Bridging the Gap: Pan-Europe between the Left and the Right

Abstract

Chapter Six compares Coudenhove and Fried further and elaborates on both the overlap and divergence between Jewish and aristocratic trajectories in the interwar period. Coudenhove’s pan-European proposal can be understood as a response to radical nationalism and the disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy, just as the threat thereof had been for Fried. Yet he also made major changes to Fried’s pan-European idea, changes informed by the new political climate in interwar Central Europe and by his elite, aristocratic worldview. These included the idea for a Jewish-noble neoaristocracy. Against this background, the chapter concludes with an analysis of Coudenhove’s failed attempts to work with the groups of Masons, liberal and progressive internationalists, and pacifist advocates for European unity with whom Fried had collaborated.