Abstract
Cultural Europeanism is a variant of the process of European integration attested within the framework of the Cold War. It will be mostly anti-communist, although it will couch elements favouring West-East dialogue. The governments will promote an intergovernmental model based on multilateral cooperation and national identity, and put into practice in institutions such as the Western Union or the Council of Europe. Non-governmental organizations, such as the European Movement, will be committed to a more transnational model based on the affirmation and promotion of the idea of Europe through institutions such as the College of Europe, the European Centre for Culture or the European Cultural Foundation. Within cultural Europeanism, networks of secondary institutionalization, such as educational seminars, ended up having as much or more impact than the primary entities from which they emerged.
Highlights
Non-governmental organizations, such as the European Movement, will be committed to a more transnational model based on the affirmation and promotion of the idea of Europe through institutions such as the College of Europe, the European Centre for Culture or the European Cultural Foundation
In the classic debate on transnational history promoted by the American Historical Review ( AHR), Sven Beckert (2006, p. 1446) claimed that networks, institutions, ideas and processes serve as international links that go beyond political borders, which does not mean that the role played by governments, empires and states in the creation of those links should be underestimated
The hegemony shared by Soviets and Americans led Spaak to pronounce the following well-known words: “We Europeans live in fear of the Russians and on the charity of the Americans”
Summary
At the beginning of 1958, Hendrik Brugmans, the Rector of the College of Europe in Bruges, beseeched Salvador de Madariaga to accept being a part of the Council of Governors of the European Cultural Foundation because “il y a toujours des gens qui veulent faire de l’européanisme culturel comme si rien n’existait déjà”.1 Brugmans’ statement is revealing, about the efforts made by Europeanists in the cultural field, and about the difficulty they had to face in order to fight their lack of visibility. The city of Bruges, the governor of West Flanders, the Belgian government and Madariaga bet high and the College of Europe soon became a post-graduate university institution specialized in European studies, prevailing over other initiatives which tried to create a European university, without intruding on the domain of the existing national universities.39 It was not the ECC but the Executive of the European Movement that had to organize the preparatory session of the College (in October 1949), elect its first Rector (Hendrik Brugmans), supervise the programme and the lecturers for the first academic year and select the students with the aid of its National Councils. The headquarters of the ESC were located in Venice, partly due to the political and financial support of its communist mayor, Giovanni Battista Gianquinto, and partly due to the fact that such support was approved by Christian Democratic senator Giovanni Ponti, former mayor of the city and Commissioner of the Biennale between 1946 and 1954 (Jachec, 2015, pp. 38-39)
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