Conflicted Memories: Europeanizing Contemporary Histories

By Konrad H. Jarausch

Despite the growing interest in general European history, the European dimension is surprisingly absent from the writing of contemporary history. In most countries, the historiography on the 20th century continues to be dominated by national perspectives. Although there is cross-national work on specific topics such as occupation or resistance, transnational conceptions and narratives of contemporary European history have yet to be worked out. This volume focuses on the development of a shared conception of recent European history that will be required as an underpinning for further economic and political integration so as to make lasting cooperation on the old continent possible. It tries to overcome the traditional national framing that ironically persists just at a time when organized efforts to transform Europe from an object of debate to an actual subject have some chance of succeeding in making it into a polity in its own right.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: May 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9780857453600

Book preview

Introduction

CONTOURS OF A CRITICAL

HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY EUROPE:

A TRANSNATIONAL AGENDA

Konrad H. Jarausch and Thomas Lindenberger

In the soapbox speeches of politicians, references to Europe have until recently functioned as an institutionalized appeal to overcome the nation-state. Intellectuals like the political scientist Jerzy Mackow have lent weight to this notion by calling for a ‘European idea'—which he aptly calls ‘Europeanism'—analogous to the development of nationalism during the nineteenth century. In order to build a common identity on the basis of history beyond ‘a bunch of national narratives and legends,' he argues ‘the Europeans need to learn and understand European history.'¹ Even the past chairman of the Association of German Historians Johannes Fried warns that ‘in spite of cooperation' the Europeans will not achieve ‘integration and a collective identity' as long as their ‘national images of memory diverge.'²

During the summer of 2005 the citizen rebellion against Brussels via referenda on the European Constitution dealt the project to devise a historical grounding for further integration a blow whose consequences are still unclear. The grand vision of a United Europe strong enough to have a common foreign and security policy, but also diverse enough to maintain cultural differences, was firmly rejected by two of its partially sovereign member states in June 2005 on the grounds that fundamental changes should be made to the draft. Whereas the public had previously shown little interest in this topic as intellectuals debated the democracy deficit of ‘Brussels bureaucracy,' French and Dutch citizens made use of the first possible opportunity to stage a practical revolt.³ Shortly afterwards, the fact that the Council of Ministers proved unable to come to a decision on a fundamental revision of the budgetary policy for the years 2007 to 2013 appeared to confirm the scepticism. In spite of the accession of Bulgaria and Romania, the European project has been forced to come to a stop—creating an opportunity to reflect on the significance or insignificance of its ‘historical identity.'

Fortunately, the European Commission has until now refrained from specifying a comprehensive strategy to legitimate European integration policy on the basis of a common view of history. All participants in the European project are following the explicit wish of the EU's founding fathers to prevent a repetition of the historical catastrophes of the first half of the twentieth century by creating common interests beyond the nation-state.⁴However, the draft of the constitution devised by the European Convention in the summer of 2003 contains only vague allusions to the ‘cultural, religious and humanistic traditions' on which a community of values might be founded, and to the need, despite a sense of pride in ‘national identity and history,' to ‘overcome old divisions.' There is no mention of national conflicts, ethnic cleansing, world wars, and genocides, and the passage about culture contains nothing more than a declaration of intention to contribute towards the ‘improvement of the knowledge and dissemination of the culture and history of the European peoples.'⁵

The discipline of contemporary history seems to be rather badly equipped to develop the outlines of a European view of history. Even the more critical representatives of the field still approach their objects within the context of the nation-state. And German historians who reflect on the course of development and periodization of contemporary history continue to focus on reappraising the National Socialist dictatorship and on writing separate postwar histories of the divided Germanies.⁶ The collapse of communism has introduced an additional topic into their agenda, concerning the second dictatorship, so that they now face the challenge of undertaking a ‘dual reappraisal of the past'⁷—an issue that may only partially apply to other countries. Only recently have authors like Christoph Kleßmann referred to ‘European contemporary history as a problem' (in contrast to ‘European history' in general) and pointed out the need for more systematic analysis of the western and eastern contexts as well as the European integration process.⁸ However, these appeals have so far yielded few substantive results.

How should contemporary historians deal with the Treitschke-temptation to justify the integration process by constructing a European master narrative? Some colleagues like Jürgen Elwert from Cologne clearly do not allow themselves to be put off by either ideological scruples or the boredom that arises as a result of the predictability of such a history: ‘Just as national histories of the nineteenth century had provided essential elements on which national identities were based, modern European historical research must contribute towards supporting the European integration process by providing accompanying arguments.'⁹ Sceptics nevertheless warn against prematurely taking leave of the nation-state and against embarking on further political instrumentalization of history.¹⁰ If scholars are to gain the detachment necessary to deal with the object of knowledge known as ‘European contemporary history,' the time has come for them to reflect on their own role in the process of European integration. The observations that follow will therefore outline some of the deficits contained in European views of history, explain the chronically inadequate responses to research on Europe, point out some interpretational problems that have yet to be solved, and draw on the contributions in this book in order to outline some suggestions for alternatives in regard to content and method.

The Patchwork of Memories

Although European schoolbooks repeatedly use the same half-dozen images to illustrate dramatic moments in history, these overlaps are by no means proof of a common ‘European view of history.' In her suggestive essay on this topic, Susanne Popp has discovered that David's watercolour The Oath of the Tennis Court, or Goya's oil painting The 3rd of May 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid, for example, appear in several textbooks. But it would amount to an overinterpretation if one were to declare that the fifteen most frequently used paintings constitute a ‘canon.'¹¹ Like the huge and incomprehensible outline of the constitution, the failure of the EU to reach an agreement about the illustrations on the common currency should act as a warning against assuming transnational consensus. If an emerging community can agree neither on the leading cultural figures like Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Molière, and Goethe, nor even on outstanding architectural works, which are reproduced on the euro merely in the form of abstract drawings, one can hardly claim that there already exists a common memory culture.¹²

Similarly, the millions of tourists who make pilgrimages to the churches, palaces and museums of European capital cities each summer are generally presented with a national glorification of the past. Most artifacts on show are nonetheless the products of pre- or transnational relations. For instance, many of the marvellous works of art in Prague were produced in the multinational Habsburg Empire, which attracted outstanding artists from Italy, France and Germany to decorate representative buildings. Even when the origins of the various creators are mentioned, their works tend to be embedded in a narrative of Czech pride that largely suppresses references to Europe while placing emphasis on the present nation-state. Popular brochures present Prague less as a European city, which it undoubtedly was before, than as the capital of the Czech Republic—which it is certainly now. What is accurate as far as development since the late nineteenth century is concerned, might be misleading when it comes to periods before that, which were marked by very different dynastic, religious, and class relations.¹³

In March 2004, an incident at the Leipzig Book Fair revealed how far Eastern and Western Europeans still are from establishing a ‘common memory culture.' When the Latvian European commissioner designate Sandra Kalniete claimed that ‘both totalitarianisms—National Socialism and communism—were equally criminal,' Salomon Korn, a member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, demonstratively left the room because he felt that it was an insult to equate these dictatorships with each other.¹⁴ The debates about the meaning of the Vichy regime or about the participation of German representatives in the commemoration of the Allied landing in Normandy show how difficult it remains in Western Europe to bring the different national memories of opponents or collaborators of Nazism into line with those of perpetrators in the crimes of the Holocaust. In Eastern Europe, however, critical debate about the past under communism, as demonstrated in a special issue of Eurozine, is still in an early phase insofar as many states in the region continue to focus attention on justifying their precarious national independence.¹⁵ While the universalization of the American concept of the Holocaust reduces its usefulness as a ‘negative founding myth' for Europe, the limitation of the trauma of mass expulsion to the East complicates common reference to this event as a Europe-wide memorial narrative.¹⁶

For this reason Stefan Troebst has recently reiterated a suggestion made already in 1950 by the Polish exile historian Oskar Halecki to distinguish variations in the European memory landscape caused by the catastrophes of the twentieth century: an Atlantic-Western European memorial community comprised of former Western military opponents of Germany and focusing on D-Day of 1944 and 8 May 1945, should be distinguished from German-speaking West-Central Europe with its multiple traumata resulting from the experience of two dictatorships, bombing raids, and total defeat. A further distinction should to be made with respect to East Central Europe, whose nations had to come to terms not only with two occupations in succession but, moreover, with being at the mercy of Soviet power as permitted by the Yalta conference. In contrast, victory in ‘The Great Patriotic War' continues to provide a unifying bond for historical identity in the Eastern European states of the Russian Federation.

In the case of the zone formerly controlled by the Soviet Union, different memory cultures have emerged that are marked by anti-Russian consensus (the Baltic republics), open conflicts about the past (Poland, Hungary, and also Ukraine and Slovenia), an ambivalent and apathetic attitude towards communist modernization (Bulgaria, Romania, and some Balkan states), and a uninterrupted authoritarian rule that prevents criticism of communist dictatorship (Moldova, Russia, Belarus, and other GUS states). Since the nation-state is expected to continue to be the dominant political unit in Europe in the near future, Troebst is rather pessimistic about the prospects for combining references to the past that characterize such different sites of memory as ‘Stalingrad,' ‘D-Day,' ‘Yalta,' or ‘8 May 1945.' ‘It is more likely that the division into four parts such as Western Europe, West-Central Europe, East-Central Europe, and Eastern Europe, as they are emerging at present, will at first become even deeper,' for ‘public discussion has only just begun.'¹⁷

In light of this patchwork of memory landscapes that are partly isolated and partly in touch with each other, the challenge is to create the greatest possible openness towards the experiences and approaches of the other. ‘Both things must be learnt: how to articulate one's own misfortune and to remember that of others.'¹⁸ An exhibition called ‘The Idea of Europe' at the German Historical Museum in Berlin demonstrated how difficult it is to practice such a degree of openness. Although its sculptures and paintings provided visual representations of the ‘myth of Europe,' the old maps revealed that the task of defining the limits of the continent has not at all been easy. Certain common features exist, such as religious uniformity under Roman Christianity or political attempts to create unity under the Holy Roman Empire, but the development of sovereignty illustrates the extent to which the territory was in fact fragmented. The story of the rise of nation-states therefore indicates how the continent gradually disintegrated, whereas the opposed plans to set up systems of ‘eternal peace' reveal that people rather hoped to pacify the entire known world at that time. The artifacts representing the will to unity in the final room of the exhibition thus testify to the clear insufficiency of the efforts to overcome centuries of discord and war.¹⁹ Numerous other examples could be mentioned to show the scarcity of signs that a common European historical consciousness already exists.

Research without Public Response

A brief survey of scholarly work devoted to the theme of Europe reveals a contradictory pattern consisting of intense effort and a lack of public response. The lead discipline in this field has been political science, spearheaded by specialists such as Ernst B. Haas, who developed research on European integration as early as the late 1950s.²⁰ This approach expanded rapidly within the field of comparative government following the foundation of European Studies centres at leading American universities, and even gave rise to a special organization, the European Community Studies Association. In recent years, descriptions of the emerging European polity from a political science perspective have become more and more complex, and scholars have also begun to carry out surveys (the Eurobarometer) in order to address qualitative questions about cultural identity. Many researchers thus see themselves as participating observers who combine analysis with political consultancy work in order to promote the integration process. They do this sometimes in a critical, but more often in an affirmative, way.²¹

In the field of history, some authors of schoolbooks have led the drive to construct a view of the past that is more compatible with Europe by breaking down national stereotypes. As early as the 1950s, a Franco-German schoolbook commission attempted to issue a common declaration on the origins of the First World War that moved away from the one-sided verdict pronounced in the Treaty of Versailles.²² Over the last few decades, the Georg Eckert Textbook Institute in Braunschweig has undertaken similar negotiations with Central and Eastern European countries in order to reduce the propagation of historical enmity on either side. In the early 1990s, a common project even attempted to devise a ‘European Schoolbook,' while individual authors propagated instructions for a transnational representation of history.²³ Initiatives such as the Körber Foundation's Student Contest have also contributed towards toning down the depictions of various conflicts, though most curricula continue to draw on national views of the past and thus perpetuate this approach in the present.

Historical researchers have also devoted more time to Europe recently, albeit without being able to inspire many of their colleagues with enthusiasm. Initial empirical research and publications of source material about the origins of integration go back to the 1950s. More recently, the European University Institute in Florence has included this topic in its programme of research and published works that have stimulated considerable interest in the field.²⁴ Some of the larger publishing houses in Germany have also produced book series on topics such as ‘Building Europe.' The Beck publishing house has even founded a new multilingual journal with the not entirely original title Journal of Modern European History.²⁵ However, there exist very few critical studies like the work by John Gillingham, which analyzes not only the successes, but also the failures of the unification process. Genuinely transnational investigations into European social and cultural history that go beyond the history of international relations and wars are still rare.²⁶

The situation faced by the subfield of contemporary history is even more complex, for its origins are closely connected to the effort to come to terms with the ideological dictatorships of the twentieth century. Differing research priorities regarding the recent past have given rise to considerable disparities. Whereas in postfascist democracies contemporary history emerged mainly as a self-critical response to national transgressions, in Western European countries treatment of the Second World War has focused rather on National Socialist repression as part of the experience of occupation. By comparison, historians in Central and Eastern Europe have only just begun to revise their understanding of Soviet domination and to reappraise the consequences of communism. Periodizations are equally varied. In France ‘contemporary history' starts with the revolution of 1789, and in Central Europe it generally begins with the First World War, whereas in Eastern Europe it refers to the period after 1945.²⁷ Instead of doing research on major catastrophes of the first half of the century in a transnational perspective and understanding the Cold War as the division of Europe, most contemporary historians continue to operate within a national framework in order to do justice to the stories of their own people's suffering, collaboration, or perpetration.

In sum, the academic field of European politics and history is no less fragmented and varied than the memorial landscape known as ‘Europe.' Productive research on the European Union, idealistic European didactics, and presentist pan-European historiography clash with the persistence of nationally defined themes of contemporary history, privileging particular versions of suffering to form a confused melange in which only a modicum of common trends and clusters is beginning to emerge. In dealing with Europe, contemporary historians have therefore barely begun to overcome this unsatisfactory situation by fostering a transnational dialogue about overarching sources, methods, and themes.

Contentions about substantive issues

One of the chief causes of disinterest is the lack of distinctiveness of historical problems connected with the label ‘Europe.' This becomes apparent in the geographical imprecision of what references to Europe mean. A quick survey of half a dozen new textbooks from the United States reveals a number of problem areas, the first of these being the uncertainty of European borders, which is the key to whether people speak in positive terms of a ‘rebirth,' or in negative terms of a ‘dark continent.'²⁸ The tendency to perceive Europe as the site of civilization and progress gives rise to celebrations of Western Civilization that emphasize US affinity with England and France during the world wars and include the smaller Western European states. But the twofold wartime enemy Germany and its neighbors fit this pattern only if they are perceived as a ‘close other,' for their relapse into the barbarity of National Socialism is beyond comprehension. Moreover, Central and Eastern Europe are almost completely ignored because this area lay behind the Iron Curtain, while the role played by Russia both within and outside of Europe generally remains vague as well.²⁹ This way of defining Europe from the point of view of Western Europe is not confined to the United States, for it also occurs cum grano salis in representations of Western European origin.

A second set of problems concerns the themes arising from differing methodological perspectives and therefore the metanarratives that might lend coherence to interpretations. Does it suffice, as in many handbooks, to present an overarching history of international relations, wars, and peace treaties in combination with separate chapters about the domestic politics of specific countries?³⁰ Should the presentation instead concentrate on the social process of modernization and celebrate the development of Europe as civilizing advance, only interrupted by crises and relapses that almost defy explanation?³¹ Or should it deal with the competition between the major ideological power centres of communism, fascism, and democracy, which determined the foreign and domestic policies of European states between 1917 and 1992?³² In spite of the decisive experiences of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, might the secular development of the economy and society, for instance in mass consumption and popular culture, moderated by the welfare state and global competition, not be in fact the essential theme on which a transnational history of Europe in the twentieth century ought to focus?³³

A third area of controversy is the actual or perceived relationship between Europe and the rest of the world, for the cliché of ‘unity in variety' may be dissolved only if it is contrasted with the alterity of the other. Most broad overviews tend to ignore the postcolonial deconstruction of Eurocentricity that happened in reaction to the suffering meted out by European imperialism throughout the world, for it would otherwise tarnish the positive self-perception underpinning the sense of cultural superiority in Western Europe. Indeed, did not the colonized peoples' habit of perceiving all ‘white folk' as ‘Europeans' cause national differences to become blurred?³⁴ A similar problem that is rarely discussed is the ambivalent relation between Europe and the English-speaking countries of North America and other overseas territories. Although the spread of European civilization in the transatlantic area could initially be understood as a form of outward projection, it led to the emergence of a more dynamic alternative in the New World, which was to save and subsequently rehabilitate the old continent during the world wars.³⁵ What is specifically European about Europe, in contrast to the settlement colonies and North America?

A final, and perhaps even more contentious issue, is the question of the fundamental values embodied by Europe, on which the common core of this Faustian civilization is based. Even if the Judaeo-Christian origins of European moral precepts are generally acknowledged, the Reformation refuted the idea that the Western world was united in its Catholic origins—not to mention the fatal element of anti-Semitism contained in both subsequent confessions.³⁶ Another frequently discussed issue is the heritage of the Enlightenment and its attempt rationally to justify political and human rights on the one hand, and to strive towards finding practical means to improve living conditions on the other. However, both postcolonial and feminist theories have demonstrated important flaws in the Enlightenment project, because it has all too often been used as a means to legitimate the domination of white European men.³⁷ How do the ideologies of fascism and communism, which cost the lives of millions of victims, fit into this overly positive self-image of the Europeans? Were they merely atavistic relapses or rather typical expressions of modern civilization?³⁸

Many of these fundamental questions regarding the interpretation of European development have yet to be addressed by scholarship—a situation that has contributed to the historical amnesia of ‘Europe.' Since a general historical study presupposes a clear definition of the issues, a genuinely European contemporary history requires the clarification of its objects and problems in advance. The time seems ripe to engage in intensive discussion about this topic on the basis of the different memories in the East and West that were outlined above.

Means of Methodological Rapprochement

Since essentialist theories have not proven successful, a common view of the European past can only be developed by recognizing the plurality of contemporary histories. The attempt to bring together diverse national narratives under one pan-European roof is no more satisfactory than the teleological emphasis on the shared essence of the ‘Enlightenment and liberal-democratic heritage of Europe' or the retroprojection of present-day attempts at integration onto the period before 1945. Precisely because knowledge, values, and perspectives differ drastically from nation to nation, the ‘plurality of interpretations of European history is completely inevitable.' In order to avoid arbitrary interpretations, such a constructivist approach must aim to identify the specifically European dimension of transnational developments. According to Hannes Siegrist, it is ‘not a question of homogenizing or harmonizing European history, but of building coherence and determining relations between stories made by Europeans, with which Europeans can identify and on the basis of which Europeans can be distinguished from non-Europeans.'³⁹

The classic way of analyzing common tendencies and individual variations is to compare national, regional, and local developments systematically. Even a comparison between just two cases can serve to clarify general trends and uncover distinctions—a method that proves to be even more effective when three or more units are included in the comparison. However, it is also necessary to question large-scale quantitative generalizations on the basis of more specific qualitative information, in order to avoid the danger of superficiality. Instead of making essentialist assumptions about Europe, empirical contrasts with other continents could serve to expose certain similarities among European characteristics beyond national boundaries. For this reason Heinz-Gerhard Haupt suggests that we should also take cultural factors into consideration when dealing with social science hypotheses, broadening their scope into a ‘comparative history of discourse and ideas.' Such a perspective would transform Europe ‘from a fixed entity into a varied ensemble of attributions that vary according to interests, authors and the economic situation.'⁴⁰

Another approach, which places greater emphasis on relations and interconnections, is ‘transnational history.' With this concept, Klaus Kiran Patel, for instance, seeks to discover ‘interdependencies and transfers across (national) borders as well as mutual perceptions' and also to distinguish ‘forms of interrelatedness,' that is, to deal with structural connections below and beyond the nation-state. The quest to establish such interactions breaks through the walls of national history, but in contrast to international history that deals with interactions between states, transnational history focuses more on social processes and cultural exchanges. The resulting discussions about notions of territoriality, transfer processes, transactions, etc. could prove to be extremely fruitful for an analysis of changing perceptions of identities and interconnections throughout Europe. Instead of establishing a new historical teleology, ‘the starting point of a transnational approach to European unification could be the question, what has the term Europe actually meant at different moments in history'?⁴¹

The concept of histoire croisée represents another ambitious attempt to think through the epistemological consequences of the multiplication of histories resulting from a transnational perspective. The ‘crossing' of history presupposes that the transfer is not confined to a one-way direction, and that its object is not subjected to a process of material concretization. Meanings change as a result of the process of transfer, and the perspectives inherent in such a relation encourage not only a variety of viewpoints, but different histories as well. The connection between them does not develop on the narrative level of a unique and ‘true' history, but of an ensemble of histories that are interconnected and yet not mutually assimilated. The suggestion to carry out a combined analysis of the ideological dependence of historical narratives and the complexity of historical issues, without neglecting either of these aspects, is not only helpful for the task of writing contemporary history from a transnational perspective, but is also part of a series of deconstructions of unified history that can be rendered in a single narrative. While drawing on theories of global history and postcolonial history, it is not by chance that the idea of histoire croisée has emerged primarily in relation to histories of intra-European relations in which antagonisms and affinities were closely bound up with each other.

A final approach to contemporary history could be a self-reflexive history of historiography that addresses the relationship between political concerns, methodological approaches, and the conclusions which historians draw on the basis of their interpretations. Comparative analysis of the effect of changing historical views on the development of nationalism in Europe has already revealed the extent to which historians have functioned as designers of an ‘imagined community.' There is ample evidence to show that scholarship became more professionalized in different countries precisely during the consolidation of the nation-state and that historians assumed the role of national prophets across the continent.⁴² This finding raises uncanny questions about the relation between European integration as a political process and the academic acclaim accorded to it by scholars who ought to be employing a more self-critical approach. Instead of simply celebrating Europe as a normative goal, after the destructive experience of nationalism they ought to treat Europe more dispassionately as a cognitive problem in order to live up to their scientific responsibility.

Unless there is a constructivist theoretical and methodological understanding and an acceptance of plurality, Europeanized contemporary history is likely to remain little more than the sum of its component national histories. Classic studies of the emergence of the idea of Europe, the European state system, and the European economy and society have until now been able to shed light only on parts of the development of the old continent. The recent discussion about comparative and transnational approaches and the concept of histoire croisée provide valuable suggestions for a more complex approach that transcends national boundaries and explores common as well as divergent aspects both within and without.

Outlines of a Critical History of Europe

What form might a critical contemporary history of Europe take, if it went beyond the Sunday speeches of politicians? The following observations will attempt to outline an alternative, based on four key questions. First, it seems necessary to understand Europe in terms of a framework of conflicting memories that cannot be magically fitted together to form a common view of the past. It required much effort to adapt Pierre Nora's model of French ‘sites of memory' to German history, for his closed system of a polyphonic master narrative of a nation that claimed to have been united for hundreds of years could not just be transferred to the German case, where a long history of disunity prevented such an affirmative construction. How can this same recipe be adapted to Europe's history of nation-states?⁴³ The new member states of the EU, which have only recently (re-)acquired sovereignty, show in particular that their independence is still largely being legitimated on the basis of a recovery of an autonomous national history.⁴⁴ Only systematical reflection about distortions and simplifications resulting from mutually inflicted suffering will make it possible to break the shackles of national master narratives.⁴⁵

This collection of essays therefore begins with the theme of ‘contested memories,' examining the relation between national memory cultures and the political use of history in the course of European integration. Henry Rousso addresses such paradigmatic developments within national memory cultures as oral history, Pierre Nora's ‘sites of memory,' and the anamnesis of the trauma of Judaeocide, and inquires why, over the last decade and therefore fifty years after the event, the history of the Holocaust has established itself as a central feature of national memory politics that contrasts sharply with the optimistic imaginings of a ‘reborn' Europe freed of the burden of the past. Dragoş Petrescus's presentation of the political use of history in postcommunist Romania then explains why the quest to establish contemporary history writing that is critical of its own nation-state and open to Europe is still far from being accepted as common property. His thesis is that the delayed construction of national identity under Ceausescu's oppressive rule has left Romanian memory culture preoccupied with its own problems of postcommunist transition, hindering a broadening of historical sensibilities.

In contrast, Stefan Berger outlines the development of national historiographies as a form of academic practice in modern Europe. Apart from an initial phase of consolidation after 1945, he argues in a more optimistic vein that these histories were exposed to sustained disruptions that brought about a greater plurality of methods, theories, and objects. He concludes by discussing what shape might be taken by a ‘safe' national history that could no longer be used to spur national antagonisms. Pieter Lagrou similarly treats the paradoxical ascendancy of the national focus in historical scholarship that emerged in the wake of the Second World War in Western Europe. He argues that it was precisely the historiographical projects that adopted a critical stance (often representing the viewpoint of minorities) towards the history of the Second World War, occupation, and the Holocaust, that for several decades encouraged contemporary historians to focus their attention inwards towards national spaces and institutions. He concludes by inquiring into the prospects for a systematically ‘unbounded' contemporary history in the European context.

The second part of the volume considers Europe not as a harmonious continent but as a sphere of bloody conflict, by placing emphasis on the almost permanent discord that has prevailed there. Religious quarrels, class struggle, national conflicts, ethnic cleansing, world wars, and genocides are not exceptions, but central threads of the European tapestry. Throughout the continent in the ruins of cities, destroyed landscapes, ubiquitous cemeteries, and black-rimmed pictures in family albums they have left traces of horror, that only someone with a naïve belief in progress could deny. The Germans certainly played a central role as the aggressors and oppressors, as the far-flung activities of their War Graves Commission show, yet other Europeans became persecutors and victims far from their home countries as well. The prevailing concern with national suffering does not do justice to these complex inter- and intranational conflicts. The historical perspective therefore needs to be enlarged in order to encompass more comprehensive aspects of such negative European interactions.⁴⁶

John Horne ruminates on ‘war and conflict' in the twentieth century by inquiring whether it is at all possible to write a contemporary history of Europe with these issues in mind. The lack of clarity of both the concepts of ‘Europe' and ‘contemporary history' paradoxically proves to be an advantage, because the chief features of the European wars and conflicts during the twentieth century—'revolutions,' ‘total war,' ‘totalitarian ideologies,' and the relation between territory, population, and statehood as well as the relation between democracy and decolonization in the various European nations—had a rather different impact from one case to another. None of these themes can adequately be dealt with on the basis of one nation or even all nations, for the experience of catastrophes in Europe is marked by heterogeneous temporal horizons and chronologies.

Kiran Klaus Patel proposes instead an unusual transnational perspective on the history of National Socialism. This approach requires a broader periodization that is not confined to the dates of 1933 to 1945 as in the case of most national historiography, but encompasses the entire scope of the ‘Second Thirty Years' War' from 1914 to 1945. He claims that a transnational perspective facilitates the reconstruction of internal connections of this part of European history without presupposing the existence of a harmonious dream of a Grand Europe. Alfred Rieber similarly focuses on the Eastern part of Europe, and therefore on an often neglected region, by investigating the origins of the Cold War on the borderline between Europe and Asia. Instead of blaming the superpower rivalry, he places the conflict in the context of the longue durée of attempts at domination by large Eurasian state organizations. Leading to the spread of the Soviet sphere of influence in various border areas, the Second World War gave rise to a series of civil wars and resistance movements, ethnic cleansings and regime changes, none of which conformed to the confrontations and diplomatic accommodations of the superpowers during the Cold War.

In the third part of this book, the past fortunately appears in a more positive light because these chapters focus on the transnational interactions that are no less ‘European' than the conflicts between nation-states and national cultures. Even if cooperation among the European powers proved to be short-lived and political initiatives like the Hague Convention on the laws and customs of land warfare merely served to channel but not resolve conflicts, international contacts in other areas such as science and culture were far closer. Recent exhibitions about links between capital cities like Paris, Berlin, and Moscow have demonstrated that the cultural avant-garde was engaged in such lively exchanges that individual artists like Kandinsky can hardly be assigned to a single national context.⁴⁷ During the height of imperialism at the beginning of the twentieth century, economic relations between leading European nations were considerably closer than during the interwar years or between these nations and their own overseas colonies.⁴⁸ The interpretative task therefore consists of reconstructing these transnational networks and of uncovering in more detail the specific contribution made by Europe, which was initially considered to be identical with the civilized world but eventually began to acquire characteristics of its own.

To uncover these elusive links, Thomas Mergel outlines the development of transnational tourism in Europe since 1945, inquiring as to what extent these collective experiences can be interpreted as part of the emergence of a Europe ‘from below.' His thesis that mass travel can be largely defined as constituting a leisure-time Europe reveals a contradiction between a transnational opening towards other cultures and a simultaneous closing off from them through efforts to preserve indigenous traditions. Karen Schönwälder explores the meaning of the migration experience for relations between European countries and between them and other countries beyond Europe. Although migration processes certainly increased during the twentieth century and became a central feature of European history, they still receive too little attention in writings on contemporary history.

Marsha Siefert tackles the contentious issue of the Americanization of European popular culture through the commercial ascendancy of US rock music and Hollywood movies after the Second World War. At the same time she outlines the consistent efforts, spearheaded by the French government, to preserve some kind of indigenous European audiovisual space, which have been only partly successful due to the difficulty of establishing an equally attractive popular culture on a continent of many different languages that can hardly be said to contain a ‘common cultural heritage.' André Steiner inquires into transnational interactions from the perspective of economic history by suggesting ways of investigating the economic effects of European integration before 1973 more precisely in order to determine whether growth was due to integration or to broader international developments. On the basis of empirical evidence from the automobile industry, he is able to show some positive effects of the common market without being able to sustain the more optimistic claims of the integration advocates.

Although the results achieved in this field are still very limited, it is finally essential to analyze the exciting process by which a new political actor known as ‘Europe' is emerging on the international stage. There already exists an impressive array of works written on the history of ideas, which primarily seeks to trace the development of various notions of Europe.⁴⁹ The history of integration in the narrow sense has also been dealt with to some degree, even if a few of the English-language surveys tend to reproduce the noble pronouncements of politicians rather than the tribulations of European everyday life.⁵⁰ Yet in order to develop an independent judgement, it is necessary to adopt a more critical attitude to the European rhetoric of unity, undertake a more thorough investigation of lobbying in Brussels, and place more explicit emphasis on the periodic setbacks that European enthusiasts are inclined to overlook. Finally, more imagination is needed when passing judgement on the supranational versus international aspects of the structures of the EU than has generally been the case, since the fixation on the emergence of a ‘United States of Europe' merely tends to project the traditional nation-state model onto a bigger screen.⁵¹

The fourth part of this book therefore opens with an essay by Hartmut Kaelble about the emergence of European civil society. He inquires into the associational ‘foundations' of the EU and its institutional landscape, concentrated in Brussels and Strasbourg, and comprising the European

Commission, the Council of Ministers and European Parliament; then presents the agents of civil society, many of whose activities are conducted with an eye to influencing EU policies in areas of their special interests. According to Kaeble, these civil society actors operate more decentrally and with more autonomy than national representatives, but are significant building blocks of a shared public sphere in the future. Örjan Appelqvist deals with the origins of European political projects in the period after the Second World War by examining in detail the International Group of Democratic Socialists, an alliance of exiled socialist politicians in Sweden. He reconstructs their far-reaching plans for Europe and traces their partial blockage and deflection into international aid organizations. Even though it could not prevent the relative weakening of European efforts following the onset of the Cold War, this group produced sustained effects that are evident from the subsequent political impact of many of its protagonists. Igor Caşu examines a more recent example of ‘re-Europeanization' on the