Abstract
The French writer Julien Benda was renowned for his controversial assertions on the role of European intellectuals. In 1927, he denounced the political engagement of fellow writers as a betrayal of their duty to defend the abstract principles of truth and justice. His speech to the ‘European nation’ in 1933 encouraged intellectuals to become self-denying evangelists, abandoning homes, families, goods, salaries, and status in order to spread the gospel of European fraternity. And in 1948 he anticipated the birth of a European spirit through the rewriting — and relearning — of European history, whereby the emphasis would shift from nationalism to internationalism, from cynical nation-builders to the ‘dreamers’ whose grandiose projects of unity had ultimately foundered. Roman emperors and medieval popes would be the heroes of this new curriculum, to be taught in the only truly European language: French.1
The authors gratefully acknowledge the valuable advice offered by other members of the network, as well as by Antonella Romano at the European Institute in Florence, during the preparation of this chapter.
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Notes
Andrée Jouve, ‘Notes sur l’Amérique’, Europe, 15 October 1924. Georges Duhamel was to echo these sentiments in his anti-American diatribe, Scènes de la vie future (Paris, 1930). On the effects of such comparisons on French self-perception, see Jackie Clarke, ‘France, America, and the Metanarrative of Modernisation: from post-war social science to the new culturalism’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies VIII No. 4 (2004), 365–77.
Drieu la Rochelle, Le Jeune Européen, pp. 201–2. On the paradoxical penchant for action rather than reflection among such right-wing intellectuals, see Pascal Balmand, ‘L’Anti-intellectualisme dans la culture politique française’, Vingtième siècle XXXVI No. 4 (1992), 31–42.
The Dîners were vividly described by Luc Durtain in his article ‘Fritz von Unruh et l’esprit européen’, Europe, 15 November. On the particular importance of Paris as a focal point for European intellectuals, see Michel Trebitsch, ‘Paris, “capital culturelle” de l’Europe centrale?’, Vingtième siècle, revue d’histoire xlvii No. 3 (1995), 201–5.
Ute Frevert, ‘Europeanizing Germany’s Twentieth Century’, History and Memory XVII (2005), pp. 92–3.
Rohan, ‘Zukunftsfragen deutscher Aussenpolitik’, ER 5.6 (September 1929), p. 375.
Karl Spiecker, ‘Österreichs Anschluss an Deutschland’, ER 1.2 (January–June 1926), p. 100.
Rohan, ‘Vom Mythos der Totalen Nation im Dritten Reich’, ER 9.4 (April 1933), p. 195.
Heinz Ziegler, ‘Nation und Politik’, ER 2.7 (October 1926), p. 41.
Guglielmo Ferrero, ‘Die legitime Demokratie’, Merkur 6.1 (1947–48), pp. 803–4.
Jürgen von Kempski, ‘Föderalismus und Unitarismus’, Merkur 6.1 (1947–48), p. 819.
See Denis de Rougemont, ‘Die Krankheiten Europas’, Merkur 6.1 (1947), pp. 18–25.
Gonzague de Reynold, ‘Was ist Europa?’, Merkur 7.2 (1948), pp. 121–4.
Robert Ingram (Franz Klein), ‘Amerikas Europäische Politik’, Merkur 9.1 (January 1950), pp. 2–12.
For example, Xaver Mooshütter, ‘Polens Nachbar im Westen: Deutschland’, Osteuropa 29 (February 1979), pp. 137–46, here p. 145.
Eitan Finkelshtein, ‘Old hopes and new currents in present-day Lithuania’, Lituanus. Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences xxiii No. 3 (1977), 47–58.
Thomas Remeikis, ‘Dissent in the Baltic Republics. A Balance Sheet’, Lituanus xxx No. 2 (1984), 5–25.
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© 2010 J. Wardhaugh, R. Leiserowitz and C. Bailey
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Wardhaugh, J., Leiserowitz, R., Bailey, C. (2010). Intellectual Dissidents and the Construction of European Spaces, 1918–1988. In: Conway, M., Patel, K.K. (eds) Europeanization in the Twentieth Century. The Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230293120_2
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