In the turbulent period following the First World War the young
Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the Pan-European Union,
offering a vision of peaceful, democratic unity for Europe, with no
borders, a common currency, and a single passport. His political
congresses in Vienna, Berlin, and Basel attracted thousands from
the intelligentsia and the cultural elite, including Albert
Einstein, Thomas Mann, and Sigmund Freud, who wanted a United
States of Europe brought together by consent. The Count's
commitment to this cooperative ideal infuriated Adolf Hitler, who
referred to him as a "cosmopolitan bastard" in Mein Kampf.
Communists and nationalists, xenophobes and populists alike hated
the Count and his political mission. When the Nazis annexed
Austria, the Count and his wife, the famous actress Ida Roland,
narrowly escaped the Gestapo. He fled to the United States, where
he helped shape American policy for postwar Europe.
Coudenhove-Kalergi's profile was such that he served as the basis
for the fictional resistance hero Victor Laszlo in the film
Casablanca. A brilliant networker, the Count guided many European
leaders, notably advising Winston Churchill before his 1946 Zürich
speech on Europe. A friend to both Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and
President Charles de Gaulle, Coudenhove-Kalergi was personally
invited to the High Mass in Rheims Cathedral in 1961 to celebrate
Franco-German reconciliation. A provocative visionary for Europe,
Coudenhove-Kalergi thought and acted in terms of continents, not
countries. For the Count, the United States of Europe was the
answer to the challenges of communist Russia and capitalist
America. Indeed, he launched his Pan-European Union thirty years
before Jean Monnet set up the European Coal and Steel Community,
the precursor to the European Union. Timely and captivating, Martyn
Bond's biography offers an opportunity to explore a remarkable life
and revisit the impetus and origins of a unified Europe.
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