Kurt Tucholsky as Prophet of European Unity

Abstract

Whilst Kurt Tucholsky has long been recognised as the leading left‐wing intellectual, polemicist and satirist of the Weimar Republic, his enthusiasm for the cause of a united Europe has only recently come to light. In the late 1920s he wrote frequently of the need to abandon absolute state sovereignty in favour of a Federal United States of Europe, and even anticipated Mikhail Gorbachev’s concept of a common European house. His reasoning was to be followed by subsequent German leaders from Adenauer to Kohl: after the disastrous Treaty of Versailles and with the League of Nations proving a broken reed, a united Europe would be the only way to prevent another still more bloody war. However, Tucholsky had no clear idea of how Europe could be brought together, remained somewhat sceptical about the Pan‐Europe model of Count Coudenhove‐Kalergi, and did not even comment on the European Federal Union proposed in 1930 by the French Foreign Minister, Briand. Three years later, all the plans for European unity were frustrated by the triumph of Nazism and Tucholsky lapsed into despairing silence and suicide.