History of European Ideas, Vol. 16, No. 4-6, pp. 827-833, 1993 0191-6X9/93 $6.00+0.

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Printed m Great Britain Pergamon Press Ltd

THE IDEA BEHIND COUDENHOVE-KALERGI’S

PAN-EUROPEAN UNION

PATRICIAWIEDEMER*

At a time when Europeans were bemoaning their fate about the outcome of the
First World War a young man decided to do something about this pessimism.
Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi was only 27 years old when he took it upon
himself to introduce his Pan-European idea and change the world. He devised a
plan to give Europe back its optimism, to guarantee peace and increase
prosperity. This paper intends to examine Coudenhove-Kalergi’s motives behind
the Pan-European idea. Its aim is to propose the thesis that Coudenhove is the
ideological father of a modern, unified Europe.
Richard Nichols Coudenhove-Kalergi was born on 16 November 1894 in
Tokyo as the second son of the Bohemian diplomat, Henrich, and his Japanese
wife, Mitsuko. He enjoyed a privileged education according to the custom of the
day in the family estate, Ronsperg in today’s Czechoslovakia. Henrich spoke
over 16 languages just to speak with the household servants and, ofcourse, to the
international guests of the family. Alone this milieu introduced the boy to a
cosmopolitain world. Mitsuko brought with her into this family the influence of
Buddism (the family was Catholic), the Asian culture but, above all, her role as
mother was for the children the proof that it was normal to live in a family of
mixed races, religions, and of widely differing social and cultural backgrounds.
Coudenhove refers to his parents in his memoirs as being the synthesis of east and
west. His parents like the continents were very different yet equal, it would be
impossible for him to think in terms of an individual nation, and so Europe
became simply the land of his father, seen always as a single unit, never as a
division, of many little nations.’
Despite his unusually international childhood Coudenhove-Kalergi admitted
feeling closest to the Germanic nation. His mother tongue was German, his
education after the death of his father took place in the famous Viennese boys’
school, Theresanium and he graduated in 1917 with a doctor in philosophy from
the University of Vienna. These feelings of association, however, stem from their
familiarity. Coudenhove knew the German people best, although it cannot be
maintained that he himself felt German in the sense of belonging either to the
German or the newly created Austrian state. Later in his career German
politicians saw him as a French envoy, and the French, in part, as an executor of
German interests despite his Czechoslovakian citizenship!
The second important factor for the development of his ideas was Ida Roland.
This celebrated actress was 14 years his senior, divorced, Jewish and a
commoner. Their marrige in 1915 was, in short, a scandal of first-class style!
Coudenhove was still a minor, not finished with his studies, a Catholic and of

*Stiirtzelstr. 5, 7800 Freiburg, Germany.

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