Richard Nikolaus Eijiro, Count of Coudenhove-Kalergi[1] (16 November 1894 – 27 July 1972), was a politician, philosopher, andcount ofCoudenhove-Kalergi. A pioneer ofEuropean integration, he served as the founding president of thePaneuropean Union for 49 years. His parents wereHeinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi, an Austro-Hungarian diplomat, andMitsuko Aoyama, the daughter of an oil merchant, antiques-dealer and major landowner in Tokyo.[2] His childhood name in Japan wasEijiro Aoyama. Being a native Austrian-Hungarian citizen, he became aCzechoslovak citizen in 1919 and then took French citizenship from 1939 until his death.
His first book,Pan-Europa, was published in 1923 and contained a membership form for the Pan-Europa movement, which held its first Congress in 1926 inVienna. In 1927,Aristide Briand was elected honorary president of the Pan-Europa movement. Public figures who attended Pan-Europa congresses includedAlbert Einstein,Thomas Mann andSigmund Freud.[3]
Coudenhove-Kalergi was the first recipient of theCharlemagne Prize in 1950. The 1972–1973 academic year at theCollege of Europe was named in his honour. Coudenhove-Kalergi proposedBeethoven's "Ode to Joy" as the music for theEuropean Anthem. He also proposed aEurope Day, a European postage stamp,[4] and many artifacts for the movement (e.g. badges and pennants).[5]
Europa-Platz – Coudenhove-Kalergi inKlosterneuburg, Austria
Coudenhove-Kalergi was the second son ofHeinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi (1859–1906), anAustro-Hungarian count and diplomat. His mother wasMitsuko Aoyama (1874–1941). His father, who spoke sixteen languages and embraced travel as the only means of prolonging life yet died in his forties, had prematurely abandoned a career in the Austrian diplomatic service that took him toAthens,Constantinople,Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, to devote himself to study and writing.
Coudenhove-Kalergi's parents met when his mother helped the Austro-Hungarian diplomat after he fell off a horse while riding in Japan. In commenting on their union,Whittaker Chambers described the future originator of Pan-Europe as "practically a Pan-European organization himself." He elaborated: "TheCoudenhoves were a wealthyFlemish family that fled to Austria during theFrench Revolution. TheKalergis were a wealthy Greek family fromCrete. The line has been further crossed with Poles, Norwegians,Balts, French and Germans".[6] TheKalergis family roots claim their descent fromByzantine royalty viaVenetian aristocracy, connecting with thePhokas imperial dynasty. In 1300, Coudenhove-Kalergi's ancestor Alexios Phokas-Kalergis signed the treaty that made Crete a dominion ofVenice.
During his childhood, Coudenhove-Kalergi's mother had read aloud to himMomotarō and other Japanese fairy tales.[7]
The Ronsperg castle, his childhood home. Damaged during the Second World War, the repairs were overseen by a German from JapanMasumi Schmidt-Muraki.
Coudenhove-Kalergi spent his adolescence onBohemian family estates inRonsperg, known today asPoběžovice. His father personally taught his two sons Russian and Hungarian[citation needed] and toughened them both physically and morally. He took them on long walks in all weather, made them sleep on straw mattresses and take cold showers, and taught them to shoot and fence so well that no one would ever dare challenge them. He also took them toMass every Sunday. On everyGood Friday, as theliturgy came to the exhortation "oremus et pro perfidis Judaeis" ("Let us also pray for the perfidious Jews"), the old count allegedly rose and walked out of the church in a protest against this expression ofantisemitism.[6]
Coudenhove-Kalergi studied at theAugustiner-Gymnasium inBrixen before attending theTheresianische Akademie in Vienna from 1908 until 1913. He obtained his doctorate in philosophy with a thesis onDie Objectivität als Grundprinzip der Moral (Objectivity as the Fundamental Principle of Morals) in 1917 from theUniversity of Vienna.
During his student years, Coudenhove-Kalergi married the famous Jewish Viennese actressIda Roland in April 1915. His marriage to adivorcée thirteen years his senior, and acommoner, caused a temporary split with his family. His mother Mitsuko did not accept Ida, considering her a "beggar living on the riverbank,"[8] a traditional Japanese point of view against actors and performers. His mother, as head of the family, banned him from the family temporarily, but relented when Coudenhove-Kalergi became renowned for his pan-European concept.[citation needed]
Ida Roland-Coudenhove-Kalergi and Thomas Mann in the second Pan-European Congress inSing-Akademie zu Berlin on 17 May 1930
Coudenhove-Kalergi is recognized as the founder of the first popular movement for a united Europe. His intellectual influences ranged fromImmanuel Kant,Rudolf Kjellén andOswald Spengler toArthur Schopenhauer andFriedrich Nietzsche. In politics, he was an enthusiastic supporter of theFourteen Points made byWoodrow Wilson on 8 January 1918 andpacifist initiatives ofKurt Hiller. In December 1921, he joined theMasonic lodge "Humanitas" in Vienna.[12] According toStephen Dorril, in 1922, he co-founded[citation needed] the Pan-European Union (PEU), as "the only way of guarding against an eventual world hegemony by Russia."[13][unreliable source?] In 1923, he published a manifesto entitledPan-Europa, each copy containing a membership form which invited the reader to become a member of thePan-Europa movement. He favored social democracy as an improvement on "the feudal aristocracy of the sword" but his ambition was to create a conservative society that superseded democracy with "the social aristocracy of the spirit."[14] European freemason lodges supported his movement, including the lodge Humanitas.[15]Pan-Europa was translated into the languages of European countries (excluding Italian, which edition was not published at that time), the constructed languageOccidental[16] and a multitude of other languages, except for Russian.[17]
In April 1924, Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the journalPaneuropa (1924–1938) of which he was editor and principal author. The next year he started publishing his main work, theKampf um Paneuropa (The fight for Paneuropa, 1925–1928, three volumes). In 1926, the first Congress of the Pan-European Union was held in Vienna and the 2,000 delegates elected Coudenhove-Kalergi as president of the Central Council, a position he held until his death in 1972.
His original vision was for a world divided into only five states: a United States of Europe that would link continental countries with French and Italian possessions in Africa; a Pan-American Union encompassing North and South Americas; the British Commonwealth circling the globe; the USSR spanning Eurasia; and a Pan-Asian Union whereby Japan and China would control most of the Pacific. To him, the only hope for a Europe devastated by war was to federate along lines that the Hungarian-born RomanianAurel Popovici and others had proposed for the dissolved multinational Empire of Austria-Hungary. According to Coudenhove-Kalergi, Pan-Europe would encompass and extend a more flexible and more competitive Austria-Hungary, with English serving as the world language, spoken by everyone in addition to their native tongue. He believed that individualism and socialism would learn to cooperate instead of compete, and urged that capitalism and communism cross-fertilise each other just as the Protestant Reformation had spurred the Catholic Church to regenerate itself.[18]
Coudenhove-Kalergi attempted to enlist prominent European politicians in his pan-European cause. He offered the presidency of the Austrian branch of the Pan-European Union toIgnaz Seipel, who accepted the offer unhesitatingly and rewarded his beneficiary with an office in the old Imperial palace in Vienna. Coudenhove-Kalergi had less success withTomáš Masaryk, who referred him to his uncooperative Prime MinisterEdvard Beneš. However, the idea of pan-Europe elicited support from politicians as diverse as the Italian anti-Fascist politicianCarlo Sforza and the German President of theReichsbank underHitler,Hjalmar Schacht. Although Coudenhove-Kalergi found himself unable to swayBenito Mussolini, his ideas influencedAristide Briand through his speech in favour of a European Union in theLeague of Nations on 8 September 1929, as well as his famous 1930 "Memorandum on the Organisation of a Regime of European Federal Union."[19]
Coudenhove-Kalergi proposed Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" as theAnthem of Europe in 1929,[4] which he later proposed in 1955 as Anthem for theEuropean Union. In 1930, he proposed a Europe Day in May[4] and in 1932 he proposed to celebrate every 17 May, the anniversary of Aristide Briand's "Memorandum" being published in 1930.[20]
His Pan-Europeanism earned vivid loathing from Adolf Hitler, who excoriated its pacifism and mechanical economism and belittled its founder as "a bastard."[21][22] Hitler's view of Coudenhove-Kalergi was that the "rootless, cosmopolitan, and elitist half-breed" was going to repeat the historical mistakes of Coudenhove ancestors who had served theHouse of Habsburg.[23] In 1928, Hitler wrote about his political opponent in hisZweites Buch, describing him as "Allerweltsbastarden (commonplace bastard) Coudenhove".[24][25]
Hitler argued in his 1928Secret Book that they are unfit for the future defense of Europe against America. As America fills its North Americanlebensraum, "the natural activist urge that is peculiar to young nations will turn outward." But then "a pacifist-democratic Pan-European hodgepodge state" would not be able to oppose the United States, as it is "according to the conception of that commonplace bastard, Coudenhove-Kalergi..."[26] Nazi criticism and propaganda against Coudenhove-Kalergi, and his European worldview, would decades later form the basis of the racistKalergi planconspiracy theory.[27]
Nazis considered the Pan-European Union to be under the control ofFreemasonry.[28] In 1938, aNazi propaganda book,Die Freimaurerei: Weltanschauung, Organisation und Politik (Freemasonry: Its World View, Organization and Policies), was released in German, which targeted Coudenhove-Kalergi's membership of Freemasonry, the organizationsuppressed by Nazis.[29] Coudenhove-Kalergi had already left the Viennese Masonic Lodge in 1926 to avoid the criticism that occurred at that time of the relationship between the Pan-European movement and Freemasonry.[citation needed]
Paul Henreid as Victor Laszlo in the cinematic trailer ofCasablanca
Afterthe annexation of Austria byNazi Germany in 1938, Coudenhove-Kalergi fled toCzechoslovakia, and thence to France. As France fell to Germany in 1940, he escaped to the United States by way of Switzerland and Portugal. When he passed a few days after the successful escape to the United States, he listened to the radio announcing the possibility that he had died.[30] During World War II, he continued his call for the unification of Europe along the Paris-London axis. His wartime politics and adventures served as the real life basis for fictional Resistance hero Victor Laszlo, thePaul Henreid character inCasablanca.[citation needed]
Coudenhove-Kalergi published his workCrusade for Paneurope in 1944. His appeal for the unification of Europe enjoyed some support fromWinston Churchill,Allen Dulles, and"Wild Bill" Donovan.[31] After the announcement of theAtlantic Charter on 14 August 1941, he composed a memorandum entitled "Austria's Independence in the light of the Atlantic Charter" and sent it toWinston Churchill andFranklin Delano Roosevelt. In his position statement, Coudenhove-Kalergi took up the goals of the charter and recommended himself as head of government in exile. Both Churchill and Roosevelt distanced themselves from this document. From 1942 until his return to France in 1945, he taught at theNew York University, which appointed him professor of history in 1944. At the same university ProfessorLudwig von Mises studied currency problems for Coudenhove-Kalergi's movement.[32]
On 22 July 1943, Nazis deprived him of his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Vienna, with the racist argument, that as a "Jew" he was not considered worthy of an academic degree from a German university ("eines akademischen Grades einer deutschen Hochschule unwürdig") – even though he was not Jewish nor was his family Jewish. His doctorate degree was only regranted on 15 May 1955, six years after the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany and thus ten years after the end ofNazism.[33]
The end of the World War II inaugurated a revival of pan-European hopes. In the winter of 1945,Harry S. Truman read an article in the December issue ofCollier's magazine that Coudenhove-Kalergi posted about the integration of Europe. His article impressed Truman, and it was adopted to the United States' official policy.[34] Winston Churchill's celebrated speech of 19 September 1946 to the Academic Youth inZurich commended "the exertions of the Pan-European Union which owes so much to Count Coudenhove-Kalergi and which commanded the services of the famous French patriot and statesman Aristide Briand."[35] In November 1946 and the spring of 1947, Coudenhove-Kalergi circulated an enquiry addressed to members of European parliaments. This enquiry resulted in the founding of theEuropean Parliamentary Union (EPU), a nominally private organization that held its preliminary conference on 4–5 July at Gstaad, Switzerland, and followed it with its first full conference from 8 to 12 September. Speaking at the first EPU conference, Coudenhove-Kalergi argued that the constitution of a wide market with a stable currency was the vehicle for Europe to reconstruct its potential and take the place it deserves within the concert of Nations. On less guarded occasions he was heard to advocate a revival ofCharlemagne's empire.[36] In 1950 he received the first annualKarlspreis (Charlemagne Award), given by the German city ofAachen to people who contributed to the European idea and European peace. In Japan, a politicianIchirō Hatoyama was influenced by Coudenhove-Kalergi's fraternity in his bookThe Totalitarian State Against Man. It was translated into Japanese by Hatoyama and published in 1952. Coudenhove-Kalergi was appointed the honorary chairman of the fraternal youth association that Hatoyama, with the influence of his book, had established in 1953.
Plaque at Place Richard de Coudenhove-Kalergi inParis
In the 1960s, Coudenhove-Kalergi urged Austria to pursue "an active policy of peace", as a "fight against theCold War and its continuation, the atomic war". He advocated Austrian involvement in world politics in order to keep the peace, as "active neutrality". He continued his advocacy of European unification in memoranda circulated to the governments of the Federal Republic of Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy. He recommended negotiations between theEuropean Community and theEuropean Free Trade Association towards forming a "European customs union" that would be free of political and military connections, but would eventually adopt a monetary union.
In his 1925 bookPractical Idealism, Coudenhove-Kalergi theorized that the historical development causing the death of European hereditary social classes would lead to an all-encompassingrace of the future made up of "Eurasian-Negroid[s]", would replace "the diversity of peoples" and "[t]oday's races and classes" with a "diversity of individuals".[38][39]
In an interview in the first Pan-European Congress in 1926, he expressed the support of Jews by the pan-European movement and the benefits to Jews with the elimination of racial hatred and economic rivalry brought by the United States of Europe.[40]
In 1932, Coudenhove-Kalergi composed, and had his publishing house reissue, a preface for a new edition of his fatherHeinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi's condemnation of antisemitism in his later life. In 1933, he responded to the ascendance ofNazism by collaborating withHeinrich Mann,Arthur Holitscher,Lion Feuchtwanger, andMax Brod in writing and publishing the pamphletGegen die Phrase vom jüdischen Schädling ("Against the Phrase 'Jewish Parasite'").[41]
The Pan-European idea influenced a young Japanese diplomat – in the future, the president ofKajima Corporation –Morinosuke Kajima during his residence in Berlin in 1922.[42] Coudenhove-Kalergi formed a friendship with Kajima and then asked him to translate the bookPan-Europa into Japanese.[42] He proposed Pan-Asia to Kajima and promised to giveDutch East Indies as their friendship after the realization of the task to establish Pan-Asia.[42] Kajima publishedPan-Europa in Japanese in 1927. In 1930 Kajima retired from theMinistry of Foreign Affairs to becomeMP. His ambition to become an MP was due to Coudenhove-Kalergi's influence.[43] In 1970–1971 he published the complete works of Coudenhove-Kalergi from Kajima Institute Publishing that was established by Morinosuke Kajima. He respected Coudenhove-Kalergi over a lifetime, dreaming of the realization of Pan-Asia.[42]
In Japan, the Pan-European idea also influenced a journalistYoshinori Maeda, the president ofNHK. He became a pioneer ofAsia-Pacific Broadcasting Union with the image ofPan-Europa that he read in his student days.[44]
In 1953Ichirō Hatoyama establishedYuai Youth Association (later Yuai Association), the fraternal association as the successor of fraternity that Coudenhove-Kalergi mentioned inThe Totalitarian State Against Man. The Japanese wordyūai (友愛) has several meanings but especially the word used by Hatoyama meansfraternity and in Germanbrüderlichkeit.[45] It can also be considered equivalent to "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" (Brotherhood), the motto of the French Republic. An educatorKaoru Hatoyama became the second president of the association after her husband Ichirō, the first president, died in 1959.[citation needed]
In 1967 Coudenhove-Kalergi was awarded the Kajima Peace Award, and was invited to Japan by Morinosuke Kajima as the president of Kajima Institute of International Peace, Yoshinori Maeda as the president of NHK, and Kaoru Hatoyama as the president of Yuai Youth Association. Together with his second wife Alexandra in a wheelchair,[46] Coudenhove-Kalergi stayed in Japan from 26 October to 8 November. He was also accompanied by his young brotherGerolf's daughterBarbara.[47] Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi was also awardedFirst Order of the Sacred Treasure of Japan. He was granted an audience with the EmperorHirohito,Empress Kōjun, their son Crown PrinceAkihito to whom he had presented his book in 1953 in Switzerland, and Crown PrincessMichiko. This time, he had returned to Japan for the first time since his childhood 71 years earlier. He gave several lectures and met various leaders. Coudenhove-Kalergi spent 2 weeks in Japan as a guest of Japanese TV, radio, newspaper, magazines and other media.[48] While in Japan, Coudenhove-Kalergi specifically asked for a meeting with the president ofSoka Gakkai,Daisaku Ikeda, as Coudenhove-Kalergi had been interested in Ikeda's work for many years.[49]
According to a masonic report,[clarification needed] Coudenhove-Kalergi died of a stroke.[50] His secretary, however, indicated that Coudenhove-Kalergi possibly committed suicide. In the memoir his secretary wrote, she said his death had been kept secret so as not to disappoint those who considered him to be the great visionary of European integration.[51] Coudenhove-Kalergi was the head of the Pan-European Union until his death.Otto von Habsburg succeeded him as president.[citation needed]
Coudenhove-Kalergi is buried atGruben nearGstaad.[52] His grave, covered withwild grapes, is located in aJapanese rock garden in theSwiss Alps. Upon the grave is the French epitaph "Pionnier des États-Unis d'Europe" (Pioneer of the United States of Europe).[53]
Coudenhove-Kalergi was married three times: toIda Roland (1881–1951), to Alexandra Gräfin von Tiele-Winckler (1896–1968), and to Melanie Benatzky-Hoffmann (1909–1983). His known children were Ida's daughter Erika and Alexandra's son Alexander, both of whom were his step-children.[54]
Objektivität als Grundprinzip der Moral. Phil.diss. (1917)
Apologie der Technik (1922)
Adel (1922)
Ethik und Hyperethik (1922);Héros ou Saint (1929), the Cahiers Internationaux series of the publisher Les Editions Rieder, 7, Place Saint-Sulpice, Paris, translated from German into French by Marcel Beaufils
Pan-Europa (1923), Paneuropa Verlag;Pan-Europe (1926),Knopf, abridged, with an introduction byNicholas Murray Butler
Krise der Weltanschauung (1923)
Pazifismus (1924)
Deutschlands Europäische Sendung. Ein Gespräch (1924)
Judenhaß von heute: Graf H. Coudenhofe-Kalergi. Das Wesen des Antisemitismus (1935)
Paneuropa kämpft für Friede, Arbeit, Brot! (1935)
Europa ohne Elend: Ausgewählte Reden (1936)
Zusammenschluss oder Zusammenbruch! (1936)
Judenhaß! (1937)
Totaler Staat – Totaler Mensch (1937), Paneuropa Verlag;The Totalitarian State Against Man, with an introduction byWickham Steed, translated by SirAndrew Mc Fadyean (1938), London, Frederick Muller Ltd.
German:Richard Nikolaus Eijiro Graf von Coudenhove-Kalergi (Regarding personal names: Until 1919,Graf was a title, translated as 'Count', not a first or middle name. The female form isGräfin. In Germany, it has formed part of family names since 1919.).
^""Yuai" for Understanding".Yuai Association. Archived fromthe original on 26 August 2014. Retrieved4 February 2016.... the word Gentleman as he used referred to British type Gentleman in the chivalric medieval Europe, who may be characterized by such attributes as elegant, well-educated, polite, honest, humorous, cleanly, etc. ... Gentleman, however, must bear the moral responsibility to respect and protect Lady ...
^Guieu & Le Dréau 2009,p. 176: "il a proposé dès 1932 une journée de l'Europe qui serait célébrée chaque 17 mai, jour de la publication du Mémorandum Briand."
^Burleigh 2001, p. 426;Lipgens 1984, p. 37; Coudenhove-Kalergi once again approached Mussolini on 10 May 1933 in a futile attempt to form a union of Latin nations against Nazi Germany.(Lipgens 1984, pp. 180–184)
^Hitler, Adolf (1928).Zweites Buch (in German).Dieses Paneuropa nach Auffassung des Allerweltsbastarden Coudenhove würde der amerikanischen Union oder einem national erwachten China gegenüber einst dieselbe Rolle spielen wie der altösterreichische Staat gegenüber Deutschland oder Rußland.
^Hitler's Secret Book, 1928, (tr. Attanasio, Salvator, New York: Grove Press, 1962), p 107.
^"Che cos'è – o sarebbe – il "Piano Kalergi"" [What is - or would be - the "Kalergi Plan"] (in Italian).Il Post. 16 January 2018.The reasons why Kalergi has once again become a scarecrow of the extreme right are quite evident by re-reading what Hitler wrote about him more than 80 years ago. Kalergi argued for the need to temper the differences between peoples in the name of a collective community, wider than the individual state, a recipe that can only be greeted with annoyance by the nationalists of the 1930s as well as those of the 2000s.
^Coudenhove-Kalergi, R. N. (1925).Praktischer Idealismus (in German). Vienna-Leipzig: Paneuropa-Verlag. pp. 22–23.Der Mensch der fernen Zukunft wird Mischling sein. Die heutigen Rassen und Kasten werden der zunehmenden Überwindung von Raum, Zeit und Vorurteil zum Opfer fallen. Dieeurasisch-negroide Zukunftsrasse, äusserlich dem altägyptischen ähnlich, wird die Vielfalt der Völker durch eine Vielfalt der Persönlichkeiten ersetzen
^Coudenhove-Kalergi, R. N. (1925).Practical Idealism, English ver. 1.2(PDF). Trans. Curtis White. p. 30.Man of the distant future will be a hybrid. Today's races and castes will fall victim to the growing defeat of space, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian-Negroid race of the future, outwardly similar to the ancient Egyptian, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals.
^Tozawa, Hidenori (2013).クーデンホーフ・カレルギーと日本の関係 (in Japanese). Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi Forum (School of Law, Tohoku University). Retrieved17 November 2014.
Tozawa, Hidenori (2013b).リヒャルト・クーデンホーフ・カレルギー (in Japanese). Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi Forum (School of Law, Tohoku University). Retrieved4 November 2014.
Tozawa, Hidenori (2013c).クーデンホーフ・カレルギーと鹿島守之助 (in Japanese). Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi Forum (School of Law, Tohoku University). Retrieved17 November 2014.
Tozawa, Hidenori (2013d).クーデンホーフ・カレルギーと創価学会 (in Japanese). Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi Forum (School of Law, Tohoku University). Retrieved17 November 2014.
第3話 鹿島平和賞授賞の舞台.Kajima MONTHLY REPORT DIGEST (in Japanese). Kajima Corporation. April 2005. Retrieved17 November 2014.
Hirakawa, Hitoshi (2011)."English Edition: Dr. Morinosuke Kajima and Pan-Asianism"(PDF). SGRA Report No. 58. Atsumi International Scholarship Foundation (AISF) / Sekiguchi Global Research Association (SGRA). pp. 37–77. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 29 November 2014. Retrieved17 November 2014.
Lipgens, Walter, ed. (1984),Documents on the History of European Integration, Volume 1: Continental Plans for European Union 1939–1945,Walter de Gruyter,OCLC406352658
Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard Nikolaus (1925).Praktischer Idealismus [Practical Idealism] (in German). Wien-Leipzig: Pan-Europa-Verlag. UBR069031840355. Retrieved7 November 2014.
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