’s status. The Fountain of Neptune related more to the future and Florentine aspirations to become a naval power and the hope that Neptune would be well disposed to such ambitions; among the nude sculptures, it most closely represents ideal nudity. David and Hercules, on the other hand, were concrete models for men in the early modern period. Starting in the fifteenth century, ideals of manhood, masculinity, and male identity were redefined in a process that combined the standardization of moral standards in the sense of the “New Adam” and the investigation of the male body in the particular. Medical anatomy pursued investigations of the body; its practitioners included not only anatomists but also artists—the latter, too, dissected corpses in order to familiarize themselves with the male body from the inside out, so to speak. They used this new knowledge in conjunction with copying antique sculptures and drawing live models, most often combining at least two of these three options, which ones and to which degree always dependent on the specific case. The nudes on the Piazza della Signoria exemplify this process well. What is often referred to as ideal nudity represents this highly empirical process of research into masculine

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corporeality, which provided the basis for deductions regarding the “natural” characteristics of actual men. Thus, contrary to common assumptions, ideal nudity was by no means far removed from the depiction from everyday reality; instead, it represented what were considered the male body’s essential characteristics, which could hardly have been portrayed without a process involving investigation, research, and the standardization of an idealized form of masculine corporeality and identity. Thus “ideal” (masculine) nudity was not always the same in all times and places; rather, it was dependent upon contexts, which to some extent involved choices between generalized and widely disseminated concepts of masculinity and notions of masculine identity. Finally, these ideals did not refer solely to non-real figures. Adam, Noah, David, and Christ were regarded as real historical personalities; who doubtless stood out from the mass of ordinary men but were nonetheless understood as men. Of course, they belonged to the past; things became more difficult when dealing with nude depictions of historically important contemporaries. In the course of subsequent centuries, this was true of Canova’s nude Napoleon I, whose subject emphatically objected to being portrayed by a nude sculpture, and it is still the case today. Sixteenth-century depictions of nude men also always involved questions about manhood and masculinity—and about male genitalia, which during the sixteenth century (following from Aristotle) were thought to lead to the soul of man.59 During this epoch, genitalia were regarded as part of the definition of humanity within the concept of unisexuality.60 Anatomically speaking, according to this conception, only one sexual organ existed, present outwardly in men and—in inverted form— internally, in women. Depictions in sixteenth-century anatomy books emphasized this view. The definition of masculinity encompassed the virtues of the “New Adam”— drawn from a symbiosis of the Old and New Testaments, classical mythology, historical and heroic figures, as well as individual characteristics—that was deliberately sexualized (even in the case of Christ) through the representation of a perfected and powerfully expressive masculine body that had been examined both inside and out. With the continuing formation of the nation state, the hero became a patriot, and in the course of the French Revolution, a luminary through which the Enlightenment was consummated via the revolution. The model identity of the “New Adam,” which had once been based upon the figure of Christ (himself a “New Adam”), now lived on in the heroic patriot who died pro patria. The young man (if not the boy or adolescent) was subjected to an idealization of his identity that could be fully conveyed only by means of the nude male body.

59 Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex. Body and gender from the Greeks to Freud, Cambridge 1990. 60 Paula Findlen, Humanismus, Politik und Pornographie im Italien der Renaissance, in: Lynn Hunt (ed.), Die Erfindung der Pornographie. Obszönität und die Ursprünge der Moderne, Frankfurt on the Main 1994, 44–114.

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As framed by the anthropology of sex in the eighteenth century,61 the concept of hegemonic masculinity constructed state and society on the basis of masculine identity―and both stood or fell together with this concept! The high point of this symbolization of masculinity (the standing or falling of state and society) is embodied by a war memorial created by Attilio Selva and erected under Mussolini in Trieste on the Colle di San Giusto. Born in Trieste and thus ostensibly “Austrian” but actually an irredentist according to his own self-understanding, Attilio Selva was regarded as one of the most important Italian sculptors of the first half of the twentieth century. He worked for Mussolini (in particular in Rome) during the phase when he created the war memorial (1934). The memorial (Trieste ai caduti nella guerra di liberazione MCMXV–MCMXVIII) was dedicated on 30 August 1935 by King Vittorio Emanuele III. It displays four young nude soldiers carrying a fifth fallen comrade in the style of the deposition of Christ. Selva perpetuates the eighteenth century’s sculptural style of dead nudes and radiant youths, whose youthfulness and beauty do not belie their hegemonic status and the identity residing therein. Selva’s athletic soldiers brooked no doubt as to their hegemonic masculinity. The memorial is erected on the Colle di San Giusto, above the town, where the fundamental idea of hegemonic masculinity reaches its full effect, directly alongside the remains of the Roman basilica (and Rome is an appropriate reference for fascism) and in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral, the house of God, which contains a fifteenth-century Lamentation of Christ that might well prompt a highly contrastive comparison. Down the hill toward the northwest, set beneath trees, is the so-called Parco della Rimembranza, commemorating those dead and lost in war. Above is the Castello, serving within the symbolic space of the Colle as an allusion to strength, fortitude, and defensive preparedness. In contrast to the Piazza della Signoria, the re-centering of this heterogeneous symbolic space—a historic site since antiquity—around masculinity and consequently its redefinition by the war memorial with its group of young naked soldiers did not occur until 1935. This comparison between two symbolic spaces dating from the sixteenth and twentieth centuries demonstrates the difference between the nude man as the “New Adam,” on the one hand, and hegemonic masculinity, on the other. Whereas the former’s identity was composed of a multiplicity of traits that cannot be conveyed via a single figure or group, but only through the distribution of numerous artifacts throughout an urban space traversing the center of the town, the latter could be effectively displayed by re-centering and reinterpreting a historic space by means of the installation of a single group. The phallic character of the memorial on the Colle—towering more than ten meters high—is unmistakable. Until the early nineteenth century, Italy provided the greatest number and probably most extensive examples of the masculine encoding of public urban space, as we have seen at the beginning of this chapter with regard to the eighteenth-century examples of Naples and Padua.

61 Schmale, Geschichte der Männlichkeit, 149–194.

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Benedetto Croce’s comparison of the park in Naples with the Tuileries in Paris suggests a look at Paris. So, let us travel to Paris!62 The entire core of Paris constitutes a single expansive space of the public art of masculinity, which since the Middle Ages has appropriately accrued within the city at the various centers of political power. This masculine space extends in a broad swath on both banks of the Seine from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe. The Panthéon, the Hôtel des Invalides, and the École Militaire form a parallel axis from which many lateral axes reach into the city toward Boulevard Périphérique. On the river’s left bank, the area from the École Militaire to the Champ de Mars and Eiffel Tower—the latter an unabashedly phallic monument of hegemonic masculinity from the late nineteenth century’s imperialist phase—is complemented by the Palais Chaillot/Trocadéro ensemble on the river’s right bank. Let us situate ourselves behind the Palais Chaillot—as viewed from the Seine— at the Place du Trocadéro, referred to as such since 1827 and recalling France’s military intervention in Spain in 1823 on behalf of the Bourbon monarchy against the liberals, an action mandated by the Holy Alliance. In the center of the square stands the memorial dedicated to General Foch. Before him, like outstretched arms, extend the two wings of the Palais with the terrace in the middle. The architecture of the Palais very much reflects the spirit of 1930s. The many nudes—full sculptures on the cornices, wall reliefs, larger-than-life bronze and stone statures aligned toward the Seine and the opposite bank—bring the grounds to life. In the distance, one can make out the very high dome of the Panthéon—the great men of history, who lie there in sarcophagi and are (supposed to be) revered, extend their greetings to General Foch. In front of the Panthéon, the golden Dôme des Invalides rises to an equal height, piercing the sky. In 1861, this fantastically successful seventeenth-century building would become Napoleon I’s eternal tomb. Looking straight ahead, Foch’s gaze encounters the École Militaire, behind which—invisible from the Trocadéro—rises the Monument de la Défense Nationale. Paris unifies the facts of death, life, and suffering more densely and compactly than any other place. The École Militaire teaches how to kill; intensely soaked with blood, the Champs de Mars also functioned as an arena for military spectacles. Below the terrace of the Palais de Chaillot, water cannons stand like an anti-aircraft battery. The relief statues La Jeunesse (youth, 1937) by Pierre-Marie Poisson and Joie de Vivre (zest for life, 1937) by Léon-Ernest Drivier stand like guardians of the water. They demonstrate life. Additional monuments stand at the foot of the Palais on the north bank of the Seine toward the east (Alma), like the one at Place de Varsovie commemorating Polish soldiers who fought for “France and its liberation 1939–1945.” This is followed by many more monuments along the way to Place de la Concorde, mostly praising soldierly virtues and rulers: a monument for Lafayette,

62 For this sub-chapter see the chapter on Paris in my book „Mein Europa. Reisetagebücher eines Historikers“, Vienna 2013, 185–192.

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France’s war hero in the American War of Independence, founder of the revolutionary National Guard, and political wild card in post-Napoleonic France after 1814/15. At the Pont Alexandre III stands Simón Bolívar, followed by many others until one reaches the Belgian King Albert I. The Pont Alexandre III links across the Seine to another axis leading to the Invalides complex, which was built as housing for invalid and frail soldiers. All around are rows of cannons—which like the Eiffel Tower possess a phallic significance—as well as further monuments to ostensibly great men. A final addition to the ensemble is the former workshop of the sculptor Rodin (today the Musée Rodin)—although he sculpted more than only naked men for display in public space, to this day he nonetheless remains one of the most influential and prominent artists of this field. In fall 2012, the Musée Rodin exhibited a selection of works by the Croation-Serb sculptor Ivan Meštrović, a close associate of Rodin whom we will encounter again in Belgrade in connection with masculinity. The gestus of the ruler dominates the axis from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe; until now, this gestus has been accepted and systematically reinforced by every king, emperor, and president from Louis XIV (new construction of the Cour Carrée as a prime example of architectural harmony) to Louis XV (design of what today is called Place de la Concorde), Napoleon I (not one but two triumphal arcs on this axis), Napoleon III (Louvre), the Third Republic (completion of the Louvre as an harmonically integrated ensemble), and Mitterrand (the “Grand Louvre” project). It is not without reason that every president since the end of Second World War up to and including Jacques Chirac has presented himself as a “président monarque.” Package tourists cannot escape the gestus of ruler—of dominance and power—even if they try: they are overwhelmed whether they want to be or not. And they and their predecessors of the early modern period and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were always supposed to be overwhelmed. Separating rulership from the dominating urban-architectural gesticulations of conceptions of masculinity would be absurd. The visualization in a city of one or another generalized notion of masculinity over the course of centuries amounts to far more than simply aesthetic iconographical repetition. The emblematic dissemination of gender concepts in public space formed part of the social practice of gender. The symbols and symbolic constructions reinforced the effects of hegemonic masculinity (depending on the epoch, other concepts of masculinity and femininity as well), “forcing” those who navigated the city into this gender corset—all the more so when the quantitative precedence of visualized masculinity so extremely marginalized the visualization of concepts of femininity, as in Paris even during the first decade of the twenty-first century. In Paris, hegemonic masculinity “became the city,” persisting as such even now. Paris is the European memorial site of hegemonic masculinity.

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Let us make use of the pronounced collaboration between Rodin and Meštrović in order to acquaint ourselves with an Eastern Central European example: Belgrade.63 Architectonically, Belgrade’s urban core has been shaped by building developments that began in the late nineteenth century, with each decade that followed contributing its own respective stylistic characteristics. A number of earlier buildings enrich the cityscape but without shaping it. An axis traverses from the small park with the Vukov Spomenik urban rail station on Bulevar kralja Aleksandra, through Kneza Mihaila street, and all the way to Kalemegdan park, terminating at the sculptor Ivan Meštrović’s victory monument of 1928. On the other side of the Sava, the visual axis extends to the West City Gate skyscraper. Designed in 1977 by the architect Mihajlo Mitrović, the twin towers can be understood as a nationalmasculine monument. The extension of this axis is also meaningful historically, for the Victor of Kalemegdan gazed over what had once been Austria-Hungary (the Sava had formed the border) but by 1928 obviously no longer existed. In any event, he looked out over an area that, after Austria conquered Belgrade in 1717, had been rebuilt according to Vaubanian fortification principles. Today’s configuration remains essentially the same. The entire axis is defined by buildings, sculptures, façade decorations, and monuments from the period when the capital of Belgrade was inhabited by a Serbian dominated monarchy. But the encyclopedia of nation and masculinity continued to be written during the eras of the Yugoslavian People’s Republic (founded in 1945) and its successors (rump Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro, and, finally, Serbia without Montenegro). Together with the bordering streets and squares, the axis constitutes an area of national meaning from the period when nation and masculinity were conceptualized and practiced as being mutually dependent. The monuments to the “great men” of politics, science, art, and education erected in this space are almost impossible to count. Hotspots in this regard are the park at Kalemegdan with its many monuments to “great men”; Republic Square with the statue of Prince Mihailo Obrenović mounted on a horse (1882); and Pionirski Park, which links the two royal palaces and the National Assembly. Many façades in this area are designed with Herculean and martial figures. The most martial figure—Ivan Meštrović’s aforementioned Victor of Kalemegdan (1928; erected 1929)—stands naked atop the Doric victory column above the Sava and Danube.64 The figure emphasizes martial elements: the back-view, which is oriented toward Belgrade, transports the stability associated with the Doric style from the column into the soldier’s body, while the stark martial visage looks menacingly toward the enemy in the West. Doric columns prominently installed in façades elsewhere in Belgrade link the values of staunchness, steadfast-

63 For this sub-chapter see the chapter on Serbia in my book „Mein Europa. Reisetagebücher eines Historikers“, Vienna 2013, 126–130. 64 See Željko Grum, Ivan Meštrović. Photographie Tošo Dabac, Zagreb 1962; Ivan Meštrović, Skulpturen. Ausstellungskatalog, Berlin 1987.

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ness, and nativeness with numerous masculine monuments. Other façade decorations—for example, in Knez Mihailova street—display men and women whose attributes visualize stereotypical gender roles and concepts. Because the length of the axis straight through the city—longer than 4.2 kilometers from the fork of Kraljice Marije and Krala Aleksandra streets to the victory column—the vast degree to which masculinity occupies this public space is not readily apparent. The differentiation of masculinity among many different fields from politics to poetry conceals the pervasiveness of this occupation, but it is also in keeping with masculinity’s multi-functionality in the nation state between 1880 and 1950. What I have outlined here using the examples of Florence, Naples, Trieste, Paris, and Belgrade applies to the same extent for other metropolises like Vienna and, at a reduced scale, for many smaller cities and towns. Without question, metropolises and former ruling capitals like Florence and Naples were especially suited for saturating public space with the concept of hegemonic masculinity, but the same message was also realized on smaller scales. By comparison, cities encoded to a similar degree in feminine terms did not and do not exist in Europe. Public space in Europe—those places where the European speaker collective mainly operated—was masculine. It formed the stage of the homo europaeus.

III The expression “European man” appears as a concept in the source material starting in the eighteenth century. As outlined in chapter 3, Carl von Linné divided the “human” mammal into multiple groups in Systema Naturae, an epoch defining work first published in Latin in 1735. What stands out here is how his quadripartite division followed the traditional subdivision of the world into four continents and continental cultures: homo europaeus, homo asiaticus, homo americanus, and homo afer (= africanus). Thus homo europaeus—European man! We cannot determine with absolute certainty whether Linné was in fact the first to use such a designation—that is, whether he invented the term. But prior to this point, it was by no means common, for people had difficulty coming up with a general name for Europeans. However, the Latin term very likely comes from Linné. With regard to its content, he tied into a long tradition that associated the inhabitants of a continent or even just a country with certain qualities, some of them moral and others related the natural climate. It is astounding that this term was coined so late. Klaus Oschema has managed to gather some isolated evidence of similar designations from the Middle Ages, but they bear little resemblance to the kind of systematic categorization articulated by Linné. Until the early eighteenth century, there were few reasons to use a term like “Europeans,” and when there were, the discussion pertained to Europe’s inhabitants (incolentes). An early coinage from the eighth century (europenses), referring to the warriors who fought under Charles Martell against Muslim soldiers, failed to survive. From the late fifteenth century we have a reference to the

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“Europiani” (1477),65 but this had no further terminological consequences. Such terminological developments would not occur until the eighteenth century, when the concept of “the European/Europeans” managed to gain traction alongside “Christians” and national designations such as Spaniards, Frenchmen, etc. The term “European” shows up frequently in works that pertain to the Christian mission in the world or “state matters” outside of Europe. Sometimes it merely appears in the sense of here Indians, there Europeans; but sometimes it is situated within a field of meanings that allows us to obtain insights into the term’s cultural loading. Issue 121 of Der Patriot (the journal of Hamburg’s Patriotische Gesellschaft), dated 25 April 1726, printed a letter by the “Dutch merchant” Jan Houdewel from Isfahan—evidently taken from Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes (Amsterdam, 1721)—that situated the term “European” in a confrontation about Persian culture and European fashion (meaning variability, which is reflected in fashion). The European’s “honor” is affected.66 To cite another basically arbitrary and somewhat later example: in 1759, Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi published a satirical commentary on the derailments in the Seven Years War that, regardless of being satire, reproduced all of the stereotypes concerning Europeans and other non-European peoples.67 These are two of hundreds of possible examples. The concept became culturally charged; it was the European who embodied the most advanced culture of the world and carried it with him throughout the globe. Linked to this were additional characteristics: the European was Christian and white. There was a desire to distinguish his body anatomically from those of other humans from other continents. Racial features were developed, which later provided the basis for racism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In eighteenth century texts I have thus far only been able to identify the masculine form of the term and, respectively, the plural, which basically also includes women, as one can assume at least when it is used by female authors. In the nineteenth century, authors extensively adopted the term in its Latin form or in their particular languages (for example, also in Slavic languages, in Romanian), often with reference to Linné: it appears in anthropological, geographical, political-scientific, sociological (France, Italy), and other contexts. Sometimes, ethnographic subgroups of the homo europaeus were formed, which at times also included the appearance of a homo europaeus septentrionalis, characterized as blond and in certain cases “Aryan.”68 65 Oschema, Europa im Mittelalter, 425. 66 . 67 Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi, Untersuchung, ob etwan die heutigen europäischen Völker Lust haben möchten, dereinst Menschen=Fresser, oder wenigstens Hottentotten zu werden […], Philadelphia in Pennsilvanien 1759. . 68 See as an example „Mitteilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien“, Vol. 30 (1900), p. 36.

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“The European” attests to a historical performative act whose efficacy can be traced into the present and that, especially with regard to the development of a European identity after 1945, was encountered everywhere in the sources.

IV Let us not deceive ourselves regarding the sematic context of the designation “European man”: it was the basic colonial context. This context was sublimated in certain respects by the systemic history of culture and progress, which admittedly did not disturb European superiority but, by basing the model of cultural progress on a different traditional model, namely, that of life phases, left the path of progress open for others, for non-Europeans. The Europeans would be prepared to help in the process, especially during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Africa, when not resorting immediately to massacres then preferably with rhino-hide whips. In the nineteenth century, black Africa and black Africans became the actual Other and Foreign in relation to Europe from the European perspective, which appears to have been indispensable for defining European identity. Hannah Arendt dealt very closely with this very specific relationship between Europe and Africa in The Origins of Totalitarianism (manuscript 1949; completed 1951, first published in English), thereby assigning to this relationship a dramatic place in history. In his Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines (Essay on the Inequality of Human Races) (1853–1855), Arthur Comte de Gobineau (1816–1882) inquired into the physical and emotional strengths of the peoples of the earth by way of a feigned cultural comparison.69 At certain isolated points, he also perceived characteristics in non-Europeans that were better than those of Europeans as a whole, but he somehow always found a European nation that was superior even with regard to these characteristics. Thus, he could scarcely avoid attributing to blacks―he spoke of “brutal Negro hordes”―a higher level of physical strength, but he added by way of qualification that these people only had “the daring heroism of the English rabble.” Without heeding any differences between European nations, Gobineau opined that the “white race originally possessed the monopoly of beauty, intelligence and strength.” He saw the admixture with other races in the course of history as degenerative, but even at this point he drew another argument in favor of European world superiority: “That is precisely what history teaches us. It shows us that every civilization originates from the white race; that no civilization can exist without the assistance of this race, and that any society is only great and brilliant to the proportion that it has for a long time preserved the aristocratic group to which it owes its existence ….” In the end, the prospect of racial admixture led Gobineau to a somber outlook tinged with overtones of decline: 69 This part of the case study has been first published under the title: The Making of Homo Europaeus, in: Comparare. Comparative European History Review 1/2001, 165–183; it has undergone a complete linguistic revision by the translator Bernard Heise.

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In a certain sense, Gobineau was still indebted to the eighteenth century, insofar as he classified all Europeans as the same race and placed the different European peoples principally into a single racial category. He looked at their virtues and defects, which, taken as a whole, compensated each other in a certain way. His spiritual successor, Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), no longer maintained this unified view of Europe, instead formulating hierarchies within the European peoples even as he excluded entire groups from the European race. Toward the end of his life, Gobineau was in close contact with Richard Wagner, a relationship that broadly expanded the reception of his racial writings. The “credit” for having his work translated into German goes to the Bayreuth Circle. His translator, Ludwig Schemann, founded a Gobineau Society, which forged links with the established political milieu as represented by the Pan-German League. Gobineau’s writings about the Renaissance, based on his theory of races, were disseminated among German frontline soldiers during the First World War. Gobineau was noticeably better received in German-speaking countries than in France itself, where he only held sway during the 1930s.71 The Englishman Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902) cultivated an English racial consciousness within the framework of imperialism, thoroughly setting a standard. Rhodes had made his fortune in diamonds, becoming the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in 1890. His doctrine declared that, among all the powers that had contributed to the progress of the human race, none seemed either as strong or as reasonable as the nations of English-speaking peoples. The nations of the Englishspeaking race—(Great Britain, its empire, and the United States) believed in God, England, and Humanity. The English-speaking race was one of God’s “chosen instruments” through which God intended to implement the future progress of Mankind’s destiny. If those who acknowledged this truth could fervently agree to help the English-speaking race fulfill its divine mission and to oppose everything that might hinder or curtail this work, such a union could become the crystallization point for everything considered vitally important by the English world. An English-

70 Josef Arthur de Gobineau, Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines, 4 Vols., Paris 1853–55, quoted according to Hagen Schulze and Ina Ulrike Paul (eds.), Europäische Geschichte – Quellen und Materialien, Munich 1994, 77 et ss. 71 George L. Mosse, Die Geschichte des Rassismus in Europa, Frankfurt on the Main 1993, 80 et ss.

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man’s highest duty was to single out all those things that kept the holy fire of patriotic devotion to their country burning in people’s hearts and to promote them as an upright service to the common good.72 These kinds of declarations shaped the age of imperialism as a whole; in the final analysis, they were by no means peculiar to the English. To a certain extent, they were characteristically European, albeit expressing a national imperial missionary fervor that therefore undermined Europe as a collective. Now, to Chamberlain and his work The Foundations of the 19th Century. In her book Germans and Jews, Wanda Kampmann wrote about Chamberlain: The Foundations of the 19th Century, which appeared in 1899, is an important chapter in the history of German education in its unprecedented success, and it enjoyed a kind of continuation in Alfred Rosenberg’s The Myth of the 20th Century. The Englishman Chamberlain, who made Germany his chosen homeland after a life of wandering on the continent, and who later thrived under the influence of Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, aimed at no less than the moral renewal of Europe as the purpose of his literary activity. However, his doctrines paved the way for intellectual devastation and barbarity. Gobineau’s aristocratic pessimism precluded an immediate political application of his racial doctrine; Chamberlain, on the other hand, believed that the future belonged to the German race if it was freed from “anti-Germanic” elements.73

Unlike Gobineau, Chamberlain excluded the continent’s Romance peoples from his portrayal of Europe and the European, whom he gave the essentially deceptive name of “homo europaeus,” invoking Carl von Linné. Already in the introduction―in a strange reversal of the actual course of history―he states that the northern Europeans have been the mainstays of world history, hardly anyone will dare to deny. It is true that they were at no time alone, either before or now; on the contrary, from the onset, they developed their characteristic methods of warfare as against foreign methods, and subsequently, against the chaos of peoples from the decaying Roman Empire; then, progressively, against all the races of the world. There were thus also other influences at play―including great influences―albeit always as the northmen’s adversaries.74

Since Chamberlain intended to prove the superiority of not the European but rather the Germanic race, he employed an elaborate historical theory that enabled him to restrict homo europaeus to the Germanic peoples: However, the greatest of all mistakes is the supposition that our civilization and culture is the expression of a general progress of mankind; no single fact of history can be produced in support of this popular interpretation…. In the meantime, this hollow phrase blinds us and we do not see … that our civilization and culture, as every other earlier and contemporary civilization

72 Cecil Rhodes, paraphrased from his essay, “To all English-speaking Folk”, in: Review of Reviews, 1890/1, according to Schulze and Paul, Europäische Geschichte, 1994, 1066 et ss. Extracts see here: . 73 Wanda Kampmann, Deutsche und Juden. Die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland vom Mittelalter bis zum Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges, Heidelberg/Frankfurt on the Main 1963/1989, 308 et ss. 74 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts, 2 Vols., Munich 1899/1907, 7.

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Chamberlain did not lack a definition of “Germanic”: I understand “Germanic” in this book to refer to the different northern European peoples who appear in history as Celts, Germans and Slavs, and from whom the peoples of modern Europe have originated, mostly in admixtures impossible to unravel. That they originally came from a single family is certain … nonetheless, the Germanic peoples have proven themselves so intellectually, morally and physically outstanding in the strict sense of Tacitus’ words that we are justified in using their name to represent the entire family. The Germanic peoples are the soul of our culture. Today’s Europe, spread far and wide over the terrestrial globe, represents the colorful result of an infinitely multifarious admixture. What binds us all to each other, and to an organic unity, is Germanic blood. … [T]rue history … began at the moment when the Germanic peoples seized the heritage of the Ancients.”76

The next step, one not yet taken by Chamberlain himself (equating Germanic with German and then Aryan) would be not be taken until later, namely, by the National Socialists, who drew their ideological concept of a German Europe from this doctrine, along with their racial anti-Semitism and plans to annihilate the European Jews.

V Once the designation “European man” became common in various European languages, opportunities to deploy the term also emerged outside obviously colonial and racial contexts. Friedrich Nietzsche returned repeatedly to this designation; in Ecce homo he basically sees himself as a model European and also writes about the “European man.”77 After the First World War, a vigorous philosophical debate developed concerning being human and the definition of the human being, one in which—unsurprisingly—the designation “European man” had its place (Thomas Mann, Paul Valéry, Max Scheler, etc.). This debate generated many fundamental ideas that were taken up with a vengeance after 1945. We need to situate the term “European man” within this post-WWII debate about being human. In part—and especially in German discourse—it served to generate distance from National Socialism’s concept of humanity. The term also played an important role in the colonialism/decolonialism debate. Interwoven with UNO and UNESCO initiatives and documents, the debate on the issue of colonialism was very controversial. Some viewed the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as an important advance, especially with regard to the declaration’s fundamental definition of the human being. However, Jean-Paul Sartre in his introduction to the 75 Chamberlain, op. cit., 9. 76 Chamberlain, op. cit., 304 et ss. 77 I am grateful to the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, that supported my research on the histoy of homo europaeus with a grant from the program Directeur d’Études Associé in November 2010.

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1966 edition of Albert Memmi’s Portrait du colonisé (written in 1956) concluded from the analysis of factual circumstances that autochtone peoples were being treated as “subhumans” and that, in practice, the declaration of universal human rights did not apply to them.78 His critical attitude vis-à-vis Europe—which today we might find easier to share but at the time was considered by many as “dirtying one’s own nest”—elicited a harsh counterattack against Sartre by Denis de Rougemont, who at the time featured as a main speaker at every European convention and viewed himself as leader of European opinion. The designation “European man” appeared in various different languages and was deployed by many European intellectuals: Luis Diez del Corral, Salvador de Madariaga (Spain), Jean-Paul Sartre, André Malraux, Frantz Fanon (France), Albert Memmi (Tunesia), Denis de Rougemont (Switzerland), Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Carlo Schmid (Germany), Hannah Arendt (Germany – U.S.A.), Paolo Vittorelli (Italy), etc. There was reason enough to be concerned with European man or Europeans, for groups in every European country had actively engaged in the fundamental degradation of people and the killing of certain social groups. European unification and integration were envisaged not only at the level of political and economic institutions (the level at which these were first realized) but also at the fundamental level of defining the human being and especially the European. Next to nothing was said about the female European; and we shall see that the almost exclusive use of the masculine had a gender-specific and socially specific meaning.

VI The most striking quote in connection with “European man” came from the mouth of the French ambassador to Germany, André François-Poncet, on 30 March 1952 in a speech he gave to open the fourth annual congress of the Union of European Federalists in Aachen.79 He spoke in favor of creating a new type of European, whom he referred to in Latin as “homo europeanus.” According to François-Poncet, this new type of European was not yet very widespread; the latter needed to act exclusively in the interests of Europe and turn his back on all national interests. François-Poncet spoke about the need to revolutionize customary practices and ideas, even invoking the idea of a crusade. He turned specifically to young people in the hope that they could realize this mental and practical revolution as a guiding principle in the interests of Europe. François-Poncet’s homo europeanus was directed by reason and technologically inclined. Therefore, a man …

78 Preface of Jean-Paul Sartre, in: Albert Memmi, Portrait du colonisé. Précédé du Portrait du colonisateur et d’une préface de Jean-Paul Sartre, Paris 1956/1966, 34. 79 This sub-chapter is based on my German article: Vom Homo Europaeus zum Homo Europeanus. Zur Debatte um „den europäischen Menschen“ in den 1940er und 1950er Jahren, in: Lorraine Bluche, Veronika Lipphardt and Kiran Klaus Patel (eds.), Der Europäer – Ein Konstrukt. Wissensbestände, Diskurse, Praktiken, Göttingen 2009, 118–134.

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Calling for and envisaging a “new man” in one form or another during times of deep and total crisis, in the wake of catastrophes, and for the purpose of revolutionizing state and society enjoys a long tradition in Europe. Despite massive abuse under Stalinism, National Socialism, and European fascisms, the call for a new European or new Europe in the aftermath of 1945 was evidently not discredited. The intellectuals of the postwar period simply viewed themselves as part of a different tradition, or they blocked out certain traditions that they did not consider their own. At the very least, they avoided evoking them explicitly. Most of them were less courageous than François-Poncet, calling not for the creation of a homo europeanus but instead availing themselves of mythological and sometime also real historical figures that they recognized as key European types. This approach situated the “debate about European man” within the larger question about European identity, one that was answered with much more determination and certainty during the first two postwar decades than it would be later on or today, insofar as the question was still even raised. The notion that there was a European Self that now, after the war, had to be recovered was better received by mainstream opinion than were critical approaches that put European culture and the European Self on trial.

VII As much as the process of European integration led to the creation of something new, even so, for more than two decades it was confronted by a certain conservatism that made itself felt in opinions regarding European identity and society in general.80 Four aspects should be mentioned here, aspects that historically referred to each other and still do—and not by chance. 1. Concerning the creation of a politically unified Europe, there was no lack of bold plans for overcoming the national principle. Ultimately, however, the nation states were restored first in order to subsequently create a Europe of closely cooperating nation states. Alan S. Milward has reconstructed this selected path—for which alternatives certainly existed—in his book The Rescue of the Nation State.81 2. Linked to the primacy of the nation state was the perpetuation of a very conservative societal model derived from the bourgeois-capitalist-colonial-nationalist societal model of the late nineteenth century—a model that was partially suspended twice in the course of both the First and Second World Wars due to the circumstances, but quickly restored after these wars ended. I am referring here to the societal model shaped by hegemonic masculinity, which ultimately promotes what Herbert Marcuse in 1964 called the “one-dimensional man.”82 80 This sub-chapter is based on Schmale, «Der europäische Mensch». Europa- und Kolonialdiskurse nach 1945, in: Georg Kreis (ed.), Europa und die Welt. Nachdenken über den Eurozentrismus. Basel 2012, 39–59. 81 Alan S. Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State, London 1994. 82 Herbert Marcuse, One-dimensional Man. Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society, Boston/Mass. 1964.

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3. Colonial thought was by no means obsolete or discredited after 1945—not only in those countries that still possessed colonies but also in principle. Here one needs to make a bit of a distinction between practical problems that resulted from the fact that France and Belgium still remained colonial powers at the time of the Rome agreements and that this had to be taken into account, on the one hand, and the general discourses above all with reference to the relationship between Europe and Africa, where European states continued to maintain colonies after the war longer than anywhere else, on the other hand. Regarding the first case, it may perhaps be correct—as is often stated—that countries without any colonies, such as Germany, showed little interest in the problem with regard to the configuration of EEC and in particular neither wanted to nor actually did cause any problems for France. However, the other aspect points more toward widespread basic culturalimperialistic or colonial attitudes, whose precursors—as previously outlined—trace back to the early modern period. The fundamental idea of European civilization’s superiority remained very strong, despite the destruction of war, millions of dead, and war crimes, as well as the degradation and debasement of human beings. To persistently adhere to colonial thought, one did not need to have colonies of one’s own. Discourses whose roots and elements lay in colonialism clearly remained part of the discourses of identity. Also, in this context, as a rule they no longer involved colonial discourses à la Cecil Rhodes; rather, they constituted somewhat prolonged and conceptually blunted—that is, deradicalized—thought patterns and discourses that at the time only the sharpest critics managed to escape, such as the aforementioned Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Memmi, Frantz Fanon, etc. After 1945, colonial discourses did not necessarily reveal themselves as such. They were exposed only through the analysis of certain thought patterns, such as those pertaining to Europe’s cultural or civilizing mission. 4. The postwar attempts to define the European—the “European man”— formed part of discourses of identity and self-assurance. To be sure, the “European man” was not national, but he was often identified as a patriot (within his own national context). In addition, he was conceptually male and therefore supported the hegemonic-masculine societal model. He incorporated the characteristics of the European as a colonial master.

VIII I do not want to delve especially deeply here into the debate about the Indo-Europeans (for a long time typically enough referred to in German as Indo-Germans), despite the fact that research into myths and mythologies has led to connections with the designation “European man.” This involves a mythological apparatus that was developed over the course of millennia and contains the roots of identity. One would naturally need to investigate the work of Georges Dumézil83 (1898–1986) 83 On Dumézil see Maurice Olender, Race sans histoire, Paris 2009, 2nd ed.

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and others. Horkheimer and Adorno also dealt extensively with myths and mythology during the years after World War I. One interesting case is the book Ewige Mutter Europa: Der Mythos vom Europäer by the author and philosopher Friedrich Alfred Schmid Noerr, published in 1949.84 Also serving for a short period as a philosophy professor at Heidelberg University (1910–1918), Schmid Noerr (1877–1969) drew upon racial doctrines, but he was not a racist. In Hitler’s Germany, he belonged politically to the circles of the conservative Christian resistance.85 Schmid Noerr’s books are still widespread even today and can be easily acquired at second-hand bookstores. He considered Cro-Magnon man to be the original European, but went on to deal not so much with the genetic or biological commonalities of Europeans that could be derived from shared origins but rather with myths that were consolidated early on. The range of his inquiries extended far beyond Odysseus, Prometheus, and other figures of ancient mythology. In a certain sense, he provided a psychohistory of Europeans that he believed could be filtered to produce certainties. Common to all anthropological, historical-anthropological, and cultural-anthropological approaches to the so-called European or European man is that they are essentialist approaches used to acquire certainty. In the “organizing preview” at the beginning of the book, in a section entitled “the reality of the European,” he writes: The European, too, insofar as he is more than a (moreover geographically extremely inadequately determined) collective term for a series of fundamentally different types of people, is an indissoluble reality that can be understood only through the most “primitive”86 consignment of its instinctual impulses, ideals, and objectives to the mythological mirror. Therefore, if at all, the European as such is understandable only from his mythos, even more precisely: from the analogical proximity of his mythological experiences, thus his religious experiences.87

The author poses hypotheses: This results in all kinds of important conclusions also for a possible mythos of the European. If it exists, then this very mythos of the European would itself be conclusive evidence that the reality of the European is still to come. Because: the European would then still be a mythical preliminary dream; thus a commanded statement,88 therefore, about future-determining fatefulness or about a divine resolution in the state of implementation; but by no means already conceptual content that merely describes being, that can be derived from the study of facts. Precisely this, however, would mean: the European does not yet exist. He has only been announced; he has only been prophesized and commanded.89

For Schmid Noerr, “the European” was not a term that referred back to a common ethnic or let alone racial origin; rather, it constituted the admixture of myths from 84 Friedrich Alfred Schmid-Noerr, Ewige Mutter Europa. Der Mythos vom Europäer, Oldenburg 1949. 85 See Michael C. Thomsett, The German Opposition to Hitler. The resistance, the underground, and assassination plots, 1938–1945, Jefferson North Carolina 1997, 128. 86 Schmid Noerr uses “primitive” in the meaning of “primary”. 87 Schmid Noerr, 26. 88 “Commanded statement”: literal translation of “myth,” according to Schmid Noerr. 89 Schmid Noerr, 28.

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various different levels of consciousness that developed over the course of history: “many sources, including age-old ones, distributed in a meshwork of fine and extremely fine channels that can hardly be surveyed, feed the flow of myths of the European family of peoples as well. If one now knows that the essentials of these sources are at home far beyond today’s so-called European region, not only in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean but also in the whole of western Asia, then the question arises forcefully once more: does the ‘European’ even exist?”90 Most of the book involves the investigation of the numerous myths of the Mediterranean cultures, Southern Europe, Central Europe, Northern and Scandinavian Europe, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, Russia, in the rest of “western Asia,” and in the “Near East.” Schmid Noerr links the blending and mixing of various different myths over the course of history to demographic migrations and the formation of various political and religious empires, calling these blends and mixtures the “European’s mythical inheritance.”91 He decodes the “European’s mythical inheritance” with the help of psychology, which for him basically constitutes nothing other than “a kind of general mythology of the soul.”92 This approach is just as essentialist as the historical derivations that viewed Europeans as the descendants of Japheth and therefore Noah; or, embellishing the myth of Europe and the steer, as the descendants of Europe (which occurred less frequently); or as members of a specific “race” that encompassed all Europeans (which became common starting in the eighteenth century). It is also just as essentialist as most of today’s conceptions regarding “European identity.”93 Not to be overlooked is the concept of the “European soul,” promoted especially strongly by Jacques Delors, the former president of the European Commission, which has since enjoyed a certain popularity.

IX I will elucidate the post-1945 discussion about “European man” using one more concrete example from the sources, namely, an essay by Carlo Schmid published in 1950 in the Die Neue Rundschau under the title “Über den europäischen Menschen.” He wrote: Which qualities distinguish the European human being? That is an endlessly complex question—moreover, a question to which one can give a disturbing and dangerous variety of answers! … [I]t could be that the answer we find in the process is nothing other than the play of

90 Schmid Noerr, 34. 91 Schmid Noerr, 369. 92 Schmid Noerr, 33. The author also refers twice in a general form to Sigmund Freud without directly citing a specific work. 93 See Schmale, Geschichte und Zukunft der Europäischen Identität, Stuttgart 2008.

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Schmid lists Prometheus as the first fundamental type of European: … Prometheus, who kneaded the earth’s clay to form from it the human being. This creature would have remained, like all others, exclusively subject to the law of the chain of cause and effect, had not the titan stolen fire from heaven in order to give his creation a soul. Thus for the first time, a being arose that is gifted with previously unheard-of freedom: the freedom of being able to choose!95

Schmid concludes: In fact, nothing other than this everlasting rebellion against the claim of nature and history to be able to quite simply determine the human being allowed the becoming of the continent of Europe from a peninsula of Asia; nothing other than this everlasting refusal to be satisfied within the order of Creation with the role of a being that only suffers.96

Referring to the figure of Odysseus in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Carlo Schmid discovers Odysseus as the second fundamental type of European: like Prometheus, this Odysseus of Dante wants to become—instead of a mere creation—a creator himself, and he wants to be this not through the transfer of an extrinsic power of creation but simply by asserting his human right. From this, the human being of Europe has erected his fortune; from this he has also created almost all of his suffering.97

Then Schmid identifies Europe’s cultural achievements: individualism, conscience, reason, philosophy and science, the capacity for self-liberation from coercive circumstances and the capacity for revolution. At first, Schmid does not directly use the word revolution, but explicitly refers to an image derived from the French revolution: “Here in every time of the world, the epoch’s respective third estate has erected the barricades of freedom, equality, and rights.” 98 He continues: But this freedom, this equality, and these rights have again and again invoked the creative power of the original time. What the peoples, what the classes searched for in the European revolutions was basically never utopia and never the abstraction; they have again and again … sought to rediscover the powers of the origins. 99

Reflecting on archetypes and origins, according to Carlo Schmid, enabled hopes based on these for the future of Europe, for Europe’s “fortune.” Odysseus and Prometheus; elsewhere more likely Faust; sometimes Christ; for Schmid Noerr, CroMagnon man, etc.: these were the more or less frequently cited model Europeans, which reveals something that can only be identity, the identity of the European, European identity (this even though the word “identity” was rarely used during these postwar years). For as nicely illustrated by the quotations from Carlo Schmid, 94 Quoted according to Denis de Rougemont, Europa. Vom Mythos zur Wirklichkeit, Munich 1962, 361–364; here 361. 95 Ibidem. 96 Schmid, in de Rougemont, Europa, 361. 97 Ibidem, 362. 98 Ibidem, 364. 99 Ibidem.

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the discussion of European man was linked to ideas about the heart of European culture. Terms like origin and creation are integral to identity discourses. Carlo Schmid serves as a representative example. Already the object of growing attention prior to the war, presumably Odysseus is the figure from antiquity used most often as a model European. Let us recall James Joyce’s Ulysses, for the novel doubtlessly ignited intense discussions about Odysseus as an archetypical European man. Whereas Horkheimer and Adorno dedicated a chapter in their Dialektik der Aufklärung (written during the war) to a very critical discussion of Odysseus (although evidently they too felt the need to expand on Odysseus), others such as Coudenhove-Kalergi could not resist the temptation to convey their platitudes in this regard to their postwar contemporaries. In terms of content, the figure of Odysseus conceals a considerable spectrum of possible propositions. But common to all of these writers is that they treat the figure as a European archetype that expresses the Self—or one of the Selves—of the European and of Europe. The non-discredited status of Greek antiquity—in contrast to Roman antiquity, which was misused under fascism and National Socialism—played an important role in the search for European archetypes. One could draw from this antiquity and likewise from Enlightenment—Carlo Schmid did both! Horkeimer and Adorno’s criticism of both Odysseus and the Enlightenment was an exception. Recourse to non-discredited cultural and intellectual epochs of Europe that were viewed as constitutive elements of European culture and thus European identity facilitated the defection from “new man” constructs advanced under Italian fascism, Vichy France, Nazi Germany, and other regional contexts, making it possible to think about the roots and creation of the European without giving oneself over to false friends. The firm belief in a European culture rooted above all in Greek antiquity provided the necessary historical-cultural continuity to proceed, firstly, from the assumption—unperturbed by war ruins and war dead—that a European identity even existed. Official documents began speaking about “cultural heritage” as early as the second half of the 1940s, by which they specifically meant freedom, human rights, democracy, and constitutional statehood. The “good” aspects of European history— those reflecting Europe’s identity—were set in opposition to the “age of extremes,” to adopt a later expression from Hobsbawm. The call for the ability and need to forget, as expressed by someone like Winston Churchill, supported this view. “European man” was the bearer of this culture; this culture is where he found his Self; it formed his identity to such a degree that recourse to archetypes from mythology, Christendom, and/or Occidental history seemed quite natural.

X At first glance, the strong recourse to myths and archetypical figures that stands out in the debates of the 1940s and 1950s seems somewhat strange. How seriously should we take expositions about the European who can supposedly be found in

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Odysseus, Prometheus, etc.? Upon the second glance, this approach becomes understandable. The authors were writing against the background of the Second World War and its criminal atrocities. War and crime were linked to totalitarian ideologies, which had included creating a “new man.”100 Whether it was the “new Soviet man,” or the fascist or National Socialist “new man,” or the “homme nouveau” of Maréchal Pétain in the “État français” of Vichy: the idea of the “new man” had been very closely associated with the violent and criminal reconfiguration of people’s political, social, economic, cultural, and religious living conditions. The “new man”— which admittedly encompassed both genders but obtained its matrix from the male—did not constitute a type of individual but rather a type of a member of a mass, a person that functioned in and as part of a mass. The propaganda portrayed this “new man” as the regeneration of a man who had become diseased, decadent, depraved, and even degenerate, visualizing him in the form of an ideal corporeality. Naturally, the “new man” in authoritarian or fascist regimes, too, reached back to historical models, but the latter served as idealized projections based on the pseudoreligiously sentimentalized warrior, (war) hero, farmer, and charismatic leader. Notwithstanding forced education and the acceptance of violence, the communist “new man” derived from the philosophical ideas of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and adhered to a certain form of humanism, recognizable in the figure of the “socialist hero.”101 In contrast, the “Aryan” of the National Socialists, disguised as a “new man,” lacked any humanistic or humane basis.102 The “new man” of the fascist regimes and their variants in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and finally Vichy France all evince their own independent components.103 In principle, the origins of the idea of the “new man” predate the twentieth century by far,104 playing a major role in Christian philosophy and speculation, whether for Augustine or Luther. It makes a forceful appearance in the French Revolution, where, however, the Terror already establishes its proximity to totalitarianism. It was the Terror of the Revolution that taught the twentieth century’s authoritarian and totalitarian regimes about creating the “new man” through forced collective education. In the twentieth century, the topic of the “new man” featured as an expression of fascism, National Socialism, or authoritarianism. As a result, it has been fully discredited for advocates promoting European unification based on democracy, constitutional statehood, and human rights. Nonetheless, the occurrence in the first half of the twentieth century of two world wars and the largest and most massive crimes in history still gives rise to 100 See Alexandra Gerstner et al (eds.), Der Neue Mensch. Utopien, Leitbilder und Reformkonzepte zwischen den Weltkriegen, Frankfurt on the Main 2006. 101 See Satjukow and Gries, Sozialistische Helden, 2002. 102 George L. Mosse, The Image of Man. The Creation of Modern Masculinity, New York 1996. 103 See Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci and Pierre Milza (eds.), L’homme nouveau dans l’Europe fasciste (1922–1945). Entre dictature et totalitarisme, Paris 2004. 104 See Sophie-Anne Leterrier, L’homme nouveau. De l’exégèse à la propaganda, in: Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci and Milza, Pierre (eds.), L’homme nouveau, Paris 2004, 23–33; Antoine de Baecque, Le corps de l’histoire. Métaphores et politique (1770–1800), Paris 1993; Mona Ozouf, L’Homme régénéré. Essais sur la Révolution française, Paris 1989.

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questions regarding “European man.” We need to bear in mind that it was only after the Eichmann trial (2 April to 11 December 1961) that people generally began to view the genocide perpetrated against the Jews as a crime that could not simply be assigned to the “war crimes” category, as had previously been the case. Moreover, the designation of this genocide as the Holocaust, used globally today, did not prevail until the 1970s. Prior to that point, the genocidal crime against the Jews lacked a name of its own—name that referred exclusively to this event—Holocaust, capitalized.105 This means that in the 1940s and 1950s, even the genocide against the Jews was understood as part of modernity, insofar as the modernity expressed itself as totalitarianism.106 Therefore as a crime, this genocide implicated not only the directly responsible and executing parties but also modern man as such. Hence questions arose not only about the “German man” and the factors that allowed this crime to occur, but also about the “European man.” People drew their answers to questions about what made these crimes possible from system analyses—from the analyses of political systems or, in the case of Europe, the analysis of their absence; but these answers were also drawn by confronting man as such. The topic of the “new man” was so severely and extensively misused that now, after the war’s end, the quest for a “new European” could not offer any promise of success. The “European man” of Ambassador André François-Poncet, quoted above, did not fall into the “new man” category. Since, for the same reasons, ethnographic approaches also could not clear any viable paths, what remained was the recourse to culture, history, mythology, and “archetypes,” the interpretations of which were deemed to be scientifically founded. To be sure, various different methods of approach opened up. Some writers such as Diez del Corral primarily used myths metaphorically—in the case of Diez del Corral, specifically the Europe myth. Others, basing their approach on the psychological analyses of myths and the “archetypes” found therein, used myths as “secure” starting points for making statements about the “European’s” essential characteristics. Other approaches also engaged in social criticism, but they were not directly related to the Europe debate. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno included a section entitled “Odysseus or myth and Enlightenment” into their Dialektik der Aufklärung, written in 1944.107 The authors attributed the wars and war crimes of the twentieth century to the dialectic of the Enlightenment, which at certain points corresponded with Arendt’s thesis concerning modernity and totalitarianism. In their introduction they wrote: We have no doubt—and herein lies our petitio principii—that freedom in society is inseparable from enlightenment thinking. We believe we have perceived with equal clarity, however, that the very concept of that thinking, no less than the concrete historical forms, the institutions of society with which it is intertwined, already contains the germ of the regression which is taking

105 See Levy and Sznaider, Erinnerung im globalen Zeitalter, 2001. 106 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York 1951. 107 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung, Los Angeles/New York 1944/1978, „Exkurs I“, 42–73.

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Not least, Horkheimer and Adorno engaged in a criticism of bourgeois society and capitalism, and their excursion concerning Odysseus also stands in this context. Retelling and interpreting the Odyssey, they wrote: The behavior of the adventurer Odysseus recalls that of the parties to the occasional exchange. … The adventurous element in his undertaking is, in economic terms, nothing other than the irrational aspect his reason takes on in face of the prevailing traditional economic forms. This irrationality of reason has been precipitated in cunning, as the adaptation of bourgeois reason to any unreason which confronts it as a stronger power. The lone voyager armed with cunning is already homo oeconomicus, whom all reasonable people will one day resemble: for this reason the Odyssey is already a Robinsonade. Both these prototypical shipwrecked sailors make their weakness—that of the individual who breaks away from the collective—their social strength. Abandoned to the vagaries of the waves, helplessly cut off, they are forced by their isolation into a ruthless pursuit of their atomistic interest. They embody the principle of the capitalist economy even before they make use of any worker; but the salvaged goods they bring with them to the new venture idealize the truth that the entrepreneur has always entered the competition armed with more than the industry of his hands. Their powerlessness in face of nature already functions as an ideology for their social predominance. Odysseus’s defenselessness against the foaming sea sounds like a legitimation of the enrichment of the voyager at the expense of indigenous inhabitants. Bourgeois economics later enshrined this principle in the concept of risk: the possibility of foundering is seen as a moral justification for profit. From the standpoint of the developed exchange society and its individuals, the adventures of Odysseus are no more than a depiction of the risks which line the path to success. Odysseus lives according to the ancient principle which originally constituted bourgeois society.109

We encounter Prometheus and Odysseus again and again in those years of the debate about “European man.” Count Richard N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, who after the war returned to Europe from his exile in the United States and took up the goals of his Paneuropean movement from the interwar period, wrote a text in 1954 entitled “Odysseus der Europäer.” Here, the contrast to Horkheimer and Adorno could not be greater: Odysseus is, in the truest sense of the word, the prototype of the European. … Odysseus is a European because his passion is restrained by moderation. … Placed into a modern suit, Odysseus is immediately transformed into a genuine European of the twentieth century. We can well imagine him with the compact form, with the high forehead of Winston Churchill. … In this as well, he [Odysseus] is a prototype of the European who achieved world domination because he had learned to overcome the sea. And whose unique achievement lies in the triumph of technology over the forces of nature. Odysseus is also a genuine European because he combines 108 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialektik, 1978, 3. English version: . 109 Ibidem, 57. English version see footnote 108.

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the features the Greek with French, British, German, Italian and other national characteristics. Were he to be reborn today, he could be a son of each of these nations … Thus he becomes at the same time the precursor of future vanguard types ….110

In contrast, the philosopher Louis Rougier, often cited by de Rougemont, stood more by Prometheus: As Toynbee claims, a founding myth stands at the start of every culture. For the culture that concerns us, this myth is not difficult to discover: it is the myth of Prometheus …. The myth of Prometheus is the pre-configuration of the occidental spirit,… the spirit of the desire for knowledge and passion for adventure that drives Ulysses to unknown horizons … It is the sanctification of work and endeavor that drives Hercules to cleanse the earth of its tyrants …. It is the thirst for knowledge that drives Pliny the Elder to the active Vesuvius …. It is the weighing and scrutinizing spirit … that Lucretius celebrates with his song of praise to Epicurus….111

The difference between Carlo Schmid and Louis Rougier is evidently quite minimal. Emphatically Christian writers, like Salvador de Madariaga, added Christ to the list of prototypes and archetypes, or “primitive” characters: The predominance of intellect and will and the close relationship between these capabilities in the European psychology explain that the strongest European traditions are the Socratic and the Christian [traditions]. Socrates dominates Europe’s intellect, Christ its will. … [T]hese two traditions …, by closely linking thought and desire, have influenced each other in a natural manner in such a way that, in the course of centuries of European life, Socrates has become Christ and Christ Socratic.112

Edmund Husserl113 contributed Phoenix to the list; Luis Diez del Corral114 positioned Faust alongside Prometheus.

XI A definitive conclusion cannot be drawn at this point, especially since the debate still continues. While the concept of the “European man” or “European” does not

110 Richard N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, Odysseus der Europäer, 1954, quoted according to: Denis de Rougemont, Europa. Vom Mythos zur Wirklichkeit, Munich 1962, 333 et ss; On CoudenhoveKalergi see Anita Ziegerhofer-Prettenthaler, Botschafter Europas. Richard Nikolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi und die Paneuropa-Bewegung in den zwanziger und dreißiger Jahren, Vienna 2004; See also Vivian Obaton, La promotion de l’identité culturelle européenne depuis 1946, 1997. . The author identified Coudenhove-Kalergi’s pamphlet in the archives: Fondation Archives Européennes Génève, Fonds Coudenhove-Kalergi AP 2. 111 Louis Rougier, in: Rougemont, Europa, 333 (quoted by de Rougemont according to an article written by Rougier in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 1st October 1958). 112 Salvador de Madariaga, L’Esprit de l’Europe, Brussels 1952, quoted according to Rougemont, Europa, 346. 113 Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, ed. by Walter Biemel, The Hague 1954; See also Schulze, Phoenix Europa, 1998. 114 Luis Diez del Corral, Der Raub der Europa. Eine historische Deutung unserer Zeit, Munich 1959.

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stand at the forefront of the Europe discourses, it has remained present. The positions presented here appear not to have been forgotten, since comparisons with Odysseus, Prometheus, Faust, and other mythological figures regularly recur,115 but these positions have been joined above all by sociological analyses that investigate the changes and adjustments of values as a result of European integration. The French sociologist Henri Mendras has contributed two larger studies on this matter.116 Since the fall of the Wall and the opening of the borders between Eastern and Western Europe, one can also observe a growing number of studies about European identity117 as well as the historical anthropology of not only Europe but also “the Europeans.” At the same time, a growing literature is focusing on the European citizen, who is being constituted through a certain number of rights that can be exercised within the EU. A paradigmatic change is transpiring most clearly in this last mentioned context, for the position of the “European man” is being taken over by the male and female “European citizen.”118

CASE STUDY III.1: THE HOLY ALLIANCE AND THE RISE OF CHRISTIAN IMPERIALISM119 I Homo europaeus was understood as Christian and as white in racial/racist terms. The following investigates the aspect of Christian Europe as part of the performative act of Eurocentrism. The Christian aspect was closely related to the hierarchical 115 See Reiner Wiehl, La philosophie comme élément de la culture européenne, in: Jean-Pierre Angremy (ed.), Europe sans rivage. Symposium international sur l’identité culturelle européenne, Paris 1988, 43–48, 46 et s.: „…Faust étant par conséquent le symbole de l’homme européen, que les désirs, le besoin d’activité engagent sans cesse plus loin dans la vie, dans des cercles de vie de plus en plus grands, et qui croit seulement pendant les rares pauses de l’agitation créatrice être confronté à la puissance du destin.“ 116 Dominique Schnapper and Henri Mendras, Six manières d’être Européen, Paris 1990; Henri Mendras, L’Europe des Européens. Sociologie de l’Europe occidentale, Paris 1997. 117 Julian Nida-Rümelin and Werner Weidenfeld (eds.), Europäische Identität. Voraussetzungen und Strategien, Baden-Baden 2007; Schmale, Geschichte und Zukunft, 2008. 118 Among others, see: Étienne Balibar, Sind wir Bürger Europas? Politische Integration, soziale Ausgrenzung und die Zukunft des Nationalen, Hamburg 2003; Christoph Conrad and Jürgen Kocka (eds.), Staatsbürgerschaft in Europa. Historische Erfahrungen und aktuelle Debatten, Hamburg 2001; Elvire Fabry, Qui a peur de la citoyenneté européenne? La démocratie à l’heure de la Constitution, Paris 2005; Thomas König, Elmar Rieger and Herrman Schmitt (eds.), Europa der Bürger? Voraussetzungen, Alternativen, Konsequenzen, Frankfurt on the Main/New York 1998; Rémy Leveau, Khadija Mohsen-Finan and Catherine Wihtol de Wenden (eds.), New European Identity and Citizenship, Burlington 2002; Yasemin N. Soysal, Limits of Citizenship. Migrants and postnational membership in Europe, Chicago 1994. 119 The English translation of this case study represents an abbreviated and revised version of the longer German article: Wolfgang Schmale, Die Heilige Allianz und die Entstehung des christlichen Imperialismus, in: HMRG (Historische Mitteilungen der Ranke Gesellschaft) 26/2013/2014, 169–186.

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order of the word’s cultures and European imperialism. The Holy Alliance of 1815 functioned in this regard as a catalyst. The Holy Alliance has certainly been well researched with respect to diplomacy related to international and European politics. But its actual effective power lay in conjoining Christianity and politics. Given that this connection seems very familiar from European history, this does not sound like a new interpretation. However, this familiarity should not be allowed to conceal the fundamental shift in the meaning of this connection during the nineteenth century—a connection that can be encapsulated as the Holy Alliance and the rise of Christian Imperialism. Contrary to Alphonse Jacques Mahul’s criticism of the Holy Alliance in an 1822 polemic, the Alliance did not raise immobility to a universal principle but rather promoted something quite substantial that initially developed prior to the Holy Alliance.120 Multiple developmental strands overlapped: Christendom was already changing in the eighteenth century along lines that evolved further in the following century. Added to this was a broad European response to church and religious policy during the French Revolution. The vision of overcoming the church’s medieval schism as well as the fragmentation of the Reformation also played a role here. Even if all of these aspects could never be contemplated within an apolitical space, when questions regarding the Church and Christendom were linked with the search for a definitive European identity and unity, sometimes participants placed greater emphasis on religious or inter-denominational issues and sometimes they stressed political matters. After all, the conceptual horizon could tend to be more European or respectively more universal. At first glance, the Holy Alliance’s initiatives appear as a reaction to the Jacobite revolution’s politically motivated efforts at de-Christianization, especially since documents at the time addressed this oppositional stance. But upon second glance, the issue went deeper: Christian renewal and revival movements can be found everywhere in the second half of the eighteenth century. Multiple developmental strands met within the Holy Alliance, which linked a political supra-denominational Christianity with global political endeavors. Eighteenth-century shifts in the meaning of the concepts of culture and civilization created the concept of culture that still remains familiar today. An understanding of Europe as a singular culture—as a cultural system—first developed in the course of the eighteenth century. This systemic approach was applied not only to Europe but also globally and provided the precondition for the emergence of a systematic model of the history of civilization that appeared in a number of variants but at heart functioned as follows: the history of human civilization began in a certain sense with the discovery of fire and over the course of time led to that very advanced stage of human spiritual development as found in the Europe of the eighteenth century. Basically, the conviction prevailed that every civilization could advance through this progressive process. For a long time, people proceeded from a simple and traditional schema—four world regions and thus four civilizations. In 120 Alphonse Jacques Mahul, De la Sainte-Alliance et du prochain congrès, Paris 1822, particularly 6. .

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the eighteenth century, people could observe the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous. That is, all known stages of development in the course of human history could be observed at the same time: the lowest stage could be witnessed in America, the next stage of development in Africa, a higher level of development in Asia, and the highest level in Europe. Later, as America became more identified with whites than with indigenous “Indians,” it moved up in the hierarchy. The highest stage of development—namely the European—was closely associated with Christendom. The promotion of civilizational progress was thus linked to Christianity, which compared to the early-modern period somewhat shifted the meaning of what was understood as Europe’s responsibility for Christianizing the world. Missionary work no longer so much served to open the gates of salvation history to the heathens, as during the age of discovery; rather, it supported civilizing progress, insofar as the highest achievable level was that of Christian Europe—that is to say, Christian in nature. The actual implementation of this basic idea occurred with a vengeance in the nineteenth century as a “responsibility” of the imperial powers, whereas for the Enlightenment this concept of civilization fully saturated with Christianity had been rather foreign. In the French Revolution, this basic idea came into conflict with the idea of a strong secular mission—people’s sovereignty, constitutionalism, fundamental and human rights—that nonetheless employed Christian symbolism and iconography and the structure of fundamentalist argumentation. In the midterm, this fundamental conflict allowed for various solution strategies. Above all, it reveals something that is often overlooked: the French Jacobite republic’s policy of de-Christianization should be viewed not only in light of its opposition to the Catholic Church and the pope but also in light of its opposition to the Christian civilizing mission. This inevitably resulted in the further politicization of Christianity as a global agent. In the eighteenth century, various religious movements emerged—pietism, revivalism—that in one or another promoted the internalization of Christianity and thus worked toward the individual’s Christian self-identification. In principle, this should be viewed as analogous to Europe’s Christian self-identification as a culture or civilization, insofar as the European was by definition a Christian. Even eighteenth-century travelogues and fictional literature—which were by no means compelled to adopt a religious focus—described Europeans in precisely such terms in order to distinguish them from indigenous populations. We are dealing with processes of fundamental Christian self-identification that applied both to individuals as well as to the large cultural collective of Europe. The fundamentality of the processes had a supra-denominational character and therefore possessed a supra-denominational potential, which was called upon by Czar Alexander I.

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II Shortly before dying of malaria in 1890 while working in Uganda as a missionary for the British Church Missionary Society, the Scotsman Alexander Murdoch Mackay wrote: “To-day the determination of Europe is to steal Africa from the African. In the name of Christianity, free trade, and civilization, we see firewater and firearms pouring in at every port.”121 Christianity, free trade, and civilization constituted a figurative “Holy Alliance” that in conjunction with military colonial power expressed the core of what I mean by “Christian imperialism.” Supported by various churches and denominations, Christian missionary work often originated from individual and civil initiatives and thus cannot be described as imperialistic per se. But even though it was usually institutionally distinct from secular government, the Christian mission nonetheless remained intertwined with such government. Despite all of the divergent interests and even conflicts, the mutual relationships between religious and secular agencies expressed above all a far-reaching spiritual commonality. The situations varied among the individual world regions.122 During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, efforts to expand European Christianity and “civilize” humanity according to European conceptions merged most closely in Africa. For many reasons, such efforts proved more difficult in India and Asia. On the one hand, these regions had their own large-scale and to some extent also historically imperialist power structures. On the other hand, with dozens of millions of adherents, deeply rooted trans-regional religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam featured prominently within these respective societies. Meanwhile, Christianity already permeated the Americas and by the early nineteenth century, apart from a few exceptions (the Caribbean, for example), the countries on these continents had attained sovereignty and independence from Europe. When answering questions about the origins of Christian imperialism, reference is usually made to the development of the missionary movement in the nineteenth century, which distinguished itself markedly from the practices and objectives of early-modern missions. In connection with possible trajectories established during what Reinhart Koselleck termed the “Sattelzeit”—or in more neutral terms the transitional period around 1800 between the early-modern and modern eras—I find it illuminating to direct a “penetrating” gaze upon the Holy Alliance, which may have functioned as a catalyst for a form of Christian imperialism.

121 J.W.H. Mackay, A. M. Mackay. Pioneer Missionary of the Church Missionary Society in Uganda, London 1890, 450 – 451. Quoted from the digitalized edition: 450 to 451. 122 Jürgen Osterhammel, for example, provides a concise overview in chapters 17 and 18 of his book Die Verwandlung der Welt. Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Munich 2009; See also Boris Barth and Jürgen Osterhammel (eds.), Zivilisierungsmissionen. Imperiale Weltverbesserung seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, Constance 2005.

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III The Russian czar, Prussian king, and Austrian emperor personally formed the Holy Alliance on 26 September 1815 in Paris. The French King Louis XVIII joined in his own name on 19 November 1815, whereas England contented itself with a letter of personal approval from the prince regent; but in any event, the Holy Alliance’s three signatory powers formed the Quadruple Alliance with England on 20 November 1815. The rulers of Sweden, Norway, Spain, Piedmont, both Sicilies, the Netherlands, Denmark, Saxony, Bavaria, Württemberg, Portugal, and other German Confederation states followed. Switzerland joined in 1817. However, the Vatican refused to become involved and thereby further legitimate this inter-denominational Christian alliance, and the United States evaded all solicitations.123 The treaty’s brief text expressed a few very general principles permeated with Christian sentiments. The three undersigning rulers wanted to establish before the world as the foundations of their policies the three (supposed) main precepts of the “Holy Christian Religion”—namely, justice, Christian charity, and peace. The Holy Scriptures say that all people are brothers; therefore the three undersigned wanted to mutually assist each other in the spirit of brotherhood and safeguard religion, peace, and justice. They wanted to view themselves and their subjects as members of the same Christian nation under the sole sovereignty of God. They called upon all people to adopt a pious lifestyle and welcomed anyone who agreed with the principles of the Holy Alliance to become a member.124 Importantly, individual persons as well as the large collective—the “Christian nation” and its political leadership—were tied to the very same principles. The initiative to create the Alliance came entirely from Czar Alexander I, whose core objective was “Europe’s regeneration.” French revolutionaries had also used the term regeneration—as well as fraternity—to legitimate their actions. But now these terms had become universally applicable code words that were being turned against the Revolution and its consequences under Napoleon. Forming part of a series of multiple congresses from the previous decade, the 1814/15 Congress of Vienna did anything but create a European order.125 It provided no clear organizing principles. The Holy Alliance was supposed to close this

123 Maurice Bourquin, Histoire de la Sainte Alliance, Geneva 1954, 146. 124 The first critical edition by Werner Näf, Zur Geschichte der Heiligen Allianz, Bern 1928. 125 Heinz Duchhardt, Der Wiener Kongress. Die Neugestaltung Europas 1814/1815, Munich 2013. The Bicentenary of the Congress of Vienna has induced several scholars to reconsider the Congress. Reinhard Stauber, Der Wiener Kongress, Vienna 2014; Wolf D. Gruner, Der Wiener Kongress, Stuttgart 2014; Brian E. Vick, The Congress of Vienna. Power and politics after Napoleon, Cambridge Massachusetts 2014; Mark Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and its Legacy. War and great power after Napoleon, London 2013; David King, Vienna 1814. How the conquerors of Napoleon made love, war, and peace at the Congress of Vienna, New York 2008; Adam Zamoyski, Rites of Peace. The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna, London 2007. Most of these books also touch the Holy Alliance although they do not carry out research in depth. Some publications have become seminal; they are quoted in the subsequent footnotes. Two recent publications are to be mentioned here: Stella Ghervas, Réinventer la

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gap with simple principles that could hardly be rejected within a Christian continent. Ensuring permanent peace in Europe also undoubtedly required a special instrument. Thus a system of frequent congresses of the European powers intended to confer recognition and practical validity to the Alliance’s general principles was supposed to accomplish this task. Moreover, Europe constituted part of a global political constellation, which had to be kept in mind as well. As an expression of the Concert of Europe, the triumvirate of the Holy Alliance, the Quadruple Alliance, and ultimately the Quintuple Alliance cannot be sharply distinguished with regard to political dealings. The Holy Alliance ideologically concealed the path from initially open principles to the reactionary policies of Metternich, who successfully instrumentalized this political system. Thus assessed against Alexander I’s basic idea, the Holy Alliance failed. It was never officially dissolved; echoing Maurice Bourquin, we can say that its actual demise did not occur until 1914 with the First World War. As envisioned by Alexander, the Alliance was supposed to have organized international relationships, which made sense in light of Europe’s global interwovenness and involvement. But this did not work out due to the divergent interests of the powers.

IV At the very least, one must acknowledge that the Holy Alliance was perceived and discussed far beyond Europe as a potential actor. Czar Alexander saw to this himself. First, he would have liked to gain the United States as a member; second, he worried about Spain and South America. Without a doubt, Alexander possessed a liberal streak, but he naturally advocated the monarchical form of government. With regard to South America, the path toward independence dismayed him less than did the prospect that these new independent countries might not be monarchies. In this he was not alone, for at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle the French Prime Minister Richelieu warned against the “growing democracy of the other hemisphere.”126 Overall, these leaders were interested in maintaining “European monarchy” in the new world. Chateaubriand assumed that Latin America’s path toward independence was predetermined, but even he advocated setting up monarchies and not republics.127 Third, the Christian foundations of the Holy Alliance inherently involved an explicit jab against the Ottoman Empire, which would first become apparent in the Alliance’s support for Greek patriotism. In November 1819, Alexander I and Count Ioannis Kapodistrias entrusted Alexandru Sturdza with drawing up a memorandum that was supposed to discuss tradition. Alexandre Stourdza et l’Europe de la Sainte-Alliance, Paris 2008; Philipp Menger, Die Heilige Allianz. Religion und Politik bei Alexander I. (1801–1825), Stuttgart 2014. 126 Quoted in William Penn Cresson, The Holy Alliance. The European background of the Monroe Doctrine, New York 1922, 77. 127 Ibid., 60.

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possible guidelines for Russian policy in Europe, the Near East, Africa, and North and South America.128 As background here, we should recall that at the time Alaska was still Russian and the Russian-American Company still sought to expand into California and Hawaii; Florida would not be ceded to the United States until 1822; the Portuguese king resided in Brazil from 1807 to 1821; and Spain—still—possessed a South American colonial empire (which from 1816 to 1826 entirely dissolved into independent states). Ultimately, however, the Holy Alliance never intervened on behalf of the two Iberian colonial powers because this would have opposed England’s growing commercial interests in South and Central America. Another concrete point of discussion pertained to stemming piracy in the Mediterranean by means of a concerted operation against the beys of Tunis and Algiers. According to Alexander I, if the sultan failed to issue a guarantee for the future good conduct of the beys then their fleets were supposed to be destroyed.129 At the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, on behalf of England in connection with the Spanish colonies, Castlereagh raised the issue of the slave trade, which had to be stopped. The Russians suggested the creation of an “International Maritime Police”; to begin with, they suggested, a fleet could be dispatched to the African coast.130 All of these debates generated very few concrete actions, none of which were conducted jointly by the five powers. England, for example, impeded anything that could encroach upon its freedom on the seas—that is, its superiority—and commercial interests or integrate these interests into internationally binding political structures. But even though each power had its own interests, these debates nonetheless developed discursive elements that were used internationally and outlasted the actual Holy Alliance. Thus the impact of the debates should therefore be classified as discursive. The close connection with trade and the economy—about which contemporaries were well aware—in particular provided ample material for globally oriented considerations, as with a certain Coustelin who in 1826 published the tract Appel à la Sainte-Alliance sur la politique du cabinet anglais (Appeal to the Holy Alliance on the politics of the English cabinet).131 Did the Holy Alliance thus become a catalyst for a discourse on globalization? Despite all of Russia’s recruitment efforts, the United States did not join the alliance. To the contrary: it developed the so-called Monroe Doctrine (1823). But this did not prevent people in the United States from describing the Holy Alliance’s principles in positive terms and endorsing the “world” and “humanity” as the Alliance’s operational horizon. The 6 April edition of the Niles Register—a gazette published in Baltimore—revealed that the Massachusetts Peace Society had directed a letter to Czar Alexander reporting “that the Society was founded in the very week in which the Holy League of the three sovereigns was announced in Russia”

128 Alexander M. Martin, Defenders of the Old Regime. Russian conservatives in the age of Napoleon and the Holy Alliance, Ann Arbor, Michigan 1995, 473 et ss. 129 Cresson, op. cit., 58. 130 Ibid., 81. 131 Coustelin, Appel à la Sainte-Alliance sur la politique du cabinet anglais, 1826 .

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and that the society’s goal was “to disseminate the very principles avowed in the wonderful Alliance.”132 New York’s Evening Post likewise welcomed the Holy Alliance, noting that “if discussions run upon the means of consolidating the peace of the world … and removing the burden of taxes and unwieldy military establishments which press at this moment upon every country, the members of the Holy League will establish an imperishable claim on the gratitude of mankind.”133 In July 1820, John Quincy Adams explained the maxims of United States foreign policy in his instructions to Henry Middleton, the American ambassador in St. Petersburg. Regarding the Holy Alliance, he wrote that the United States would admittedly not join, but “as a general declaration of principles, the United States not only give their hearty assent to the articles of the Holy Alliance, but they will be among the most earnest and conscientious in observing them.”134 This at least struck the same chord as the czar. In a private letter from July 1818 to the Russian ambassador in Paris Pozzo di Borgo, Kapodistrias reported on his discussions with the czar regarding France’s future. Alexander had said: “I desire the prosperity of the French Monarchy and the progressive strengthening of its influence, not for myself, not for Russia, but in the interest of the entire universe.”135 Nothing less than the entire world—this horizon was ever present in the context of Holy Alliance.

V The czar’s court was perhaps more European than any other since Catherine the Great. The people who came or were brought to the court derived from all points of the compass. Whereas Catherine in a certain sense intensively continued the Europeanization initiated by Peter I, Alexander I was able to build upon these developments and become one of Europe’s driving political forces. Alexander surrounded himself with and listened to people from all parts of Europe. The Swiss republican Frédéric César de La Harpe served for many years as Alexander’s tutor.136 Alexander attached great importance to his personal presence at the peace congress; he was therefore mobile, much more so than other rulers of his time. He not only spoke French (naturally) but also had a fair command of English.137 He possessed a global political view. With respect to religion he was undogmatic: A. M. Martin refers to Alexander’s “religious internationalism.”138 Searching for Alexander’s religious intellectual roots, Martin came across a wide range of different sources: (1) Jesuits, who after all were not banned in that part of Poland under Russian rule but rather protected by Catherine and thus able to flourish. Until 1820 they were also able to 132 133 134 135 136 137 138

Quoted in Cresson, 48. Quoted in ibid., 48. Quoted in ibid., 95. Quoted in ibid., 70. A detailed account in Martin, op. cit., passim. Cresson, op. cit., 90. Martin, op. cit., 17.

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maintain educational establishments and centers of influence in Russia itself.139 (2) European Freemasonry. (3) Southwest German pietism (Franz von Baader, Heinrich Jung-Stilling, Baroness von Krüdener, and others). (4) Despite belonging to the Orthodox Church, an inimical attitude toward conservative orthodoxy that likewise pertained to Catholic arch-conservatism. (5) Notwithstanding an intellectual friendship with Joseph de Maistre, a persistent rejection of Maistre’s Catholic conservatism. The foreign policy leader Kapodistrias came from the Ionian Islands and advocated Greece’s independence from Ottoman rule. The siblings Roxandra and Alexandru Sturdza, who were important attachment figures for the czar, came from a family that was polyglot by necessity. Roxandra was born in Constantinople in 1786; her brother in Jassy in 1791. Their mother Sultana Moruzi was the daughter of a Moldau prince; their father Skarlat Sturdza came from a leading Moldau family and had studied at the University of Leipzig from 1771 to 1773. Forced into Russian exile, the family owned estates in White Russia. The parents gave their children French tutors.140 The Russian general and strategist for Moldavian and Greek independence Alexander Ypsilanti was also related to the Sturdza family.141 Later at the 1818 Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, France was represented by King Louis XVIII’s prime minister the Duke of Richelieu, who as an émigré had served Russia and been the Governor of Odessa. And so on. All of these people—perhaps due to biographical reasons as well—customarily contemplated politics within large European dimensions. They were very religious, but undogmatic compared to the official churches (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant). Some more than others, they reflected on a European order of peace to establish an end to the Napoleonic disarray brought about by permanent war. They viewed Christianity as the most appropriate moral and social doctrine whose principles could and were supposed to shape international relations.142 This coincided with the Christian self-identification that had already basically been established in the eighteenth century.

VI Alexander I opened the way for a form of Christianity that entered into a supportive partnership not only with politics but also with emerging imperialism. The latter availed itself of a Christian identity that later, with imperialists like Cecil Rhodes,

139 Angelo Tamborra, Chiesa cattolica e ortodossia russa. Due secoli di confronto e dialogo: dalla Santa Alleanza ai nostri giorni, Milano 1992, 21. 140 All details in Martin, op. cit., 364–7 (and elsewhere). 141 Martin, op. cit., 374 et s. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek possesses a volume with the family’s printed documentation, but it first begins with the year 1863: Documente privitoare la procesul Sturdza, Bucharest 1892 . 142 On the foundational ideas of the Holy Alliance, see Martin, op. cit., 399–400.

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for example, would take on racist characteristics. The new understanding of Christendom also had an internal effect, constituting a connection between individual believers within the various congregations and imperialism in the world beyond. Since the Czar did not publically announce the Holy Alliance until 25 December 1815, more in-depth discussions of the coalition emerged only starting in 1816. The Leipzig philosophy professor Wilhelm Traugott Krug reacted quickly with a short text in 1816, brushing aside unavoidable gaps of information for the purpose of his evaluation: “… obviously that alliance does not have a restricted orientation on this or that state; rather it deals with—at least in the idea—the entirely of Christianity and therefore also all of humanity, since Christendom itself, according to its nature, has a universal tendency.”143 Thus the establishment of Europe within Christendom was directed, on the one hand, internally: European identity and unity was based therein. And on the other hand, externally, as formulated in 1826 by Théodore Jouffroy, for example, in an essay “On the Present State of Humanity”: Christian civilization is the only one … which is endowed, at the present day, with expansive power. It is, in truth, the only one which makes any progress at the expense of the others, and which gains savage tribes to civilization. … if the Christian system of civilization be not destroyed by internal defects, it is destined to gain possession of the earth. Its future condition, therefore, involves the future condition of the world.144

Like Saint-Simon in his 1814 text on the reorganization of Europe, 145 Jouffroy identified France, England, and Germany as the leaders among civilized Christian countries. With respect to the opinion he espoused, Jouffroy can very much be considered representative, insofar as he crudely simplified the future of civilization’s further history. Other texts researched by Perkins, such as for Germany by Ernst Moritz Arndt and Friedrich List, point in the same direction, although they assign precedence to Germany ahead of France in the same way that British texts prioritize British missionary work.146 One of the most interesting authors in connection with the Holy Alliance is the Danish State Councilor Konrad Friedrich von Schmidt-Phiseldek.147 In an 1822 143 Wilhelm Traugott Krug, La sainte alliance. Oder Denkmal des von Oestreich, Preußen und Russland geschloßnen heiligen Bundes, Leipzig 1816, here 23 et s. . 144 Quoted in Mary Anne Perkins, Christendom and European Identity. The Legacy of a Grand Narrative since 1789, Berlin 2004, 244, 245; contemporary English translation by George Ripley in The Students‘ Cabinet Library of Useful Tracts. Vol. 6, Edinburgh 1839, 127–154 [note: in the references, Perkins refers to pages 49–60 for her quotes from Jouffroy, but in the bibliography the locations indicated for the text in the specified collection of tracts are pages 127– 154]. 145 Claude-Henri Rouvroy Comte de Saint-Simon and A. Thierry, De la réorganisation de la société européenne. Ou de la nécessité et des moyens de rassembler les peuples de l’Europe en un seul corps politique, en conservant à chacun son indépendance nationale, Paris 1814. 146 Perkins, op. cit., ch. 14. 147 On the person and his work, see Winfried Schulze and Gerd Helm, Conrad Georg Friedrich Elias von Schmidt-Phiseldek (1770–1832), in: Heinz Duchhardt et al (eds.), Europa-Historiker. Vol. 1, Göttingen 2006, 107–128.

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tract on the Holy Alliance Die Politik nach den Grundsätzen der heiligen Allianz (Politics according to principles of the Holy Alliance), he interprets the Alliance’s fundamental idea as the consummation of something that already exists, which is supposed to underpin the Alliance’s correctness and necessity. He notes that his text is intended to prove that the idea of a cosmopolitan connection of civilized humanity … through a celebratory declaration of the European powers about the future form of governmental systems, which has firstly recognized religion as the bond of state relations, has already been introduced into the political life and coherence of the external world.148

According to Schmidt-Phiseldek, “in accordance with its practical content, which makes it apt for a universal religion,” Christianity was “elevated to be the lodestar of state wisdom.”149 He elucidates the global dimension under the concept of the Christian world state: The second main item of politics, which above we named diplomacy, has as an object the external relations of each given state to all others. From the cosmopolitan perspective that the Holy Alliance has in sight, it is intended to gradually bring about all conditions of the Christian world state, maintain the harmony of justice, love, and peace, and to always further expand the association of states outward to the degree that those now still alien to the same become more receptive to this harmony.150

Schmidt-Phiseldek might be representative in that he basically establishes the connection of Christian concepts of politics and the state with a number of Enlightenment achievements, in particular constitutionality, human rights, progress, and so on. He can thus easily claim that all cultures coming into close contact with European culture profit from the latter and become more civilized. For him, the path toward a kind of world culture—one that is Christian-European and fills the organism of humanity (which he views as a pre-configured unity due to humanity’s monogenesis) with culture or civilization—seems predetermined because of the global trade network, the use of periodical printed works for communication, the use of certain technologies such as steam power, and so on. Christianity’s task is to create a world community of human beings; and of all religions, only Christianity is suited for this task. This requires missionary work. We can summarize Schmidt-Phiseldek’s theses as follows: the individual’s Christian education makes him capable of becoming a citizen. We could also say that he sees globalization (even economically) as Europe’s project: the goal is a kind of world culture and civilization; the instrument to prepare humanity for this in a spiritual sense is the Christian mission. We can also find an explicit connection between trade and Christianization: “The ever-growing trade traffic among the most remote parts of the earth will, as always,

148 Konrad Friedrich von Schmidt-Phiseldek, Die Politik nach den Grundsätzen der heiligen Allianz, Copenhagen 1822, XI et s. 149 Ibid., 27. 150 Ibid., 51 et s.

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also henceforth in rapid progressions prove conducive to the diffusion of better concepts, and thus the final purpose of the expansion of the Christian religious territory might with greater confidence than before be promised a quicker success.”151 The diverse approaches to the world’s cultural and religious diversity that characterize the relevant works of the eighteenth century are in this case rationalized into a self-contained system of thought. Real civilization or culture can arise only in connection with Christianity. In this respect, Schmidt-Phiseldek assumes a peaceful global development process that follows—indeed, must follow—a logic inherent to Christianity and European culture founded on Christianity. Written in 1827, his tract reads like the foundational text of Christian imperialism, even if the author cannot be proven to have had such an extensive influence as to make him the ideological founder of Christian imperialism. Even so, he takes up the basic ideas of the Holy Alliance and embeds them within a consistently argued world view. In the name of the czar, Count Karl Robert Nesselrode welcomed the 1830 French expedition to Algiers that launched the conquest of Algeria and its incorporation into the French state: “Tous les vœux de l’empereur accompagnent le roi dans cette glorieuse entreprise; la chrétienté lui devra un bienfait, la civilisation une profonde reconnaissance, le commerce de la Méditerranée une nouvelle vie.”152 [All the emperor’s wishes accompany the king in this glorious enterprise; for Christianity, it will be a benefit, civilization will afford him great appreciation, Mediterranean trade will be given new life.] Here we once again see the same discursive connection between Christendom or Christianity and civilization and trade that was mentioned by Mackay in the citation at the outset. Starting in the 1830s, one finds the powers of Holy Alliance peacefully coexisting in Ottoman-ruled Palestine. What are they doing there? They are imposing a Christian character upon the designated “holy” land and especially Jerusalem. From 1831 to 1840, the Egyptian Muhammad Ali governed Palestine and opened the land to the Christian activities of Austria, Russia, Prussia, France and Great Britain. They were followed by Italy, Spain, and—with an ever increasing commitment—the United States. Pilgrimages were organized and the infrastructure required for these pilgrimages was created; missionary campaigns were conducted. The course of the nineteenth century witnessed the creation of countless Christian structures that still today shape especially the cityscape of Jerusalem. In their own well-understood interests, the powers supported the return to power in 1840 of the Ottoman sultan, who facilitated their acquisition of land and construction projects. In effect, these developments must be described as a Christian Europeanization of the Holy Land.153

151 Konrad Friedrich von Schmidt-Phiseldek, Das Menschengeschlecht auf seinem gegenwärtigen Standpunkte. Ein Versuch, Copenhagen 1827, 274 et s. 152 Quoted in Fernand L‘Huillier, De la Sainte-Alliance au Pacte Atlantique. Histoire des relations internationales à l’époque contemporaine, Neuchâtel 1954, 59. 153 Elucidated in greater detail in Schmale, Mein Europa, 2013, especially in the chapter on Jerusalem, 73–99.

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Nowhere else can we so clearly observe even today how major European powers together with smaller states implemented the spirit of the Holy Alliance. The Christian churches and denominations established themselves and pursued construction projects peacefully side by side—and sometimes even jointly, as in the case of the Anglican-Prussian bishopric from 1841 to 1886. The architectural legacy of the Russian Orthodox Church is no less dominant than that of Prussia and the German Empire. At the same time, it should be emphasized that the Holy Alliance as a spiritual confederation had a sustained impact only in the Holy Land. On other continents, the powers set to work not as allied forces of order as imagined by Alexander I but on their own as colonial powers, albeit also in the spirit of Christian imperialism. In conclusion, it should be noted that along with (1) the Holy Alliance’s concrete impact within Europe itself, (2) the Alliance left its mark above all in Palestine and (3) in addition became the catalyst for the globalization discourse of the Christian imperialism that developed in the course of the nineteenth century.

CASE STUDY III.2: IMPERIALISM AND COLONIALISM IN THE EARLY DISCOURSES OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION154 I It is perhaps difficult to imagine that many politicians and intellectuals in the postSecond World War context found it hard to distance themselves from European colonialism and imperialism and the idea of Europe’s mission civilisatrice. But surprisingly, Europeans continued to build European identity on colonialism and colonial rhetoric. Perhaps this becomes more understandable if one considers that in post-conflict situations it can seem easier to reconstruct what was previously in place than to invent something new. How far, then, did European colonial identity reach, and why was it so strong in the first decades of the postwar period? With these issues in mind, this case study will now problematize the research on the relationship between European integration and decolonization. Thomas Moser has summed up the current scholarly hypotheses in his study of European integration, decolonization and Eurafrica.155 The Treaty of Rome, signed by the Inner Six to create the European Economic Community, merged the issues of European integration and decolonization in articles 131 to 136. The notion of Eurafrica 154 This case study represents a revised edition of: Wolfgang Schmale, Before Self-Reflexivity: imperialism and colonialism in the early discourses of European integration, in: Menno Spiering and Michael Wintle (eds.), European Identity and the Second World War, Houndmills, New York 2011, 186–201. Michael Wintle has revised the English of the original text. My translator Bernard Heise has gone through the text. 155 Thomas Moser, Europäische Integration, Dekolonisation, Eurafrika. Eine historische Analyse über die Entstehungsbedingungen der Eurafrikanischen Gemeinschaft von der Weltwirtschaftskrise bis zum Jaunde-Vertrag 1929–1963, Baden-Baden 2000.

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formed only one among many aspects inherited from colonialism and imperialism. Closely related to France and, not quite as importantly, to Belgium, it was rooted in a myth that arose in the late nineteenth century asserting a special economic constellation tying together Europe and colonized Africa. The EEC members probably benefited more from the Eurafrican Community than did African countries. In a global context, the Eurafrican strategy prevented communist countries from rapidly extending their influence over African countries, or indeed over the whole continent. Scholars less often raise the questions of whether colonial and imperialist thinking continued to shape European identity, and whether strategies of decolonization like the creation of Eurafrica or, much later, the “Barcelona process” should be included in this particular tradition of an international European identity. “Imperialism” in this chapter refers mainly to an enduring European mentality after World War II that heavily influenced conceptions of European identity in this period. While one might ask whether this can appropriately be called “imperialism,” a number of factors argue in favor of the term: the feeling of European cultural superiority; the asymmetric conception of economic and political relations; the goal of making a united Europe the third global power between or alongside the United States and the Soviet Union; and the asymmetric nature of thinking inside Europe. For “the Inner Six” usurped the label of Europe for themselves and self-consciously assumed the role of representing the “true” Europe. Is it possible, even today, for us to leave behind the remnants of colonial and imperialist thought? I have recently argued elsewhere that the EC member states did not enter a phase of self-reflexivity—one that included its identity policy—until the 1980s.156 Self-reflexivity explicitly refers to a shift in European identity policy toward citizens. The Commission and the heads of state and government became aware of the gap between the citizens and European Community; the problem was no longer Europe’s international identity, but to make it possible for citizens to identify with the European project.

II During the French occupation of the Rhineland in 1918, soldiers from Senegal, Madagascar, Morocco, and Vietnam served in the occupation army. Although the numbers of these colonial troops were reduced when the Versailles Treaty came into force, a vivid and hate-filled debate had started not only in Germany but also in Italy, Britain, and other countries. Against a background of racism, people considered the presence of these “black” men—they drew little distinction between black Africans and soldiers from North Africa or Asia—as a humiliation not only of Germany but also of the whole of Europe. Some made prophecies about the “black” colonization of Europe, a fear enhanced by the fact that during the war more

156 Schmale, Geschichte und Zukunft, 2008, Ch. 12.

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than 650,000 non-European served as soldiers and another 400,000 non-Europeans worked in the factories. For the first time, European superiority within Europe itself became an issue. The discourse was propagandist and racist, but its far-reaching consequences should not be underestimated. In February 1921, American citizens of German origin organized a demonstration in the United States against this “black shame,” attended by 12,000 people.157 And as in comparable situations in earlier periods, like the “Ottoman threat” in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the existence of a perceived external danger heightened European self-consciousness and identity. Europe, or the (Christian) Occident or Abendland (to cite the ambivalent German expression)158 was in danger and needed to be defended,159 an opinion shared not only by rightwing political parties and movements but also by wide range of conservatives. Mainstream opinion was probably best expressed by Count CoudenhoveKalergi, the founder of Pan-Europa, which would become a Europe-wide movement. His book of the same name, first published in 1923, included a world map showing the world’s five principal political and economic areas: the British Commonwealth, “Panamerica,” “Paneuropa,” East Asia, and the Soviet Union. The area of the British Commonwealth covered the colonies in Africa and Asia, while that of Paneuropa excluded the United Kingdom but included the colonies in Africa and Asia, as well as the remnant colonies in South America (Caribbean). Thus one of the leading and most influential representatives of numerous European movements, associations, and initiatives during the inter-war period, Count CoudenhoveKalergi, apparently saw no reason to end colonialism and colonial thinking. He spoke explicitly about “the European continent and its African colonial empire,”160 arguing a few paragraphs later that “Europe has definitely lost its global hegemony—but at the same time not its independence nor its colonial empires, nor its culture, nor its future.”161 Although these few remarks by no means fully represent European political opinions after World War I, they do show that the idea of Europe was not restricted to geographic Europe but rather extended to include the colonies. The asymmetric relationship between the European continent and the colonies persisted. Europe’s plans for its future usually anticipated the continuation of its colonial relationships, rarely foreseeing the independence of colonial territories. Although Eurafrica may

157 Sandra Mass, Weißer Mann – was nun? Ethnische Selbstverortung zwischen kontinentaler Solidarität und nationaler Identifikation nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, in: Lorraine Bluche, Veronika Lipphardt and Kiran Klaus Patel (eds.), Der Europäer – Ein Konstrukt. Wissensbestände, Diskurse, Praktiken, Göttingen 2009, 57–72. 158 Richard Faber, Abendland. Ein ‘politischer Kampfbegriff’, Hildesheim 1979. 159 Hermann Dorowin, Retter des Abendlands. Kulturkritik im Vorfeld des europäischen Faschismus, Stuttgart 1991. 160 Richard N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, Paneuropa, 4th ed., Vienna 1926, 21. 161 Ibid., 23.

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have been a special case,162 the asymmetric European perspective that grew from a conviction of European superiority dominated the colonial discourse.

III Resistance movements during World War II also produced many plans for European unity, and although these movements generally adopted democratic positions when discussing Europe’s prospects, they too retained colonial rhetoric. The anticolonialism of resistance movements163 was not necessarily identical with non-colonial thinking. How much did the idea of reconstructing a great and powerful Europe owe to colonial and imperialist discourses? A selection of quotations taken from Walter Lipgens’ anthology of resistance movement documents (see chapter 2) provides a sense of the enduring discourse inherited from colonialism and imperialism. (1) Belgium. In the first issue of La Voix des Belges (10 August 1941) the Mouvement National Belge argued: In 843 Europe was broken in two at Verdun. In 1916—such are terrible lessons of history—the descendants of the warriors of Louis the German and Charles the Bald fought a fierce battle at Verdun to decide who should possess a fragment of Lothair’s ancient kingdom, Alsace-Lorraine. What a fine thing it would be if, in 1943, at Verdun, Europe were to come to its senses and re-establish a unity that would be the foundation of its future greatness and power!164

The text establishes a close link between “unity” and “greatness and power.” It apparently did not occur to the writer to link “unity” with goals other than “greatness and power,” such as for prosperity and freedom for Europeans, for example. La Wallonie Libre (no. 161, probably June 1944) published an article on “France as an element of European reconstruction”: The reconstruction of a free and united Europe would have seemed an impossible task if there had not been found among the ruins a corner-stone massive enough to serve as a foundation for the edifice of the future. … This first, too brief, summary of French recovery shows that Europe can rely once again on the nation devoted to humanity and reason which for a thousand years has generously expended its efforts in advancing civilization.165

La Wallonie Libre thus retained a French consciousness of France’s global mission civilisatrice. (2) France. With regard to the future Europe of the Inner Six, the French case holds special interest. According to Lipgens, “in 1942 a socialist-republican resistance group was formed in Toulouse with support from the large colony of Italian

162 Moser, op. cit. 163 Moser, op. cit., 67. 164 Walter Lipgens (ed.), Continental Plans for European Union 1939–1945. Documents on the History of European Integration, Vol. 1, Berlin 1985, 224; emphasis added. 165 Lipgens, Continental Plans, 1985, 1: 238; emphasis added.

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anti-Fascist and Spanish republican exiles.”166 The movement published an underground journal entitled Libérer et Fédérer. In the first number, tellingly dated 14 July 1942, the movement called for “a revolution which, like that of 1789, will stir the people to its uttermost depths and bring forth new élites, a new mystique, a fresh vitality: which will again place France in the vanguard of civilization, freedom and justice.”167 This view was rooted in the traditional if not classical French conviction that France was obliged to accomplish a mission civilisatrice. Similarly, Combat— the “leading organization of the resistance in the Southern Zone” whose members included Henri Frenay, Georges Bidault, and Pierre-Henri Teitgen—echoed the same sentiments in July-September 1942, stating that “the revolution that we bear within us is the dawn of a new civilization.”168 In April 1943, Paul Bastid, a former minister and radical socialist who later joined the Conseil National de la Résistance, appeared to distance himself from traditional colonial rhetoric when he wrote: Europe, the nurse of civilization, the wider homeland of all Frenchmen, this privileged corner of the earth which the superior races of mankind must unite to organize and defend—all these slogans have an alluring sound. They make us think of the United States of Europe … or the European federation … . Some would extend the bounds of our tiny continent across the Mediterranean and turn it into Eurafrica.169

But when proceeding to discuss alternative future solutions to the problem of realizing world peace, he concluded: “Europe is still the nerve-centre of the globe, and the world situation depends on security in Europe.”170 Daniel Villey, a professor of political economy at Poitiers University and member of the French Resistance, was invited in July 1943 by the Comité Général d’Études, an arm of the Conseil National de la Résistance, to contribute to the debate regarding the coming peace. Villey, too, seemed to be distancing himself from colonial views, but in reality, as the following quotation demonstrates, he was unable to imagine a world without colonies. On the one hand he argued “it is unthinkable that nations should remain sovereign in economic and customs matters.” On the other hand, in the interests of the “maintenance of the national existence and political independence of small countries,” he called for “the present distribution of colonial empires despite its economic irrationality, [and] frontiers that respect the nationality principle,” adding, however, that “all these are only tolerable if the importance of economic frontiers is systematically reduced.” He further argued that “the economic exploitation of colonies should be put on an international basis, and international trade should be regulated not by the nations concerned but by a single

166 167 168 169 170

Lipgens, Continental Plans, 1985, 1: 289. Lipgens, Continental Plans, 1985, 1: 291. Lipgens, Continental Plans, 1985, 1: 291, 293. Lipgens, Continental Plans, 1985, 1: 301. Lipgens, Continental Plans, 1985, 1: 303.

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body, in the sole interest of the world as a whole and the exploitation of its resources.”171 Thus he proposed reforming the system of exploitation but not abolishing the colonies. In the view of many people who belonged to the Conseil National de la Résistance and later served in various governmental capacities, the idea of “Eurafrica” was supposed to be maintained. The French mission civilisatrice and colonialism are not necessarily two sides of the same coin: one of the main resistance groups, Libération-Sud, clearly distinguished between the two. It published a leading article on 1 September 1943 in the journal Libération: Organe des Mouvements Unis de Résistance condemning imperialism: “Imperialism in all its forms must die, whether it be military, economic, colonial or racist.” The next sentence, however, championed France’s leading role in the world: “We repeat, France’s greatest victory will not be won by armies but by ideas. God grant that, as we proclaimed to the world the Rights of Man in 1789, we may this time bring to it the new gospel of the Rights of Nations.”172 René Courtin, professor of political economy at Montpellier University, was the rapporteur for economic questions at the Comité Général d’Études. In the summer of 1943 he prepared a report on postwar economic policy for the committee. It was first distributed clandestinely in November 1943 and later printed in Algiers in 1944. Courtin wrote: Perhaps it can be safely suggested that France might explore the possibility of forming an economic union with the West European countries viz. Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg and if possible Switzerland. Our colonies and those of the Low Countries would be economically integrated with the bloc thus formed. … We should be chary of accepting the idea, frequently put forward, of an open-door regime for the whole of Africa, as we should then risk losing not only economic but political control of our colonial empire. Moreover, goods produced by countries outside the continental bloc would tend to be nationalized in the colonies and re-exported thence so as to avoid paying customs duty. There would have to be strict import controls in the colonies and in France itself, and this would have vexatious effects on our trade with foreign countries and the empire.173

Finally, the historian Joseph Hours, who contributed to Témoignage Chrétien and Les Cahiers Politiques, wrote in January 1944 in the latter journal that “a European federation could not exist without an economic base that can only be provided by union with Africa. France is better able than any other nation to solve these problems by her example and by contribution of her colonial empire.”174 Hours did not call the continued existence of the empire into question. (3) Italy. In his “The United States of Europe and the various political trends” of 1941–42, Altiero Spinelli wrote: “Given Europe’s predominance in the world, even today, as a centre of civilization, and the fact that its quarrels have always made it the epicentre of world conflict, the final pacification of our continent under federal institutions would be the greatest step towards world peace that could be

171 172 173 174

Lipgens, Continental Plans, 1985, 1: 308. Lipgens, Continental Plans, 1985, 1: 311. Lipgens, Continental Plans, 1985, 1: 327–8. Lipgens, Continental Plans, 1985, 1: 338.

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taken at the present juncture.”175 In the first issue of L’Italia Libera (January 1943), the new bourgeois-democratic party Partito d’Azione published its program under the title “Seven Points,” which stated that there “should be a juridical community of states, with the necessary organs and means to set up and apply a system of collective security, the international protection of minorities and a fairer, more progressive application of the colonial mandate.”176 The party proposed that colonialism be modified, not abolished. This list of quotations could be extended, but its purpose in the context of this case study is simply to show that the core elements of colonial discourse were not automatically ejected from the discourse of European unity. Thus we should not be surprised that, even after the Second World War, politicians and intellectuals still firmly believed that Europe’s “predominance was given in the world” and that it remained the “centre of civilization.”

IV On 14 May 1947 in London, the socialist Victor Gollancz referred directly to Europe’s civilizing mission in a speech on European matters delivered to an audience of 8,000. That mission, he said, consisted mainly of persuading the world to practice liberty. Did Europe, in 1947, enjoy enough standing in the world to justify such a statement? At the famous Congress of European Federalists in The Hague, another renowned Europeanist, Henri Brugmans, said in May 1948 that Europe should reconquer independence in the world and play the role of a global mediator. To do so, Europe should and must unite.177 In Rome in November 1948, on the occasion of the second congress of the Union Européenne des Fédéralistes, the same Brugmans repeated that “humanity counts on Europe to give an example for an inner revolution and for a just and free social order,” adding that “this is our raison d’être, this is our mission.”178 In 1948, the Belgian European Paul-Henri Spaak, future first president of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, wrote in a Belgian review that Europe must unite unconditionally, or else it would lose what remained of its former reputation and greatness. He predicted the decline of European civilization if Europeans did not unite.179 In May 1950, the French socialist party SFIO held its forty-second congress. The French socialists considered European unification a precondition for a new

175 Lipgens, Continental Plans, 1985, 1: 486; emphasis added. 176 Lipgens, Continental Plans, 1985, 1: 493; emphasis added. 177 Paul Noack, Der Einfluss der Intellektuellen in der Frühphase der Europäischen Bewegung, in: Raymond Poidevin (ed.), Histoire des débuts de la construction européenne (mars 1948 – mai 1950), Brussels 1986, 229–30. 178 Archives of the European Union, Florence, UEF 100/1, 12 typewritten pages, here p. 1. 179 Michael Brückner, Roland Maier and Andrea Przyklenk (eds.), Der Europa-Ploetz, Freiburg 1993, 32.

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leading role for Europe in the world.180 Robert Schuman, in his famous declaration of 9 May 1950, announced that “the contribution which an organised and active Europe can bring to civilisation is indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations,” going on to propose the “pooling” of French and German coal and steel production, which would become the ECSC. Common production, he continued, “will be offered to the entire world, without distinction or exclusion, as a contribution to raising living standards and promoting world peace. Europe, with her resources thus increased, will be able to pursue one of her essential tasks: the development of the African continent.”181 The passage referred to particular French political and economic interests, but also to “Eurafrica” and other generally recognizable European topics. In 1953 in a longer academic article published in Europa-Archiv, RaymondJean Guiton, professor of law and political sciences at the Sorbonne, argued that the European integration process could not be limited to the continent; only when extended to the colonial territories could Europe expect a “hopeful future as a world power.”182 On 21 January 1955, the fifth congress of the Union Européenne des Fédéralistes was welcomed at the Paris Town Hall. In his speech, Bernard Lafay, President of the Paris Conseil Municipal, wondered whether this Europe, which for 400 years had advanced the world’s material civilization, could preserve “this place in the sun of history” when it had already lost its global leadership.183 The resolution adopted at the Messina conference of 1–2 June 1955 by the ministers of foreign affairs of the ECSC member states included the statement: “they [the ministers] consider that it is necessary to work for the establishment of a united Europe by the development of common institutions, the progressive fusion of national economies, the creation of a common market and the progressive harmonisation of their social policies,” and that “such a policy seems to them indispensable if Europe is to maintain her position in the world, regain her influence and prestige and achieve a continuing increase in the standard of living of her population.”184 The second passage linked an internal European issue, namely, increasing the standard of living, to Europe’s position and role in the world, equally emphasizing both. Of course, the rhetoric of these statements differed from that of the imperialist age: it was moderated and “purged” of its former Christian ideological elements. However, so strong was this traditional mode of thought that the core arguments 180 Jean-Jacques Becker, L’opinion de gauche française et les débuts de l’Europe, in: Poidevin, Histoire des débuts, 255–6. 181 Robert Schuman, The Schuman Declaration. Statement by French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman on Pooling Coal and Steel Production in Europe, in: A. G. Harryvan and J. van der Harst (eds.), Documents on European Union, 1950/1997, No. 11, 61–63, 61. 182 Raymond-Jean Guiton, Die Französische Union und die Einigung Europas. Das Kolonialproblem als Aufgabe der Europaforschung, in: Europa-Archiv 20/11/1953, 6089–97, 6094. 183 Archives of the EU, Florence, UEF 104/2: Réception à l’Hôtel de Ville du Ve Congrès de l’Union Européenne des Fédéralistes le Vendredi 21 Janvier 1955, à 17 heures 45, Discours de M. Bernard Lafay, Président du Conseil Municipal, 3 typewritten pages, here p. 2. 184 Resolution (1955/1997): Resolution Adopted by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Member States of the ECSC, at the Messina-Conference of 1–2 June 1955, 92, emphasis added.

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pertaining to Europe’s cultural superiority and world’s inability to continue without Europe’s contribution survived fully intact. Although the consequences of World War II obviously moderated imperialist rhetoric, this did not produce a step toward self-reflexivity, which meant no decolonization of imperialist rhetoric. These early examples can be taken as representing the typical position regarding the relationship between postwar Europe and its colonies and the world’s need for European—in particular, French—civilization. This position was also affirmed by the discourse of those 600 European deputies who between 1949 and 1957 served as members of the European assemblies then in existence: the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Common Assembly of the ECSC, the socalled “Assembly Ad-hoc” that existed briefly in 1952–53 to prepare the planned European Political Community, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Western Union (starting in 1955). All these assemblies met at Strasbourg and included amongst their deputies many former ministers and prime ministers. One of the major problems they discussed was European decline, their benchmark being Europe’s leading position in the world in 1900. Compared to that happy situation, the late 1940s and the early 1950s did indeed represent a decline. This analysis had a direct impact on European identity: Europe would need to marshal all its forces to halt its decline and recapture a leading position. Evidently, it was unimaginable for Europe to accept a less forceful and important political role, give up its colonies, and abandon the mission to continue Europeanizing the world as it had done for four and a half centuries.185

V Thus, starting in early modern period, ideas on European identity included or relied on a conception of the homo europaeus. Did racial discourses186 and the distinctions they established between Europeans and non-Europeans continue to shape European identity after 1945? Racial discourses still dominated anthropology. In Europe—and beyond—a handbook published in the interwar period by Eugen Fischer, Erwin Baur, and Fritz Lenz introduced the division of mankind into three groups: the “Europides,” “Negroides,” and “Mongolides,” while clearly implying Europe’s superiority. Even UNESCO, which issued several anti-racist statements from 1950 to 1967, did not stop using the word “race” but rather retained it in a biological sense “as one of the group of populations constituting the species Homo sapiens.”187

185 Achim Trunk, Europa, ein Ausweg. Politische Eliten und europäische Identität in den 1950er Jahren, Munich 2007. 186 Bethencourt’s “Racisms” (2013) is one of the rare overviews of the history of racism that fully includes the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Francisco Bethencourt, Racisms. From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century, Princeton, Oxford 2013. 187 Veronika Lipphardt, Von der ‘europäischen Rasse’ zu den ‘Europiden’. Wissen um die biologische Beschaffenheit des Europäers in Sach- und Lehrbüchern, 1950–1989, in: Bluche, Lipphardt and Patel (eds.), Der Europäer – Ein Konstrukt, 167.

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The international discourse took into consideration between three and five of those “populations.” In the early 1950s the Union Européenne des Fédéralistes established a Commission Internationale Europe Outre-Mer, which studied, among other things, the aptitude of Europeans for living and working in tropical zones. The discussion was related to the “Assembly Ad-hoc,” the project to create a European Political Community, and debates directed by the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe. The Italian Paolo Vittorelli was tasked with assembling a report on the “movements of persons between the metropolitan and overseas territories of the European political community,” which was submitted to and discussed by the commission in spring 1954.188 During the 1940s and 1950s, these European federalists constituted a veritable pressure group whose aim was a European federation or federal state. Their influence on the ongoing process of European integration slowly declined after the founding of the ECSC, but the Federalists remained an important intellectual movement that regained force and influence with the realignment in European affairs in 1989. The report of 1954 and the related discussions contain no racism, but based their raison d’être on the presumption of biological qualities specific to Europeans or the “white race.”189 The reports states that, in principle, the liberty of movement of persons applied to movements in both directions, from Europe into the overseas territories and vice-versa. Nevertheless, the report only deals with the movements of Europeans from Europe into the colonies (the report avoided the expression “colony,” replacing it with “overseas territory” or even “European overseas territories”). It did not explain the reason for this approach, apart from that an influx from the colonies to Europe was not expected to constitute a problem in the near future; therefore, the report only discussed the reasons why Europeans might be motivated to move (unemployment, demographic growth, etc.). After the introduction, the report continues with a first chapter entitled “The Theories,” quoting ethnological, colonial, and geographical studies from the United States, Australia, and various European countries published in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1950s. Vittorelli quotes a longer passage in a memoir written by Fred Van der Linden and presented on 15 June 1953 to the “Section des Sciences Morales et Politiques de l’Institut Colonial Belge.” In the passage, Van der Linden assumes that whites are dominant and enjoy technical superiority over indigenous peoples. He asks how the prestige of the Europeans (in tropical and subtropical colonies) can be preserved under difficult social and racial conditions.190

188 Archives of the EU, Florence, UEF 170, report Vittorelli: UEF 170/3 (in French, 34 typewritten pages). Cited hereafter as Vitorelli 1954. 189 Vitorelli 1954, 3. 190 Vitorelli 1954, 4.

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Later, Vittorelli quotes another study by an Australian scholar, Sir Raphael Cilento,191 which attributes the “degeneration of the Whites” in Australian Queensland to hygienic conditions and to “promiscuity with the indigenous population.” Cilento argues that the reduction of that promiscuity had contributed to a considerable augmentation of sugar production in 1922 compared to 1905–6.192 Vittorelli then deals with the problem of racial segregation, an instrument that he fully rejects. Between the lines, and sometimes explicitly, the text conveys a sense of European or white superiority. In situations where indigenous populations succumb due to unfavorable circumstances, whites or Europeans are driven to succeed because they enjoy taking risks or because they occupy a higher cultural level.193 Indigenous cultures appear as underdeveloped, even though that expression is avoided. The report does not address the importance of indigenous or local traditions or consider the issue of whether indigenous civilizations have the same right to be respected as Western cultures. It does not question the European or Western model of civilization and views the European’s assumed character (for example, taking risks) as a mark of a superior civilization. It casts no doubt on the idea that the European Community of the Inner Six, in becoming a European Political Community, should encompass overseas territories. The report is written in the same spirit that underpinned the Union française in those years. When the plans for a European Political Community fell through, the Commission Internationale Europe Outre-Mer stopped its work, but was not dissolved. In 1958, the Secretary General of the Union Européenne des Fédéralistes (UEF), J. C. Demachy, asked the commission to give its opinion on a declaration prepared by Germain Desbœuf, a member of the UEF. Desbœuf thought it necessary to declare that all races, civilizations, and nations were equal, and that Europeans would contribute in a spirit of equality to the evolution of all of them. He advocated a clearcut break with colonialism.194

VI The European postwar discourse merged traditional patterns of colonial and sometimes imperialist thought with the concept of Europe as a third force between the United States and the Soviet Union. Walter Hallstein, the first president of the Commission of the EEC, repeated as often as possible that the Community should play an eminent role in the world, and that it had to accomplish a mission with regard to developing countries. Commissioner Hans von der Groeben (1958–70) called this Europe’s destiny. In 1964, Hallstein explained the debt owed to Europe by the 191 See the Australian Dictionary of Biography: . Cilento served the UN in different functions from May 1945 to 1950. He also assumed responsibilities in the British zone of occupied Germany. 192 Vitorelli 1954, 12. 193 Vitorelli 1954, 23. 194 Archives of the EU, Florence, UEF 170/3, ‘Projet présenté par Germain Desbœuf’, 1958, 2 typewritten pages.

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world and mankind. According to Hallstein, Europe had contributed to making the world more noble and more human, thanks to its philosophy, its sciences, its poetry and fine arts, its technical knowledge, its political philosophy and practices, its values such as liberty, human dignity, individual responsibility, and the right to national self-determination. He presented the EEC as a universal model for a coming international order. Hallstein asserted all this because he was listing good reasons for European unity.195 With regard to Europe’s relations with the rest of the world, Europe’s cultural and moral superiority was a leitmotif in Europe’s discourse on European unity and European identity. Hallstein reiterated the discourse of the Enlightenment. To put it another way, he went beyond imperialism, but not beyond the Enlightenment’s deep conviction that European civilization was the world’s most superior and advanced civilization. The turning point in this discourse was represented by the “Declaration on European Identity,” issued by the Conference of Heads of State or Government held in Copenhagen on 14 December 1973 (see below, case study IV). This 1973 document exhibits self-reflexivity regarding the relationship between European unity, European unification, European identity, and the global context. Self-reflexivity, in this context, meant that the EC had drawn the necessary conclusions from the events of World War II; it meant the definition of new coordinates for European identity and a reconsideration of the part played by the former colonial world in shaping European identity.

CASE STUDY IV: FROM (CHRISTIAN) IMPERIALISM TO EUROPEAN IDENTITY196 I With regard to the individual European, identity was centered on eighteenth century referred as homo europaeus (see case study II). The European, as we say today, is characterized by a number of moral convictions and attitudes, by European history and long-lasting traditions, by the legal definition of the status of the European citizen, by common values, and by plenty of other things that are common to the 500 million people living in Europe. Some would say a European is somebody who 195 Bertrand Rochard, L’Europe des commissaires. Réflexions sur l’identité européenne des traités de Rome au traité d’Amsterdam, Brussels 2003. 196 First published: Wolfgang Schmale, A History of European Identity, in: David Tréfás (ed.), Europe on Trial. Shortcomings of the EU with Regard to democracy, public sphere, and identity. Innsbruck 2010, 98–105. For the introduction and the conclusion, I have used elements of my article: A history of European identity. euro/topics, (published December 2008). The English has been revised by the translator Bernard Heise.

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lives in Europe; others say a real European can only be a Christian, and so on. Although racist conceptions of the European still linger even today, they have typically been replaced by softer conceptions—or such conceptions have ceased to exist at all. Actually, the question now is whether an individual European identity exists or is even possible. Unlike the nation state, the European Union does not represent a framework for “patriotic” citizens. The Union confers the legal status of European citizenship but cannot tie this status to European patriotism. The globalization of democracy and a range of values formerly considered purely European, such as the moral core of the human rights-philosophy, along with the waning of Christian ideology, have made it impossible to speak about European exclusivity. In general, national identity, gender identity, and local or regional identity seem better suited for providing individuals the elements they need to construct their individual identities. Apparently, it is difficult to say what a European is made of. This is a new and unusual situation in European history. The paradox is that Europeans had no difficulty defining their identity from antiquity to World War II when they lacked common institutions. Today, Europeans have common and supra-national institutions but they are unsure about their identity. Evidently, the building of collective institutions and formulation of common policies in different crucial fields such as economics, security, law, environment and so on has had no or only minimal consequences for the building of a collective European identity. Viewing Europe from the inside, one must argue that Europe possesses no identity. There is not only one Europe, but many: the Europe of the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area, the Western European Union, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) or its remnants, the Council of Europe; also the Europe of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO), two organizations that include non-European member states. The question of identity can be meaningfully raised only with respect to Europe in the form of the EU. It is true that the EU’s 28 members do not add up to the current figure of 46 members for the Council of Europe, but nowhere other than in the EU can one find a greater degree of integration, that is, of institutional and constitutional deepening and indeed intertwining. As a result, for most European states that are not yet members of the EU, the prospect of joining will play a decisive role in shaping their future political, social, economic, and cultural development. But while the EU exudes an attractive force for non-member states, it has been undergoing an endless series of internal crises that repeatedly thwart the goal of European unity. Insofar as it was ratified by every EU member, the Treaty of Lisbon ended the crisis concerning the European constitution triggered by the no vote in 2005 in France and the Netherlands. But it also contains the seeds of new crises to come, because individual countries were granted exceptions that form juridical grey areas. One could summarize the issue ironically by saying that “crisis” evidently constitutes Europe’s identity.

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Seen from the outside, however, things appear quite different. In connection with the debate about the Iraq war, Robert Kagan published Of Paradise and Power, a book that triggered a stormy debate due to the author’s prominence.197 It appeared simultaneously in German translation as Macht und Ohnmacht, although the German title (power and powerlessness) blurred the metaphorical identifications of the English title. Referring to Europe, the metaphor of “paradise” reflected Europe’s peace and prosperity and the renunciation of the typical ruthless power politics that prevailed until the Second World War. The metaphor of “power” referred to the United States, or rather to “the power protecting Europe,” for the “paradise” could develop after 1945 only under the military protection of the United States, which to some extent guarded and continued to guard its gates. This image of Europe as a paradise—a place with a paradisial standard of living—also plays an important role in the minds of many African migrants who have more recently been risking their lives in unseaworthy boats to reach European shores. But notwithstanding such external assessments, within Europe there is no widespread tendency to imagine EU Europe as a paradise and thus as entity with an unambiguous identity. The former president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors (1985–1995), captured this deficiency when he noted that Europe needed a “soul.” Apart from a few early isolated steps and acts, such as the Document on European Identity published at the Copenhagen summit in December 1973 (see below), the EC/EU has been pursuing an identity policy only since the 1980s, making use of the symbols of a unitary state. On the one hand, the identity policy of the EU is arguably based on the typical identity policy of a nation state, for the flag, the anthem, Europe Day, the currency, and EU citizenship are all symbolic expressions of unity. On the other hand, the ubiquitous and predominant diversity that seemingly contributes to Europe’s frequent crises repeatedly comes under scrutiny with regard to whether unity is even possible or feasible. Indeed, the current concept of identity assumes a high level of unity within oneself, a state of “being one in oneself,” whether we are talking about the identity of individuals or collectives. Historically speaking, there have been times when “European identity” understood as a collective identity was taken for granted. Two successive concepts of collective identity have emerged since the fifteenth century: Europe as a Christian commonwealth (in the early modern period) and Europe as a culture (ever since the Enlightenment). Even though nineteenth and twentieth century nationalisms undermined these concepts, “European culture” continued to be seen as the expression of European unity. There was difference between cultural identity and the identity provided by common political institutions—not to mention the “United States of Europe.” Therefore, the European Union and its predecessors such as the ECSC, the EEC and the EC conducted an identity policy right from outset. In the 1940s, most Europeanists did not consider European identity a problem, taking it simply as given: 197 Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power. America and Europe in the new world order, New York 2003.

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keywords like “common inheritance,” used even in official documents such as the Brussels Treaty (1948), remained unquestioned. There existed little doubt about Europe’s fundamental unity rooted in culture, history, and common values. European consciousness included human rights, liberty, human dignity, and democracy, at least as ideals and as part of a legal philosophical tradition, although they had been deeply violated by Hitler and the Nazis. But war and Nazis were considered exceptions to European traditions and culture. The task after the war was the reconstruction of Europe; the issue was not any presumable lack of European identity. Because “European identity policy” per se constitutes a historically unprecedented post-Second World War innovation, and since this war has resulted in a crisis for “European identity” understood as individual identity, I will now focus on Europe’s identity policy.198

II The optimism regarding the future of European unity reflected by opinion polls in the 1940s and 1950s may be surprising. In France and Germany, opinion polls revealed that between 70% and 80% adhered to the idea of a European federation or union. Although unstable and changing with the years, characterized by many ups and downs, this basic opinion differed clearly from later periods.199 Despite the fact that Europe lay in ruins, Europeanists expected it to play an international role commensurate with Europe’s former preeminent historical role in the world. Many politicians and intellectuals found it difficult to distance themselves from European colonialism and imperialism and the idea of Europe’s “mission civilisatrice” or “mission of civilization.” The same had been true for the interwar period. The most influential movement was probably the Paneuropean Movement founded by Count Coudenhove-Kalergi. As Katiana Orluc puts it, Coudenhove-Kalergi argued “that Europeans should continue to exercise world hegemony given their outstanding cultural and scientific capabilities and achievements.”200 Orluc continues: This understanding of Europe is represented by the symbol he chose for the Paneuropean Union: the red cross of the medieval crusades resting on the emblem of the sun. For him, this represented the oldest symbol of a supranational European community and of international humanitarianism (the cross), enclosed by the European spirit which enlightened the world (sun).201

198 The use of history and ‘remembrance’ for European identity policy induces continuously new studies: Birgit Schwelling (ed.), Reconciliation, Civil Society, and the Politics of Memory. Transnational initiatives in the 20th and 21st century, Bielefeld 2012; Étienne François et al (eds.) Geschichtspolitik in Europa seit 1989, Göttingen 2013; Fröhlich, Schmid and Schwelling (eds.), 25 Jahre europäische Wende, Stuttgart 2014. 199 For more details see Schmale, European Identity, 2008, op. cit., 115. 200 Katiana Orluc, Decline or Renaissance. The Transformation of European Consciousness after the First World War, in: Bo Stråth (ed.), Europe and the Other and Europe as the Other, Brussels 2001, 2nd ed., 123–155, 142. 201 Orluc, op. cit., 142.

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Perhaps the sense of disaster arising from destruction caused by World War I was less intense than would be the case in 1945, and the colonial empires like France, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands still existed. Thus it may be understandable that Coudenhove-Kalergi had no reason to restrict European expectations to a “European Occident.” The idea of a European mission in the world obviously was maintained through the interwar period and World War II (see case study III.2). Therefore, we should not be surprised that the idea of this European mission also helped form the basis for early efforts in the 1940s and 1950s to achieve European integration and the idea of European identity. The turning point in this discourse is marked, as I have already mentioned above (case study III.2), by the “Declaration on European Identity” issued by the Conference of Heads of State or Government held in Copenhagen on 14 December 1973. As far as the nine member states were concerned, decolonization had been accomplished, at least on a formal and legal level, notwithstanding certain British Commonwealth cases (Rhodesian independence 1980, Belize 1981, various Caribbean isles and states) and the special status of Greenland, which became autonomous in 1985. The document states that the “nine member countries of the European Communities have decided … to define the European Identity,” adding that “defining European Identity involves: … (b) assessing the extent to which the Nine are already acting together in relation to the rest of the world and the responsibilities which result from this ….” Of the 22 paragraphs that define European identity, 13 are dedicated to the EEC’s relations to the “rest of the world,” now invoking the following keywords and phrases: international obligations, cooperation, to contribute to ensuring that international relations have a more just basis, to share prosperity equitably, to promote harmonious and constructive relations with third countries, long-standing links, historic links, fruitful cooperation etc. Although interpretive problems still remain,202 the document formed a turning point in the history of European integration. The postwar consensus on Europe’s historical and cultural unity had vanished in light of the Cold War. Europe was split into two blocs, and no single political structure united the free democratic Western countries. The E(E)C was only one structure among others such as NATO, the Council of Europe, the OECD, and the EFTA. The E(E)C’s integrative capacity was to be thrown into doubt. For years, France foiled plans to make the United Kingdom a member of the community. The six founding members were not united in and through the E(E)C; rather, they had come together simply because each country had a few interests that seemed better served via the E(E)C-structure. In reality, each member state occupied a very special place because “after two world wars, the nation was more established than ever.”203 France with its DOM-TOM and “Fran-

202 Georg Kreis, L’émergence de la notion d’‘identité’ dans la politique de la Communauté Européenne. Quelques réflexions autour la Déclaration du sommet de Copenhague de 1973, in: Relations Internationales 140/2009, 53–72. 203 Bo Stråth, Multiple Europes. Integration, Identity and Demarcation to the Other, in: Bo Stråth (ed.), Europe and the Other and Europe as the Other, Brussels 2001, 2nd ed., 385–420, 386.

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cophone” global community continued to view the world in ways that differed substantially from what Germany or Italy now could imagine. The divide separating France and the United States was the opposite of the special relationship that existed between the United Kingdom and the United States. Furthermore, the United Kingdom, too, managed an economic and political structure that seemed incompatible with EC membership, namely, the British Commonwealth. While we should not overemphasize Winston Churchill’s speech at Zurich University on 19 September 1946—a speech that subsequently gained notability—the statesman’s speech clearly reflected English priorities: the British Commonwealth. The issue—an old issue, incidentally, for it had also preoccupied minds dealing with the League of Nations—was whether “a regional organisation of Europe should in any way conflict with the world organisation of the United Nations.” Churchill did not see any contradiction with the UN: We British have our own Commonwealth of Nations. These do not weaken, on the contrary they strengthen, the world organisation. They are in fact its main support. And why should there not be a European group which could give a sense of enlarged patriotism and common citizenship to the distracted peoples of this turbulent and mighty continent…204

He placed the British Commonwealth on the same level as a future European union. Even though the Commonwealth’s destiny would weaken continuously over the years, it kept the United Kingdom away from Europe. The EFTA philosophy could lend the impression that it best matched the United Kingdom’s ideas regarding Europe. The United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark nonetheless joined the EC on 1st January 1973, but the divergences between the member states still remained. By addressing the topic of identity, the EC attempted to provide a new basis for European identity in a globalized world. This is not an empty phrase. Bo Stråth has argued that: In a situation where labour markets and the capacity of national economies for political government was diminishing, and where the dollar collapse and the oil price shock had broken down the established international order of political economy, identity was launched by the European Council as a key concept in order to re-establish that order, and the place of Europe within it, and to shift national tripartite corporatist arrangements to a Eurocorporatist level … .”205

Stråth continues: From our perspective today, it seems clear that identity replaced integration as the buzzword for the European unification project at a time when the project was experiencing severe strains. The concept emerged in a situation where the very legitimacy of the European integration project was at stake. It is therefore no coincidence that the increased attention to the legitimacy

204 Winston Churchill, “Sir Winston Churchill on a United States of Europe, speech at Zurich University, 19 September 1946.”, in: A. G. Harryvan and J. van der Harst, Documents on European Union, No. 3, London 1997, 38–41, 39–40. 205 Stråth, Multiple Europes, 385.

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and democratic accountability of the structures of the EC was accompanied by reflection upon European identity.206

According to Bo Stråth, several aspects led to the EC’s new identity policy: severe strains on the political economy, established in its Keynesian form since the 1950s; the collapse of the Bretton Woods order; oil crises; therefore, concomitant challenges to established ideas about full employment and nationally governable economies. Hence, the 1970s saw the break-down of the model of political economy based on mass consumption and mass production. This was also the break-down of the corporatist model, in which organised interests in most nations established some form of tripartite bargaining structure whereby the state, the employers and the trade unions, exerting various degrees of power, negotiated over how to achieve high economic performance and how to share the fruits of the growth in productivity. … In the 1970s, when a seemingly endless list of factories … faced bankruptcy these established patterns of solidarity and interests changed. … One political response to this situation was to try to save the national tripartite bargaining model by shifting it onto a European level and establishing a kind of Euro-corporatism. The European Trade Union Confederation was founded in 1973 as an instrument of political restructuring. … It was in this context that the idea of a European identity emerged, and the concept was used in an attempt to build new institutions.207

Stråth assigns an important role to a “memorandum elaborated in the administration of the German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, before the EEC summit in Copenhagen in December, 1973.”208 But since 1968 other factors became important as well: social protests, the anti-Vietnam War peace movement; the collapse of dollar in 1971 as a result of financing the Vietnam War; strikes; unemployment; uncertainty about the efficiency of traditional bargaining models; the oil crisis. The concept of “European identity” promised “to save the national economies over into new arrangements” and “to save the place of Europe in a reconstructed international order.”209 Stråth emphasizes the connection between the concept of a European identity, on the one hand, and the crisis of national economic policy, on the other, which was related to an international economic, monetary, and political crisis. He assigns a special role in this constellation to the German idea of “social partnership” and the German trade union strategy to make it a model for Europe. That is to say, this idea was backed by the German government’s memorandum for the Copenhagen summit. Georg Kreis has emphasized in a recent article that the EC aimed to distinguish itself clearly from the United States. Indeed, the 1973 document deals extensively with relations between “Europe” and the United States. Kreis further argues that the Copenhagen summit enhanced the institutionalization of the “European Council,” that is, the regular meetings of the heads of state and government. Prior to this point, such meetings had been informal and not institutionalized.210 These aspects must 206 207 208 209 210

Stråth, Multiple Europes, 385–6. Stråth, Multiple Europes, 401–2. Stråth, Multiple Europes, 402. Stråth, Multiple Europes, 402. Kreis, op. cit.

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be situated within a longer series of symbolic acts: participants at the Paris summit in September 1972 declared the creation of a (European) union to be a near-future goal. In a speech to the European Parliament on 14 February 1973, European Commission President François Xavier Ortoli explained that the Paris summit participants viewed European identity as a critical issue that needed to be treated seriously by the member states.211 Georg Kreis argues that the notion of identity appears in the EC discourse around 1970. As Viviane Obaton has shown, the very similar notion of “cultural identity” became the focus of deliberations in the former colonized and subsequently independent countries of the so-called Third World. It seems that Europeans were inspired by a concept that had initially been directed against them as former colonial powers.212 In brief, there have been plenty of good reasons since the late 1960s and early 1970s to exploit the concept of identity and transfer it to the level of the EC. This occurred during a period when the initial euphoria of 1940s and 1950s in Western Europe about Europeanism increasingly gave way to skepticism. Did Europeans—the citizens of Europe—lose their sense of European identity just as this identity became an issue for the political institutions of the EC, namely the European Council?

III The 1973 document focused on the definition of new coordinates for European identity, including the role played in this process by the former colonial world. In fact, as noted by Richard G. Whitman, the EU possesses an “international identity.”213 The “European Union” was formed by the Treaty on European Union—the Maastricht Treaty—which entered into force on 1 November 1993. Article B, Title I, defines the Union’s objectives, the second of which pertains to the EU’s international identity: The Union shall set itself the following objectives … to assert its identity on the international scene, in particular through the implementation of a common foreign and security policy including the eventual framing of a common defence policy, which might in time lead to a common defence; … .214

211 Cited by Kreis, 2010, op. cit. Kreis uses an unpublished thesis of Sophie Huber. Sophie Huber, Polyphonie sur l’identité européenne. Aux origines d’un discours identitaire 1962–1973. Thèse n°811, HEID Genève 2009 (unpublished). Published as eLivre, Geneva 2013, . 212 Vivian Obaton, Identité culturelle européenne, 1997. 213 Richard G. Whitman, From Civilian Power to Superpower? The international identity of the European Union, New York 1998. 214 Whitman, op. cit., 1 (Council of the European Communities, Commission of the European Communities, Treaty on European Union – Luxembourg, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Title I Common Provisions, Article B. German text used here for comparison: Daniel-Erasmus Khan (ed.): Vertrag über die Europäische Union mit sämtlichen Protokollen und Erklärungen. Vertrag zur Gründung der Europäischen Gemeinschaft (EG-

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This objective is an extension of ideas put forward in the 1973 document and more precisely formulates the consequences for the EU: common foreign policy; common security policy; common defense (the latter stated as a future objective because it was the most difficult and especially sensitive with regard to safeguarding the national sovereignty of member states). The Lisbon Treaty marked a change because it did away with the notion of “identity.” Article B of Title I: Common Provisions in the Maastricht Treaty had become article 2 of Title I: Common Provisions in the Amsterdam Treaty. In the Lisbon Treaty, article 2 of Title I: Common Provisions still exists but has been extensively reformulated: the external relations previously linked to the notion of identity are now formulated in article 2, § 5, as follows: 5. In its [the EU; W.S.] relations with the wider world, the Union shall uphold and promote its values and interests and contribute to the protection of its citizens. It shall contribute to peace, security, the sustainable development of the Earth, solidarity and mutual respect among peoples, free and fair trade, eradication of poverty and the protection of human rights, in particular the rights of the child, as well as to the strict observance and the development of international law, including respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter.

The Union now builds up its identity on its institutions, values, and what it represents, yet all this can be expressed without using the word “identity.” So article 2 § 1 states that “the Union’s aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples.” § 2 states that “the Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum, immigration and the prevention and combating of crime.” § 3 establishes an objective: The Union shall establish an internal market. It shall work for the sustainable development of Europe based on balanced economic growth and price stability, a highly competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment and social progress, and a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment. It shall promote scientific and technological advance. It shall combat social exclusion and discrimination, and shall promote social justice and protection, equality between women and men, solidarity between generations and protection of the rights of the child. It shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States. It shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and shall ensure that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced.215

A few notions such as “Europe’s cultural heritage” bridge the gap between the documents of the 1940s and those of the twenty-first century, and the Union’s abovecited values and inner objectives are rooted in the 1957 treaties and never have been denied. But has the Union abandoned the goal of constructing its identity? The notion of identity is relegated to the following issues: churches, “philosophical and

Vertrag) in den Fassungen von Maastricht und Amsterdam, 4. aktualisierte und erweiterte Auflage, München 1998, p. 3. 215 Official Journal of the European Union Vol. 50, C 306/12 (17.12.2007), in: .

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non-confessional organisations,”216 and “identity cards” (art. 62, 3). The notion of the “international scene” used in passage of Maastricht Treaty reappears in a new article, article 10 A, but does not refer directly to “identity.” Article 10 A, § 1 states: The Union’s action on the international scene shall be guided by the principles which have inspired its own creation, development and enlargement, and which it seeks to advance in the wider world: democracy, the rule of law, the universality and indivisibility of human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for human dignity, the principles of equality and solidarity, and respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law. The Union shall seek to develop relations and build partnerships with third countries, and international, regional or global organisations which share the principles referred to in the first subparagraph. It shall promote multilateral solutions to common problems, in particular in the framework of the United Nations.

The Lisbon Treaty reinserts “identity” into the sphere of the individual: fundamental and human rights conferred to or possessed by the individual; religion, philosophical, philanthropic, or other non-confessional convictions which are pursued by “organisations,” that is, presumably NGOs and other associations that represent civil society. Finally, the identity card represents the individual bureaucratically. The Lisbon Treaty imparts the impression that the EU (its member states) has given up the goal of building a collective identity. Only terms and phrases such as “to offer its citizens an area of freedom, justice and security”, “internal market,” “economic, social and territorial cohesion,” “solidarity among Member States,” “to ensure that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced” refer to a European collective, but without directly naming this collective. The “Union” is supposed to represent what is common to all “member states.” But even the (now buried) Constitution for Europe 217 restricted the Union’s “exclusive competence” to five points (Article I–13.1) which are obviously inherited from the EEC/EC treaty: (1) customs union, (2) establishing rules of competition necessary for the functioning of the internal market, (3) monetary policy for the member states using the euro as currency, (4) conservation of marine biological resources under the common fisheries policy, (5) common commercial policy. All other competencies are not exclusive, meaning that, despite the fact that they deal with “common” concerns, they can also be duplicated at the national level. Article I–13.2 states—but this only follows logically from Article I–13.1—that the Union shall also have exclusive competence for the conclusion of an international agreement when its conclusion is provided for in a legislative act of the Union or is necessary to enable the Union to exercise its internal competence, or insofar as its conclusion may affect common rules or alter their scope.

The Lisbon approach does not much differ from that of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. The step backwards is less important than was sometimes 216 Article 16 C: “3. Recognising their identity and their specific contribution, the Union shall maintain an open, transparent and regular dialogue with these churches and organisations.” 217 Conference of the Representatives of the Governments of the Member States, Brussels, 29 October 2004: Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, CIG 87/2/04 REV 2.

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suggested in the media, or, to put it another way, the step forward represented by the draft constitution was less important than portrayed in the media. The constitution’s preamble stated that the representatives are “convinced that, while remaining proud of their own national identities and history, the peoples of Europe are determined to transcend their former divisions and, united ever more closely, to forge a common destiny.” Although “destiny” is not a synonym for “identity,” it is a strong word that, on the one hand, describes more than a simple “aspect” of identity. It refers to what in German is called Schicksalsgemeinschaft, a word that expresses very well the relation between destiny and collective identity. On the other hand, both the non-enacted “constitution” and the Lisbon treaty clarify and strengthen the role of the nation state. The “common destiny” will be that of 28 or more nation states that convene to cooperate through the Union and transfer clearly defined competencies to the Union. These documents also clarify the legal status of European citizens, but in terms of individual rights. Only the right to petition opens the door for collective initiatives that are not framed by political parties. This right to petition may provide the path to the formation of European “citizen collectives.”

IV The EU’s political and constitutional situation differs from that of the typical nation state. Under these circumstances something like a “European demos” is extremely difficult to imagine. Of course, elements of a European demos occasionally emerge. To give only three more or less recent examples: spontaneous protests against the Iraq War in various European countries; joint action by German, Spanish, Belgian, and British Trade Unions in the Opel case against General Motors; student protests in many (but not all) members states in 2009 against the “Bologna System.” In these cases, shared trans-national convictions, economic goals, or political aims were expressed by political actions outside the realm of party politics and the European Parliament. There are only few Europe-wide media whose audience differs from that of the far reaching national media (print media, television). Facebook, Twitter, and other internet media are not automatically Europe-wide: they work globally, they work nationally, and they can work Europe-wide. For the moment, the situation is in flux, making prognoses difficult. European identity requires a European demos and Europe-wide media. A third factor is similarly important, namely, European memory. Although the “European inheritance” is frequently invoked in political discourses, this inheritance is characterized more by diversity and divergence than by unity and common history. The memory of the national past carries greater weight than a shared European memory, although some significant common categories exist: the largest shared experience was that of the Nazi occupation and dictatorship, but until today it has only seemed possible to commemorate this period and the end of World War II in a national context, not in a European manner. This pertains not only to the commemoration of national suffering but also to the way European nations have commemorated the

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Holocaust.218 Specifically for the Holocaust, the EU and the European Parliament have set initiatives for common commemoration and education in schools. Another category pertains to the former colonial powers and their experience of the wars of decolonization. But rarely did this comprise a common Western European experience, nor can I see anything with regard to decolonialization that merits the term “commemoration,” not even at the national level, never mind the European level. A third group and category consists of the post-communist or transformation states of the former eastern bloc. But any expectation that these states would view their communist or socialist past under Soviet domination as a common past has been disappointed. The reason probably is that, even as the concept of identity has remained a national one, people have not considered this shared legacy derived from Soviet domination to be a genuine part of their nation’s history. Finally, one could imagine the Inner Six forming a commemoration area or category. But since this would be counterproductive, the founding events of the present EU are jointly commemorated by all member states, as occurred in 2007 (fiftieth anniversary of the treaties of Rome). Although European integration is generally presented and “commemorated” as the story of Europe’s success, it is difficult to imagine that it will form the future European master narrative that unifies national memories and commemorative attitudes.

V The EU’s identity policy, pursued at the theoretical level since 1973, has turned increasingly toward the assumed commonalities in European history and culture, the so-called cultural inheritance, calling for the creation of a European memory and the formulation and propagation of common values.219 Strictly speaking, Europe’s identity is again being situated in “European culture,” although today’s concept of culture has undergone a shift in meaning compared to that of the Enlightenment. Following from Max Weber, culture is today defined semiotically: culture means everything that symbolically expresses the giving of meaning, the creation of sense and meaning, and the goals of certain human communities. This is a very open formulation of the concept of culture, placing less importance on overall unity and uniformity and allowing instead for variation to the extent that coherence can still be created and maintained. It is about coherence in diversity, and not nearly so much about being united in diversity, as the EU’s motto rather unsuitably puts it.

218 See the synthesis by Stefan Troebst, Gemeinschaftsbildung durch Geschichtspolitik? Anläufe der Europäischen Union zur Stiftung einer erinnerungsbasierten Bürgeridentität, in: Fröhlich, Schmid and Schwelling (eds.), 25 Jahre europäische Wende, Stuttgart 2014, 15–41. 219 This sub-chapter has been first published: A history of European identity. euro/topics, (published December 2008).

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Coherence undoubtedly represents a possibility, a form through which identity can be realized. To accept diversity as something specifically European, to generate as much coherence as possible, and to seek as much unity as necessary—it is within this triangle that the European identity of the developing European demos will take shape. For the present, we need to emphasize the practical relevance of realizing a European identity; for both the notion of the Christian commonwealth and the notion of Europe as culture (in the Enlightenment sense of the word) remained mere imaginings and could always stay that way. However, as a framework and, if necessary, as an expression of European unity, the EU should be seen in terms of praxeology, that is, rationally and in terms of logical decision-making. It represents a real practical framework within which diversity and coherence can be realized. This poses anew the problem of performativity: The identity policy of the EU seems to be inspired by the tradition of collective historical performative speech acts. As I explained in the first chapter, the feasibility of such acts is now in doubt.

CHAPTER V TOWARDS POST-PERFORMATIVITY I The feeling that we are living in “post” period seems to have existed for a long time now. This is basically nothing new, for the period after the Second World War has long been called the “postwar period.” As a proper name, “postwar period” also refers only to this postwar period. The idea was recapitulated by the term “postCold War.” The most comprehensive term is “postmodern.” Often, writers have described (and still describe) the “end” of something dominant: as early as 1960, the now deceased Daniel Bell wrote about the The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties.1 Most well-known is surely Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1992); the title of the German translation (1992) asks the question: “where do we stand?” But Lutz Niethammer already wrote Posthistoire: Ist die Geschichte zu Ende? in 1989 (English translation published in 1992). All of these works have also been strongly contested, for there is no consensus. Yet even so, one gains the strong impression that we are experiencing a post-period, even according to the estimation of scholarly authors. To be sure, “post” emphasizes the reference to what (presumably) previously existed and posits a comparison. But “post” is contemplated in terms that are strongly dependent on what (presumably) came before. By comparison, the notion of “end” seems more radical. The historiography about Europe has refined these concepts. Metaphorically, one can apply the notion of “episodic historiographical narratives” elaborated by Peter Pichler (see chapter 2) to today’s situation. This approach is reinforced by the valorization of subjectively lived, experienced, and interpreted history/histories, a feature of much historical scholarship for a number of decades (see chapter 2). We find ourselves in a “post” in the sense of a “post-master narrative,” with the impossibility of representing the present in a master narrative reflecting back on the interpretation of the past. The retrospective understanding of the past by means of master narratives seems to be a less and less meaningful option for historical understanding. The same applies to memory. There is no unified memory ensconcing itself in Europe. The culture of memory and memorialization is developing in very different ways, for reasons that are very much connected to the twentieth century and its history of violence.

1

First edition Glencoe 1960, 2. rev. ed. New York 1962. Numerous later editions. Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology. On the exhaustion of political ideas in the Fifties, Glencoe 1960.

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II The traditional iconography of Lady Europe may not be dead, but it is severely atrophied and irrelevant. That is, it no longer offers any starting point or point of departure for significance and meaning. Europe is no longer a woman; but it is also not necessarily a man, even though, particularly in postwar caricatures, Europe is often visualized as male politicians.2 The use of specific pictures or icons is not based on coincidence but rather transports an often subconscious cultural subtext, as in the case of the iconography depicting Europe, which in its mutability formed part of the heterosexual-patriarchal speech act during antiquity and part of the heterosexual-masculine hegemonic speech act during the eighteenth century. Even though the gender hierarchy still functions in lifeworld practices, it has in many cases been ruptured and is giving way to a different understanding of gender relations, one that furthermore does not remain bound by a heterosexual model but is accepting same-sex relationships as well as trans- and intersexuality. Hence, the historical referentiality between Lady Europe and de facto male rule, which had been assimilated by society’s heterosexual standardization since antiquity, has ceased. There is a photo of Conchita Wurst (Austrian winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2014), who in October 2014, at the invitation of the Austrian Green party, gave a concert before the European Parliament in Brussels: this photo appropriately visualizes the difference of the present compared to the past in the context of my subject, namely, to reiterate: the end of the historical referentiality between Lady Europe and de facto male rule, which had been assimilated by society’s heterosexual standardization since antiquity. The transvestite Conchita Wurst is—the photographer has captured this3—Europe. Europe no longer has an unequivocal gender. This applies at the iconographic/metaphorical level as well as in society and at the level of language: idiomatic turns of phrase with clear masculine connotations are being deconstructed, their use appearing out of place because they are often sexist. Hence, the identity of the homo europaeus, which played such a surprisingly prominent role in the Europe debates from the 1940s to 1960s, has likewise become obsolete. If we look at the weakening identification of Europe and Christianity and the retreat of racist conceptions of humanity, it becomes evident that the elements that comprised the performative act of “Eurocentrism” in the second half of the eighteenth century are being lost. And many people no longer share the understanding that the culture is masculine and only males are actors.

2

3

Angelika Schwingshackl, Zwölf Sterne über Österreich – Auf der Suche nach europäischer Identität in politischen Karikaturen im Rahmen der EU-Beitrittsverhandlungen, master‘s thesis University of Vienna 2014. .

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III At this point it makes sense to return to the original connection that led to the theory of the performative speech act. Performative speech acts pertain to naming, gender identity, marital status, etc. The lifeworld has changed so much that these performative speech acts could lose/are losing their performative character: it still remains difficult to change one’s gender if one rejects the gender that was originally “brought to awareness” in the typical performative speech act, but at least in some parts of Europe it has become possible and relatively easier than before. Previously common and unavoidable speech acts—for example, in connection with one’s acceptance by a religious community, the act of marriage, etc.—are implemented less frequently because one no longer needs to belong to a religious community (such belonging is guided during childhood by the parents’ conduct and later by self-determination), because one no longer needs to marry, and so on. Admittedly, naming remains a performative speech act, but less and less does it bring about an awareness of identity. In Europe, biblical and saints’ names still account for most names, but less and less do they in fact refer to biblical figures and saints as models to emulate or live by. Less and less do they evoke kinship relationships; more and more, newly invented names are bestowed that no longer possess any historical dimension and therefore no longer transport any identity that obtains first outside the person’s Self but is then given to that person through the speech act. Performative speech acts continue to exist as shells, but they are becoming more and more depleted. To be sure, this is an uneven process; thus, in Greece, bestowing a first name that refers to an ancient mythological or historical hero can indeed still signify this reference, which can also be taken very seriously by the person who bears the name.4 Social and cultural circumstances have developed such that fewer collective texts (on the concept of text, see chapter 1) are being written. Instead, the number of texts that only pronounce something about individual people—because they are being produced solely by individuals—is rapidly increasing. Web 2.0’s so-called social media intensifies this effect, because, through one’s own independent effort, one can create and launch a successful video, sketch, or musical composition, etc. (these are all texts about one’s self, in a certain sense textual selfies) on YouTube or elsewhere that can lead to fame and sometimes even wealth; previously such success would only have been possible with the support of many suitably organized persons and institutions/firms, as well the acceptance of a feudalistic system of tributary subjection. Moreover, this has become just as possible for women as it is for men—this means that the essentialist connection between males, culture, and agency produced by the concept and practice of hegemonic masculinity is being dissolved here as well. Many digital memory and memorial projects are explicitly calling for individual texts that stand independently but are simultaneously linked to others through the project’s website.

4

Verbal information from Kerstin Poehls 18 October 2014 within the context of a conference at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen (KWI).

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Hypertexts are undoubtedly still being created, but the linked texts are infinitely more numerous and smaller; it is becoming more difficult or impossible to implement a performative speech act in this dense “undergrowth.” The (European) world is “messier” and more difficult to “tidy up.” In the course of de facto globalization, the eighteenth century’s performative act of “Eurocentrism” is also losing its efficacy, because it is no longer affirmed by realities. Much in the culture is global, or in any event not solely European (anymore). The fractures that exist in Europe—in the vernacular sense of the European continent—do not only amount in positive terms to diversity; rather, because they are fractures, they amount in negative terms to the opposite of unity, which makes the reference to a European culture seem inaccurate. After 1989, the political division between East and West paradoxically transformed into a cultural divide that cannot be concealed by the membership of 28 states in the European Union. Traditional controversial questions—is Russia European? is Turkey European?—have become virulent once again and evade definitive answers. The conflict in the Ukraine raises a similar question: how European is the Ukraine? The Europeanness5 of Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova und Transnistria is not clear but rather a point of contention. The Greek debt crisis and the way it has been handled has led to a penetrating scrutiny of Greece, likewise raising the question of Greece’s Europeanness with regard to this “cradle” or “root” of Europe. Claus Leggewie and Anne Lang quite appropriately entitled their still current book as follows: “The Struggle for European Memory: A Battlefield Visited.” 6 Directly compared with the ideas about Europe held by the European speaker collective of the eighteenth century, today there seems to be a loss of links between cultural texts. The mobility and migration of people are increasing, facilitated by the diminishing utility of stable ties and loyalties (Richard Sennett)7. This development is dissolving socioeconomic and cultural ties and has accompanied a shift of competencies and options for action to the individual, although this shift has not rendered the individual more autonomous and free. In part, this has involved an electronic or digital virtualization of the lived world, which has gone hand-in-hand with an obvious impoverishment of the sociocultural environment and social competence. The time of Europe plans8 has passed. With regard to the content of such plans, this need not be bad, but it is a symptom of the disappearance of the European speaker collective, which for the early stages of European integration after the Second World War could still be ascertained by studying Europe projects and plans. 5 6 7 8

On the notion of “Europeanness” see Wolfgang Schmale: Europäizität. In: Wolfgang Schmale, Blog „Mein Europa“, (published 15 December 2015). Claus Leggewie and Anne Lang, Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung. Ein Schlachtfeld wird besichtigt, Munich 2010. Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character. The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism, New York/London 1998. On Europe plans see Wolfgang Schmale: Terror, Flüchtlinge, Ukraine: Würde ein „Europaplan“ helfen?. In: Wolfgang Schmale: Blog „Mein Europa“ (published 18 November 2015).

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The easiest way to sociologically describe this collective would be to identify the authors of such projects and plans and their interrelationships all the way to the local level. But with regard to the current situation of the last two or three decades, this form of approach has long since ceased to offer any promise. At best, we encounter very diverse and numerous speaker collectives pursuing disparate and sometimes contrary ideas of Europe. Symptomatic too is the lack of intellectual figureheads, which refers back to the vanishing European speaker collective. This is not to say that audible voices like that of Jürgen Habermas do not exist, but they do not comprise the resounding polyphonic chorus of a European speaker collective. Rather, they are solitary voices. The “EU” claims to be “Europe.” However, this comes up against the facts, for there are more broadly conceived and institutionally supported conceptions of Europe—for example, in the form of the Council of Europe. The EU is also not greeted with unanimous affirmation, for there are many EU opponents and EU skeptics. The United Kingdom is pushing for a different EU limited to guaranteeing free trade. There is no chance for the statement “the EU is Europe” to become a successful performative act. The present is a time when links between texts are being lost. This can also been discerned, for example, in how EU members treat each other with regard to commitments that they have actually made regarding collective action and the adherence to jointly established rules. The retreat to the space of national (France, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Poland, etc.) or regional (Scotland, Catalonia, etc.) texts is manifest. Despite joint resolutions on sanctions, the attitudes of EU members toward Russia are by no means unified. Yet historical performative speech acts— implemented not by individual persons but rather by a European speaker collective—require shared interests among the speakers, otherwise the performative act fails. As already established, no such collective currently exists. To be sure, if we view the societies of Europe in structural terms, we can follow Hartmut Kaeble9 and talk about European society in the singular. But this society does not constitute a demos or a speaker collective; there is no European public10 that can be addressed, that can be “made aware” of an (imputed) identity by means of a performative act. In the eighteenth century, the speaker collective and the European public were still largely identical (the Republic of Letters in the broad sense of the term); today this is out of the question. This long list of obstacles to a new performative act similar to that of the eighteenth century implies no value judgment. It is also not supposed to become a culturally pessimistic litany. The effect of performative speech acts requires that the

9

Hartmut Kaelble, Auf dem Weg zu einer europäischen Gesellschaft. Eine Sozialgeschichte Westeuropas 1880–1980, Munich 1987; Hartmut Kaelble, Sozialgeschichte Europas 1945 bis zur Gegenwart, Munich 2007. 10 More optimistic perspectives are provided by: Robert Frank et al (eds.), Building a European Public Sphere. From the 1950s to the present = Un espace public européen en construction. Des années 1950 à nos jours, Brussels 2010.

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society in which the act is implemented thinks in essentialist terms, that the concept of identity is an essentialist concept. This no longer applies in the present. Societies are multicultural, functioning by virtue of “measures and rules that are sensitive to difference.” 11 Rightwing and extreme right parties or fundamentalist groupings adhere to essentialist conceptions of society and culture and therefore vehemently oppose multiculturalism, even in the midst of the current (2015) refugee crisis. Although they can thereby foment conflict and violence, they are standing on the losing side. They are misjudging the course of history. Essentialisms held as true have been deconstructed and revealed to be social constructs that can admittedly lay claim to validity but not to truth. In the process, important preconditions for the success of performative acts have ceased to exist, which inevitably leads to the conclusion that we live in a post-performative time. But what exactly does this mean? The answer depends on whether performative phases can be followed by nonperformative phases until a performative phase reoccurs. In this case, the present would be not-performative rather than post-performative, for, as in the expression postmodern, post-performative means something irreversible. Both concepts expressly do not refer back to the image of ebb and flow that is occasionally invoked for European history. The key, in my opinion, lies in the connection established in antiquity between the performative act and gender. We are dealing with a heterosexually connoted performative act emplaced at end of a transformation from partially egalitarian/matrifocal/male-warrior societies to a patriarchal model of society. The performative act of the eighteenth century retained this connection, but intensifying it and sharply realigning it toward heterosexual-hegemonic masculine connotations. Heterosexuality was conceived in essentialist terms. Connoted in heterosexual-essentialist terms, this performative act was reflected into consciousness, on the one hand, by the image of Lady Europe (insofar as it referred to mythical Europe), eroticized and naked in art well into the twentieth century; and, on the other hand, by the saturation of public space with countless male figures, many of them nude and therefore especially efficacious. This reflection (understood in Lacan’s terms) began in antiquity; it continued with the Christian adaptation of the Europe myth in the later Middle Ages; it intensified to almost extreme levels in the Florentine Renaissance, elaborated in a most exemplary fashion in Italy and then coming to be deployed throughout Europe during the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century (see chapter 4, case study II). However, for a number of decades now, heterosexuality and essentialism have both been subject to a fiercely debated process of deconstruction, which has rendered them useless as a basis for a new historical performative act. What worked since the first millennium before Christ (or even longer) has stopped working. Evidently, it no longer depends on “knowing” what Europe is—something that for the longest time was brought to awareness in the performative speech act that claimed 11 Volker M. Heins, Der Skandal der Vielfalt. Geschichte und Konzepte des Multikulturalismus, Frankfurt on the Main 2013, 12.

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indubitable certainty. As mentioned earlier in the first chapter, this has opened a vacuum of meaning that is being filled by authoritarian politicians, developing into a “battleground” of extremely contrary interests and objectives. A single keyword—European IS warriors—is enough to expose the entire drama. Perhaps the “swindle” went on too long? In case study III.2 and IV (chapter 4), I have tried to show how the postwar period uncritically took up with the Enlightenment (or elements thought at the time to be properly attributed to the Enlightenment), thereby adopting the entire ineffable context of hegemonic masculinity that had subsumed the concepts of culture and civilization, together with all of the consequences, including the obligations of the European civilizing mission—and this after two world wars. The criticism of the Enlightenment—credibly exemplified by Horkheimer and Adorno12—failed to penetrate. The chance to end the “swindle” was there; it was not taken. We must accept the fact that, unlike before, a collective historical performative speech act can no longer be successful; it cannot be recovered, nor can this situation be changed through a collective act of will. We need to recall that such a performative act ultimately is and must be a “swindle.”

IV Post-performative therefore means that the time of the “swindle” is over. Not so much because we have become so enlightened but because a very longue durée is coming to an end. The establishment of a patriarchal societal configuration—occurring between presumably 3000 and 500 years before Christ and remaining in effect or consequential until the contemporary era—amounted to a “victory” of the masculine and patriarchal principle over the Great Goddess or Great Mother (the latter had various names). Incidentally, this is precisely the story told by the Europe myth in conjunction with other myths (Françoise Gange13). For a long time now, we have been encountering ancient myths in smoothed out form. Researchers of mythology have deconstructed these smoothed out versions, dissecting them into their temporal levels. Roughly put, these myths narrate a historical transformation that occurred from approximately 5,000/3,000 B.C.E. to approximately 500 B.C.E and resulted in the formation of an extremely patriarchal societal form. The Europe myth, too, is part of this story—the myths basically form a single great narrative— and narrates this transformation. It does not narrate the transformation directly; instead, the story emerges from the reconstruction of the temporal narrative levels and symbolic levels, including their reinterpretations and changes. Just as the male and sexually lustful god Zeus “conquers” Europe, so the myths construe the historical course of world as the result of interwoven masculine heroic deeds and masculine rulership. In the “real lifeworld,” masculinity conquers and rules Europe. 12 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, New York 1972. 13 Françoise Gange, Le Mythe d’Europe dans la grande histoire. Du mythe au continent, Tournai 2004.

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If one follows Françoise Gange and dissects the ancient myths into their narrative, thematic, and pictorial components and allocates them to the various temporal levels from which they derive, then the seemingly smooth story that appears in Ovid and other ancient authors dissolves. The Europe myth ceases to “tell” a simple, well-fabricated story that serves as entertainment but instead reveals a painful and violent story about the establishment of masculine dominance throughout the entire lifeworld. This dominance remains in place for a very long time: Europe is a woman; the lifeworld is male dominated. Both refer to each performatively for almost two and half thousand years, whereby one also needs to consider the shift from the heterosexual-patriarchal to heterosexual-masculine hegemonic connotation. The performative act was carried out visually and textually, above all through the practices of everyday life. The myth consists of a multitude of narrative levels originating in time from approximately 3000 to 500 B.C.E. and intermingling during this long period. The core of the myth constitutes a statement about real history, for it renders an account of the change to a male dominated society. The paired figures of the woman and steer refer to an early time when the relationship between the two was structured differently than it appears in the narrative of Europe who is seduced by the steer and basically raped. As assumed on the basis of numerous archeological findings that in part reach back to Stone Age, the Great Goddess was assigned an animal (steer, horse, or lion, etc.) that she rode and/or led. The Great Goddess also appeared as a holy cow. This relationship was mirrored “on earth”: in a matrifocal society, where high priestesses served the Great Mother, the former took young men for “one” year or a “great year” (= multiple years, four or eight) as (royal) spouses. In ceremonies, both wore animal masks—the chosen man wore a steer mask, for example. The priestess and steer-spouse married. After the (great) year had passed, the young man was sacrificed and born again as an oracle snake that was kept and cared for in the temple. In the myths, the roles are reversed. When Theseus, Europe’s brother, sacrifices a (holy) cow, he basically goes against the Great Goddess and powerfully demonstrates the changed circumstances; when Hercules kills the white steer with which Pasiphae—the daughter of the sun and wife of the son of Europe and Zeus—begets Minos the Minotaur out of wedlock, he once again destroys the symbol of the Great Goddess and her animal, the steer. And so on!14 The change in gender relations toward male dominance is already documented by the emergence of male gods and finally the supreme god Zeus. Antiquity’s abundant visualizations of men and masculinity were an expression of the change reported in the myth. They start proliferating in the seventh/sixth century B.C.E. Thus, when we discuss the visualization of men and masculinity in public space, we need to understand that we are talking about the continually repeated perpetuation and confirmation of a trajectory in European history established in antiquity.

14 Here I am adopting the argument of F. Gange, because I find persuasive due to the many archeological finds that it cites.

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This occurred in connection with the invention of the alphabet and the increased role of writing in culture, which is the main subject of Christina von Braun’s Versuch über den Schwindel, referred to in chapter 1. Whether one considers the development of the Greek letter alpha “α,” or the importance for Jewish men of the ability to read and write, or the significance of Christ, the Son of God, as word become flesh in Christianity, or even Islam: Braun argues that writing and the culture of writing is part of masculinity everywhere, specifically, in the key cultural area of religion. Religion also stands behind the development of Alpha. With regard to the meaning of the letter Alpha, Christina von Braun draws upon Alfred Kallir’s study Sign and Design.15 Kallir began his work in the middle of the Second World War in London and Oxford, publishing his study of the “psychogenetic” foundations of all the letters of the alphabet in 1961. Only now is his approach enjoying a broader reception. In 1994, for example, it was translated into Italian; in 2002, into German. The study focuses on the Greek and Latin alphabet, while at the same time taking into account historical connections and parallel developments between the languages of the Indo-European language groups. At times, Kallir reaches out more broadly still (native American pictograms). According to his analysis, all letters developed in close connection with conventional male-female relationships; this development was dependent on a lifeworld where the house, human being, animals and agriculture, conflict, birth, etc. constituted the most essential fields of reference. A tripartite division into microcosm, macrocosm (first and third group of letters), and the world in between (middle group of letters) played a role in the sequence of the letters, which among others things referenced the house and womb. The first group of letters follows an extensively male point of view: The first eight letters of our alphabet form a procession, telling a clear tale: Man, the creator of the script system, places his self-portrait at the head of the procession:―A. He meets woman; there follow indications of lips and kiss and the outstanding part of hers, the bosom: ―B. His eye glides further down from her breasts, to the womb: ―C. Now the penetration is indicated by the insertion of the cross-stroke into the cavity: ―there arises G. The blessed state of the growing womb is depicted: ―D. Follows the birth process: ―E.; and the arrival of the child: ―Digamma = F. The multiplicity of the offspring is shown by those F-signs with several crossstrokes, Polygamma, denoting the h-sound. Finally, that design is replaced by that of man who throws his arms up to heaven, man jubilant, man offering thanks to heaven for the rich progeny bestowed upon him: ―H.16

We cannot trace and discuss the Kallir’s “chain of evidence” in detail here. We accept his results. In principle, his story of the alphabet tells the same story as the myths, even though Kallir does not go into the mythological narrative. Christina von Braun adds the development of religious culture as a third strand. The name Europe, according to one variant among the different answers regarding the name’s origins, could have been the name of the Great Goddess or that of a high priestess of the Great Mother/ Goddess. Using the example of Moses, 15 Alfred Kallir, Sign and Design. The psychogenetic source of the alphabet, London 1961. 16 Kallir, Sign and Design, 228.

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Sigmund Freud masterfully demonstrated how figures and memories telescope, a process that produced the familiar figure of “Moses.”17 A similar process might have occurred with regard to Europe. However, the established patriarchal societal configuration did not abandon this history but rather affixed it to Lady Europe and mirrored the latter. In antiquity, bridal presents were adorned with the figure of Europe, for example; early-modern rulers arranged for the pictorial programs of their weddings or ceremonial processions to express the idea that the exalted lord was taking Europe as his wife (for example, the wedding of Charles II of Inner Austria with Maria Anna of Bavaria; the wedding of Frederick V, the elector of the Palatinate and so-called Winter King of Bohemia with Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of the English king; Louis XIV; William of Orange).18 The family register of the Bohemian nobleman Vacláv Berka z Dubé (1554–1600) contains a drawing by (presumably) Kašpar Melchior Žerotin that depicts Europe on the steer, above it a Latin adage stating that Amor compels even the wise to foolishness. The sexual reference is clear: the figure of Europe stands for love, eroticism, and sex.19 The Enlightenment abrogated this peculiar “balance”—which in fact reflected a megatransformation of the Bronze Age and antiquity—in favor of self-sufficient hegemonic masculinity, one that was excessively amplified in a most lethal manner during the first half of the twentieth century. That is the longue durée that is coming to an end. One might want to say: good! But that is not the point. The point is, first, that this is how it is, and, second, that there is a historical vacuum. It is no longer possible to “engender an awareness” of an identity in a performative act.

V The feeling of being “lost in cyberspace” sets in by this point at the latest. If, with regard to Europe, it is no longer possible to implement a performative act that, with the claim of indubitable certainty, engenders an awareness of an imputed identity, then the problem shifts permanently to the future. We now need to learn how to contemplate Europe’s situation with methods that differ from the ones we usually use. The performativity and gender approach is an option that leads to the result outlined here, namely, a post-performative Europe. Consequently, other solutions 17 Sigmund Freud, Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion, Frankfurt on the Main 1939/2001; see also: Jan Assmann, Moses der Ägypter. Entzifferung einer Gedächtnisspur, 4th ed., Frankfurt on the Main 2003; Wolfgang Schmale, Die aktuelle Theoriediskussion der Geschichtswissenschaften und Freuds Mann Moses, in: Eveline List (ed.), Der Mann Moses und die Stimme des Intellekts. Geschichte, Gesetz und Denken in Sigmund Freuds historischem Roman, Innsbruck/Vienna/Bozen 2008, 97–109. 18 For details see Wolfgang Schmale, Europa, Braut der Fürsten, in: Klaus Bußmann and Elke Anna Werner (eds.), Europa im 17. Jahrhundert. Ein politischer Mythos und seine Bilder, Stuttgart 2004, 241–267. 19 Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, Sign. Cod. Guelf. 210.2. Extravagantes; fig. in: Schmale, Geschichte und Zukunft, 2008, p. 43.

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need to be found. We should place fewer hopes in new political figureheads. We should not wait as intently for the great idea of Europe. Instead we should situate ourselves in the real world of the hypertext that steadfastly evades the single great interpretation and can no longer be brought to awareness as European identity by means of a collective performative speech act. The supposedly strong men and women who wield or strive for power—Kaczyński, Orbán, Putin, Marine Le Pen, Erdoǧan, and others—will fail, even if they momentarily give the impression that they control the situation or could do so if they were in power. The post-performative situation will be stronger. It is symptomatic that the repression of homosexuality and same-sex partnerships or marriages is especially important to these men and women: as declared homophobes, they want to force history back into a channel that it has left. This has already proven to be a process accompanied by violence (physical and mental violence), and the violence will further increase. These rulers have recognized the connection between the performative act and gender in a very specific way; that is why the repression of non-heterosexual life practices is so important to them. There is a reason why I have focused on two very fundamental collective historical speech acts: regardless of how many “roots” and origins one might like to allocate to Europe, “Europe” as we understand it today in the era of EU did not exist in antiquity. The desire to ascribe the longest possible history to today’s Europe is understandable but dubious from a scholarly perspective. One can, however, identify the homocentric performative act in the ancient world, which became part of the foundation of what would later be called European history and culture. This performative act underwent its renaissance—as did many other things—during the Renaissance, when it became customary among the period’s most powerful rulers to “take Europe as a bride.” In the European speech act of the eighteenth century, this was altered and intensified along masculine-hegemonic lines. For a number of decades now, this intensification has being incrementally reduced and eliminated. If there is a “red thread” in European history, then this is it: the thread that leads from the practice of the homocentric speech act of antiquity to the practice of the masculine-hegemonic Eurocentric speech act of the eighteenth century, from there to the beginning of the last third of the twentieth century and finally into the postperformative present. The decisive moment in recent European history is marked by deconstruction. The deconstruction approach is strongly associated with Jacques Derrida, thus at the same time with the early 1960s. But Derrida did not invent deconstruction ex nihilo. In any case, the approach and attitude of deconstruction constituted a new phenomenon in European history that led toward postmodernity. In chapter 1 I wrote: “The theoretical sentence, ‘performative acts engender an awareness of “Europe” in that transcultural hypertext that is designated “European history,”’ does not claim to explain every history in Europe, for not every history in Europe is also European history. This distinction needs to be made.” Deconstruction works in opposition to the form of speech that resides in the performative act, inhibiting it. It is still possible to “engender an awareness of Europe”? No— not insofar as this engendering of awareness consists of a performative act.

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Processes of coherence formation operate within the transcultural hypertext. Seen in such a way as a nexus of meaning and significance, Europe constitutes something that is very much processual. This does not entail a renunciation of binding common values or joint objectives, but these cannot be convincing or achievable unless, first, the existence of the many individual texts within the hypertext is recognized and accepted, and, second, the focus shifts toward the processual production of coherence between the texts. This is far more difficult than launching projects such as “a constitution for Europe” or the “United States of Europe.” There are reasons why these projects failed (the 1980s and 1990s featured the development of a certain predilection for the slogan “project Europe”), for they were too greatly subject to the paradigm of unity to be able to meet requirements of the postperformative situation. They basically still speculated on the feasibility of a performative act.

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ABSTRACTS DEUTSCHE ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Die meisten Darstellungen der europäischen Geschichte folgen einem quasi biografischen Schema. Es ist von der „Geburt Europas“, von Europas Wurzeln etc. die Rede. Ohne allzu sehr simplifizieren zu wollen wird im Allgemeinen davon ausgegangen, dass Europa seit der Antike durch die Kumulierung und Fortsetzung von verschiedenen Entwicklungen entstanden ist. Das meint teilweise die „Idee Europa“, teilweise aber auch die Kulturgeschichte, die politische Geschichte oder für das 20. Jahrhundert seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg die Integrationsgeschichte. Europa ist so gesehen ein Produkt der Geschichte, im Sinne von Kausalzusammenhängen, Ketten von Ursachen und Folgen, die zumeist als „Entwicklung“ oder „Veränderung“, als „Werden“, oder als bestimmte Prozesse wie „Modernisierung“ bezeichnet werden. Der Ansatz dieses Buches unterscheidet sich davon. Geschichte wird als HyperText verstanden, der aus zahllosen einzelnen miteinander oder nicht miteinander verknüpften Texten besteht. Text ist nicht wörtlich als geschriebener oder gedruckter Text zu verstehen, sondern im Sinne von Kultur als Text, Gesellschaft als Text, soziale Kollektive als Text. Ein Text enthält einen Sinn- und Bedeutungszusammenhang, der sich auf ein soziales und kulturelles Kollektiv bezieht. Wie groß dieses soziale Kollektiv ist, ist nicht festlegbar. Es kann von einer Kleingruppe bis zu den großen Gesellschaftsformationen des Staates oder noch größer reichen. Selbst Individuen, die wegen einer Funktion, die sie ausüben (König/in, Präsident/in usw.), mit sehr viel Bedeutung aufgeladen sind, die sie als Person übersteigt und auf ein soziales Kollektiv gerichtet ist, können als Text fungieren. Die Historiografie ist nicht die einzige Instanz, aber doch eine wichtige, die solche Texte als zusammenhängend deutet und dadurch oftmals Identitäten behauptet wie die Nation, den Nationalstaat und die Nationalkultur. Nach heutigem Verständnis liegt die Aufgabe der Historiografie aber wo anders, einmal in der Dekonstruktion solcher Identitäten, und zum zweiten in der Analyse, die nicht zugleich Sinnstifterin ist, wie es in der Hochzeit des Nationalismus der Fall gewesen war. Gegenstand der Analyse und der Dekonstruktion ist die Konstruktion oder Erfindung von Sinn durch soziale Kollektive. Mag der einzelne Text mehr als nur eine Sinndeutung, eine Konstruktion von Sinn sein, so sind die Deutungen der verknüpften Texte als z. B. Nation oder noch Größeres Konstruktionen oder Erfindungen. Die vielen kleinen Texte werden nicht mehr wahrgenommen, sondern als ein einziger umfassender Text gesehen, der neben anderen steht, wie es sich im Begriff der Zivilisationen oder Kulturen oder noch deutlicher im Begriff des „Kulturkreises“ vollzieht.

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Der Ansatz dieses Buches besteht darin, die einzelnen Texte wieder zu sehen und ihnen nicht einfach, einer historiografischen Gewohnheit folgend, einen einheitlichen Sinn einzulegen. Ein Hyper-Text hat für sich keinen Einheitssinn, sondern den erhält er durch „Sprechakte“, deren Ergebnisse uns als Sinndeutungen und Konstruktionen oder Erfindungen wieder entgegentreten. „Europa“ wird verstanden als Name eines Hyper-Textes, dessen ‚Ausdehnung‘ im Grunde ungewiss ist. Die Sinnkonstruktion des Namens erfolgt durch historische kollektive performative Sprechakte, das heißt nicht allgemein durch „Sprechakte“, sondern mittels eines ganz bestimmten Typs, den performativen Sprechakt. Während der performative Sprechakt nach Austin und anderen in der Regel durch Individuen getätigt wird, aber einen bestimmten sozialen Zusammenhang voraussetzt, sind historische kollektive performative Sprechakte solche, die durch ein größeres soziales Kollektiv getätigt werden in mehr als nur einem einzigen Sprechakt. Gemeinsam ist beiden Sprechaktsituationen, dass sie performativ sind, also eine Identität vermeintlich nur zur Kenntnis bringen, indem diese ausgesprochen wird, wissenschaftlich betrachtet jedoch eine Identität konstruieren, begründen, zuweisen. Dieser konzeptuelle Ansatz, der im 1. Kapitel dargelegt wird, besitzt einen grundsätzlichen, das heißt daher auch epochenunspezifischen Anspruch, wird im vorliegenden Buch aber vor allem in Bezug auf die Neuzeit verwendet. Im 18. Jahrhundert kam es zu einem historischen kollektiven performativen Sprechakt, der sich sinngemäß wie folgt paraphrasieren lässt: Du, Europa, bist die höchstentwickelte Zivilisation/Kultur der Erde. Das Sprecher(innen)kollektiv, das den performativen Sprechakt tätigte, kann mithilfe des zeitgenössischen Begriffs der République des lettres benannt werden. Am deutlichsten fassbar wird der Sprechakt in den Menschheitsgeschichten (Universalgeschichten, Zivilisations- oder Kulturgeschichten), deren Zahl seit der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts stetig zunahm. Er findet sich in vielen anthropologischen Schriften, in Reise- und Expeditionsberichten, überall dort, wo sich Gelegenheiten ergaben, Europa mit nicht-europäischen Regionen zu vergleichen. Es kann leicht übersehen werden, dass sich der Singular in Kultur bzw. Zivilisation nicht von selber versteht, sondern erst im 18. Jahrhundert manifest wurde. In der europäischen Kultur, so die Annahme, drückte sich der größte Fortschritt des menschlichen Geistes aus, während dieser in anderen Kulturen (Erdteilen) noch nicht so weit entwickelt sei. Diese Auffassung von Menschheitsgeschichte setzte sich bei den Aufklärern an die Stelle des älteren heilsgeschichtlichen Modells, das zwar bis ins 19. Jahrhundert weiterhin seine Anhänger fand, ohne den Mainstream zu bedeuten. Der Sprechakt war folglich ausgesprochen eurozentrisch; außerdem war er hegemonialmännlich. Im Geschlechtermodell des späten 18. Jahrhunderts spielte das System der Zuordnungen eine entscheidende Rolle: So wurden Mann und Kultur bzw. Frau und Natur zusammengeordnet, der Mann galt der Zeit als kultureller Akteur. Die Gesellschaftsordnung wurde hegemonialmännlich gedacht und Schritt für Schritt umgeformt. Hegemonialmännlich bedeutet gleichzeitig, dass ein Idealtypus des Männlichen imaginiert wurde, von dem Männer in ihrem Leben nur bedingt

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abweichen konnten oder durften, um nicht als „weibisch“ und unmännlich dem anderen Geschlecht zugerechnet und aus dem eigenen ausgeschlossen zu werden. Diese prinzipiell bekannte Entwicklung trifft im späteren 18. Jahrhundert auf das eurozentrische Denken und Handeln und auf die Imagination Europas als eine Kultur (im Singular). Der kulturelle Akteur der Kultur Europa ist männlich – der homo europaeus. Den hier sehr knapp zusammengefassten Aspekten wird im Buch in den Kapiteln 2 und 3 nachgegangen. Das zweite Kapitel ist vollständig der Europahistoriografie von den Anfängen bis heute gewidmet. Dies dient der Einbettung der Menschheitshistoriografie der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts und der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, die am deutlichsten den performativen Sprechakt tätigte und bei der sich viele im Sprecherkollektiv der République des lettres exponierte Namen wie Voltaire oder Herder finden. Zugleich stellt das Kapitel den bisher wohl weitgehend singulären Versuch dar, die Europahistoriografie über mehrere Jahrhunderte im Zusammenhang auszubreiten. Das dritte Kapitel dreht sich um den historischen performativen Sprechakt des späteren 18. Jahrhunderts, der grundlegend für die Moderne wurde. Darum geht es im vierten Kapitel, das den historischen kollektiven performativen Sprechakt in verschiedenen Praktiken anhand einer Reihe von genaueren Fallstudien bis in die Gegenwart hinein untersucht. Grundlegend ist die Frage, wie weit die „Kultur Europa“ reichte: Dies wird anhand von Osteuropa (Ostmitteleuropa, Südosteuropa, Osteuropa im Sinne von Russland) untersucht. War Osteuropa Teil von Eurozentrismus? Die zweite Fallstudie fragt nach dem Geschlecht von Eurozentrismus und befasst sich mit dem homo europaeus im oben skizzierten Sinn. Der hegemonialmännliche Charakter des performativen Sprechakts bereitet sich schon in der Renaissance vor und hält bis in die Gegenwart an, in der er allerdings in die Defensive gerät. Ein wiederum wesentlicher Aspekt der „Kultur Europa“ ist die christliche Unterfütterung, die zwar auch in der Aufklärung ‚da ist‘, aber vor allem nach 1800 immer stärker den Kulturbegriff durchdringt. Innerhalb des ununterbrochen wiederholten performativen Sprechakts findet im 19. Jahrhundert eine Gewichtsverlagerung zugunsten des „christlichen“ in der europäischen Kultur statt, die im vorliegenden Buch als „christlicher Imperialismus“ bezeichnet wird. Untersucht wird dies am Fallbeispiel der Heiligen Allianz von 1815 und deren katalysatorischer Bedeutung für den christlichen Imperialismus. Dieser wird in einer anschließenden Fallstudie durch die Integrationsdiskurse der ersten beiden Jahrzehnte nach dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs hindurch verfolgt. Die dritte und dieses Thema abschließende (Teil-)Fallstudie analysiert die Verbindungen zwischen christlichem Imperialismus und Europäischer Identität bis in die 1970er-Jahre. Die Fallstudien des vierten Kapitels zeigen einerseits, inwieweit die, performativen Sprechakten inhärenten, Eigenschaften der Reiterativität, der Zitativität und Ritualität auf den hier behandelten historischen kollektiven performativen Sprechakt in der Moderne seit dem ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert zutreffen, andererseits, welche Verlagerungen innerhalb des Sprechakts stattfanden, ohne seine Natur grundlegend zu verändern.

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Im fünften und Schlusskapitel steht die Frage im Mittelpunkt, ob wir in einer „post-performativen“ Gegenwart leben, in der der historische Sprechakt seine Wirkung verfehlt bzw. nicht mehr oder immer weniger getätigt wird. Da jedweder performative Sprechakt die Intention hat, eine Identität zur Kenntnis zu bringen, kann er nur dann wirksam getätigt werden, wenn der stillschweigende gesellschaftliche Konsens über eine bestimmte Identität Bestand hat. Wenn sich die Ergebnisse sozialer Konstruktionsprozesse so stark ändern, dass bisher als unhintergehbar betrachtete Identitäten angezweifelt werden, büßen die entsprechenden performativen Sprechakte an Wirkung ein oder werden obsolet, befremdlich, unverständlich, folglich wirkungslos, bis sie einfach nicht mehr wiederholt werden. Keine der Identitätskomponenten des historischen performativen Sprechakts (Du, Europa, bist die höchstentwickelte Zivilisation/Kultur der Erde) gilt heute noch unbestritten: Kulturrelativismus, Hybridkulturen, kulturelle Globalisierung etc. entziehen dem eurozentrischen Kulturbegriff die Grundlage. Das hegemonialmännliche Geschlecht von Kultur, wie es seit der Aufklärung definiert wurde, wurde sozial dekonstruiert. Dasselbe gilt für die christliche Identitätskomponente, insbesondere in Bezug auf ihre Kombination mit dem Imperialismus. Am ehesten vermitteln die 2015 wieder stärker gewordenen Zweifel an der Europäizität Osteuropas den Eindruck einer gewissen Kontinuität. Das Problem reicht weiter: Ganz grundsätzlich zweifeln Gegenwartsgesellschaften am essentialistischen Charakter von „Identität“. Ein performativer Sprechakt bezieht sich jedoch ausschließlich auf Identitäten dieses Typs. Das fünfte Kapitel mündet in die Diagnose, dass wir uns in einer nicht-performativen Phase, womöglich tatsächlich in einer post-performativen Zeit oder Epoche befinden. Der historische kollektive performative Sprechakt des späten 18. Jahrhunderts brachte eine vermeintliche europäische Identität zur Kenntnis und behauptete diese als Bedeutung des historischen Hyper-Textes mit Namen Europa. Es scheint eindeutig zu sein, dass dies gegenwärtig nicht funktioniert. Es wird versucht über eine explizite oder mindestens implizite Gleichsetzung von Europäischer Union und Europa, doch scheitert diese regelmäßig. Es gilt sich auf eine Zeit einzurichten, in der kein kollektiver performativer Sprechakt eine europäische Identität zur Kenntnis bringt.1

1

Wie europäische Identität in der Gegenwart und Zukunft gedacht werden kann, habe ich in einem anderen Buch zu analysieren versucht: Geschichte und Zukunft der Europäischen Identität, Stuttgart 2008.

RÉSUMÉE FRANÇAIS

L’Europe n’est pas dans le sens ontologique, elle est le résultat d’une construction intellectuelle et collective. Cette construction est sociale, elle émane de l’activité intellectuelle d’une société européenne, d’une société que, en simplifiant un peu les choses, l’on peut considérer être transnationale. Cette société transnationale exerce la fonction d’un locuteur qui produit des actes performatifs de langage. Europe, c’est le résultat d’un tel acte locutoire performatif, exécuté par ce locuteur que constitue la société européenne. Ainsi pour le principe général. Un acte performatif de langage signifie beaucoup plus que ne le disent le nom d’Europe dans le sens géographique ou la représentation iconographique du continent par l’allégorie de la République chrétienne que nous a léguée l’humaniste Johannes Putsch, un proche du roi habsbourgeois Fernand Ier, frère de l’empereur Charles V., en 1537. La désignation d’Europe comme culture ou civilisation depuis la deuxième moitié du 18e siècle révèle une toute autre dimension. On peut répertorier les locuteurs actifs un peu à travers toute l’Europe. La base sociale de cette collectivité de locuteurs va s’amplifiant au cours des décennies jusque dans les années 1950/1960. On peut longuement discuter à partir de quel moment dans l’histoire il serait juste de parler de l’existence d’une société transnationale européenne qui constitue en même temps un collectif de locuteurs performatifs. L’hypothèse sous-jacente à ce livre porte que c’eût été le 18e siècle qui ait réuni tous les facteurs permettant la formation et l’activité d’un tel collectif et qui ait exécuté cet acte performatif de langage qui consistait à dire qu’Europe est une civilisation ou « Kultur » (selon les langues dans lesquelles s’exprimait l’acte locutoire performatif) au singulier. Le collectif a un nom – la « République des Lettres ». La notion de civilisation, ou de Kultur en Allemand, culture en Anglais, qui nous est toujours familier, devient ce récipient au singulier seulement au cours du 18e siècle. La catégorie du genre entre en jeu ici. Celui qui vit, incorpore et représente cette civilisation est l’homo europaeus. Ce fut Charles de Linné qui le nomma ainsi dans la première édition en Latin de son Systema Naturae (1735). La civilisation européenne est, dans l’acception du 18e et des siècles ensuivants, une civilisation mâle. Cette manière de « comprendre » la civilisation européenne va se modifiant depuis un certain laps de temps. Chez Linné, l’homme, qui appartient au groupe des mammifères, est catégorisé par six catégories : quatre catégories suivent le schéma des quatre continents (Europe – homo europaeus ; Asie – homo asiaticus ; Afrique – homo afer ; Amérique – homo americanus). Additionnellement, Linné connaît l’homme sauvage et les

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monstres. Au courant du 18e siècle, le schéma des quatre continents est soumis à une ample dissémination par l’art (peinture, sculpture, arts graphiques…), mais il sous-tend encore souvent les « histoires universelles » dont un certain nombre, mais pas toutes, démontre la supériorité de la civilisation européenne. En tant que catégorie dans le système de la nature, l’homo europaeus comprend le sexe masculin et féminin, mais dans cet acte performatif de langage qui dit « Europe = civilisation » il désigne le mâle. Cela est dû au nouvel entendement et enseignement « des Lumières » au sujet des rôles « naturels » des sexes. La distinction biologique faite du corps féminin du corps mâle qui souligne les différences non seulement des organes sexuels, mais de tout ce qui est déduit de « la nature », s’accentue en comparaison avec les 16e et 17e siècles. L’entendement des supposés rôles et devoirs naturels de l’homme et de la femme se combine avec la sexuation de toute la nature (Linné et d’autres), de la sexuation de « civilisation/culture » et « nature », de la sexuation du « public » et du « privé ». Si la culture est mâle, l’homo europaeus, l’homme européen, ou, tout court, l’Européen, ou encore, dans le contexte des Européens vivant ou voyageant dans une civilisation non-européenne : le Chrétien, désigne prioritairement le mâle, l’homme. Dans la logique des Lumières dont le collectif locutoire a été désigné sous le nom de la République des Lettres, la civilisation européenne est donc mâle. Soulignons l’importance qu’est attribuée à l’idée du progrès de l’esprit humain. A qui attribuent les Lumières, dans leur entendement des sexes, cet esprit ? A l’homme, au mâle. Bien sûr, il y a la « femme d’esprit », mais « esprit » n’égale pas « esprit ». Le progrès de l’esprit humain est un progrès fondé dans la civilisation qui est mâle. Le plus grand progrès ait été réalisé au sein de la civilisation européenne. « Eurocentrisme » doit d’abord se comprendre comme une notion culturelle si l’on suit Samir Amin. Cette notion ne figure pas dans le vocabulaire du 18e siècle. Elle date du milieu du 20e siècle. Selon Amin, cette notion a deux volets : d’un côté, on nie l’existence de principes universels d’évolution, de l’autre on veut la civilisation européenne universelle. Cela ne peut s’appliquer tel quel aux Lumières, celleslà basent sur l’idée que toute civilisation est capable de progresser. C’est ‘seulement’ que la civilisation européenne ait progressé le plus. Cette idée qui rend le principe de progrès ou d’évolution universel, sera déformée au 19e siècle, surtout à l’encontre des Européens avec l’Afrique et les Africains. Tout-de-même, le germe commence à pousser au 18e siècle, parce que les relations entre les quatre civilisations (ou plus) sont pensées d’une manière hiérarchique. Il existe des exceptions – pas tous les auteurs des histoires universelles, des histoires de l’humanité, ou du progrès de l‘esprit humain, pensent ainsi. Ce qui est certain c’est que la représentation iconographique des civilisations du monde, dans le public, se sert amplement du schéma hiérarchique. Dans mon livre, je prends comme point tournant l’acte performatif de langage du 18e siècle que je viens d’esquisser. Qu’est-ce qui fait devenir « performatif » un acte locutoire ? Cette approche se fonde sur les théories de John L. Austin et John R. Searle. Jacques Derrida et Judith Butler et d’autres ont développé ces premiers pas des années 1950/1960, dans la théorie de l’acte performatif de langage. L’acte performatif se discerne d’un quelconque acte locutoire par le fait qu’il prétend à

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prononcer un être, une identité. Dans la vue scientifique il s’agit d’une construction culturelle, d’une création d’identité à l’aide de l’acte performatif, tandis que le locuteur n’entend pas construire mais dire ce qui est. Ainsi, dire que « Europe est une civilisation » est un véritable acte locutoire performatif dans le sens original de John L. Austin. Le locuteur n’est pas un individu mais un collectif – les ‘membres’ de la République des Lettres. Je parle ici d’un certain type d’acte performatif de langage, de « l’acte performatif historique de langage ». Le locuteur correspond à un collectif transnational qui dispose de l’infrastructure communicationnelle et d’un pouvoir performatif de fait ainsi que d’un public – le public européen – auquel il parle et dont il fait partie. Ces conditions réunies, il est possible de dire que « Europe est une civilisation » au singulier. Cet acte performatif historique de langage a eu un succès général, même en dehors de l’Europe. Dans quel sens puis-je prétendre à ce qu’il s’agisse d’une approche conceptuelle de l’histoire d’Europe ? Si l’acte locutoire performatif du 18e siècle constitue un point tournant, il y a aussi un avant et un après. Examinons d’abord l’avant, c’est-à-dire le passé précédant le 18e siècle. Si l’acte performatif de langage est nouveau et, dans son ensemble, originel, ses composants ne le sont pas tous. Le lien que l’acte performatif établit entre la civilisation et l’homme européen résulte d’une très longue évolution. Depuis la Renaissance, une représentation du mâle – figures historiques, figures mythologiques, figures religieuses – submerge l’espace public dans les villes. Cela va s’accentuant jusqu’au premier 20e siècle, et même au-delà. La Florence de la Renaissance donnera le premier modèle avec l’axe urbain mâle qui mène du dôme à la Piazza della Signoria et au Palazzo Pitti. D’autres villes suivront au cours de l’époque moderne et du 19e siècle. Dans les cas que j’ai étudiés (Florence, Padoue, Naples, Trieste, Athènes, Belgrade, Paris, Vienne etc.) la continuité avec laquelle le programme d’un axe mâle est poursuivi pendant un, deux siècles ou plus, est frappante. La Renaissance fait renaître un acte locutoire performatif homocentrique de l’Antiquité. La clef-de-voûte du système politique et social est le mâle, la représentation du mâle occupe largement l’espace public. Cela ne veut pas dire, ni à l’égard de l’Antiquité ni à l’égard de la Renaissance, que les représentations de femmes soient absentes de l’espace public mais leur nombre et leur importance sont clairement moindre par comparaison aux hommes. A cet égard, le 19e siècle fera encore ‘pire’. Dès le 16e siècle, cette manière d’exprimer l’homocentrisme, cette approche au monde fondamentalement homocentriste, se combine avec la figure de l’Europe, soit celle du mythe ancien, soit l’image allégorique de la « dame Europe ». Les grands princes, surtout ceux qui poursuivent une ambition politique européenne dans le sens d’une prépondérance de fait ou même de monarchie universelle en Europe, aiment s’entourer d’images représentant l’une ou l’autre figure Europe. De préférence, cela se pratique lors des grands mariages des maisons d’Habsbourg, Valois ou Bourbon et d’autres. Le grand prince prend Europe en fiancée. Voilà qu’Europe devient véritablement femme, soumise, comme toute femme mariée, à l’autorité du mari.

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A l’époque moderne, du moins jusqu’au milieu du 17e siècle, l’idée d’unité est représentée par le corps mystique et, de plus en plus, simplement par le corps humain sans mysticisme religieux, même s’il reste vrai que tout corps – celui de l’église, celui de la monarchie, celui de l’homme, celui du continent, celui de la terre entière – avait été créé et voulu par Dieu. Si l’allégorie d’Europe, dessinée par Johannes Putsch en 1537 et modifiée à plusieurs reprises par d’autres humanistes au cours du 16e siècle, représente l’idée de la République chrétienne, celle-ci se conçoit sur le modèle du corps fondé dans la volonté de Dieu. En fait, il faut poser la question s’il ne s’agit pas également d’un acte performatif de langage ? Une réponse affirmative ne changerait rien à l’acte performatif de langage ensuivant, celui qui fut prononcé par le locuteur qu’était le collectif de la République des Lettres, au 18e siècle. Au 18e siècle, la relation entre homme et Europe évolue. L’image montrant la dame Europe reste, mais l’essence n’est plus « être femme ». Europe devient civilisation ou Kultur qui est, comme je l’ai dit plus haut, incorporée par l’homme européen. Il ne s’agit plus d’homocentrisme, mais de « masculinité hégémonique » qui se montre pour ainsi dire sans gêne sur le plan représentatif dans l’espace urbain comme dans la pratique sociale, politique et législative. Au plan de la nation, l’évolution est semblable. La représentation allégorique de la nation est ‘normalement’ feminine ; même elle peut être remplacée par une image mâle (comme, assez rarement, les continents sont représentés par des hommes ou même par un mélange de figures allégoriques féminines et masculines). Cependant, l’essence de la nation est mâle, l’homme en tant que patriote et soldat, en tant qu’homme politique et économique, ingénieur, artiste, intellectuel etc. incorpore la nation. Il est logique que Victor Hugo et beaucoup d’autres voient l’Europe sous l’angle des nations-frères dont les relations sont régies par la fraternité. L’histoire va se dégradant jusqu’à la deuxième guerre mondiale. Et après la guerre ? Le locuteur collectif, pour ainsi-dire l’épigone moderne du collectif de la République des Lettres du 18e siècle, – les gens issus de la résistance, de l’exil, des camps de détention et de concentration, des démocrates ayant survécu aux régimes fascistes – renoue de préférence avec les Lumières et leur acte performatif de langage au regard d’Europe. Ce faisant, on prolonge la disposition établie au 18e siècle : Que cette civilisation, du nom d’Europe, est incorporée par le mâle. Il suffit d’étudier les discours d’après-guerre sur l’Europe, il suffit d’étudier le rétablissement de la masculinité hégémonique dans les sociétés nationales. On maintient l’idée d’une mission civilisatrice de l’Europe dans le monde, on éprouve beaucoup de peine à se séparer des colonies, de cette « affaire toute mâle ». C’est le moment de s’interroger sur une notion-clé de la construction européenne de l’après-guerre, la notion d’unité. Son champ sémantique comprend « union », « unanimité », « communauté » et d’autres paroles plus ou moins synonymes. Penser Europe comme civilisation au singulier pose pour condition l’unité culturelle. Les historiographes du 18e siècle le montrent à satiété : Voltaire dans son Essais sur les mœurs des nations…, Gibbon dans son Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire pour ne citer que deux fameux auteurs influents. En dépit des conclusions

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de Larry Wolff, il faut constater que cette notion de civilisation au singulier comprend l’ « Europe de l’Est » qui, à l’époque, n’est pas encore unanimement considérée étant un « Est ». Ce sera François Guizot, au premier 19e siècle, qui dirigera le focus sur l’Occident et contribuera à ce qu’on travaille, dans les historiographies des trois nations qui s’étaient relevées les plus importantes dans les Lumières (France, Angleterre, Allemagne), avec une notion géographiquement plus restreinte de la civilisation européenne. Certaines inégalités dans le développement historique soutiendront cela : les biais géographiques dans le processus de l’industrialisation, le côte à côte d’Etats avec empire coloniale ou non, l’existence d’empires sur le continent (Autriche-Hongrie, Turquie, Russie) qui sont multi-ethniques et se trouvent en conflit permanent avec les mouvements nationalistes ethniques, etc. La « mental map » se transforme. C’est l’essor de l’Europe de l’Est (cela signifie d’abord et surtout la Russie), du Balkan, plus tard de la « Mitteleuropa » sous dominance allemande, du Midi méditerranéen, du Nord ou Scandinavie, et de l’Occident, l’Europe de l’Ouest. Ce « Ouest » sera ré-élargi en 1945 avec la formation des deux blocs idéologiques : il comprendra la Mitteleuropa des pays de langue Allemande libres, il perdra sa connotation exclusivement européenne, dont les EtatsUnis ou bien l’Amérique du Nord avec le Canada faisaient déjà partie. Seront jointes la Nouvelle Zélande, l’Australie, le Japon. L’Europe des Six récupérera l’idée d’Europe-civilisation-au-singulier, sans gêne aucun, pour elle-même, et se positionnera dans la continuité des Lumières. Cela inclut la conception mâle de la civilisation européenne, même si ça va changeant à partir des années 1960. Il ne faut que suivre la notion de « homme européen », « europäischer Mensch », ou encore « homo europeanus » etc. dans les discours de l’époque sur l’unité et sur la civilisation européennes. Cela dit, il faut se demander si un nouvel acte performatif de langage s’est produit depuis ou si un tel va s’annonçant ? Y-a-t-il un locuteur collectif ? Y-a-t-il un public européen comme ce fut le cas au 18e siècle ? L’hypothèse du livre consiste à dire que les conditions ne sont pas réunies pour qu’on puisse répondre par l’affirmative. Nous sommes entrés dans une phase post-performative. Autrement dit : l’acte ou les actes performatif(s) de langage ont eu leur temps, leurs époque(s). L’acte locutoire ne fonctionne que si le locuteur et son public agissent dans le même con-texte, ou, tout court, texte. En principe, locuteur (collectif) et public sont un, même si ce ne sont pas tous qui forment le public, qui s’expriment activement à travers des actes performatifs de langage. Les deux locuteurs collectifs dont j’ai parlé – la République des Lettres du 18e siècle et son épigone du milieu du 20e siècle – se sont décomposés. La situation actuelle ressemble un paradoxe : plusieurs centaines de milliers de gens sont quotidiennement adressées par des informations concernant l’Europe mais ils ne forment pas un « public Européen ». Certes, il y a des débuts d’un tel public mais en comparaison avec la structure toujours ferme du public national, un « public Européen » n’existe pas. Les optimistes disent que cela change, il ne faudrait que regarder les dernières élections au Parlement Européen ou la crise grecque et son retentissement simultané dans tous les médias de tous les pays de l’Union Européenne. Tout de même, à dire vrai, le public n’existe pas au singulier mais seulement au pluriel des

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États-nation. Et l’on peut ajouter que les publics nationaux se trouvent également en état de décomposition sans pour autant devenir Européen ! Il faut regarder de plus près le con-texte, ou texte tout court. L’évolution de l’historiographie (non seulement) européenne les derniers vingt ou trente ans environ peut nous apprendre certaines choses de fond. On remarque très bien l’importance accordée par de plus en plus d’historiographes, à l’action de l’individu dans l’histoire et au texte que l’individu produit. Cela va de pair avec l’évolution des pratiques sociales, familiales, économiques etc. Zygmunt Bauman et Richard Sennett ont livré les mots de passe : liquid modernity et l’homme flexible. La contrainte qu’exerçait, auparavant, le con-texte, sur l’individu, s’affaiblit – ce qui ne se fait pas forcément à l’avantage de l’individu, mais cela n’est pas la question ici. Par contre, l’individu ne peut autrement que de produire un texte par et pour soi-même qui soit compatible avec l’hypertexte dont la structure interne diffère du con-texte traditionnel ou historique. En dernière conséquence cela empêche l’endurance ou la formation d’un seul public transnational qui peut agir comme locuteur performatif. L’hypertexte rend difficile la fabrication d’un narratif historique magistral. Cela concerne le travail de l’historien aussi bien que la conscience historique collective et publique. Or, l’acte performatif de langage du locuteur collectif du 18e siècle et celui de son épigone au 20e siècle, ne furent possible que parce qu’il y avait un narratif historique magistral expliquant comment s’est fait la civilisation européenne au singulier. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Gibbon, Robertson, plusieurs professeurs de l’université de Göttingen, Herder et beaucoup d’autres en étaient les auteurs. Au 20e siècle, Max Weber donnera un titre au contenu essentiel de ce narratif : le rationalisme occidentale. Au regard de l’historiographie actuelle, Peter Pichler1, dans sa thèse de doctorat, a pu discerner pas moins que huit narratifs différents, narrant l’histoire de la construction européenne. Ce nombre s’augmenterait considérablement, si on analysait les nombreux « Histoire de l’Europe » ou les « Histoire de l’Europe à l’époque moderne » etc. etc. Le narratif historique magistral a semblé, pour très longtemps, la bonne méthode à comprendre l’Histoire mais cette méthode a perdu beaucoup de sa force. Puis, la position du mâle : elle aussi se décompose ou s’est déjà largement décomposée. Si mon hypothèse sur l’homocentrisme peut prétendre à une certaine validité, il en découle une conséquence concrète : c’est que le locuteur (collectif) est, historiquement, régi par le principe de l’hégémonie masculine. Ce con-texte se décomposant, le locuteur collectif historique (République des Lettres ; l’épigone du 20e siècle) se décompose forcément au même rythme. Y-a-t-il un remplaçant ? Féminin, ou mixte ? Je ne vois pas ce remplaçant. La déconstruction de l’hégémonie masculine dans la société contemporaine n’est pas balancée par la construction d’une autre hégémonie, et soit-elle féminine. Cela ne se peut, apparemment, pour des raisons très nombreuses, mais dont l’analyse n’est pas le sujet ici. Par

1

Peter Pichler, Acht Geschichten über die Integrationsgeschichte, Innsbruck 2011.

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conséquent, si la constitution d’un locuteur performatif collectif et du public correspondant ne peut plus se faire sur la base de l’hégémonie du sexe mâle ou de l’un ou de l’autre sexe, il faut se mettre à la recherche d’un remplaçant de cet agent historique. Ou bien, l’époque contemporaine qu’on aime nommer « post-moderne » est aussi une époque « post-performative » qui empêche la formation d’un nouveau locuteur performatif collectif. À qui adresserait-il ses actes performatifs de langage, quel con-texte résorberait encore l’acte performatif et le transformerait en réalité sociale ? De fait, dire ce qu’Europe est, s’avère impossible au 21e siècle. Comme je l’ai déjà dit ci-dessus, l’Europe des Six s’apostropha « Europe » comme si les Six étaient l’Europe. Intentionnellement, il s’agissait d’un acte performatif de langage prononcé par le locuteur collectif épigone de l’ancien République des Lettres. Mais l’acte de langage ne fut pas couronné de succès. Aujourd’hui, plus par habitude que par une volonté performative, l’équation « Union Européenne = Europe » s’applique assez souvent dans le discours public. Elle ne peut guère convaincre vu la conscience manifeste et répandue qu’il y a d’autres Europes : Des pays non-membres comme la Norvège et la Suisse qui, néanmoins, sont très proches de l’UE ; les pays du Balkan qui, il est vrai, s’orientent vers l’UE et ont la chance réelle de la joindre dans quelques années ; des pays comme la Moldavie, l’Ukraine ou encore la Biélorussie dont l’européicité est mise en question – avec raison ou non ; ou encore le cas de la Turquie, où l’on ne sait ‘décider’ s’il s’agit d’un pays ‘européen’ ou non. Il faut comparer cette situation au discours du 18e siècle : dans le livre je réfute largement l’hypothèse de Larry Wolff, que les auteurs des Lumières aient « inventé l’Europe de l’Est ». À la notion de civilisation européenne on trouva une limite géographique et claire : l’Oural. La reconnaissance de l’Oural comme limite orientale non seulement du continent mais aussi de la civilisation, certes, ne fut pas unanime mais majoritaire. Au 21e siècle, l’on se trouve dans l’impossibilité de trancher la question ce qu’est l’Europe. La cause n’en est pas un manque de clairvoyance. C’est un effet de la liquid modernity qui produit plutôt un hypertexte qu’un seul texte. L’approche systémique des Lumières facilita la production d’un texte au singulier, et le but à atteindre ne faisait pas de doute : le progrès de l’esprit humain. Ce but appartenait à un regard universel porté sur le monde et l’humanité. Aujourd’hui, ce regard universel ne s’appelle plus « universel » mais « global » parce que l’universalisme des Lumières s’insère dans un seul texte, l’histoire universelle, tandis que le néologisme « globalisme » qui a tendance à remplacer « mondialisme » se réfère à un hypertexte global composé d’innombrables textes. Non seulement « civilisation » ne se peut plus exprimer par un seul texte mais seulement au pluriel et au niveau d’hypertexte. Il en est de même de « la » société : en exagérant légèrement, chaque individu produit son propre texte social, culturel, moral etc. La tâche du collectif – de « la » société – n’est plus de créer une structure sociale mais de la cohérence entre ces textes. La notion de « texte » revêt ici un sens très large : en principe, presque tout peut varier avec l’individu concret. La notion de texte exprime la production de sens culturel, social, moral etc. par l’individu. La contrainte qui émane des struc-

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tures se désagrège (cf. Bauman, Sennett etc.). La liberté que ce désagrègement procure à l’individu contraint celui-ci à produire lui-même du sens et de chercher à s’insérer avec son propre texte dans un hypertexte social, culturel, moral etc. cohérent. La nouvelle contrainte, c’est la production de cohérence. On voit que l’Eurocentrisme est rendu impossible dans cette constellation. Certes, une partie de la politique et de la population veut élever des murs autour de l’Europe aisée, mais ce sera peine perdue. On voit que l’homocentrisme et l’hégémonie masculine, finalement toute hégémonie basée sur le sexe, sont également rendus impossibles. Et, l’acte performatif de langage qui vise un ensemble nommé « Europe » ? Le moindre qu’on puisse constater avec assez de certitude, c’est que toute tentative échoue. La dernière tentative qui échoua, comme toutes les autres depuis quelques décennies, fut celle du gouvernement grecque de M. Tsipras au cours des premiers six mois de son action. Il voulait, dans la meilleure tradition des actes performatifs de langage, dire l’identité de l’Europe. Était-ce la faute à l’attitude inhabituellement mâle et héroïque de ce gouvernement ? L’acte performatif de langage, en tant que phénomène de communication sociale, appartient à une époque historique quand il ne pouvait pas s’agir de produire de la cohérence mais une identité. L’acte performatif de langage le plus commun et qui a des racines historiques véritablement lointaines se réfère au nouveau-né : la dénomination du sexe et l’attribution d’un prénom qui traditionnellement suit le sexe et est masculin ou féminin. En faisant cela, le locuteur prononce une identité. En vérité, il la crée ou la construit mais ce locuteur n’a pas cette conscience, il pense exprimer une essence donnée, une vérité. Or, l’on doit constater que cette pratique performative montre des signes d’émiettement : Les nouveaux prénoms en usage assez souvent actuellement n’ont plus besoins d’une référence explicite au sexe, et l’individu, même si l’acte performatif de langage qui consiste à dire le (prétendu) sexe du nouveau-né peut s’en libérer au cours de sa vie, si elle ou lui le veulent. Au fond, il s’agit d’une faculté dont la pratique sociale et corporelle, incluant le changement de sexe, reste difficile, même dans les sociétés dites libérales. Dire l’essence, et par là, configurer la pratique, c’est la fonction de l’acte performatif de langage dans tous les con-textes dans lesquels il se prononce. C’est pourquoi la question est à savoir si l’acte réussit encore dans un des contextes dont nous pouvons retracer l’histoire jusque dans un passé lointain ou non. Or, le déconstructivisme est devenu une approche générale et fondamentale configurant la manière d’expliquer le monde et de le comprendre. Si un acte performatif de langage avec référence à « Europe » semble devenu impossible ce n’est pas parce que ce soit un problème unique à « Europe ». Le problème se situe à un niveau beaucoup plus profond et regarde tous les contextes traditionnels et historiques où ces actes de langage furent habituellement prononcés. En arrivant ici, il faut tourner les yeux vers l’avenir. L’intention de mon livre est de démontrer la transformation de certaines données de bases de l’histoire de l’Europe. En vue de la question de l’avenir, on peut tenter d’en tirer quelques conclusions. La première conclusion qui s’impose consiste à reconnaître que certaines choses ne passeront plus : dire ce qu’Europe est dans le con-texte d’une notion de civilisation européenne dont l’essence est l’hégémonie masculine laquelle porte en

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soi comme une nécessité la mission civilisatrice du monde (Eurocentrisme). La deuxième conclusion consiste à se rendre compte de ce qui est : Ce qu’on continue de nommer civilisation européenne n’est plus un texte, mais un hypertexte. Cet hypertexte résiste à toute tentative de sexuation émanant de l’hégémonie de l’un ou de l’autre sexe, il ne se forme pas sur le modèle du narratif historique magistral qui admettrait toutes sortes de discriminations et d’inégalités humaines, toutes sortes de hiérarchisations et d’asymétries. La troisième conclusion qu’il en faut tirer consiste à comprendre que, après les deux premières, les conditions permettant un acte performatif de langage disant ce qu’Europe est, ne sont plus réunies et ne peuvent plus être réunies à l’avenir. Bref, il faudra changer de méthode. Mais l’intention de ce livre n’est pas de dire à d’autres comment ils doivent faire dans l’avenir. L’intention était de démontrer certaines transformations historiques qui nous apprennent que nous sommes entrés dans une phase post-performative et que cela entraîne des conséquences pratiques qu’on ne doit pas vouloir éluder.

INDEX Aachen 115 Abadie, Paul 26 Académie Française 65 Adams, John Quincy 133 Adorno, Theodor 115, 121, 123 Africa 33, 69, 111, 117, 128, 129, 143 Agatharchus of Cnidus 31 Alaska 132 Alba Carolina Citadel 85 Alessandro I de Medici 103 Alexander I 128 Alexander the Great 85, 88 Algerian war 95 Algiers 132, 137 allegory of the continent 68 alphabet 14 America 13, 33, 69, 128 Amin, Samir 73–74 Anderson, Benedict 78 antemurale christianitatis 84 anthropology 71 antiquarians 34, 64 antique architecture 85 Antiquity 13, 14, 64, 67, 71, 89 Apollo 70, 98 Arendt, Hannah 111, 115 Aristotle 33, 66, 104 Armenian Genocide 58 Arndt, Ernst Moritz 135 Arnold, Thomas 48 Asia 31, 33, 70, 79, 81, 128 Assembly Ad-hoc 146 Athens 66 Atlantic Europe 95 Augsburg world map 32 August III 87 August the Strong 86 Augustine 122 Austin, John L. 14 Australia 147 Australian Queensland 148 Austria 12, 51, 94 authority 17

Baader, Franz von 134 Babelsberg 86 backwardness 45 balance of power 39 Balkans 49, 78, 81, 89 Baltic states 94 Barcelona process 139 Bartlett, Robert 19 Basel 36 Bastid, Paul 142 Bauman, Zygmunt 9 Baur, Erwin 146 Bayreuth Circle 112 Beauvoir, Simone de 117 Belgium 117, 139, 141 Belgrade 99, 108 Bellers, John 43 Berger, Peter L. 79 Berlusconi, Silvio 12 Bernard of Chartres 66 Bernard of Clairvaux 18 Bible 47, 103 Bidault, Georges 142 Black Sea 31, 80, 81 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich 71 Bohemia 44 Bordeaux 62 Bosnia-Herzegovina 11 Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne 38 Bourdieu, Pierre 15 Bourgeois society 61, 124 Bourquin, Maurice 131 Bourse de commerce (Paris) 69 Brandt, Willy 155 Braun, Christina von 16, 171 Brazil 132 Bremen 35 Briand, Aristide 55 Briant, Pierre 88 Britain 34 British Asiatic Society 47 British Church Missionary Society 129 British Historiography 48 Browning, Christopher R. 53

208 Brugmans, Henri 144 Brussels 164 Brussels Pact 91 Brussels Treaty (1948) 54 Bucharest 91 Bulgaria 93 Bulgars 88 Burckhardt, Jakob 49 Burgundy 18 Burke, Peter 68 Butler, Judith 14 Buzinskij, G. 44 Byzantine empire 77 Byzantium 43 Calcutta 47 California 132 Camden, William 34 Canada 66 Canaletto 87 Canova 104 Cape Colony 112 Carolingian empire 39 Catalonia 12, 167 Catherine the Great 133 Caucasian race 72 Cellini, Benvenuto 101 Celtic 48 Celtic culture 34 Central Europe 89 Cerato, Domenico 99 Cesare Borgia 103 Chabod, Federico 50 Chamberlain, Houston Stewart 112 changing gender 16 Charlemagne 13, 39 Charles Martell 109 Charles V 42 Charles XII 81 Charter 77 92 China 39, 41 Chitraeus, Nathan 35 Christ 104, 105, 120, 125 Christendom 26, 32, 41, 70, 74, 121, 127, 128, 135 Christian idea of the Occident 54 Christian mission 68 Christian Republic 39 Christian roots 19 Christianitas 32 Churchill, Winston 99, 154 Cilento, Sir Raphael 148

Index civil society 92, 94 Cold War 51, 56 colonialism 114 Comecon 91 Commission Internationale Europe OutreMer 147 Common Assembly of the ECSC 146 Common Market 10 Conchita Wurst 164 Conference of Heads of State or Government (Copenhagen 1973) 149 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe 11 Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle 131 Congress of European Federalists (The Hague) 144 Congress of Vienna 42, 130 Conseil National de la Résistance 142 Constant, Benjamin 66 Constantinople 80, 134 Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe 144, 146 consumer societies 61 continent allegories 68, 81 Cornaro Piscopia, Elena Lucrezia 99 Corpus Christi 32 cosmographies 36 Cossack Republic 84 Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard N.E., count of 55, 121, 124, 140, 152 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance 91 Council of Europe 11, 52, 91 Courtin, René 143 Croatia 95 Croce, Benedetto 98 Cro-Magnon man 118 crusade for peace 18 CSCE 90, 92 cultural history 37 culture, concept of 37 Cuvier, Georges Léopold 73 Cyprus 9 Cyrillic 77 Czech Republic 94 Dante Alighieri 120 Danubian Principalities 45 David 104 David (biblical) 102 Dawson, Christopher 51 de Gaulle, Charles 99

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Index

Declaration on European Identity 149, 153 decolonization 138, 160 Delors, Jacques 119, 151 Demetrios of Kallatis 31 Denmark 18 Denmark-Norway 35 Derrida, Jacques 14, 173 Desbœuf, Germain 148 Diez del Corral, Luis 115, 123, 125 Dohrn, Anton 98 Donatello 101 Dresden 87 Drivier, Léon-Ernest 106 Duchhardt, Heinz 29 Dumas, Alexandre 98 Dumézil, Georges 117 Durelle-Marc, Yann-Arzel 48 Eastern Bloc 90, 91 Ebstorf world map 32 EC 91 ECC Treaty 10 ecclesiastical history 44 ECSC 52, 91, 145 EEC 91, 117, 139, 148 EFTA 91 ego-documents 53 Eichmann trial 52, 123 Elias, Norbert 24 Encyclopédie 72 England 33, 46, 61, 64 English constitution 44 English history 33 Enlightenment 13, 38, 62, 63, 68, 74, 83, 97, 121, 169 Erasmus of Rotterdam 52 Erdoğan, Recep T. 12 essentialism 168 ethnocentrism 73 EU 91 Eurafrica 55, 138, 139, 140 Eurocentrism 12, 14, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 73, 75, 166 European Defense Community (1954) 54 European Economic Community 54 European Federalist Movement 52 European Federalist Movements 56 European integration 50 European movements 54 European Union Liaison Committee of Historians 54 European University Institute 54

Europeanization 63, 78 Europeanness 84, 96, 166 Europiani 110 Evans, Robert J.W. 48 Fabri de Peiresc, Nicolas 34 Falange 95 fall of Constantinople 41, 43, 46 fall of Rome 39, 40 fall of the Berlin Wall 50 Fanon, Frantz 115 fashion 64 Faust 120, 125 femininity 99, 107 Ferdinand IV 98 Fischer, Eugen 146 Florence 54, 100 Florida 132 formative phase 15 Foucault, Michel 79 France 11, 12, 26, 34, 36, 46, 53, 61, 141, 152 Franco 95 François-Poncet, André 115, 123 freedom 66, 80, 89 Frenay, Henri 142 French Revolution 128 Freud, Sigmund 172 Friedrich Wilhelm II 86 Fukuyama, Francis 163 Gange, Françoise 169 Gehler, Michael 19 Geneva 36 Gentz, Friedrich 52 Georgia 96 Germanic Europe 34 Germany 64, 94, 139, 152 Giambologna 101 Giambullari, Pier Francesco 35 Gibbon, Edward 40, 41 globalization 63 Gobineau Society 112 Gobineau, Arthur Comte de 49, 111 Gollancz, Victor 144 Gollwitzer, Heinz 52 Gothic 48 Gray, John 43 Greece 85, 89, 134, 165 Greek 48 Greek antiquity 121 Greek civilization 30

210 Greek sculptors 66 Greenblatt, Stephen 79 Greifenclau, Prince-Bishop Karl Philipp von 70 Gruen, Erich S. 31 Guicciardini, Lodovico 35 Guiton, Raymond-Jean 145 Guizot, François 45 Guthrie, William 43 Habsburg Monarchy 82 Hagia Sophia 26 Halecki, Oskar 52 Hallstein, Walter 148, 149 Hamburg 53 Hartog, François 65, 66 Hawaii 132 Hay, Denis 52 Hazard, Paul 51 Hebrew 47 hegemonic masculinity 10, 13, 97, 99, 105, 107 Hercules 98, 102 Herder, Johann Gottfried von 39, 44, 67 hero 12 Herodotus 29, 30, 31 Heroe of Labor 93 Hetmanate 84 history of great men 99 history tree (of Europe) 19 Hobsbawm, Eric J. 50, 59, 121 Holocaust 52, 53, 57, 123, 160 Holocaust Memorial (Berlin) 58 Holocaust Memorial (Paris) 58 Holocaust survivors 58 Holy Alliance 26, 78, 106 Holy Roman Empire 36, 37, 46, 82 homo europeanus 115 homocentrism 13, 23, 28 Horkheimer, Max 115, 121, 123 Hours, Joseph 143 human spirit 39 Hungary 11, 33, 43, 45, 94 Hus, Jan 44 Husserl, Edmund 125 hyper-text 18, 21, 49, 59, 63, 174 iconic leaders 11 identity 16, 17, 23, 24 Iggers, Georg G. 49 Illyrianism 88 India 41

Index Indians 66, 110 Indo-European 47 inscriptions 35 integration policy 91 Ionian Islands 134 Ireland 34 Irkutsk 61 Iron Curtain 19, 56, 90, 91, 92, 96 Islam 26 Islamic world 41 Israel, Jonathan I. 72 Istanbul 26 Italian historiographers 33 Italy 12, 33, 46, 143 Jacobins 66 Japheth 13, 32, 33, 88, 119 Japheth land 13 Japheth legend 13 Jarausch, Konrad 51 Jassy 134 Jerusalem 52, 137 Jesuit churches (Rome) 68 Jones, Sir William 47 Joseph II 85 Jouffroy, Théodore 135 Joyce, James 121 Judt, Tony 50 Jung-Stilling, Heinrich 134 Justi, Johann Heinrich Gottlob von 110 Kaelble, Hartmut 55 Kagan, Robert 151 Kalemegdan park 108 Kallir, Alfred 171 Kampmann, Wanda 113 Kanitz, Felix 89 Kant, Imanuel 71 Kapodistrias, Count Ioannis 131, 134 Khiva (Middle East) 63 Klee, Paul 98 Kochanek, Piotr 81 Koselleck, Reinhart 129 Kosovo 11 Kreis, Georg 155 Krug, Wilhelm Traugott 135 Kurakin, Prince Boris Ivanovich 44 La Harpe, Frédéric César de 133 Lady Europe 164, 168, 172 Lafay, Bernard 145 Lafitau, Joseph-François 66

211

Index

Lang, Anne 166 Latin 48 Le Bon, Gustave 53 Le Pen, Marine 12 Leggewie, Claus 166 Lenz, Fritz 146 liberal historiography 47 Lieberman, Benjamin 50, 53 limes 34 Linnaeus, Carl 27 Linné, Carl von 71, 72, 80, 109, 113 Lipgens, Walter 54, 141 liquid modernity 28 Lisbon Treaty 157 List, Friedrich 135 lived Europe 56 London 43, 44 Loth, Wilfried 54 Louis XIV 65 Loyer, François 26 Lublin 53 Luckmann, Thomas 79 Luther 122 Maastricht Treaty 156 MacIntyre, Alasdair 23 Mackay, Alexander Murdoch 129 Madagascar 139 Madariaga, Salvador de 115, 125 Mahul, Alphonse Jacques 127 Maistre, Joseph de 134 Malraux, André 115 Mann, Thomas 114 Marcuse, Herbert 116 Marshall Plan 91 Martin of Tours 13 master narrative 18 Mazower, Mark 50 McCain, John 11 Medieval historiography 32 Mediterranean 61, 81, 132 megaliths 34 Melk Abbey 62 Memmi, Albert 115 Memmo, Andrea 99 Mendras, Henri 126 Merian, Matthaeus 36 Mérimée, Prosper 18 Meštrović, Ivan 107, 108 Michelangelo 101 Middle Ages 13, 18, 32, 33, 109 Middleton, Henry 133

migrant workers 93 migration 166 Milward, Alan S. 116 Mitrović, Mihajlo 108 Mitteleuropa 89 Moldova 96 Montenegro 108 Montesquieu 38, 40 Morocco 18, 63, 139 Moscow 44 Moses 171 mosque 26 Mouvement National Belge 141 Münster, Sebastian 36 Mussolini 105 myth of Europe 13 Naples 98 Napoleon I 106 nation state 9, 10 national identity 9 Nesselrode, Count Karl Robert 137 Netherlands 11, 35, 61 New Adam 100, 103, 104 new man 122, 123 New Testament 104 Nicotera, Giovanni 98 Niethammer, Lutz 163 Nietzsche, Friedrich 114 Noah 13, 32, 104, 119 North America 61, 83 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) 42 Obama, Barack 12 Obaton, Viviane 156 Odessa 134 Odysseus 118, 120, 121, 124 Old Testament 13, 32, 104 ontological antecedence 15, 16, 18, 22 Orbán, Viktor M. 11 ordinary people as historical actors 53 Orgovanyi-Hanstein, Britta 19 Orient 80 Orientalism 79, 81 Orluc, Katiana 152 Orthodox Christianity 78 Orthodox Church 134, 138 Ortoli, François Xavier 156 Oschema, Klaus 109 Osterhammel, Jürgen 79, 90 Ottoman Empire 32, 77, 79, 82, 84, 89 Ovid 13, 170

212 Oxford 48 Padua 98 Palatinate 35 Palestine 137 Panciroli, Guido 34 Pan-Europa 140 Paneuropean movement 124 Pan-German League 112 Pan-Slavism debate 96 paradise 93, 151 Paris 26, 62, 99, 106 Parliamentary Assembly of the Western Union 146 Parvev, Ivan 82 Passerini, Luisa 12 paterfamilias 17 Patriotische Gesellschaft (Hamburg) 110 Penn, William 43 performative speech acts 15 performativity 15 Perkins, Mary Anne 135 Perrault, Charles 65, 66 Persia 30 Persian 47, 48 Persian culture 30, 110 Pétain (Maréchal de France) 122 Peter the Great 44, 78, 81 Philadelphia 62 Phoenix 125 Piazza della Signoria (Florence) 100 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio 31 Pichler, Peter 30 Poisson, Pierre-Marie 106 Poland 33, 35, 45, 80, 84, 86, 94, 133 Polish-Saxon Union 86 Pollaiuolo, Antonio 103 Poltava 71, 81 Pope Gelasius (5th c.) 65 Pope John Paul II 57 Pope Pius IX 26 Poršnev, Boris 52 Portugal 95 posthistoire 49 Potsdam 62, 85, 86 power 17 Pozzo di Borgo 133 Prague 92 Prague Spring 90 prehistory 35 Prometheus 118, 120, 125 protohistorical cultures 34

Index Prussia 45, 64 Pufendorf, Samuel 44 Putin, Vladimir 11 Putsch, Johannes 21 Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns 27, 34, 64, 65 Quebec 18 racial anti-Semitism 114 racial discourses 146 racism 147 Ranke, Leopold von 48 rape of Europe 98 rape of the Sabines 98 Raumer, Kurt von 52 Raynal 74 Raynal, Abbé 38 Renaissance 33, 100, 112 Republic of Europe 41 Republic of Letters 62, 70, 80 Reserve Battalion 101 53 Resistance movements (WW II) 141 Respublica Christiana 32 respublica literaria 84 Reynold, Gonzague de 51 Rhodes, Cecil 26, 112 Richelieu, cardinal 65 Ripa, Cesare 68 Robertson, William 42, 46 Rodin 107 Roman antiquity 34, 88 Roman Empire 39, 41, 46 Roman Europe 34 Roman law 33 Romanian 110 Rome 34, 87, 144 Rostock 35 Rougemont, Denis de 19, 51, 52, 115 Rougier, Louis 125 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 38 Russia 43, 45, 61, 63, 77, 81, 84, 89, 96 Russian historiography 30, 44 Russian-American Company 132 Rüst, Hans 32 Sacré-Cœur basilica 26 Said, Edward 78, 81 Saint Louis 18 Saint Petersburg 62 Saint-Pierre, Abbé de 43 Saint-Simon (Comte de) 135

213

Index

Salazar regime 95 Sale, George 38 salvation history 18, 26, 32, 33, 88, 128 Sanskrit 47 Sanssouci Park 86 Santiago de Compostela 18 Sarkozy, Nicolas 11 Sarmatism 88 Sartre, Jean-Paul 115 savages 66 Saxony 86, 88 Scandinavia 34, 61 Scheler, Max 114 Schelting, Alexander von 45 Schemann, Ludwig 112 Schlözer, August Ludwig 44 Schmid Noerr, Friedrich Alfred 118 Schmid, Carlo 115, 119 Schmidt-Phiseldek, Konrad Friedrich von 135 Schulze, Hagen 19 Schuman, Robert 145 Scotland 167 Searle, John R. 14 Selva, Attilio 105 Senegal 139 Sennett, Richard 166 Serbia 43, 89, 95, 108 SFIO 144 Silvestre, Louis de 87 Sirotchouk, Tatiana 84 sites of memory 18 Skovoroda, Gregor 84 slavery 66, 80 Slavs 44 Slovenia 94 sociocultural system 10 Soemmerring, Samuel Thomas 71 Sörgel, Hermann 55 South America 61 Soviet Union 77, 91 Spaak, Paul-Henri 144 Spain 33, 36, 46, 95, 106 Sparta 66 speech-act theory 14 Spengler, Oswald 40, 51 Spielberg, Steven 58 Spinelli, Altiero 143 St. Petersburg 44, 80, 133 Stalinism 57 Stalinization 96 Stockholm 71

Strahlenberg, Philipp Johann von 71, 81 Strasbourg 146 Stråth, Bo 154 Sturdza, Alexandru 131 Sturdza, Roxandra 134 Šul’gin, Ivan Petrovic 44 Sweden-Finland 35 swindle 16, 17, 22, 24, 169 Tatishchev, Vasily Nikitich 44, 45 Teitgen, Pierre-Henri 142 Terror 66 Theatrum Europaeum 36 Ther, Philipp 50 Thiele, Johann Alexander 86 third Rome 44 Thou, Jacques-Auguste de 36 Tiepolo, Giambattista 68, 69, 96 Timișoara 85 Todorova, Maria 79, 81 Trabi 92 transcultural hypertext 17 Trans-Dniester 77 Transnational families 56 Treaty of Rome 138 tree metaphor 19 Trieste 105 Tübingen 35 Tunis 132 Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques 38 Turkey 12 Turks 35 Uffizi (Florence) 101 Uganda 129 Ukraine 11, 77, 84, 96 Ulloa, Alfonso de 35 UNESCO 146 Union Européenne des Fédéralistes 145, 147 Union of European Federalists 115 United States of America 12, 64, 131 United States of Europe 42, 174 University College (London) 48 University of Göttingen 38 University of Heidelberg 118 University of Leipzig 87, 134 University of Montpellier 143 University of Padua 99 University of Sorbonne 145 University of Zurich 154 Urals 70, 84

214 urnfields 34 Uzbekistan 18 Valéry, Paul 114 Van der Linden, Fred 147 Vaughan, Robert 48 Venice 87 Versailles Treaty 139 Veyne, Paul 19 Vézelay 18 Vichy regime 95 Vico, Giambattista 98 Vienna 99, 109 Vietnam 139 Villey, Daniel 142 Vittorelli, Paolo 115, 147 Vittorio Emanuele III 105 Volksaufklärung 80 Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 38, 39, 41, 42, 46 von der Groeben, Hans 148

Index

Wagner, Richard 112 Warsaw 87, 88 Warsaw Pact 91 Washington Holocaust Memorial Museum 58 Weber, Martin 30 Weber, Max 160 White Russia 77, 96, 134 White, Hayden 22 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim 66 Wolff, Larry 77, 87 Würzburg 68, 69 Yad Vashem 58 Ypsilanti, Alexander 134 Yugoslavia 90, 95, 108 Zeune, August 81 Zeus 98, 169 Žižek, Slavoj 15

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What is European in the history of Europe? In order to answer this question, Wolfgang Schmale uses two approaches. Firstly, he develops the concept of a performative speech act into what he defines as a collective historical speech act. Secondly, he looks at European history from a gender point of view. Europe was generally thought to be male – considering the former Republic of Letters’ definition of Europe as a male civilization. However, the 18th-century’s per-

formative speech act presently loses its binding force as European civilization develops from ‘male’ to diversity and plurality, yet right wing parties try to defend and to repeat the historical performative speech act by ignoring the fundamental switch in European civilization. This will only produce violent conflicts. This book considers developments and consequences in a post-performative epoch.

SGEI SG SHEI SH EHIE E www.steiner-verlag.de

Franz Steiner Verlag

ISBN 978-3-515-11461-5