New Europe 1933–1945

The term Europe has not always been understood in the same way. Depending on the period and influenced by the dominant interpreting elites at the time, it was always different features that were emphasised, "new" traditions that were discovered and created, and different values -- specific to the period -- that were claimed as European. Europe is a construct. That is as true today as in the period before 1945. This monograph focuses on 'Sachbücher' (non-fiction books), travelogues and literary-political writings by eight authors who played a key role in the discourse on Europe in the Third Reich and also partly in the early German Federal Republic. One of them is Walter Kiaulehn. In World War II, in the periodical Signal, Kiaulehn draws up a European family tree of a somewhat different, totalitarian kind -- naturally excluding semi-Asiatic Russia as well as England, a refugee from Europe. England has "swum off" in the direction of the USA. For Ernst Wilhelm Eschmann, Great Britain and France belong to the "margins of Europe" anyway, while the central powers, Germany and Italy, constitute the actual core of the continent. Europe evolves from the centre, and it is characteristically medial, balanced, mediating between tradition and progress. It is the others who are radical and have no appreciation for the middle course: the Americans with their skyscraper fantasies and the Bolsheviks with their anti-cultural tabula-rasa mentality. The New Europe", on the other hand, is the continent where in accordance with a golden mean that has developed historically, a moderate Modernism takes shape. An instance of this is the New Bari, the "favourite city of Fascism" that Gustav R. Hocke visits in 1937 and in which, instead of giant high-rises, he encounters much smaller, six-storey buildings along the new waterfront promenade. The term The New Europe became generally accepted in Germany during the 1930s, and by the beginning of World War II it was an integral part of the German discourse on Europe. Last but not least, this book would like to encourage the reader to critically question the provisionally last 'great narrative' of the Occident -- the narrative according to which Europe evolved from liberal humanist traditions and, based on democratic values, gradually came to have its present form in several intermediate stages beginning in classical antiquity.