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118 Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen caused Gorbachev to accept the Federal Republic to stay in the Western alliance. At the beginning of June 1990, Shevardnadze assured Baker of Soviet acceptance of German membership in NATO, pending the working out of conditions such as the future size of the German army. After that Gorbachev’s success on the 28th Party Congress on July 12 and 13 only had to be waited for, before the Soviet leader could present the answer to Federal chancellor Kohl. Many passages in the book show clearly that German unification is also an important chapter in the history of European integration. Genscher’s striving for an island of stability in Europe and Mitterrand’s fear about a possible German drift to the East made sure that at the end of the 80s, a European framework was ready to receive German unification. That made it easier for the Bush-administration to decide for a promotion of German unification. After Kohl dropped his previous resistance to France’s pet European Monetary Union and central European bank, Mitterrand also was reconciled with unloved German unity. Thus German unification was acting as a catalyst for European integration, the Maastricht treaties were a result of recent German unity. From Pond’s point of view, apart from the Soviet Union France also belonged to the losers of the process. For her the new Europe necessarily is under German leadership. This may be an exaggeration, as this opinion underestimates Germany’s dependence on an integrated Europe. Nevertheless, it does not alter the correctness of her results that the American actual strength in Europe will be welcome also in future as a balance between the different European powers. And it is certainly true that the Germans as “partners in leadership” now take a special responsibility. As far as the security-political scene of the 1980s is concerned, Pond is sometimes inhibited by American prejudices. Moreover, some passages are superseded by new detailed research. This concerns for example the decision to open the wall on November 9, 1989, which in the meantime turned out to be a half-revolutionary act. But these comments do not detract from the convincing general view. Pond’s book is well written and excellently documented. It represents a fascinating reading material for all who witnessed the process of German unification and give thought to its significance. Wilfried Loth Universität Essen Aram MATTIOLI. – Zwischen Demokratie und totalitärer Diktatur. Gonzague de Reynold und die Tradition der autoritären Rechten in der Schweiz. Zürich, Orell Füssli Verlag, 1994. ISBN 3280021936. 68,00 DM. While Switzerland as a whole remains aloof from the progress of European integration, a number of Swiss intellectuals like Denis de Rougemont or Jean-Rudolf von Salis have played an important role in achieving a cultural definition of Europe. In this context, the influence of Gonzague de Reynold (1880-1970), a member of the French-speaking aristocracy of Fribourg and a belligerent as well as controversial right-wing intellectual, on the conservative European ideology of ‘Abendland’ from the time between the wars till well beyond the year 1945 should not be underestimated. All through his life, Reynold had his biggest audience amongst that university educated bourgeoisie of ‘Carolingian’ Europe which was governed by a pessimistic view of contemporary culture, by antiliberalism and catholicism. His vague nostalgia for a catholic ‘Reich’, a reactionary utopia based on the Holy Roman Empire, harks back to the empire of the Franks under Charlemagne and to the universal monarchy of the Hohenstaufen emperors. Their amalgamation of the Latin and the Germanic cultures appears as the culmination point
Book reviews – Comptes rendus – Buchbesprechungen 119 of the European history. This nostalgia is transferred to the authoritarian systems of the 30s. Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Third Reich up to the massacre in June 1934, Franco’s Spain, Pétain’s French regime at Vichy appear in Reynold’s eyes as part of a ‘revolutionary’ progress in the original sense of the word: of a historical roll-back which does not mean a return to the past but to the future, as he would express it. Reynold’s contemporary hero was Salazar, the Portuguese dictator, whose Christian corporatism appealed to him far more than the idea of the state as realised by Fascism. Accordingly, his sympathies were with the Austrian antiliberal Ignaz Seipel and with certain Helvetian tendencies in what became known as ‘frontism’ in the Switzerland of the 30s. He once said in ironical self-depreciation that he preferred to be called a ‘reactionary’ rather than a ‘conservative’. The term ‘reactionary’, as he understood it, was of course a synonym for ‘revolutionary’ (or rather, ‘counter-revolutionary’). The Swiss historian Aram Mattioli (Basel/Lucerna) is a specialist for the history of the authoritarian Right and of contemporary catholicism and one of the few historians to attempt an analysis of the phenomenon of European right-wing intellectualism. His excellently written and exhaustive biography of Gonzague de Reynold is the first scholary study to be published about this subject. Mattioli uses a vast and impressive range of published as well as unpublished sources, not least the material available from Reynold’s own papers which – as an exception to the rule – are fully accessible and seem to have remained completely ‘unpurged’. On this basis, he describes the important steps in the development of this Helvetian nationalist and right-wing catholic, of the antidemocratic, antiliberal and antisocialist, the ideologist of authoritarian change in Switzerland, the partisan for a Christian state and the ideologist of ‘Abendland’ during the Cold War. Reynold, after renouncing his political ambitions in 1941, turned to writing what became his most important work, the seven volumes of “La Formation de l’Europe” which are an arsenal of occidental anticommunism, of bipolar East-West-thinking and of biting comments on contemporary reality. Reynold’s achievement in writing this work lies in his insisting on a historical definition of Europe. Its weakness is his insistence on the cultural superiority of Europe which makes him turn the past into a utopian future. The Holy Roman Empire remains for this enemy of supranational institutions the example of a federal organisation of states, of polycephalous Christian unity. Champions of conservative political thought as different in their views as Denis de Rougemont, Otto von Habsburg and André Siegfried payed tribute to Gonzague de Reynold as a “great European”. Robert Schuman confessed in 1955 that the spiritual encounter with Reynold’s work had been decisive for his European engagement. Thus, it is no surprise that Gonzague de Reynold is remembered as a connoisseur of European cultural history and as one of the most renowned essayists in the Romanic world. In the context of European integration, he represents a catholic, restorative tendency the historical importance of which can hardly be overestimated. The mentality of the Old Regime survives in this attempt to salvage what is left of ancient privilege and class subordination by countering modernization with conservative as well as revolutionary ideas of renewal. Such ideas were consistent with contemporary attitudes of the 20s through to the 60s; in the academically educated bourgeoisie of Portugal, Spain and Latin America, of France, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands they found a fertile ground in which to take roots up to the present day. Today, these ideas appear antiquated, but they still remain powerful political tools. Mattioli’s biography of one of their principal authors is a key for understanding the political and historical relevance of European attitudes taken up by right-wing intellectuals in this century, a field of study which had so far been explored only at its outer rims. Readers should not be deterred by the fact that large portions of this eminently readable book treat of historical events which shaped Swiss rather than European history. All these events reflect a change which affects the continent as a whole. In many instances, Mattioli’s point of view as a
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JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION HIS
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Integrating Europe or Ending the Co
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Cold War Threats 51 Cold War Threat
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Cold War Threats 53 their part in t
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Cold War Threats 55 Program monies
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Cold War Threats 57 years after its
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Cold War Threats 59 could be immune
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Cold War Threats 61 tional organiza
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Cold War Threats 63 Some European p
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Cold War Threats 65 IV The story of
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