This book reconstructs the intellectual and social context of several influential proponents of European unity before and after the First World War. Through the lives and works of the well-known promoter of Pan-Europe, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, and his less well-known predecessor, Alfred Hermann Fried, the book illuminates how transnational peace projects emerged from individuals who found themselves alienated from an increasingly nationalizing political climate within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the new nation states of the interwar period. The book's most important intervention concerns the Jewish origins of crucial plans for European unity. It reveals that some of the most influential ideas on European culture and on the peaceful reorganization of an interconnected Europe emerged from Jewish milieus and as a result of Jewish predicaments.

Explores the origin story of the European Union through a history of the pan-European idea in the first three decades of the twentieth century Challenges the hold of nationalism on Central Europe before WWII and demonstrates the surprisingly limited reach of radical nationalists Reconstructs the intellectual and social context of several influential thinkers of European unity before and after the First World War

Autorentext

Katherine Sorrels is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati, USA. Much of her work relates to the question of how political ideologies and scientific theories have been used to draw boundaries of exclusion and how marginalized thinkers and activists have reinterpreted those ideologies and theories to argue for a more inclusive form of international life.

Inhalt
Introduction: Outsiders Within. .- Chapter One: The Jewish Dilemma of Exclusion in Late Imperial Central Europe. .- Chapter Two: Pacifism, Empire, and Social Evolution. .-Chapter Three: Pacifist Realpolitik: Selling Pan-Europe to Militarists and Nationalists. .- Chapter Four: Aristocrats and Jews as Elites and Pariahs in Interwar Central Europe. .- Chapter Five: Bridging the Gap: Pan-Europe between the Left and the Right. .-Conclusion: The Limits of Shared Experience.