IRAK DIE WIEGE DER ZIVILISATION

LE MONDE ESSAY
The Invention of Europe
Turn of an era: “Miranda en la
Caraca” (1896) by Arturo
Michelena, “Napoleon in Berlin”
(1810) by Charles Meynier and
“Portrait of Monsieur Lavoisier
and his Wife” (1788) by
Jacques-Louis David.
The congress was dancing, as a fact. But that’s only
half the story. In his essay, Manfred Matzka,
Director General of the Chancellery, examines the
political relevance of a major historical event.
Author Manfred Matzka
is the Head of the
Presidential Section in the
Federal Chancellery. In
addition, he was a lecturer
at the University of Vienna,
and is a speaker at the
Danube University Krems.
I
have spent the majority of my professional life in
the former Secret Court and State Chancellery
on Ballhausplatz, and hardly a day went by when
I did not use, show or explain the famous „Kongresssaal”
(congress hall). So, in a way it was an everyday
occurrence to be asked about the Congress of Vienna,
which took place there. Unfortunately, it was also
a given thing, that the event was reduced to the same
two preconceptions which seem to characterise its
image, namely, that the congress danced, but did not
achieve anything, and that the conservative Metternich
only contributed to a restoration of the old political
conditions. Hardly any of the guests and visitors
established a relationship to the current importance
of the Congress of Vienna. Both images – like every
good preconception – contain a grain of truth, but
they are both far away from reality. Therefore, it is
time to put a great deal right, and shed new light on
it: this includes things like long term goals, planning
and action plans, the target oriented and clever use
of top entertainers in the music programme for the
conference, networking and lobbying whole droves
of experts, hangers-on, society ladies and conduits,
for the dynamic of a series of summits with preparation
by working groups and confessional negotiations,
for the readiness for international law sanctions
and the correction of borders within Europe,
for the importance of single individuals that are charismatic
for the whole of Europe in an unstable historical
situation …
All of these are also current phenomena of the
European cooperation, it seems to me. You can obviously
describe the congress fittingly with the current
EU vocabulary: Vienna was really the cultural capital
of Europe in this „chairmanship year“; strategic concepts,
state political and economic interests were
brought home to the heads of state and government
in a professional way, and they integrated these into
the negotiations. Even the fact that the working method
– many people from different states sitting together,
in a succession of meetings according to the
rising order of the position of the participants – is
still the same in the EU today, does not put the Congress
of Vienna in a bad light, but rather the working
style of today‘s European bureaucracy. And the fact
that at the time you didn‘t have to strive for and pay
for translation services is going in a similar direction.
The thought of supranationality, the legitimacy of
normative stipulations on a level above the states –
which previously had the monopoly on legislation –
continued to develop from Ballhausplatz into the late
20th Century. The fact that the EU successfully eliminated
some borders within Europe (or at least
their perception) with Schengen, only to recreate
them unsuccessfully and paradoxically somewhere
else, is something else it has in common with the
congress. Incidentally, the whole thing cost about as
much as an EU Council Presidency today, took a similar
amount of time, worked in the same format
and was paid without objection by tax payers, just
like today, who were not quite clear on how it actually
happened.
However, it also makes sense to go deeper underneath
the surface, to look at some of the basic principles
of the Congress of Vienna from a current European
perspective, and ask yourself whether, and if
PHOTOS: GEROLD VERLAG
yes, which effects and significance it has for the current
political Europe.
A joint conviction was at the beginning of the
whole thing – it seemed possible to turn a fundamental
crisis into a chance. The wars with their consequences,
and the wide reaching internal and external
destabilisation of the European states enabled
joint initiatives to be set up, in economics, state
structure and society, which would previously hardly
have been possible without a huge turning point – a
stable, comprehensive reorganisation of the whole
continent.
The congress proved something else: Cooperative
action is possible in Europe. Not only could the individual
states be the bearers of political decisions, there
were further possibilities outside of their sphere of
action, which had previously hardly been recognised,
and were almost never used.
After that it was shown that diplomacy and law
can also bring about what until then had mostly only
occurred through the use of armies. The conquests
of the revolutionary Napoleonic France could be reversed,
without having to enforce this on the battlefield.
You could give yourself and others a new order,
and at the same time avoid military violence. This
proved, that in future it could even be possible to solve
conflicts diplomatically, and moreover, even prevent
them in this way.
This was a new political quality – the instrument
was a new category of norms, namely supranational
law, which was determined by the states together, but
then was also binding for them, where they did not
expressly agree. This applied both for the whole of
Europe, and – with even denser regulations – for
parts of the continent, such as the small states merging
in the German Confederation. Thus, a variable
geometry of the European, political organisation – a
very modern image.
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Cercle Diplomatique 1/2015
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