Vision Europa. Deutsche und polnische Föderationspläne des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts by Heinz s> Duchhardt Małgorzata Morawiec (review)

Abstract

756 SEER, 82, 3, 2004 Duchhardt, Heinz and Morawiec, Malgorzata(eds). Vision Europa. Deutsche und polnischeFoderationspldne des 1g. undfriihen 20. J7ahrhunderts. Veroffentlichungen des Instituts fur Europaische Geschichte Mainz. Universalgeschichte Beiheft, 6o. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz, 2003. xiv + I43 pp. Notes. Index. C24.8o. ITis useful for the general reader to be reminded, as the German and Polish historiansin this volume do, that the genesis of concepts of European unity, integrationand brotherhoodlies in earliercenturiesand not simplyamidstthe detritusof the Second WorldWar. These concepts were given a new impetus particularlyfollowing the Frenchrevolutionaryand Napoleonic era, and they continued to be articulated thereafter in various forms and with different degreesof intensityby a motley congregationof individualsand organizations, most of which were motivated above all by a desire to promote lastingpeace, prosperity and social equality on the continent. Consequently, by I945, a sizeablecorpusof ideaswhich had been developed overtime awaitedpractical implementation by politicians and statesmen imbued with the vision of creatinga new and betterEurope. While each of the sixpaperstriesearnestlyto add to our understandingof a topic which has assumed so much importance in public and political debate in manyEuropeancountries,some arerathermoreinformativeandpersuasive than others.WolfD. Grunerskilfullysketchesthe somewhathesitantevolution after I8I5 of ideas concerning the shape and identity a united Europe might assume against a background of increasingly rapid social and economic change. Malgorzata Morawiec analyses the federalistnotions, including that of a so-called 'PermanentAssociationof CivilizedNations' (i 83I), overwhich the Russian Empire was to play a 'protective' role, that were circulated in Polish circles during the first half of the nineteenth century by Adam Czartoryski,WojciechJastrzfbowskiand StefanBuszczynski.Even if Morawiec might be exaggerating the resonance of their ideas within a wider Polish context that was shaped principallyby the quest for the recovery of Poland's independence following the Partitions of the late eighteenth century, her remarksdo help to fill a gap in the historiography.Regrettably,however, the same cannot be saidof the remainingcontributions. Heinz Duchhardt failstojustify in his very briefpaper the importancewith which he endows a sixteen-page pamphlet entitled 'The United States of Europe. Effortsat Achieving the Brotherhood of European Nations', which was publishedby an obscurewriter,FranzHeinrich Plotzer, in Darmstadt,in 1912. Plotzer adumbratedthe fancifulnotion of establishingan International Liberal Party under the auspices of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, but otherwisedid not explain how thiswas actuallyto be brought about. Imperial Germanywas full of well-intentioned but nebulous eccentricswhose opinions understandablyattractedscant attention. In theirseparatediscussionsof PanEuropeanideas in interwarPoland, StephanieZloch and WieslawBokajloare even less convincing. Zloch describes attempts by some Poles to promote federalistideas as an integral part of Poland's foreign policy, with particular reference to the VersaillesSettlement, the Polish-SovietWar of I919-2 I and the League of Nations. Butherdiscursiveaccount addslittleto what is already REVIEWS 757 known about such attemptswhich were, in any case, renderedperipheralby the Pilsudski-ite'Doctrine of the Two Enemies' and other exigencies of that period. Bokajlo'sequally ill-focused and overlong paper also adds very little that is intrinsicallynew, in this case about the federalismassociated with the old Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth, J6zef Pilsudski'sideas, and with the weakly-definednotions of a Mitteleuropa entertained for a time by sections of the Polish socialistand nationalistmovements. The volume is rounded off by Jurgen Elverts'sratherflat account, based directlyon his earlierpublications, of how the original nineteenth-century concept of a German-led Central EuropeanFederationwas subsequentlycommandeeredby right-wingintellectualsand eventuallyincorporatedby the Third Reich into itsracist-imperialist foreignpolicy. However interesting and significantideas of European unity and the like are, it must be remembered that until 1945 they were marginalized intellectually and politically by the steamroller of an increasingly militant, intolerant nationalism, especially from about i890 onwards, and by its corollary, the emergence of the self-conscious nation-state, which was exemplified during the interwaryears by, among others, Weimar Germany and the Second Polish Republic. It is that proper, wider perspectivewhich is lacking in most of this volume, whose limited scope, moreover, cannot reasonably be expected to address wholly satisfactorilya topic -'United Europe' of such complexity and magnitude. TheCentrefor Research inPolishHistory PETER D. STACHURA University ofStirling Berend, Ivan T. Histogy Derailed.Central andEastern Europe in theLong Nineteenth Century. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, and London, 2003. xx + 330 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. $39.95: /27.95. MORE than two decades ago...