Fraternité! Schöne Augenblicke in der europäischen Geschichte

Abstract

Bernd Jürgen Warneken’s new book promises to offer readers a hopeful vision of European history as a succession of emancipatory movements, and to ‘save beautiful moments in social history from those who would spurn them’ (p. 10). He has selected a series of ‘beautiful moments’ for ‘thick description’ beginning with the French Revolution, specifically the 14 July 1790 Festival of the Federation. The second and longest section begins with another commemoration of the storming of the Bastille—the July 1889 founding conference of the Socialist International—and continues through a series of subsequent events in the international socialist movement, including the antiwar movement, the outbreak of World War I, the ‘Christmas Truce’ and finally international meetings of pacifist veterans in the 1920s and early 1930s. The final section is dedicated to Germany’s recent migration history, with two subsections on the ‘wildcat strikes’ of ‘guest workers’ that broke out in factories across West Germany in August 1972, and finally a section on ongoing efforts to build mosques in German cities since the 1990s.