Richard Nikolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi

Excerpt

Is it possible that on the small European peninsula, twenty-five states live coast to coast in international anarchy, without a similar state of affairs, leading to the most terrible political, economic, and cultural catastrophe? Divided Europe leads to war, oppression, misery; united Europe leads to peace and prosperity.
—Pan Europa, Richard Nikolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi, 1923

Which of Richard Nikolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi's Works were Burned?

All works published before May 1933

Who was Richard Nikolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi?

Count Richard Nikolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi (1894-1972) was founder of the "Pan-Europe" movement. Of Dutch, Greek, Bohemian, and Japanese descent, his parents had met while his father served as Austrian ambassador to the court of Japan. Coudenhove-Kalergi studied philosophy and history in Vienna, receiving a doctorate in 1916. He published Pan Europa in 1923, marking the foundation of the Pan-European movement. This movement aimed to collect the nation states of Europe into a formal political union.

In 1926, the first Congress of the Pan-European Union met in Vienna, and the 2,000 delegates elected Coudenhove-Kalergi president of the Central Council. The Nazis attacked Coudenhove-Kalergi even before their rise to power. The Nazi "house organ," the Eher Publishing House, devoted an entire booklet to attacking him; Hitler had different plans for uniting Europe. Coudenhove-Kalergi had to flee his native Austria in 1938, seeking asylum first in France, then in the United States. All of his works published before May 1933 were thrown into the flames during the book burnings.

Coudenhove-Kalergi returned to Europe in 1947 and continued to work for a European union.