Hitler’s Cosmopolitan Bastard: The Forgotten Father of Europe

Virtually unknown in Britain, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi strongly influenced continental thinking on the unification of Europe. Half Japanese and half Austro-Hungarian, he was politicised by the First World War and appalled by the Versailles Treaty. He proposed instead a peaceful unification of all the states of the continent, and Hitler was his rival. They clashed repeatedly in the no-holds-barred media of the 20s and 30s, culminating in Mein Kampf with Hitler’s insult – “Cosmopolitan Bastard” – the title of my recent biography.

Coudenhove-Kalergi escaped to New York in 1940 and pursued his dream of a united Europe with a PanEuropean Congress in exile. He lobbied the State Department and the White House, finally winning over Truman to declare that “The United States of Europe is a very good idea.”

Back in Europe postwar, he engaged with Churchill, De Gaulle and Adenauer to ensure that what became the EU never forgot what he called “the enslaved East”. He revived his pre-war campaigning organisation, PanEuropa, and master-minded the first Europe-wide Parliament that met in 1949 as the Assembly of the Council of Europe. He died in 1972 and his successor as President of PanEuropa – Otto von Hapsburg – organised the East-West Picnic that first prised open the Iron Curtain at Sopron in 1989.

About our speaker

Martyn Bond studied modern languages at Queens’ in the 1960s and always wanted to work on the continent. After postgraduate study in Hamburg and some years at the BBC he taught European Studies at the New University of Ulster. From there he was recruited to Brussels as press spokesman for the Council of Ministers of the European Community in 1974. He switched to Berlin as the BBC correspondent for a few years in the early 1980s, and then back to Brussels as a Eurocrat looking after Council relations with the new kid on the block, the European Parliament. He jumped ship in 1989 to head the Parliament’s office in London, coping with Thatcher’s, Major’s and Blair’s ups and downs about the UK’s role in Europe. In retirement he has run a think tank on European affairs and published on human rights and the Council of Europe – as well as the topic of tonight’s talk, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi.

The Evening

Guests should arrive from 6.30pm to meet for a drink and get comfortable before we move to the lecture room for the talk and discussion starting at 7pm sharp. The talk will be finished by 8pm at which point we can move back to the quiet bar area for drinks and more chat. There will be a cash bar before and after the talk.

*As tickets are limited, only members of the Cambridge Society of London may book tickets – if you are not currently a member and would like to become one, please enrol via this link.