European Unification: An Ambivalent Concept?

As UK and EU representatives are discussing the future economic and political relationship between the two government entities, it should come naturally to examine how the idea of a united ​​Europe has changed across the centuries, and, precisely, the different interpretations to which it has been subject in the years before the foundation of the modern European Project.

According to historian Alessandro Barbero in his brilliant podcast series on the Frankish Empire, it is possible to imagine a hypothetical thread that unites such different conceptions with that of about 1200 years ago, at the time of Charlemagne. In fact, it is precisely with the Frankish monarch, and his territorial conquests, that the geographical dimension which was beginning to coagulate impressively recorded today's Europe, at least before the annexation of Eastern countries.

Indeed, it is essential to underline that it is with Charlemagne that we began to talk about Europe not only with a geographical meaning, but by a deeper one, as before his conquests different European populations had lived each for themselves since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, while they were then beginning to be understood as part of a bigger whole. Such phenomena was exemplified at the turn of the twentieth century by the lively academic debate between German and French historians on the national identity of the European king, which saw a revival of German scholars who managed to somehow impose their idea and therefore the fact that Charlemagne was German.  

The advent of Hitler, however, was accompanied by rise of new, young historians whose could not wait to get rid of their older competitors, and they did this precisely by dealing with Charlemagne, whose figure was questioned, as guilty of having conducted a Christian policy in close collaboration with the Pope. As a result, Charlemagne came thus to be seen in protestant-dominated Germany as a figure associated with Roman Catholicism rather than a pure Germanic hero. 

Despite the significance of the such historiographical parenthesis, the figure of the Frank King was restored in Germany by Hitler, who, until then, having been disinterested in the controversy, decided to deal with the matter by establishing that Charlemagne, despite having made some ‘mistakes’ -nominally the alleged beheading of thousands of Saxons- could be justified on that basis that what he had done had the wider purpose of unifying the Germanic people. This should be seen in the wider political context of the time in which the Nazis themselves wondered if it was not Hitler "the new Charlemagne," whose advent was talked about in the circles of astrologers and fortune-tellers.

As the end of Nazism began to loom in face of increasing military difficulties, the dichotomy in German propaganda between Hitler and Charlemagne became even closer, as the fight against the Soviets and the Anglo-Americans was associated to the defence the European order Hitler had built, and Charlemagne served to tell all the submitted populations in Europe that all of them had a common cause: the defence of Europe and European civilisation that was thought to be an external ‘threat’. In such a context, the figure of the Monarch was seen as being especially useful when it was necessary to address the French. In such light, it is significant that Hitler donated in 1943 to the officers of the French SS division, the Charlemagne division, a service of dishes which bore on one side the portrait of Charlemagne and on the other the Latin inscription "Imperium Caroli Magni Divisum per nepotes Anno DCCCXLIII defendit Adolphus Hitler una cum omnibus europae populis anno MCMXLIII,” which can be roughly translated as "The descendants of Charlemagne divided by the year 843 maintains Adolf Hitler with all the peoples of Europe in the year 1943."

Subsequently, as Paris had recently been liberated from the Nazi occupation in the winter of 1944, the historian Lucien Febvre was called to teach a course on the idea of ​​Europe at the Collège France for the academic year 1944-45. He began the course by asking the following question to his students: "Is Europe an outdated concept or a vital necessity for the progress of the world?" And he continued: "It is superfluous to insist on the present interest and relevance of similar studies. It is useless to insist after four years during which we have heard the words Europe European repeated by voices that seemed so un-European," also referring to the figure of Charlemagne who, like the Nazis, had tried to unify Europe with the means of military conquest.

We can link such thinking about the subject with the thesis proposed by Heinrich von Fichtenau, author of one of the most significant accounts on the matter, the book ‘The Carolingian’s Empire’, being written in 1949. Such work is particularly notable as it provides a moral perspective of the idea of Europe which came into light during a historical period in which much of Continental Europe was reduced into rubble by the German unificatory attempt, in which the rather bleak account was given that ‘The Frankish Empire and the great Charlemagne were thus raised to a symbol of magnificent and splendour, he liked to forget the shadow that had suffocated that light.’

With such a statement, Fichtenau clearly underlined the ambivalence of the idea of a united Europe and the different meanings as well as practical consequences it could take according to its different interpretation by those who came to represent such unifying force. Eventually, we would then see how this initial scepticism would be then overtaken by subsequently dominant current of taught tracing back its roots by the Pan-European movement and the Ventotene Manifesto, as European Integration became a key principle in the post-war ideological reorganisation of Western European leaders, being based ad principium on a spirit of collaboration and free association between European populations rather than the one of military conquest.

Without the need to get into a discussion of whether the more sceptical voices behind the idea of united Europe have been proven right by the political developments of the last three decades of European integration -which culminated with the leave of the United Kingdom of the European Union- it is possible to see how that the future relationship between the UK and the EU will be dominated by such underlining ambivalent principle of European unification. British lawmakers and negotiators must take such necessary discussion into account, in order to predict and react to future European political developments in a post-Brexit scenario.

Enrico Pelganta is a first year reading Jurisprudence at Christ Church.