Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi

Nationality

Austrian

Date of Birth

1894

Date of Death

1972

Political
Preference

Richard Nikolaus Eijiro von Coudenhove-Kalergi was born in Ronsperg (Austria) and obtained his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Vienna. His first book, in fact a manifesto, titled Pan-Europa was published in 1923. It was among the first blueprints of European unity in the interwar-era.

This manifesto reflects his disappointment with Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations. Inspired by Fried’s Pan-America (1910), Coudenhove favoured a United States of Europe. Each copy contained a membership form which invited the reader to become a member of the Pan-European Union. With 16,000 copies being sold in 1926 Pan-Europa was a best-seller at its time
At the first conference of the Pan-European Union in 1926 2,000 participants from 24 nations gathered in Vienna.

While Coudenhove-Kalergi opposed Hitler and was unequivocal in his condemnation of Nazi anti-Semitism, he flirted with Mussolini’s fascism.

Honorary president of the Pan-Europa Movement and Prime Minister of France, Aristide Briand, proposed a European Federal Union in 1930 at the League of Nations. The main contrast between the two blueprints is that Coudenhove-Kalergi prioritizes political and security integration over economic integration whereas Briand’s European Federal Union would start with economic integration.

During World War II, Coudenhove continued his call for the unification of Europe along the Paris-London axis. He took up exile in New York, where he organized a seminar on the subject of European federation, kept writing on the same topic, and established contacts with sympathetic opinion leaders.
After the war, with the emergence of many other movements for European integration, Coudenhove-Kalergi’s European Parliamentary Union was less central. He was awarded the first Charlemagne Prize in 1950, acknowledging his efforts for promoting European unity.