The Symbolic Politics of European

Integration : Staging Europe 1st Edition

Jacob Krumrey (Auth.)
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-symbolic-politics-of-european-integration-staging-
europe-1st-edition-jacob-krumrey-auth/
 Jacob Krumrey

The
S Y M B O L I C PO L I T I C S
of
E U R O P E A N I N T E G R AT I O N
Staging Europe
The Symbolic Politics of European Integration
 Jacob Krumrey

The Symbolic Politics

of European
Integration
Staging Europe
Jacob Krumrey
European University Institute
Florence, Italy

ISBN 978-3-319-68132-0    ISBN 978-3-319-68133-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68133-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018930132

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Getty Images / Jonathan Kitchen

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgments

This book is the result of many years of research. During that time I have
incurred many debts of gratitude. The greatest of all is to my mentor,
Kiran Klaus Patel, whom I approached, more than a decade ago, wanting
to do research about the history of European integration. Kiran then
joked that what really struck him about European integration was how
insignificant it had been for the longest time in the grand scheme of things.
With this casual remark, he shocked this book into being. He also had the
grace to live patiently through its many ups and downs. Without his sup-
port and constant intellectual challenges, it would not have been
possible.
I also express my gratitude to N. Piers Ludlow, Federico Romero, and
Johannes Paulmann for reading an earlier version of the manuscript very
carefully. I hope they find I made good use of their advice.
I had the great privilege to spend many years at the European University
Institute (EUI) in Florence, where I met and worked with many great
scholars. I am particularly grateful to Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, who sup-
ported this project from the beginning. I owe thanks to Martin van
Gelderen and Steve Smith, who showed me that the history of European
integration can appeal to historians of very different periods and geo-
graphic areas. Further, I benefited greatly from stimulating conversations
with Antoine Vauchez, Cris Shore, Patricia Clavin, and Desmond Dinan.
In Florence I received generous financial assistance from the Deutscher
Akademischer Austauschdienst.
In addition, I was lucky to spend a few months at New York University’s
Center for European and Mediterranean Studies. There I greatly enjoyed

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

the chance to talk to Larry Wolff, Thomas H. Bender, Mary Nolan, and
the late Marilyn B. Young.
During the research for this book, I met a great many companions
whose intellectual and personal support I acknowledge: Oriane Calligaro,
Antoine Acker, Veera Mitzner (née Nisonen), Jens Wegener, Emmanuel
Mourlon-Druol, Angela Romano, Kenneth Weisbrode, Aurélie Gfeller,
Philip Bajon, Michael J. Geary, Daniel Furby, Christian Salm, Gabriele
d’Ottavio, Alanna O’Malley, Martin Rempe, Veronika Lipphardt, Lorraine
Bluche, and Frauke Stuhl.
For my research, I relied on advice from archivists from many different
institutions. In particular, I thank the German parliament’s press docu-
mentation, the Fondation Jean Monnet pour l’Europe in Lausanne, and
of course the great people at the Historical Archives of the European
Union in Florence, where I was a frequent visitor. I also thank Pedro
Cymbron, deputy chief of protocol at the European Commission, who
made time in his busy calendar to talk about the work of his long-past
predecessors. Thanks to Alexander Stummvoll, who made this meeting
possible.
At the CDU in Brandenburg, I am indebted to Jan Redmann, Gordon
Hoffmann, and Ingo Senftleben for giving me the time to complete this
book. At Palgrave, I thank Sarah Roughley and Samantha Snedden. James
Longbotham, Madeleine LaRue, Mona Gainer-Salim, and Sofia
Kouropatov helped me to polish my English.
During my time at the EUI, I made wonderful friends who contributed
in one way or the other to this book, especially Marat, Dennis, Sanne,
Mark, Pierre, Daniel, Tobias, Christoph, Samuël, Norman, Georg, Laura,
as well as Sarah and Bas, Federico, Lena, and Claudia. Special thanks are
reserved for Karin Manns, my history teacher in high school, who dared
me, at age 17, to write a history book. Well, it took me nearly 20 years—
but here it is.
Last but by no means least, I thank my family for bearing with me
throughout the often nerve-wracking writing process.
 Contents

1 Introduction: The EC as a Theater State   1

Part I Europe on the Diplomatic Stage  15

2 Statesmen Made in Washington: Official EC Visits

to the United States  17

3 At the Eurocrats’ Court: Foreign Representatives,

Diplomatic Ceremonies, and the Empty Chair Crisis  57

4 Ambassadors from Europe: The EC’s Diplomatic

Missions in Britain and the United States  81

Part II A Parliament for Europe 109

5 The Self-Styled Constituante: From the Council of

Europe to the Common Assembly 111

vii
viii Contents

6 Constitutional Theater: From the Common Assembly

to the European Parliament 131

Part III The Race for the Capital of Europe 155

7 The Provincial Heart of Postwar Europe: The Seats

of the Council of Europe and the ECSC in Strasbourg
and Luxembourg 157

8 A Europe Ruled from Paris? Paris, Brussels,

and the Battle for the Seat of the EC 179

9 Conclusion: The Power of Europe 207

10 Epilogue: Symbolic Surplus and Democratic Deficit 215

References 219

Index 239
 Acronyms and Abbreviations

AAPD Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik

Deutschand
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
BArch Bundesarchiv
CDF Central Decimal File
CSCE Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe
CVCE Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l’Europe
DDF Documents diplomatiques français
DG Directorate General
EAC European Atomic Energy Community
EC European Community/European Communities
ECSC European Coal and Steel Community
EDC European Defense Community
EEC European Economic Community
EFTA European Free Trade Association
EPU European Payment Union
EU European Union
EUI European University Institute
FAZ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
FJME Fondation Jean Monnet pour l’Europe
FO Foreign Office
FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
HAEU Historical Archives of the European Union
IHT International Herald Tribune

ix
x ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

JMDS Jean Monnet Duchêne Sources

MAEF Ministère des Affaires étrangères françaises
NARA [United States] National Archives and Records
Administration
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NYT New York Times
NZZ Neue Zürcher Zeitung
OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development
OEEC Organization for European Economic Co-operation
OPEC Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
PAAA Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes
RG Record Group
SZ Süddeutsche Zeitung
TNA / PRO The National Archives of the United Kingdom / Public
Record Office
UN United Nations
UNECE United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization
WEU Western European Community
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The EC as a Theater State

“Europe is born!” declared Jean Monnet on 10 August 1952 in the town

hall of Luxembourg City as he inaugurated the bureaucratic creature that
he was to preside over: the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC).1 A year into the ECSC’s operation, Monnet even
more candidly revealed what he thought his brainchild’s raison d’être was:
“The true significance of the European Coal and Steel Community,” he
told a group of journalists, “is not coal, and it is not steel; it is Europe.”2
What Monnet claimed for his organization of economists, engineers, and
commercial lawyers was nothing less than a mandate to represent the cause
of a united Europe.
Fourteen years after Monnet’s emphatic declaration, on 25 January
1967, the French daily Le Monde invited Pierre Chatenet to publish an
op-ed piece on its front page. Even though Chatenet headed one of the
ECSC’s sister organizations, his piece dealt critically with the emerging
idiom of European unification. “When you think about it,” he wrote, “it
is surely a singular misadventure of language that has managed to create in
the current vocabulary a quasi-synonymity between ‘Europe’ and
‘Common Market’.”3 At first glance, this observation attests to the success
of Monnet’s politics. But while Monnet had sought to wed his humble
organization to the noble cause of Europe, his editorializing successor
implored his readers: “Why pretend to take the part for the whole?”
Chatenet, a French Gaullist, may have had his own political agenda.
But his question was not without merit. Kiran K. Patel has recently drawn

© The Author(s) 2018 1

J. Krumrey, The Symbolic Politics of European Integration,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68133-7_1
2 J. KRUMREY

attention to the “synecdochic qualities of the EC/EU integration pro-

cess,”4 the propensity of an essentially economic policy regime to stand in
for the much larger vision of European union. Taking its cue from that
puzzle, this book sets out to reveal the European Community’s (EC) syn-
ecdochic qualities as a product of staging. It does so by putting forth a
cultural history of European integration that focuses on aspects hitherto
neglected in the history of European integration: the EC’s protocol and
ceremonies, and its marketing and image in the media. It claims that view-
ing European integration through the lens of symbolic representation will
help us to understand how coal, steel, and agricultural tariffs became the
stuff the European dream was made of.
From today’s perspective, the EC’s claim to stand for Europe may not
seem too bold. On the contrary, it may seem self-evident, vindicated by
history. No lesser authority than the Norwegian Nobel Committee certi-
fied its truth when it awarded the European Union (EU), the EC’s succes-
sor organization, the 2012 Peace Prize for “the advancement of peace and
reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe.” Even its most
implacable foes do not deny that the EU is a force to be reckoned with.
Even if severely shaken, it is still the world’s most powerful regulator, with
a market of 500 million consumers, an annual budget in the hundreds of
billions, and the power to bail out—or not to bail out—entire countries.
To inquire into the origins of a major fact of contemporary life is surely
a legitimate interest for historians. But it must nor spare them the question
of what today’s EU—greatly enlarged, thoroughly metamorphosed sev-
eral times—has to do with the Coal and Steel Pool and even the Common
Market of the 1950s and 1960s, nor that of whether the ready-made
assumption of significance can simply be projected back to the postwar
period. Even in 1972, the London Times described the organization
Britain was about to enter as “a super-combination of a Board of Trade
and Ministry of Agriculture.”5 Was this description far off the mark? And
if not, in what way could such an organization substantiate its boast of
peace, prosperity, and European union?
The answers historians give turn out to be surprisingly vague upon
closer inspection. Confronted with the popular narrative of the EC as the
miracle of surpassing a realist conception of international politics, the
now-classic accounts of integration history point out that European inte-
gration—even if it implied a partial pooling of sovereignty—was in fact
nothing but realism.6 They argue that European statesmen, along with
their international partners, followed an economic and/or geostrategic
 INTRODUCTION: THE EC AS A THEATER STATE 3

rationale: that is, they sought economic growth by increasing markets and
sought security from Germany (and obliquely, from the Soviet Union) by
pooling strategic resources. This realist view, however, does not shy away
from claiming great accomplishments for the EC. Famously, the economic
historian Alan Milward declared that European integration had done
nothing less than “rescue the nation state.” Curiously, however, such
grandiloquence finds no echo in the master narratives of twentieth-­century
Europe, which often struggle to pinpoint the EC’s exact contribution to
postwar history. In recent textbooks, for example, European integration
appears as little more than an obligatory interlude.7 Perhaps even the most
hard-nosed integration historians have not been able to fully escape the
EC’s own narrative of itself as Europe.
The EC’s claim to Europe ignores the manifold alternative Europes
that were available at the time. If we take a closer look at the front page of
the edition of Le Monde where Chatenet published his critical op-ed piece,
we find one of these alternatives prominently on display. That day’s cover
story was dedicated to British prime minister Harold Wilson, who had
delivered an address to Europe on the eve of a tour through Europe’s
capitals. Although the purpose of this trip was to build support for the
United Kingdom’s membership in the EC, Wilson had not given his
speech in an EC forum, but in front of the Council of Europe, founded in
1949 in the wake of the Hague Congress.8 Because the Council of Europe
had enjoyed the blessing of the European movements at its inception, and
because its membership included many countries left out of the later
Europe of the Six, it was viewed for a long time as the EC’s most potent
rival. The context of Chatenet’s article therefore qualified its message:
The synonymity of EC and Europe was evident enough to become the
object of plausible criticism, but it was not absolute, nor was it
guaranteed.
The Council of Europe was by no means the only competitor. The
creation of the EC was part of what Akira Iriye calls the “new internation-
alism,”9 the surge in international organizations, or multilateral arrange-
ments, in the aftermath of World War II. This new internationalism
occurred on a global scale: notable examples are the United Nations (UN)
and its agencies, but also the Bretton Woods system and the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). But this new internationalism
had a particularly profound impact upon the transatlantic space between
Western Europe and North America, where a dense web of overlapping
international arrangements emerged, the North Atlantic Treaty
4 J. KRUMREY

Organization (NATO) the most prominent among them. In the area of

collective security, complementary arrangement on a European scale had
existed before, and continued to exist alongside, NATO—such as the
Brussels Pact, which later turned into the Western European Union
(WEU). On a smaller scale, there were cases of regional integration, such
as the Benelux customs union or, later, the Nordic Council. European
integration was part and parcel of this trend toward institutionalized
cooperation. The term itself was originally coined by US policymakers for
the aims of the Marshall plan and applied to the vast array of organizations
dedicated to Europe’s economic reconstruction, from the European
Payment Union (EPU) and the United Nations Economic Commission
for Europe (UNECE) to the Organization for European Economic
Co-operation (OEEC).10 In other words, European integration had
existed before the EC. Patel even characterized the EC as a “fragile late-
comer,” for which others had paved the way.11
The EC’s own history, too, was more complex than is usually remem-
bered. None of Europe’s mythical founding moments actually created a
coherent institutional framework. In fact, the EU’s institutional precursor
originated in three mostly separate organizations created at different
points in time: the ECSC was founded by the 1951 Paris treaty, which was
inspired by the Schuman declaration of 5 May 1950. The later Rome
­treaties, signed on 27 March 1957, created two sister organizations: the
European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic
Energy Community (EAC). In the meantime, however, there had been
additional, but failed, attempts at integration. The infamous example is
the European Defense Community (EDC) and its associate, the European
Political Community, both of which were voted down in the French
National Assembly in 1954. The eventual trio of ECSC, EEC, and EAC
were merged into a single institution—the EC—only in 1967, after the
ECSC had already been in existence for 15 years.
Does this bewildering array of European communities belie the claim of
the EC’s European monopoly? Only superficially so. It is true that, between
the early 1950s and late 1960s, the torch had passed from the Coal and
Steel Community to the Common Market, but in the public perception,
this underscored, rather than contradicted, the continuity in the two orga-
nizations’ common cause, in spite of considerable differences in institu-
tional design and economic approach. Hence, the six signatories decided
to merge the three Communities into a single European Community.
Revealingly enough, while the EU celebrates 5 May as an official “Europe
 INTRODUCTION: THE EC AS A THEATER STATE 5

Day” in memory of the Schuman declaration and EU member states rou-

tinely stage anniversaries of the Rome treaties, the date of the merger—1
July 1967—has passed into oblivion.
But what about the Community’s special nature? Weren’t its suprana-
tional powers what set it apart right from the start? Isn’t this “institutional
revolution,” as it seemed to Raymond Aron, the path that leads from 5
May 1950 to today?12 That, of course, is the textbook narrative: “The
European Union is sui generis – of its own kind, peculiar and unique in
the word. This is as true today as it has been throughout its fifty-year his-
tory,” write Damian Chalmers and Adam Tomkins in their widely read
textbook.13 Recent historiography has, however, pointed out that even the
High Authority’s vaunted supranationalism differed from earlier prece-
dents only by degree.14 The EEC and EAC, moreover, were hybrid orga-
nizations, in which intergovernmental elements were significantly
strengthened. From a legal perspective, more and more scholars are begin-
ning to emphasize the contingency of the EC/EU’s constitutionalism.
They see it not as an inherent feature of the EC’s setup, but as the result
of a contentious process of “constitutionalization,” in which legal and
political entrepreneurs historicized the treaties as a “constitutional
moment.” The EEC Commission’s first president, for example, the
German constitutional lawyer Walter Hallstein, referred to the Rome trea-
ties as “our Basic Law,” comparing them to the West German constitu-
tion.15 Perhaps, the EC-turned-EU has a constitution today. If it does, it
has been the result of such talk. It certainly was not signed into existence
on Rome’s Capitoline Hill on 25 March 1957.
In conclusion, while there can be no doubt that the EC contributed to
solving some thorny issues in postwar Europe—economic reconstruction,
committing West Germany to Western Europe, providing a sense of secu-
rity—this contribution was embedded into, and crucially depended on, a
much broader framework of cooperation. In the postwar construction of
Europe, the EC was but one pillar.
If the EC “was so much less than was claimed for,” as Tony Judt puts
it, our initial question is even more pressing: Why take the part for the
whole? How has the EC come to monopolize “Europe”?16 This book
seeks an answer from a perspective that is unorthodox in the field of EU
historiography, that of cultural history. From this perspective, it advances
the argument that the EC’s claim to Europe—the symbolic value it car-
ried, the normative appeal Europe conferred, and the legitimacy it lent—
was fabricated, constructed, and staged.
6 J. KRUMREY

This book owes its guiding theatrical metaphor to Cliffort Geertz,

whose ethnographic study of kingship and statehood in precolonial Bali
helped inspire a cultural turn among historians, who, over time, began to
appreciate the “ordering force of display, regard and drama” even in mod-
ern politics.17 Geertz himself intended his study as a contribution to politi-
cal philosophy and as an inquiry into the sources of order. Politics, we can
infer from his work, is not exclusively governed by interests, but by ideas
and identities as well, which are in turn arbitrated by symbols. Symbolic
representation therefore is not distinct from, or even subservient to, the
real business of politics—it is at the very heart of it.
The mainstream of integration historiography, up until very recently,
has focused on the interests and interactions of ministers, diplomats, and
administrators. Some authors have refined this approach into very sophis-
ticated multilateral accounts, thanks to which we now have a profound
understanding of the international history of European integration.18
Their work, though often unacknowledged, is heavily influenced by a real-
ist understanding of international history—all the more so as influential
authors, such as the British economic historian Alan Milward, styled them-
selves with great success as dissident revisionists vis-à-vis a naive idealism
that they associated, not entirely unfairly, with an earlier intellectual his-
tory of the European idea and the political science school of
neofunctionalism.
For all their sophistication, there is a blind spot in mainstream accounts
of European integration history. The EC can perhaps be explained in
terms of economic or security rationales, but neither the contemporary
excitement about it nor its enduring normative appeal can be properly
understood in these terms only. It does not suffice to think of the EC as a
purely utilitarian enterprise whose true character is obscured by an
unhealthy dose of idealism. A concern for identity—long before the term
became fashionable and an express political objective—was at the heart of
the EC from the beginning. In dismissing European rhetoric as an annoy-
ing digression from European realpolitik, historians have for too long
ignored how rhetoric offered a kind of legitimacy for realpolitik that alter-
native Europes could not.
Just as legitimacy is more than a function of performance, power is
more than bargaining between states. European lawyers, for example,
have come to understand that the “transformation of Europe” (Joseph
H.H. Weiler) into a distinct legal order was a socially and culturally condi-
tioned process.19 If historians likewise complemented their research of the
 INTRODUCTION: THE EC AS A THEATER STATE 7

“mechanics” with a study of the “poetics of power,” as Geertz suggests,20

it could help them to understand the condition of possibility of the very
realpolitik they have been studying. A cultural history of European politics
can enlighten us as to how “Europe” soon became a self-evident way of
structuring the world. The Symbolic Politics of European Integration
encourages historians to discover a completely different sort of puzzle
than the one they are used to. Instead of calculating the usual gains and
losses of this or that international regime, it asks historians to marvel at a
maverick polity that soon surpassed any policy regime—including its
own—and long survived the changing realist conditions that had origi-
nally prompted its creation.
This book, however, does not call for a paradigm shift in integration
history. Rather, it sees itself as a contribution to the ongoing pluralization
of the field. A few years ago, historians of European integration went
through a phase of self-reflection.21 Some leading figures lamented the
insular state of integration historiography and found the field’s conceptual
underpinnings wanting. As a result, realism is now increasingly balanced
by a wealth of different approaches. To begin with, quite a few authors
have reached out to the literature of social science, especially insofar as
they study transnational epistemic communities and advocacy coalitions.22
Others have sought to embed European integration into larger contexts,
be it the Cold War, the global North-South conflict, or the history of
internationalism.23 Finally, a number of historians have joined an interdis-
ciplinary group of scholars who share an interest in the role of culture in
European integration. The latter literature combines the study of the EU’s
various cultural policies with an interest in the larger issues of European
identity.24 Only rarely, however, have historians used culture as an analyti-
cal tool to make sense of a domain so far reserved for economic and dip-
lomatic historians: the actions of European statesmen and the politics of
the EC’s technocrats.25 The Symbolic Politics of European Integration sets
out to address this gap.
This book is organized into three parts. Each tells the story of a differ-
ent stage in Europe’s political theater: the European parliamentary assem-
blies, the EC’s early diplomacy, and the contest over an imagined capital of
Europe. These three settings offered opportunities for the EC to present
itself publicly. They are ideal case studies precisely because, at face value,
they have little to do with the EC. From a realist perspective, they were
auxiliary to the geo-economic rationales the EC was meant to follow.
Diplomatic relations, parliamentary assemblies, and seating arrangements
8 J. KRUMREY

were not strictly necessary for the EC, at least no more than for any other
international organization. For that reason, they have been dealt with so
far only in specialist studies in neighboring disciplines such as law, urban
studies, and political science.26 In drawing on these studies and comple-
menting them with fresh archival research and a thorough media analysis,
this book inquires into how these seemingly peripheral aspects contributed
to the process of building a polity—and not just any polity, but one that
aimed to transcend its policies. Each of these three settings, moreover,
echoed, in a distinctive way, the representations of a modern state and so
resonated particularly with the media and the broader public. In modern
European history, diplomatic representations have inextricably been bound
up with conceptions of sovereignty. Parliamentary assemblies have not
only been intertwined with ideas of sovereignty, but also deeply ingrained
in the symbolism of European revolutions, and capital cities were key com-
ponents in the iconography of European nation states. Hence, the EC
navigated a sensitive symbolic terrain. But this terrain also allowed it to
develop an ambitious symbolic program: to upstage its competitors on the
international scene by acting like a state, or at least attempting to.
Part I opens with a closer look at the intricate ceremonies and courte-
sies of the EC’s early diplomatic forays and aligns its findings with the
growing literature on the EC’s external relations. Chapter 2 deals with
official visits by Community actors, particularly to the US capital,
Washington, D.C. It argues that visitors and hosts, along with their respec-
tive media, collaborated to use the ambiguity in the protocol of visits by
this novel type of actor to treat the EC heads as true representatives of an
emerging Europe. Meanwhile, their opponents back home contested and
scandalized this representation—paradoxically giving prominence to the
very figures they sought to degrade. Chapter 3 turns to the diplomatic
ceremonies staged by the EC in Luxembourg and Brussels. From this
angle, it revisits the 1965/1966 empty chair crisis, the pivotal crisis in the
Community’s early history. Historians usually describe it as a dispute over
agricultural policy or attribute it to a covert constitutional struggle.
Chapter 3, however, shows that the symbolic representations of the
Community figured much more prominently in the crisis: Community
and member state actors fought over the ceremonies, titles, and dress
codes devised to receive foreign diplomats and designed to demonstrate
the Community’s state-like qualities in international diplomacy. Chapter 4
investigates the early attempts to create “European” ambassadors in part-
ner capitals, the ultimate diplomatic domain of sovereign states.
 INTRODUCTION: THE EC AS A THEATER STATE 9

Community institutions, national governments, and partner governments

fought over attempts to dispatch representatives to foreign states—with
success in the case of the Community’s most reluctant partner, the United
Kingdom, yet without success in the case of its most supportive partner,
the United States. Chapter 4 helps us understand that paradox.
Part II investigates the European Parliament and its institutional pre-
cursor, the Common Assembly of the ECSC, and embeds them in the
broader history of postwar Europe’s parliamentary assemblies, beginning
with the 1948 Congress of Europe in The Hague. From the letters of the
ECSC treaty, the Common Assembly could have been something akin to
an interparliamentary economic committee. Instead, its members insisted
it had a much broader mandate: to act as a sovereign parliament for the
uniting Europe. Chapter 5 explores how this extraordinary self-image was
articulated in rhetoric, rituals, and procedures that were often appropri-
ated from the traditions of historical parliaments in order to demonstrate
revolutionary momentum and to appeal to the federalist theories of the
day. To a large extent, this process was driven by the Common Assembly’s
covert rivalry with the Council of Europe’s Consultative Assembly, which
had frustrated the hopes of European federalism. The chapter also dis-
cusses the role party dynamics and media representations played. Chapter
6 charts the evolution from the Common Assembly to its successor orga-
nization, which, in a bold and unilateral move, renamed itself European
Parliament in 1958. Even though it had no decision-making powers, the
European Parliament shaped the EC in ways historians tend to underap-
preciate. Because its symbolism was a striking contrast to the functionalist
nature of European integration, it helped to dramatize the EC’s promise
of a united Europe. Specifically, the chapter focuses on the Common
Assembly/European Parliament’s relationship with Commission and
Council and argues that the parliamentary setting enabled Community
actors to enact a proto-constitutional order. Chapter 6 also discusses the
history of the European flag, which crystalizes the complex relationship
between the EC/EU, the idea of a united Europe, and the larger story of
postwar internationalism.
Part III revisits the largely forgotten story of the race for the “capital of
Europe.” It presents an account of the complex diplomacy of the various
seating decisions, ranging from the 1949 decision to have the Council of
Europe seated in Strasbourg to the acrimonious battle over the EEC seat
in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the attendant debates, the speakers—
politicians, journalists, and local activists—discussed the pros and cons of
10 J. KRUMREY

the various candidate cities, Strasbourg, Paris, and Brussels. Chapter 7

shows that activists, journalists, and even diplomats chose not to debate
the site of the Community seat in functional terms appropriate for a tech-
nical organization. Instead, they couched their argument in the normative
language of a “capital of Europe.” Thus, they not only bestowed state-like
attributes onto the EC, but also underscored its claim to represent the
broader cause of a united Europe. The chapter also reveals how these
debates articulated new mental maps of Europe and negotiated its cultural
roots. The chapter also discusses how earlier internationalist ideals of the
seat of an international organizations resonated, if obliquely, in these
debates. Chapter 8 gives an account of the competition between Paris and
Brussels to become the EEC seat. In particular, it explores the larger polit-
ical meaning the seat decision assumed. In deciding against Paris, EC
member states rejected an unspoken French leadership claim and made
Brussels the symbol of the balance of power among them. They also nego-
tiated the EC’s geopolitical role, ranging from French neocolonial plans of
Eurafrica to Europe’s place within the Atlantic alliance. The chapter con-
cludes with a cultural history of Brussels as the embattled symbol of
EU-Europe.
The conclusion revisits the question of the EC’s distinctiveness among
European organizations and compares its symbolic representations to
nation states, on the one hand, and postwar internationalism, on the other.
Even though the EC failed in its attempt to emulate in its symbolic repre-
sentations a sovereign nation state, it still managed to excite the political
and public imagination. Thanks to its symbolic politics, the EC offered a
dramatization and legitimization of European cooperation that other
European organizations could not. The conclusion also looks ahead to the
EC’s evolution from the 1970s on and outlines ways in which symbolism
contributed to the EC’s/EU’s longevity. The epilogue, finally, will reflect
upon the legacy the EC’s staging left for today’s EU. It refutes the critique
that the EU suffers from a symbolic deficit. On the contrary, it argues that
the surge in demagogic Euroskepticism is also a response to the EU’s
symbolic overload.
This book’s narrative begins in the late 1940s when, in the wake of the
1948 Hague Congress, the first international organizations, most vocally
the 1949 Council of Europe, seized the European mantel propagated by the
various European movements. Its end, however, is less clear-cut. To begin
with, the EC had begun to take over the European mantel as early as the late
1950s. Many European activists, disappointed with the Council of Europe,
 INTRODUCTION: THE EC AS A THEATER STATE 11

shifted their hope and allegiance to the newcomer organization. On the

other hand, the EC’s claim to Europe would never be absolute. Not even
today’s EU wields a complete monopoly over Europe, as the recent surge in
Euroskepticism and the British vote to exit the EU demonstrate.
Recent historiography offers a compromise periodization: Historians of
European integration have reassessed the 1970s, once deemed the age of
Eurosclerosis, as a pivotal period when new policies were conceived and
new institutional formats tried out, notably the European Council. What
still looked like the “dark ages” to scholars in the early 1990s27 is now seen
as the beginning of the metamorphosis of the EC into a political force on
a global scale. This fresh view of the late 1960s/early 1970s can serve as a
rough guide to the story of the EC as Europe—not because it represents
a concluding finale, but because it suggests a turning point decisive enough
to bring this book’s narrative to an end.
Two developments in particular support such a periodization. First, in
1972, the United Kingdom’s renewed bid to enter the EC succeeded.
This not only ended the repeated attempts to integrate the EC into a
somewhat larger European framework, either through the Council of
Europe or through a transatlantically enlarged OEEC, but also rendered
moot any plans for a British-led alternative Europe, particularly in the
shape of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), as many of its
members had likewise applied for EC membership. Perhaps even more
important was a second development: the creation of new European insti-
tutions such as the European Council. Although these were at first formed
outside the Community’s legal framework, they did not challenge the
EC’s claim to Europe, at least not in the long run. The member states
were identical. Soon enough, the EC Commission assumed an informal
role, and over time, these institutions were reintegrated into the treaties.
Henceforth, if there was to be an alternative Europe, it would be a trans-
formed EC rather than one made redundant by a competitor.
The EC’s European monopoly, however, was no more than a ten-
dency—and observable as such only with the historian’s benefit of hind-
sight. Functionally, there were always alternative Europes, not least the
Council of Europe. The latter reinvented itself with a focus on human
rights and cultural heritage, which it labeled European. What is more,
even completely new European formats appeared: In the 1970s and 1980s,
the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), for
example, assumed a geostrategic role that actually dwarfed the EC’s. These
alternative European formats, however, did not turn into alternatives
12 J. KRUMREY

to the symbolic Europe embodied by the EC. By then, the EC itself had
become so sure of its European self-image that it no longer identified these
potential alternatives as a challenge. Rather, it either co-opted them as a
partner, as happened with the Council of Europe, or became an active
participant, as was the case with the CSCE.
This book combines analyses of three kinds of materials. Conventional
archival sources, to begin with, yield fresh insights if viewed from a cul-
tural history perspective. A large part of this book is therefore based on
public records held in a number of archives: the Historical Archives of the
European Union (HAEU) in Florence, as well as national diplomatic
archives, namely the archives of the foreign ministries of Germany and
France, along with those of the EC’s most important external partners,
the United States and the United Kingdom. In addition, the private papers
of both Jean Monnet and Walter Hallstein, held in the Fondation Jean
Monnet pour l’Europe in Lausanne (FJME) and the HAEU, respectively,
have proved to be extremely valuable. Second, this book draws heavily on
the recorded debates of the Council of Europe’s Consultative Assembly, as
well as those of the European Parliament and its precursors. Media repre-
sentations of the EC often were crucial to their staging attempts. Finally,
therefore, archival research is complemented by an analysis of media cov-
erage. Thanks to the newsreel and photographic archives of the FJME,
this book occasionally also draws on visual sources. For the most part,
however, the media analysis is confined to press reports.
Even though this book sets out to challenge the taken-for-granted tele-
ology that underpins much of the conventional narrative of European
integration, no historical analysis can—and perhaps should—forgo the
attempt to make the past speak to the present. Arguably, there is less than
is commonly assumed that links today’s EU to the Coal and Steel Pool of
the 1950s and even the Common Market of the 1960s, far less, at any rate,
than anniversaries and celebratory speeches suggest. But it is precisely in
speeches, celebrations, and festivities that the postwar EC’s legacy still
reverberates today. So far, historians have cared surprisingly little about the
meaning of symbolism for European integration. Taking its cue from
scholars of different schools and historians of different eras, this book tries
to fill this gap. In uncovering the theatrical nature of an apparently tech-
nocratic regime, it reveals the thick layer of symbolism coating European
integration. Perhaps only now that this coat is starting to crack can histo-
rians begin to appreciate its significance for the past 60 years of European
integration.
 INTRODUCTION: THE EC AS A THEATER STATE 13

Notes
1. Reader’s Digest, “Mr. Europe,” Andre Visson, Apr. 1953, 44 (condensed
from the April 1953 issue of the Rotarian).
2. Address by Jean Monnet before the Overseas Writers Club on 5 June
1953, Fondation Jean Monnet pour l’Europe (FJME) AMH 47/7.
3. Le Monde, “L’Europe et les mots,” Pierre Chatenet, 25 Jan 1967. All
translations in this book, unless otherwise indicated, are mine.
4. Patel, “Provincializing the European Communities,” 667.
5. Times, “Tug-of-war between Paris and Brussels,” 18 Apr. 1972.
6. Milward, European Rescue; Becker and Knipping, Power in Europe?; Di
Nolfo, Power in Europe?
7. Judt, Postwar; Mazower, Dark Continent.
8. Le Monde, “M Wilson a fort à faire pour convaincre le général de Gaulle de
la sincérité de sa conversion à l’Europe,” 25 Jan. 1967.
9. Iriye, Global Community, 37.
10. Herbst, “Die zeitgenössische Integrationstheorie.”
11. Patel, “Provincializing the European Communities,” 653–54.
12. Aron, Century of Total War, 311.
13. Chalmers and Tomkins, European Union Public Law, 52.
14. Thiemeyer and Tölle, “Supranationalität.”
15. Hallstein, “Speech at the Institut für Weltwirtschaft,” 82; For an overview
of the legal literature, De Witte, “International Legal Experiment.”
16. Judt, Postwar, 159.
17. Geertz, Negara, 121.
18. For a superb example, see Ludlow, European Community.
19. Vauchez, Brokering Europe; Davies and Rasmussen, “New History of
European Law.”
20. Geertz, Negara, 123.
21. Kaiser, “From State to Society?”; Ludlow, “Widening.”
22. Kaiser, Wolfram, Leucht, and Rasmussen, “Origins of a European Polity.”
23. Ludlow, European Integration and the Cold War; Conway and Patel,
Europeanization in the Twentieth Century; Garavini, After Empires.
24. Shore, Building Europe; Malmborg and Stråth, Meaning of Europe.
25. Partly an exception, Calligaro, Negotiating Europe.
26. Becker-Döring, Die Außenbeziehungen; Hein, Capital of Europe;
Rittberger, Building Europe’s Parliament.
27. Keohane and Hoffmann, “Institutional Change in Europe in the 1980s,” 8.
 PART I

Europe on the Diplomatic Stage

 CHAPTER 2

Statesmen Made in Washington: Official EC

Visits to the United States

Preface: Aggrandizement by Ambiguity

The Community’s appearance on the international stage as the sole voice for
its six member states, with a single duly authorized representative, the
Commission, represents a new development that deserves special attention.
[…] I believe that the analysis of the Commission’s position and role con-
firms that the Commission really is a novel element in international life,
whether it is in its relations to the six member states, or in relation to third
countries. The system whose special feature is the Commission may well sur-
prise those who think in the usual categories of international law. It becomes
much easier to understand to those who try to think in constitutional terms
and to recognize similar traits to the structure of a federal setup.1

Walter Hallstein, president of the EEC Commission, spoke these words

at the end of March 1965, barely eight weeks before the outbreak of the
empty chair crisis: France’s months-long withdrawal from the major insti-
tutions of the three organizations that together formed the EC*: the

*
In this book, the acronym EC is used to denote both the singular, European
Community, and the plural, European Communities. From 1958 to 1967, the
ECSC, the EAC, and EEC existed in parallel; they were merged into a single
entity only in 1967. In order to avoid unnecessary confusion, many textbooks
still use the acronym EC in the singular. This book follows this convention only
when “EC” is used in a generic sense and refers to the entire period from 1958
until the 1992 creation of the EU. Often, however, it is necessary to underscore
the fact that there were three separate bodies. In that case this book will treat the
acronym as a plural noun as far as grammatical agreement is concerned.
© The Author(s) 2018 17
J. Krumrey, The Symbolic Politics of European Integration,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68133-7_2
18 J. KRUMREY

ECSC, EAC, and most importantly the EEC. The French government
used this withdrawal, effectively a near-blockade, to demand the EC’
“general overhaul.”2 This overhaul, the French insisted, should deal with,
among other things, the EEC Commission’s alleged misbehavior in the
area of diplomacy. As a result, the January 1966 Luxembourg compro-
mise, the tentative resolution of the French blockade, not only contained
the famous disagreement on majority voting. Perhaps right next to it in
importance, it also required a revamp of the EC diplomatic ceremonial.
In the empty chair crisis, historians and contemporaries, rightly or
wrongly, saw a “disastrous confrontation” between Hallstein and the most
illustrious political figure in Europe at the time: French president Charles
de Gaulle.3 When de Gaulle looked back at Hallstein in his memoirs, he
did not mince his words, nor did he forget to mention his opponent’s
grandiose diplomatic ambitions:

He ardently espoused the theory of the super-state and devoted all of his
considerable talents to shaping the Community after this image. He has
made Brussels, where he resides, his capital. There he is, clothed in the trap-
pings of sovereignty, directing his colleagues and giving out assignments,
presiding over several thousand civil servants who are appointed, assigned,
promoted and paid by virtue of his decisions, receiving diplomatic creden-
tials from foreign ambassadors, pretending to the highest honors during his
official visits.4

Official visits, letters of credence, “European” embassies in Washington

and London, in short, the EC performance on the diplomatic stage will be
at the heart of the subsequent three chapters—along with the controversy
that surrounded it, ranging from US support to British ambivalence,
French anxieties, and high hopes among some other member states. On
the diplomatic stage, the EC had a chance to outgrow its technical pur-
pose. For its representatives, diplomacy provided a platform to present
themselves as the embodiment of an emergent united Europe. For its
external partners, above all the United States, it served to tacitly accept or
even to actively promote EC representatives in this role. On the diplo-
matic stage, the nascent EC gained stature, sharpened their profile, and
took possession of the cause of a united Europe.
The EC symbolic aggrandizement, however, did not play out in the
straightforward manner that de Gaulle lambasted. This is not to deny that
Community bodies, from the ESCS’s High Authority to the EEC
 STATESMEN MADE IN WASHINGTON: OFFICIAL EC VISITS TO THE UNITED… 19

Commission, sought diplomatic distinction—in fact, as the quotation

from Hallstein’s speech illustrates, they clearly did. Yet upon closer inspec-
tion, we will find that the EC’ diplomatic efforts yielded mixed results at
best: certainly no diplomatic breakthrough, but a treatment that was
ambiguous enough to be enlarged in the public imagination; and likewise
ambiguous enough for de Gaulle to declare a breach of taboo where,
arguably at least, there was none.
Perception, of course, was itself a powerful reality. As the following
chapters will illustrate, the EC’ diplomatic aggrandizement did not hap-
pen so much in the taxonomy of protocol as in the imagination of the EC’
advocates and critics. In other words, it was aggrandizement by the press
officer as much as by the protocol officer, by the audience as much as by
the actors, and, ironically at last, by de Gaulle himself as much as by
Hallstein.
Across the subsequent three chapters, a common theme emerges:
aggrandizement by ambiguity. Wherever we look, the diplomatic treat-
ment the EC enjoyed seemed grand at first glance, but hardly ever did it
accord to the EC a status that went clearly beyond that of other interna-
tional organizations at the time. Yet this ambiguity in status did not pre-
vent, it much rather enabled the EC’ aggrandizement. This preface will
help to illuminate that paradox.

International Organizations:
Caught in the Diplomatic Limbo
The empty chair crisis has made the EC’ diplomatic ceremonies their
cause célèbre, the one aspect of their symbolic politics that historians
have occasionally discussed.5 But behind the smokescreen of the crisis,
historians have found it difficult to escape the echo of de Gaulle’s ver-
dict. Too often have they ignored the larger historical context of inter-
nationalism. The EC’ diplomatic aspirations were part and parcel of a
fundamental change in diplomacy and diplomatic representation in
particular: the ascent of international organizations and the challenge
they posed to the well-calibrated system of diplomatic representation,
which was at the time still based on an imagined diplomatic monopoly
of sovereign nation states. The challenge to this monopoly went beyond
the EC, and this, in turn, made distinction even harder for them to
achieve.
20 J. KRUMREY

The EC’ diplomatic status was highly controversial, but the contro-
versy surrounding it resulted as much from the nature of diplomatic
­representation in general as from their own contested nature. In diplomacy,
style and substance are inseparable: one is what one represents. Diplomatic
­representation does not simply reflect, it rather creates, global order, for
only in the representation of its units can the international system be
imagined, become tangible, and hence “real”: as a system of hierarchy in
early modernity, as a system of great powers in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries, or as a system of theoretical equality today. The problem
of precedence among ambassadors had vexed early modern European
diplomacy. The system of randomized precedence, as it matured in the
1814/15 Vienna Congress, then heralded the breakthrough of modern
diplomacy: the monopoly of state actors, sovereign inside and equal
among themselves.6
Even though the diplomatic monopoly of sovereign states became the
ideal in modern times, it was challenged—almost in parallel—by the
advent of international organizations. The first international organization,
in fact, was founded in the wake of the Vienna Congress: the Central
Commission for the Navigation on the Rhine. Toward the end of the
nineteenth century, more international organizations, often of a technical
nature, followed, but it was not until the twentieth century that their
institutional setup diversified, their numbers multiplied, and their signifi-
cance grew, so that they became a distinctive feature of diplomatic life.
This development reached a high point in the aftermath of World War II,
with the UN and its numerous subsidiaries, the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF); and especially with the dense net-
work of regional organizations that formed the institutional backbone of
the political West, such as NATO, the OEEC, the WEU, the Council of
Europe, and obviously the EC. The historian Akira Iriye calls these diplo-
matic newcomers the “global community,” or “an alternative world, one
that is not identical with the sum of sovereign states and nations.”7 With
the advent of this “alternative world,” the old problem of precedence
returned in new disguise. Because their powers were seen as derived from
sovereign states, international organizations gave protocol officers a head-
ache. In Paris, for example, where during the 1950s most international
organizations were based, the French protocol had difficulty managing
the meeting of “old” and “new” diplomacy, of the new “global commu-
nity” with traditional state diplomats. They tried not to invite both groups
to the same occasions, and if this could not be avoided, to keep them
 STATESMEN MADE IN WASHINGTON: OFFICIAL EC VISITS TO THE UNITED… 21

separate as much as possible.8 Elsewhere, the “new” diplomats found a

slightly warmer reception: for example, in Washington, D.C., where the
US government had initiated and sponsored many of the post–World War
II international organizations. Yet even there they were not treated on a
par with state actors. In sum, while the standing of international organiza-
tions gradually and partially improved, they still remained second-class
diplomatic actors.9
In this fluid environment, EC actors, such as the much-maligned
Hallstein, were dealing with moving goal posts. Once our analysis takes
this insight onboard, we will find that the EC’ diplomatic achievements
were more nuanced than the noise around them suggests: even though its
partners sometimes gave the EC the proverbial red-carpet treatment, they
never truly left the diplomatic limbo in which all international organiza-
tions found themselves.

International Relations “Analogous to Those

of a State”

Was there, then, nothing at all extravagant about the EC’ diplomatic pos-
turing? Was it, in other words, merely a case in point, an illustration of a
broader trend? Not quite. What distinguished the EC was the audacity
with which they questioned their status in the diplomatic limbo of inter-
national organizations, and while their success was ambiguous in terms of
diplomatic nomenclature, it was all the greater in the public imagination.
When Hallstein made his comments, quoted above, about the EC’
role as “the sole voice of its six member states,” he was addressing an
audience of lawyers, the British Institute of International and
Comparative Law in London, to be precise. This was no coincidence:
Hallstein was, like his audience, a law professor. In the case of the EC’
international role, moreover, symbolism and precedent, ritual and cer-
emony were not merely regulated by law; they also shaped the law, and
perhaps more so than was usual in modern international politics. If
ambiguity characterized the EC’ diplomacy, this ambiguity reflected the
ambiguity of international law. For centuries, diplomacy was governed
by customary law, a set of practices that were codified only in 1961,
nearly ten years after the ECSC’s creation, in the Vienna Convention on
Diplomatic Relations. The diplomacy of international organizations,
moreover, was only an emergent field, and this was even truer of the EC
22 J. KRUMREY

whose claim to be “a novel element in international life” added another

dimension to the already complex matter. In this state of flux, the EC set
out to create precedents and, with lawyers of their own, to influence what
was emerging as a legal field distinct from international law: European
law.10 Meanwhile, the EC’ opponents, likewise equipped with legal
counsel, fought the ceremonial in order to prevent, or rectify, a prece-
dent with potentially legal ramifications.
The EC, more so than any other international organization, repudi-
ated the very distinction between state and non-state actors that was
underlying their diplomatic limbo. Here is the deeper root of the anxi-
ety over the EC’ diplomatic claims among some member state govern-
ments. It was a question of the Commission’s, or the High Authority’s,
power, to be sure; but beyond that, it also spoke of profound unease
about the fundamental change in diplomatic culture. The attack on the
EC’ diplomatic aspirations, particularly from Gaullist quarters, that
resulted from this unease was aimed at Hallstein, whom de Gaulle per-
sonally charged with being the head of “a technocratic, unpatriotic are-
opagus, answerable to no one.”11 True, Hallstein believed in the EC’
international role—we have his 1965 London speech as evidence for it.
In fairness, however, the Gaullist attack merely victimized the latest dis-
ciple of a doctrine that went back to the days of Jean Monnet, whose
pragmatism, ironically, is often contrasted with Hallstein’s supposed
obstinacy.12 It was in fact during the very first days of Jean Monnet’s
presidency that the High Authority’s legal service, under Michel Gaudet,
developed the most ambitious conception of the EC’ international role,
a conception that claimed for the ECSC—then still the only
Community—likeness with a state, or as one of the High Authority’s
legal counselors put it: “Owing to the supranational nature of the
Community and the sovereignty delegated to it, its foreign relations are
analogous to those of a state.”13
To Monnet himself—not a lawyer, but a salesman by training—the
ECSC’s public image mattered almost more than the law, but he shared
his lawyers’ claim to uniqueness. Stanley Cleveland, a US diplomat sta-
tioned in Luxembourg at the time, recalls: Monnet “is anxious to make
clear in [the] public mind that [the] High Authority is not just another
international ‘coordinating’ organisation, but a group endowed with real
authority and the intention to exercise it without reference to national
governments.”14
 STATESMEN MADE IN WASHINGTON: OFFICIAL EC VISITS TO THE UNITED… 23

Undoubtedly, the EC’ self-image was a crucial factor in the controversy

around its diplomatic aspirations. Yet what warrants explanation even
more than the EC’ quest for distinction is the fascination it kindled and
the outcry it provoked. Cleveland gives us an important clue when he
mentions “the public mind.” The EC’ diplomatic standing went beyond
the intrinsic meaning of protocol, that is, beyond the taxonomy of foreign
ministries. Indeed, the key to the EC’ diplomatic success was that they
idealized their technical diplomatic status. This idealization could be
called, for want of a better term, a success in public diplomacy, a concept
coined in the context of US Cold War diplomacy. Recent scholarship has
set out to disentangle this concept from its original political purposes. In
this vein, Jan Melissen, in a recent volume, defines it as diplomacy that
“targets the general public in foreign societies and more specific non-offi-
cial groups, organizations and individuals.”15 Thus, public diplomacy is
now a broad concept that deals with “cultural diplomacy” and encom-
passes all aspects of “soft power.” For our purposes, it helps to add a layer
of analysis to the study of diplomatic representation. In fact, the forms of
diplomacy have never (only) been ritual in the mold of Victor Turner,
which holds meaning to those involved16; diplomacy has always (also)
been ceremony, that is, something staged for an audience. And this audi-
ence, increasingly through the prism of the media, ultimately decides what
a ceremony means, what it represents.
Here we find what really set the EC apart from other European orga-
nizations as international players: the interplay between traditional and
public diplomacy, the skillfully contrived ambiguity in the EC’ diplomatic
status, and the way this ambiguity in status invited the EC’ idealization in
the public mind as a European proto-government. Titles and precedence,
receptions and banquets, military honors and red carpets—they all carried
meaning in the taxonomy of foreign ministries. Yet what they meant for
the protocol officer was greatly surpassed by their meaning for the press
officer. Through the prism of the mass media, the finely calibrated equiv-
ocation in its protocol treatment created an image of the EC that was
larger than themselves: Monnet became “Mr. Europe”; Hallstein,
“Europe’s first prime minister”; and the EC set out to monopolize the
cause of European unification. Thus, of all the European organizations,
no other fascinated the public to the same extent; no other was as auda-
cious about its status—and no other faced as formidable an opponent as
de Gaulle.
24 J. KRUMREY

Diplomacy of Visits
Jean Monnet and René Mayer, Walter Hallstein, Étienne Hirsch, and Paul
Finet—who headed, at different times, the EC’ three “executive” bod-
ies—traveled frequently. They traveled far and wide, including Iran and
India, Japan and Brazil. No place outside Europe did they visit more often
than the United States, which acted as a patron and sponsor of European
unification. The US capital Washington, D.C., afforded visibility and
could bestow prominence and credibility on a visitor like only few other
places in the Western camp—it was, in other words, an important stage to
enact the vision of a united Europe; and over the years, the US govern-
ment, as part of its sponsorship of a united Europe, received the various
Community heads on its stage.
In an interview, George Berthoin, an officer in the ECSC’s London
representation, recalled Hallstein’s various visits to Washington thus:

The U.S. president received Hallstein like a head of state and this of course
did not sit well with de Gaulle—and [Hallstein] remained in his post for ten
years—he was in the process of becoming the real president of Europe. […]
Hallstein was in line with the logic of the original ideas: it was the
Commission that [was intended to] become the representative of general
European interests. This is not to diminish the importance of the national
sovereigns represented by the Council. So the Americans, who at that time
were very [eager to] look ahead, extended to Hallstein the honors reserved
for a head of state. So, he stayed at Blair House, and that’s that.17

Berthoin’s recollections illuminate this chapter’s central claim: During

their visits to Washington, the bland technocrats from Luxembourg and
Brussels were seen around the world as true statesmen—statesmen, more-
over, who represented not only Europe’s coal and steel industries or
Europe’s agricultural interests but “Europe itself,” as Monnet once put
it.18 Berthoin’s quotation also hints at another dimension of these
Washington visits: the image of a united Europe and the treatment
accorded to its supposed representatives caused contention with some
member states’ governments, notably of course with French president de
Gaulle. This chapter argues that Hallstein—or Monnet, or any other
Community figure—was in fact not quite afforded “the honors reserved
for a head of state,” and that behind the contention was, rather than an
actual protocol breakthrough, an intentionally distorted representation of
the EC’ diplomacy of visits.
 STATESMEN MADE IN WASHINGTON: OFFICIAL EC VISITS TO THE UNITED… 25

Visits have become a popular topic among historians.19 Of all the forms
of diplomacy, official visits by statesmen are particularly vivid. Condensed
in time and space, such visits produce meaning, yet exactly what they mean
is negotiated in a complex process. A visit’s meaning is not simply a ques-
tion of its staging, its mis-en-scène, but of its context and of the interpre-
tation given to it by its audience, usually through the lens of modern mass
media. Despite the newfound popularity of visits among historians, the
EC’ diplomacy of visits has so far largely escaped their attention.
The EC’ diplomacy of visits operated on two levels: To begin with,
guests and hosts appropriated the rituals and ceremonies of traditional
diplomacy. But they did so creatively enough to allow a certain ambiguity
about the visitor’s diplomatic status, an ambiguity that helped stylize EC
visitors as spokespeople of Europe. Crucially, EC actors, aided by their US
hosts, combined the official visit with a public relations campaign. They
engaged not only in a charm offensive aimed at the United States’ com-
mercial and political elite; they also launched a media campaign that tar-
geted broader cross-border audiences: the US public as well as audiences
in Europe. Thanks to this combination of public and traditional diplo-
macy, the visits’ media echo and their overall political significance exceeded
their protocol status. Thus visits to Washington helped give the nascent
EC shape, demonstrate their potency, and underline their agency. Visits
also contrasted the EC with, but not necessarily distinguished them from,
the plethora of regional European organizations.

“Representatives of Sovereign Institutions”

There is no doubt that the United States’ support for European integra-
tion—material, diplomatic and occasionally conceptual—was crucial to its
success. Successive US administrations, from Truman to Kennedy, came
out in favor of a united Europe, and specifically threw their weight behind
the efforts of European unification represented in the various EC. The
Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad has found the pithy formula of
“‘empire’ by integration” for the US rationale behind this.20 When French
foreign minister Robert Schuman presented his May 1950 proposal, invit-
ing France’s European partners to participate in the joint administration of
their coal and steel markets, the Truman administration, though initially
surprised, embraced the step. The Schuman plan chose a key economic
sector to address what the US government considered the main challenge
to any European arrangement: a balance between France and Germany.21
26 J. KRUMREY

US support for the Schuman plan owed a lot to the brain behind it: Jean
Monnet, the future president of the High Authority. Monnet acted as a
mediator between the French and the US administrations. He had spent
much of his life in the United States: first as an entrepreneur, later as a
prominent civil servant in the Allied wartime economic administration.
Not only were his economic ideas influenced by US thinking, he had made
many friends who later rose to the highest echelons of the US political and
business establishment. Monnet, in other words, was the center of an
influential transatlantic network, which he employed to promote his ideas
of European unity.22
In May 1953, John Foster Dulles, the US secretary of state, invited
Monnet—now the president of the just inaugurated High Authority—to
an official visit to Washington, D.C. This invitation came after Dulles him-
self had included the High Authority in his inaugural round trip though
Europe’s capitals in February 1953—in fact, as his very last stop before his
return to the United States.23 The invitation to Monnet was suggested by
David Bruce, the US representative to the ECSC, as Monnet was planning
to come to New York to receive an honorary degree from Columbia
University. Bruce, it seems, anticipated Monnet’s wishes. Indeed, the State
Department speculated that Monnet had not accepted Columbia’s honor-
ary degree earlier “in large part […] because he did not want to come over
here unless he had an official invitation from the U.S. Government to
discuss the [ECSC] in Washington.” Similarly, Bruce let Dulles know that
Monnet sought this invitation “for prestige reasons.”24
Diplomacy knows a finely calibrated scale of visits. As a rule, there are
three classes of visits: state visits, official visits, and working visits, with a
gray zone between the latter two categories where a visit’s protocol also
depends on the visitor’s status: royalty, prime ministers, ministers, or other
dignitaries. To complicate matters ever further, each of these visitors can
visit either officially or unofficially. According to this complex set of fac-
tors, an official visit’s ceremonial design varies greatly: from a 21-gun
salute for a head of state to a 19-gun salute for a head of government,
from a white-tie state banquet to a black-tie dinner to a day-time lun-
cheon in a regular business suit; from a stopover in a hotel to a three- to
four-­night extravaganza including accommodation in the head of state’s
official residence. A visit’s status also shows in such minutiae as the
composition of the motorcade, the number and location of flags on
display, and the elements and interlocutors included in the official
program.25
 STATESMEN MADE IN WASHINGTON: OFFICIAL EC VISITS TO THE UNITED… 27

Exactly where the ECSC visitors would be located on this scale was
unclear, particularly so as their visit was envisaged “for prestige reasons”
and as they claimed to represent an entirely novel sort of entity, closer to
a sovereign state than to an ordinary international organization. Even
beyond the case of the High Authority, however, the finely calibrated
system of diplomatic protocol was challenged by the fundamental
changes of diplomacy in the twentieth century. Diplomatic visits became
more and more frequent. Soon they were a matter of routine. While they
lost nothing of their political significance, the meaning of protocol
minutiae came to be ever more complex. The distinction between tradi-
tional roles, notably heads of state and heads of government, grew
blurry, a development that was compounded by the emergence of com-
pletely new kinds of diplomatic actors such as the representatives of the
ECSC. Besides, mass media often charged visits with political meaning
completely independent of their protocol and the visitor’s diplomatic
status. Some of the twentieth century’s most important visits, for exam-
ple, did not, in protocol terms, qualify as state visits, such as Kennedy’s
1961 visit to Berlin or Nixon’s 1973 visit to China. While traditional
protocol did not indiscriminately become more informal, let alone
superfluous, it was more selectively applied and creatively appropriated
to new contexts.
With regard to protocol, moreover, the United States was a special
case. For the longest time of its existence, it had stayed on the margins
of the Eurocentric diplomatic community, at first due to its revolution-
ary origins and republican constitution, later prolonged by an isolation-
ist foreign policy. The United States only developed a professional
diplomatic service at the beginning of the twentieth century. The first
state visit classified and treated as such occurred only in 1954, a year
after Monnet’s visit, when South Korean president Syngman Rhee came
to Washington, D.C.26 At the same time, however, the United States
found itself suddenly propelled to the center of the diplomatic stage. In
the late 1950s, for example, the undersecretary of state registered an
“unprecedented worldwide interest in official Washington visits” and
worried how to keep this interest “manageable.”27 A full-fledged cere-
monial for visits, appropriate for the United States’ newfound super-
power status, was only created under President Kennedy. The incipient
state of protocol norms, on the other hand, made it easier for US author-
ities to accommodate unorthodox diplomatic actors, such as representa-
tives of international organizations. There was also a political reason for
28 J. KRUMREY

this: US foreign policy had supported, or even sponsored, the creation

of many of these organizations, a tradition that went back to President
Wilson’s interwar internationalism and was reinforced in the post–World
War II era by efforts to organize the United States’ new worldwide
commitments.
Against the background of the High Authority’s claim to unique sta-
tus, the design and protocol of Monnet’s visit went beyond the usual
routines; it represented a political challenge. The US authorities handled
this challenge skillfully: the visit’s protocol was impressive enough so as
not to dismiss the High Authority’s status claims but not dignified
enough to affirm them either. To begin with, the State Department
adopted elements of the traditional repertoire of official visits without
fully copying them. Most importantly, President Eisenhower received
Monnet for a brief talk in the Oval Office, along with Franz Etzel and
Dirk Spierenburg, two High Authority members who accompanied
Monnet. Subsequently, Monnet, Etzel, and Spierenburg held talks with a
number of cabinet secretaries and senior members of Congress. An offi-
cial dinner was given in their honor, and the six member states’ ambas-
sadors gave a return dinner in one of their embassies.28 The official party,
moreover, was accommodated at Blair House, which for ceremonial pur-
poses was considered part of the president’s official residence, on a par
with the White House itself and the president’s country retreat, Camp
David. Etzel proudly reported back to his personal staff in Luxembourg:
“We were accommodated at Blair House by the American administra-
tion. It is the guest house of the American government and only repre-
sentatives of sovereign institutions, and generally not even ordinary
ministers, are accommodated there.”29
As protocol standards in general and the treatment of international
organizations in particular were in a state of flux, gauging the ceremonial
standing of the ECSC’s 1953 visit to Washington is difficult. Any
comparative assessment can go several ways. The treatment accorded
­
to the three High Authority members was certainly dignified enough to
give the High Authority stature. In purely ceremonial terms, however, the
distinctions stopped short of singling out the High Authority from other
international bodies. The head of the State Department’s Bureau for
European Affairs, for example, told his staff that Monnet “would like to
[…] attain at least the dignity of the OEEC visit.”30 While this statement
shows again how sensitive the US authorities were toward their guests’
 STATESMEN MADE IN WASHINGTON: OFFICIAL EC VISITS TO THE UNITED… 29

status concerns, it also reveals that other European organizations were the
benchmark.
At the same time, however, the visit’s dignity contrasted with the
treatment Monnet received earlier and elsewhere. A case in point is
Monnet’s visit to London in August 1952, shortly after he had assumed
the presidency of the High Authority. This excerpt from a British foreign
office memorandum gives us a glimpse into what the level of formality of
Monnet’s first ever journey in his new capacity was:

3. M. Monnet will arrive on the morning of 21st August, time and place not
yet known. […] Sir R. Makins [a senior civil servant in the Foreign Office]
wished M. Monnet to be met. He suggested that Conference and Supply
Department should do this, but if, as I suspect, this is not their job, Mr.
Hope-Hones should do it.
4. Mr. Allchin [a British diplomat in Paris] had, unprompted, led M. Monnet
to expect that he will have a car placed at his disposal for the duration of his
visit. Though cars are very short, we must do what we can to honour this
unexpected commitment.
5. M, Monnet will lunch with friends of his own, and is being informed that
he will be expected at the Foreign office at 3 p.m. on 21 August.
6. There will be a small Government hospitality dinner at the Savoy at 8
o’clock that evening, unchanged. Sir R. Makins will take the Chair.31

True, from the outset, the London visit was supposed to be a mere
working visit, a visit, moreover, that Monnet seems to have rather imposed
on the British authorities. Monnet seems to have felt slighted nonetheless.
His one-time collaborator and later biographer François Duchêne recalls
Monnet’s arrival in London:

On arrival at Victoria station at seven A.M., and as he [Monnet] was still

framed in the doorway of the wagon-lit, he was confronted, three inconve-
niently deep steps down on the platform, by a slender, blond young man in
top hat, tails and striped trousers who announced “I am Government
Hospitality, Sir.” Monnet, somewhat taken aback, stumped after him to the
ponderous Humber of State. 32 [Humber is a British car brand.]

During his entire stay in London, Monnet only dealt with civil servants,
not even a junior minister met with him33—a sobering reminder of how
precarious the ECSC’s standing was. This comparison gives us another
angle on the Washington visit a year later: the honors which Monnet,
30 J. KRUMREY

Etzel, and Spierenburg enjoyed during their stay there could not be taken
for granted. Besides, the 1953 Washington visit served as a precedent to
which US authorities would refer when they were confronted, years later,
with complaints by the EC’ member states about the way they supposedly
distinguished Community figures.34

A Coup de Théâtre for the Press

For the Washington visit’s political significance, however, far more impor-
tant than the minutiae of protocol was its representation in the media. The
US and European press alike exaggerated the ceremonial of the visit—an
exaggeration that was facilitated, and perhaps even invited, by the ambigu-
ity about the visit’s protocol. The Christian Science Monitor, a propagator
of European unity in the United States, called Monnet, albeit in quotation
marks, the “the first premier of Europe” and, without the quotation
marks, the “head of an over-all European government.” Consequently,
the paper spoke of a “state visit” and likened Monnet’s treatment to that
of a head of state or a sovereign.35 German papers particularly craved all
sorts of embellishments for the treatment accorded to Monnet. Bremer
Nachrichten, a local paper, ran this piece:

As far as the status of the president of the High Authority of the ECSC is
concerned, it is – as is often not fully appreciated today – indeed that of a
sovereign under international law. The United States of America too has
recognized this and accordingly has accredited a special ambassador to
Jean Monnet. During his visit to Washington, Monnet was also accorded
the honors of a head of state. He was for instance permitted to hold his
press conference at the State Department, an honor that the various
French prime ministers did not enjoy during their respective visits. The
American protocol therefore carefully observed the difference between the
status of a head of government and the sovereign status of the president of
the High Authority.36

Similarly, Die Welt, a national high-quality paper, enumerated at length

all the honors Monnet enjoyed and which were, the paper pointed out,
usually reserved for heads of state only.37
Monnet’s rise to fame in America was a topic for French papers, too. As
opposed to the United States, Monnet was a controversial figure in his
native country. Still, quite a few papers reflected on the visit with a sense
 STATESMEN MADE IN WASHINGTON: OFFICIAL EC VISITS TO THE UNITED… 31

of awe,38 and even Le Monde, whose editorial stance on Monnet’s Euro-­

federalism was one of ambivalence, echoed these sentiments, calling the
High Authority “the first ‘European government’” and mentioned specifi-
cally that they “stayed at Blair House, usually the residence of heads of
state.”39 In France, however, there were voices, though limited in number,
that did not accept the visit’s show and pomp at face value. The French
paper L’Observateur, for example, ran the following piece two weeks after
Monnet’s Washington visit:

The ‘coup de théâtre’, as he orchestrated it, happened in the last act of the
game of the Common Market, earning the applause of the spectator-extras
of the ECSC assembly. […] The remarkable skill of ‘King Jean,’ the first
emperor of little Europe, stunned the Western governments. They had all
gone, one after the other, to their American patron to ask for funds: official
visits, punctuated by numerous meetings with the American administration.
[…] Mr. Monnet [both] secured funds and earned considerable esteem.40

Toward the end of the piece, however, the author struck a more concil-
iatory tone: “This success also made more sense in light of the fact that, of
all the guests invited to Blair House, Mr. Monnet was the only one to
bring a concrete plan.” Others reported on the visit with anxious over-
tones, such as in this piece in the French weekly La Tribune des nations:

We have already drawn your attention to this colorful and burlesque pros-
pect of our times: Mr. Jean Monnet is a sovereign presence. The U.S. has
recognized this by accrediting an ambassador to him. But what we must not
fail to realize is that the French protocol cannot overcome the problems
posed by this situation. As president of a High Authority that comprises six
countries, Mr. Monnet theoretically ranks above the president of France;
and I cannot think of any official ceremony in which they both have a role
that can avoid highlighting this incongruity. But those are the facts.
Mr. Monnet has also just been received in Washington with the honors
reserved for the rank that we have conferred on him in consenting to the
Schuman plan. He was permitted to hold his press conference in the State
Department, an honor that neither a Mayer, nor a Bidault, nor even a Pleven
could claim. In the end [the parties’] equal merit is immaterial; it’s the dif-
ference in rank that counts.
[…] we ought to acknowledge that Mr. Monnet spoke in the name of
tons of coal, nuts, bolts, sheets, raw steel and industrial turning machines
[…] Mr. Monnet has however judged it more comfortable and expedient to
32 J. KRUMREY

speak in the name of Europe. Which Europe? This question he skillfully

dodged […]41

These allegations, however, were completely unfounded. For all its

ambiguity, Monnet’s reception in Washington did clearly not rank as a
state visit. The protocol fell short of the full honors that would have been
bestowed on heads of state: Monnet got neither the 21-gun salute, nor
the white-tie state dinner. Nor was his official invitation issued by the US
president—he came at the invitation of the secretary of state. Still, he
met with the president, but when he did, the protocol was that of a
working visit: the meeting took place in the morning rather than in the
evening, and in the West Wing’s Oval Office rather than in the main resi-
dence, the White House’s ceremonial center, where banquets are given
and ambassadors are received.42 In other words, the ceremonial distinc-
tion between the French president and the High Authority president was
upheld at every stage of the visit. Yet, to the press, the visit’s protocol, in
purely technical terms, seemed not to matter. The visit’s public signifi-
cance thus far exceeded its technical status, with or without white-tie
state dinner.
Reportedly, Monnet’s visit raised eyebrows in political circles—perhaps
precisely because it had assumed enormous proportions in the press. Some
papers reported on misgivings in some member state capitals. The enthu-
siastic Bremer Nachrichten, for example, could not forgo gibes at “unjusti-
fied criticism from Paris,” an allusion to reported criticisms of Monnet’s
visit in the French parliament.43 Likewise, La Tribune des nations, in a
piece separate from the one quoted above, told of the alleged reaction to
the visit by the Belgian government:

In Washington [Monnet] played the role of the first “European head of

state,” which seemed to please him. This attitude profoundly shocked the
lower-ranking Belgian politicians. The magazine La Nation Belge (which is
associated with well-known Christian-democratic officials around Mr. Van
Zeeland) wrote that Mr. Monnet risks injecting a regrettable confusion into
the debate about the Defense Community. His statements give the impres-
sion that the project of a political community is as good as inviolable.
For Belgium, or to be precise, for the Belgian government, Mr. Monnet’s
attitudes are in fact missteps. It must be stressed that Mr. Van Zeeland is
exerting himself to rally the nationalist opponents of the EDC, in order to
affirm that a so-called European army does not in any way imply the creation
of a supranational political community that is an end in itself […]
 STATESMEN MADE IN WASHINGTON: OFFICIAL EC VISITS TO THE UNITED… 33

On the rue de la Loi it is no secret that Mr. Monnet abuses his functions,
for which he ought to incur a serious warning from the Committee of
Ministers. [sic]44

Beyond the protocol and its representation in the media, the visit
was a public diplomacy triumph, and it was carefully planned. The High
Authority, and Monnet in particular, were anxious about US public
support for their endeavor. They used the visit as a publicity campaign
and planned a true charm offensive. To that end they had procured the
services of an influential New York law firm, coheaded by Monnet’s
friend George Ball, which effectively worked as the High Authority’s
public relations agency, an ad hoc arrangement that would be made
official a year later.45
Monnet had been a well-known and even popular figure before this
visit. Monnet entertained friendly, often close, relations with many US
journalists, including Joseph Alsop, Cyrus Sulzberg of the New York
Times, Helen Reid of the New York Herald Tribune, as well as Philip and
Katherine Graham of the Washington Post.46 As early as 1950, stories on
Monnet were frequent in US magazines such as TIME, LIFE, or Newsweek.
The latter even placed Monnet on its cover in May 1950, with the head-
line reading: “Monnet: Europe’s No. 1 Idea Man.”47 In the run-up to the
1953 visit, the magazine followed up with a multi-page illustrated home
story on Monnet (which, by the way, treated the readers to the most
bizarre details of his domestic life including the contents of his “suprana-
tional breakfast”).48 Monnet, in short, was a surprisingly popular figure
and perhaps one of Europe’s most prominent leaders in the United States
at the time, a popularity that was hardly ever matched by any other
Community figure, then and later.
When the State Department announced his visit, US journalists began
approaching the High Authority, to the point that Monnet’s press officer
began worrying the publicity might become “uncontrollable.”49 Henry
Luce, the US media tycoon who owned TIME and LIFE, alerted his “top
editors” and sent them to interview Monnet.50 The reporting began
before Monnet even set foot on US soil. Monnet traveled to the United
States by steamship—a fact the operator exploited for its publicity, b
­ oasting
it would transport “the first European.” Aboard the Queen Mary, Monnet
was accompanied by Newsweek’s foreign affairs editor Harry Kern, who
prepared a lengthy piece about Monnet’s trip and the larger issues of the
ECSC.51
34 J. KRUMREY

Once in New York, Monnet received a triumphant reception among

the city’s high society. Within barely a week, he had both lunch and dinner
with Thomas Dewey, governor of the state of New York. In addition, he
had three luncheons given in his honor by the editors of the New York
Herald Tribune, the New York Times, and Newsweek, and had addressed
the Overseas Writers Club, the National Press Club, as well as the American
Committee on United Europe. There he met the stakeholders of most US
media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal to CBS and NBC. He attended
a dinner organized by the American Iron and Steel Institute and met
major industrialists and Wall Street financiers. As the climax of his
New York stay, he received an honorary doctorate from Columbia
University in a public outdoor ceremony, broadcast by European news-
reels, which reportedly some ten thousand spectators attended and which
was rounded off by a black-tie reception whose guests numbered in the
hundreds and included a supreme court justice and a wide range of Ivy
League professors.52
The coverage of Monnet’s visit, both his stay in New York and the offi-
cial part in Washington, was accordingly intensive. Hardly a day went by,
for example, without a detailed piece in the New York Times.53 Monnet
appeared on various broadcasts where he spoke of “the greatest revolution
that Europe has ever seen” and promised his US audience the “prospect
of a European federation.”54 When he saw Eisenhower in the White
House, the two men’s meeting, captured in photograph, made the front
pages nationwide.55 So great had Monnet’s fame become that the High
Authority received hand-written petitions by ordinary Texans, proffering
Monnet their advice on how to deal with the Soviets.56
Not only the High Authority’s press service intended to turn the visit
into a media event; the US authorities, too, helped design it with a view to
maximum publicity. Notably, the State Department agreed to issue a joint
communiqué, and Etzel proudly reported back that this represented
“something very unusual […] which is usually not done.”57 In this com-
muniqué, the White House called the guests the “first executive of Europe
as a community,” an institution of a “federal character,” and “a first impor-
tant step toward the creation of a united Europe.”58 Yet the White Hose
went further in its public demonstration of support for the High Authority
and staged events scripted by Monnet for the press. At Monnet’s sugges-
tion, the State Department urged the president to exchange letters of sup-
port with senior lawmakers, particularly concerning the prospect of a loan
for the High Authority. The White House obliged and immediately
 STATESMEN MADE IN WASHINGTON: OFFICIAL EC VISITS TO THE UNITED… 35

addressed such letters, drafted more or less by Monnet himself, to the

chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House
Foreign Affairs Committee.59 The letters, along with the replies, were then
published and distributed as a booklet by the US government, so that it
“could be dramatized by proper release as representing the opening gun
in the administrations’ determination to meet new conditions in Europe
by new policies at home”60 At Monnet’s explicit request, they were
­published just in time for Monnet to present it at the Common Assembly’s
annual session, which followed Monnet’s overseas trip.
The High Authority also tried to give a spin on the reporting. Its press
service, for example, provided journalists with a brief, which they tellingly
called “the Europe story,” a story of unity after century-long strife.61 No
one was a better presenter of this “story” than Monnet himself, and so the
best way to get the gist of it is to recite Monnet’s speech delivered before
the Overseas Writer’s Club. Monnet begins his speech by referring to him-
self and his companions Etzel and Spierenburg as “the first ‘real’
Europeans” and to the High Authority as “the first Executive of Europe
as a united community.” After briefly relating some details about the com-
mon coal and steel market, he moves on to the key passage:

Yet the true significance of the European Coal and Steel Community is not
coal, and it is not steel; it is Europe. The forces which brought the
Community about are working to extend and transform it into a United
States of Europe. These forces spring from the historic experience of the
European people. They are grounded in the deep conviction that the unifi-
cation of Europe is indispensable to the creation of a lasting peace.62

Monnet couched this narrative in the language of federalism, as did

Monnet’s press officers in their materials, a language that was bound to
strike a chord with a US audience. Here is another passage from his speech:

Remember that it took the American people seven years to progress from
the Continental Congress to the Articles of Confederation, and another
eight years before your Constitution became the rule of the land, It took
three years after your Constitution was drafted before it could be ratified by
all States. Yet your Federal Government was created among States with a
common language, a common cultural heritage and the unifying effect of
having fought together against a common enemy. […] We are convinced
that soon this will be realised. We shall then have taken the decisive steps
towards creating the real beginning of a United States of Europe.63
36 J. KRUMREY

In an interview scripted by the High Authority’s press service, probably

for distribution among various US publications, Monnet made his mes-
sage crystal-clear:

Question: Is it [i.e., the ECSC] a government?

Monnet: Decidedly. It is not only a government—it is a federal structure.
Q: Would you call it a federation, then?
M: I would call it the beginning of the federation of Europe. […]
Q: Do you think of that federation as a possible United States of Europe?
M: Yes.64

Monnet’s visit established a tradition of regular visits to the United

States. Monnet himself was back in Washington only a year later to
negotiate the details of a much-publicized loan agreement. At the turn
of 1953, he even presented the Newsweek New Year’s program that
was broadcast nationally by ABC.65 In the United States, Monnet was
as popular as ever, but he also visited other countries. Most notably, he
traveled to London again—this time, to conclude and sign an associa-
tion agreement. Perhaps, it was the different occasion or the precedent
set by his two Washington visits—at any rate, the British government
now gave the visit official trappings and received Monnet with a degree
of dignity that fell only slight short of the one he had enjoyed in the
United States.66
Monnet’s visit to London nearly coincided with the first major crisis:
the rejection of the EDC by the French parliament, the failure of the
related plans for an ambitious European constitution and, partly as a
result, Monnet’s resignation as president of the High Authority. The
EDC debacle dealt a blow to the United States’ European policy. It
shook their belief in European integration deeply, and by the mid-1950s,
the initial enthusiasm for a united Europe had given way to pragmatism,
or even a sense of economic competition.67 But the overall rationale of
strengthening Europe through integration was still in place. The US
government therefore welcomed the plans for a common market and
even more so for joint nuclear research. While the six governments still
debated these plans, the US government invited Monnet’s successor as
High Authority president, René Mayer, to Washington for another
three-night official visit from 6 to 9 February 1956, a visit that was
designed as encouragement “at a significant point in the movement to
revive the ‘European idea.’”68 They bestowed similar honors on Mayer
 STATESMEN MADE IN WASHINGTON: OFFICIAL EC VISITS TO THE UNITED… 37

as on his predecessor: military honors, a call on the president, accom-

modation at Blair House, an official dinner plus an official reception.69
The US government thus singled out Mayer as a symbol of European
unification even though he played no active role in the ongoing negotia-
tion of the future Rome treaties.

A “European Triumvirate” in Washington

When the EEC and EAC were in place, US symbolic support for European
integration reached a climax—in the form of a joint visit in June 1959 by
all three heads of the EC: Paul Finet, Mayer’s newly installed successor as
president of the High Authority; Étienne Hirsch, president of the EAC
Commission; and Walter Hallstein, president of the EEC Commission.
According to the planners in the State Department, this show of support
was intended to “demonstrate to the European public the continued
strong American interest in European integration,” and to recognize the
EC as “a functioning symbol of European unity.”70
The visit reprised the earlier pattern of skillful protocol ambiguity,
exploited by a public diplomacy campaign. But the visit is worth a closer
look in its own right. It was, for example, the only occasion when the three
Community heads visited jointly. Originally, this joint visit was a some-
what desperate compromise, conceived by the Americans to avoid having
to juggle individual Community visits. From the start, the State
Department had been keen on a visit by Hirsch’s predecessor as EAC
Commission president, Louis Armand, a visit that was meant to be part of
the transatlantic cooperation in nuclear research and nuclear materials.71
Armand, however, was forced to postpone his visit due to repeated bouts
of illness, which eventually caused him to resign prematurely. Meanwhile,
Hallstein had privately expressed his interest in a visit to Washington as
well. Overwhelmed, the State Department sought refuge in a joint visit.72
“The main purpose of such visits,” the diplomats argued internally, “has
always been to publicize the European integration movement and raise
the prestige of the Executives of these European institutions. A common
visit by the three presidents would serve this purpose more appropriately
than individual visits.”73
The State Department sought distinction for its guests. Secretary
Dulles telegraphed to the US embassy in Brussels that the visit’s objective
was to “to create [an] image [in the] public mind of [a] movement toward
[a] single political entity, rather than simply independent international
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
— Ah, quasi — ella ripetè cupamente. — Ci son dunque esempi di
navigli perduti senza che rimanga alcuna traccia di loro, senza che si
salvi un uomo dell’equipaggio, senza che una tavola galleggiante sul
mare dia un indizio della catastrofe?
Non potei negarle che di questi casi ce ne fossero, ma erano così
rari, così eccezionali da non doverci fermare il pensiero.
— Perchè vede, Ceriani — ella ripigliò — non so come sopporterei
l’annunzio positivo d’una sciagura; so che l’incertezza mi
ucciderebbe.... Ma, in nome del cielo — seguitò la povera signora
attorcigliando nervosamente il fazzoletto alle dita — si è poi fatto
tutto quello che si doveva per chiarire questo mistero?... Mio marito
lo afferma; io non lo credo.
Le enumerai le lettere, i telegrammi che si erano spediti; l’assicurai
che si sarebbe tornato a scrivere, a telegrafare.
Ella si strinse nelle spalle. — Scrivere? Telegrafare?... Ah se fossi un
uomo!
Qualcuno s’avvicinava, ed ella mi lasciò con queste parole,
slanciandomi uno sguardo metà di preghiera, metà di rimprovero.
Che pretendeva mai la signora Agnese? Ch’io andassi alla ricerca
del King Arthur come Stanley era andato alla ricerca di
Livingstone?... Ohimè, l’impresa dello Stanley era stata una follia
sublime; la mia non sarebbe stata che una follia ridicola.
Nè la signora Agnese me ne riparlò nei giorni seguenti. La sua
agitazione febbrile aveva ceduto il posto a una calma apparente che
ci impensieriva ancora di più. Ella stava per lunghe ore sdraiata sulla
sua poltrona nel salottino giapponese, senza un libro, senza un
lavoro, immersa in un cupo silenzio. A colazione, a pranzo, toccava
appena il cibo, pronunziava appena qualche monosillabo, si faceva
una legge di non menzionar mai nè il King Arthur, nè il capitano
Atkinson, nè la piccola Ofelia. Solo una volta ella scattò dalla
seggiola quando il dottor Gandolfi le suggerì un viaggetto di un
mese. — Quest’anno non mi muovo da Venezia — ella risposo in
tuono secco, reciso.
Passavano i giorni, passavano le settimane. Eravamo venuti a
sapere d’un tifone che aveva infuriato nei mari della China fra il 25 e
il 28 di giugno ed era penetrato nei nostri animi il convincimento che
in quella occasione appunto il King Arthur si fosse perduto con tutto
l’equipaggio. Ma mentre si conoscevano i nomi d’altri legni ch’erano
scampati miracolosamente al pericolo, e sbattuti, malconci avevano
dovuto ripararsi in qualcheduno di quei porti, del King Arthur
nessuno poteva dir nulla. Nessuno lo aveva visto dopo la sua
partenza da Hiogo.
Anche i danni materiali d’un simile stato di cose erano gravissimi. Le
rimesse fatte a Londra per rimborsare il nostro banchiere
importavano circa ottocentomila lire, somma della quale c’era forza
rimaner scoperti finchè fosse spirato il termine necessario per
acquistare il diritto d’abbandono verso le compagnie assicuratrici, e
non c’è casa di commercio, per potente che sia, a cui non dia
degl’impicci l’immobilizzare un capitale di quasi un milione.
Inoltre tutti i vantaggi sperati da un’iniziativa che doveva riaffermare
la superiorità della nostra ditta andavano in fumo per esser raccolti in
gran parte dai nostri rivali, i Gelardi, che avevano commesso a
Hiogo un carico di riso dopo di noi e che lo aspettavano entro
l’ottobre col vapore inglese The Iron Duke. Noi l’odiavamo questa
Iron Duke che seguiva la via tenuta dal King Arthur, che
probabilmente sarebbe passato sul punto ove il King Arthur era stato
inghiottito dalle onde. Non credo che nessuno di noi gli augurasse
un disastro, ma è certo che a sentirlo nominare ci si rimescolava il
sangue. E lo si sentiva nominare così spesso. I sensali, che in attesa
del King Arthur avevano imbastito degli affari con noi, adesso, con la
compunzione di chi fa una visita di condoglianza, venivano a
sciogliersi da ogni impegno e a dirci della dolorosa necessità in cui si
trovavano di trattare coi Gelardi per l’acquisto della merce di
prossimo arrivo con l’Iron Duke. E poi gli stessi Gelardi, alquanto
vanitosi per loro natura, stimavano opportuno di comunicare ai
giornali cittadini le varie tappe del loro bastimento. Era partito il tal
giorno da Hiogo; aveva nel tal altro toccato Point-de-Galle; era
passato per Aden, era a Suez.... Il comandante dell’Iron Duke non
faceva economia di telegrammi.
Finalmente, ai primi di novembre, una mattina, il bastimento entrò in
porto e andò ad ancorarsi alla Giudecca, proprio dove, in aprile, era
ancorato il King Arthur. Ed io procurai nella giornata medesima di
vedere il capitano per chiedergli se gli fosse venuta all’orecchio
nessuna voce circa al vapore che due mesi prima di lui aveva
lasciato il Giappone alla volta di Venezia. Ma egli non ne sapeva più
di quello che ne sapevamo noi.
Quando tornai in banco dopo questa mia pratica vana, il principale
mi disse: — Mia moglie ha ragione. L’incertezza è il peggiore dei
mali, e una speranza voluta conservare a ogni costo è una fonte
perenne d’inquietudine.... Ma che speranza? — egli corresse con un
gesto d’impazienza. — Noi non ne abbiamo più; noi non dubitiamo
che il King Arthur sia perduto.... Ci manca però la forza di
rassegnarvisi finchè non abbiamo in mano un documento, una
prova.... Ah, questa prova, questa prova chi ce la darà?
Mi guardò in un modo singolare e soggiunse: — Senta, Ceriani. Il
viaggio d’esplorazione che l’Agnese parve consigliarle tempo
addietro è, anche a’ miei occhi, una cosa assurda. Nondimeno
qualche passo si potrebbe fare. Una corsa in Inghilterra per
esempio, tanto da vedere gli armatori, da consultarsi con persone
esperimentate, da recarsi agli uffici del Lloyd ove ci son notizie di
tutto il mondo?... Andrei io, se non avessi scrupolo di piantar quella
disgraziata.... Lei, Ceriani, lei ch’è giovine, ch’è libero, avrebbe
difficoltà di partire per Londra al più presto, domani sera, per
esempio?...
Sollevai alcuni dubbi sull’utilità di questa gita, ma difficoltà ad
abbandonar Venezia per un quindici o venti giorni non ne avevo
affatto. In fondo, lo confesso, l’offerta mi tornava gradita, perchè
ormai il King Arthur pesava sul banco come un incubo. Ora,
quest’incubo io l’avrei subìto anche durante le mie peregrinazioni
che avevano per iscopo preciso di far nuove indagini sulla sorte del
naviglio: ma mi sorrideva l’idea di cambiar aria, di sostituire una
ricerca attiva (fosse pure infruttuosa) a una preoccupazione inerte e
opprimente.

VI.

Partii dunque, munito d’una quantità di commendatizie, partii senza

congedarmi dalla signora Agnese ch’era indisposta, e nel cui animo,
del resto, era inutile far sorgere aspettazioni che non si sarebbero
adempiute.
Che dirò del mio viaggio? Fui a Londra, fui a Glascow, fui a
Liverpool; parlai con gli armatori del King Arthur, mi rivolsi a quel
meraviglioso centro d’informazioni ch’è il Lloyd, conobbi il
comandante d’un vapore ch’era stato investito dal tifone dal 25 al 28
giugno, e non per questo riuscii a dissipare l’oscurità che avvolgeva
il nostro vascello fantasma. M’accorsi bensì che del King Arthur si
discorreva universalmente come di chi sia morto e sepolto da un
pezzo. O, per esser più esatto, m’accorsi che si cominciava a
discorrerne meno, come d’un fatto ormai vecchio.
Gli armatori, ricchi a milioni, proprietari d’una dozzina di piroscafi
sparsi per tutti gli Oceani, erano più che addolorati, inaspriti contro il
capitano Atkinson. Lo accusavano d’imprudenza; già un’altra volta,
parecchi anni addietro, egli aveva, per la sua temerità, tratto a
perdizione un naviglio. Ma allora almeno s’era salvata la gente.
Questa circostanza che noi ignoravamo non era però ignorata dal
Lloyd. Mi mostrarono colà il Captain’s Register, specie di dizionario
biografico dei capitani mercantili inglesi, ove nella forma più succinta
possibile si contengono importanti notizie relative a ciascuno di loro.
E sotto il nome del capitano Giorgio Atkinson, dopo la data e il luogo
della nascita, dopo altre indicazioni varie, si leggevano queste brevi
parole: Lady Hamilton, st. 1863-65 — lost on the 10th May 1865, off
the Isle of Majorca; ciò che significava che il capitano Atkinson avea
dal 1801 al 1865 comandato il vapore Lady Hamilton, e che questo
vapore s’era perduto in vicinanza dell’isola di Majorca il 10 maggio
1865.
— Una disgrazia può succedere al più provetto, — notò la mia guida
chiudendo il volume accusatore; — è però sempre una cattiva
raccomandazione.
Del resto, anche pel Lloyd, il King Arthur era un legno a cui si poteva
recitare il de profundis. Quei preposti, con molta cortesia, mi
lasciarono vedere la corrispondenza, quasi esclusivamente
telegrafica, scambiata coi loro agenti del Giappone, della China,
dell’India su questo argomento. Con parole diverse si arrivava
sempre alla identica conclusione: testimonianze oculari non ce
n’erano, avanzi del bastimento non se ne trovavano, ma il King
Arthur doveva esser naufragato tra il 25 e il 28 giugno. La miglior
prova era la mancanza di qualunque notizia da pressochè cinque
mesi. Nello stato presente delle comunicazioni postali e telegrafiche,
in una navigazione per mari frequentatissimi, ciò non si spiegava che
con un disastro.
E poichè io stentavo a capacitarmi di questa scomparsa assoluta
d’un bastimento, fui condotto in un’altra camera e invitato a dare
un’occhiata alla lista dei missing vessels, cioè dei vascelli mancanti,
su cui pesava lo stesso mistero che sul King Arthur, ma di cui non si
poteva mettere dubbio che fossero stati inghiottiti dal mare con tutti i
loro attrezzi, con tutti i loro uomini. La lista non si riferiva che a pochi
anni, eppure era così lunga. Vi figuravano legni grandi o piccoli, a
vapore ed a vela, col loro nome, col nome del loro capitano, con
l’indicazione del porto dal quale erano partiti e di quello al quale
erano diretti, con la data dell’ultime notizie.... Poi, più nulla.
— E il King Arthur? — chiesi all’impiegato che mi accompagnava.
— Non c’è ancora, — egli mi rispose. — Lo registreremo presto....
Bisogna che passi un certo numero di mesi.
Io non sapevo staccar lo sguardo da quella pagina. Pensavo a tante
tragedie di cui l’Oceano chiude il secreto, a tante esistenze troncate,
a tanti gemiti, a tante imprecazioni, a tante preghiere soffocate dal
fragore del vento e dei flutti. E pensavo alla piccola Ofelia. La
rivedevo nella sala del palazzo Prosperi, ilare e vispa, co’ suoi riccioli
biondi che le svolazzavano sulla fronte; la rivedevo tra il cane Tom e
la signora Agnese. Povera, povera bambina! S’era accorta
dell’imminente catastrofe? O aveva cambiato il sonno con la
morte?... Ma più ancora che ai naufraghi pensavo a quelli che
aspettano.... Madri che l’inutile attesa precipita nella decrepitezza e
nell’imbecillità, spose che avvizziscono nella forzata vedovanza e
che dopo aver pianto tutte le loro lacrime dimandano invano la
libertà di aprir il cuore a nuovi affetti, di farsi una nuova famiglia....
L’impiegato del Lloyd indovinò in parte ciò che mi si agitava nella
mente e disse: — Tristi cose. Ma che sono i legni mancanti, che
sono i legni perduti in confronto di quelli che corrono i mari e
tengono alta la bandiera britannica? La lista dei missing vessels, il
loss-book, sono come il nostro necrologio, e qual’è la famiglia ove
non muoia qualcuno? Che famiglia numerosa sia la nostra lo si rileva
dal nostro registro nautico, il libro dei vivi. Erano l’anno scorso più di
dodici mila navigli.... nè il registro comprende tutti i legni della marina
mercantile inglese.... Sicuro, di quando in quando ci capita un
dispaccio annunziante un disastro, ma novanta volte su cento i
telegrammi che riceviamo a ogni ora del giorno ci parlano di
bastimenti arrivati, di bastimenti partiti, di bastimenti apparsi in
qualche punto remoto del globo e che mandano un saluto alla patria
lontana.... Eh, non ci resta mica tempo d’indugiarci troppo a pianger
sui morti.
Orgoglioso della grandezza della sua patria, della grandezza
dell’istituzione alla quale egli apparteneva, il mio interlocutore, uomo
dall’aria positiva quanto mai, diventava poeta. E io subivo, mio
malgrado, il fascino della sua eloquenza e nelle linee maestose del
quadro ch’egli mi tracciava vedevo ridursi alle proporzioni d’un
dramma domestico il pietoso episodio del King Arthur. Ripetevo a
me stesso quella frase crudele: Non ci resta tempo d’indugiarci
troppo a pianger sui morti — e mi pareva che, pronunziata in quella
sala ove fa capo il commercio marittimo del mondo, ella perdesse
alquanto della sua brutalità. Non ceder mai nè all’accidia, nè allo
scoraggiamento, nè al sentimentalismo, ecco il segreto della forza e
della potenza.
Comunque sia, io ero già al termine della mia missione senz’aver
raggiunto il fine sperato. Indizi in quantità, certezza morale fin che si
vuole; ma prove materiali, palpabili, nessuna. Da Venezia Prosperi
mi scriveva lasciando in mia facoltà di spingermi magari all’India, alla
China, al Giappone se credevo al risultato pratico di questo
viaggio.... Io però non ci credevo, nè ci credeva alcuno di quelli a cui
ne parlai. — Dove andreste? — mi si diceva. — È un’ipotesi
ragionevole che il King Arthur si sia perduto nel tifone dal 25 al 28
giugno. Ma è sempre un’ipotesi. E in ogni modo, pur riuscendo a
precisare il raggio di quel tifone, come scoprirete il punto ove il
bastimento si è sommerso? Che esercito di palombari prenderete
con voi? E vi par possibile ch’essi discendano a una profondità di
migliaia e migliaia di metri?
Quest’era vero, ma io obbiettai che forse qualche uomo
dell’equipaggio s’era salvato, rifugiato in un’isola, in una spiaggia
deserta, che forse si poteva trovarlo....
I miei ascoltatori sorrisero. — Non è più il tempo di Robinson
Crusoè.
Un po’ perchè queste riflessioni non facevano che crescere la mia
sfiducia, un po’ perchè m’impregnavo anch’io della maschia filosofia
anglo-sassone che ci stimola a guardare dinanzi e non dietro a noi,
io abbandonai l’impresa e feci ritorno in Italia. Era inutile ostinarsi, io
dissi al mio principale, era inutile sprecar l’energia, l’ingegno, il
danaro in ricerche fantastiche. Dovevamo mettere il nostro cuore in
pace, dimenticare il King Arthur, lavorar con lena raddoppiata,
mantenere alla nostra casa il posto che le spettava pe’ suoi capitali,
per la sua riputazione, per l’abilità riconosciuta di chi la dirigeva. Nel
fervore del discorso mi sfuggì un’allusione alla frase udita negli uffici
del Lloyd circa alla necessità di non indugiarsi troppo a piangere i
morti.
Il principale m’interruppe. — Non si tratta di morti, caro Ceriani....
almeno per me.... Per me si tratta d’una persona viva che amo e che
avrei voluto render felice a costo del mio sangue, mentre invece un
fatale concorso di circostanze volge ad effetto contrario tutti i miei
sforzi.... Ah è facile dire: quella persona è un’esaltata, ingigantisce i
suoi dolori, non apprezza convenientemente i beni che possede, va
in traccia dello strano, del singolare.... È facile rimproverarle il suo
cieco trasporto per una bambina appena conosciuta, la sua
mancanza di rassegnazione ai decreti della Provvidenza. È facile
infine citarle tante donne che hanno la saviezza di contentarsi di ciò
che hanno, di non accasciarsi sotto il peso di sventure molto più
grandi di quella che l’ha colpita.... Ragioni belle, buone, sacrosante,
ma che non concludono nulla.... Le cose non sono quelle che
dovrebbero essere, ma quelle che sono.... Il fatto si è che le
condizioni di mia moglie sono tali da destar le più legittime
apprensioni.... Quel pensiero assiduo che la tormenta, logora la sua
salute e pur troppo ha un’azione funesta anche sulla sua
intelligenza. La vedrà, Ceriani, la vedrà.... Non è già che ella parli di
continuo del King Arthur o dell’Ofelia; sarebbe meglio che ne
parlasse.... ma si capisce che la sua mente è sempre lì, e la sua
fissazione di voler passar quasi l’intera giornata in quello ch’ella
chiama il suo salottino giapponese basta a dimostrarlo.... Via, siamo
giusti, data una natura nervosa come quella dell’Agnese, non poteva
accader di peggio.... Se lo sciagurato King Arthur si fosse perduto
come si perdono centinaia di navi non saremmo a questo punto.... È
per ciò ch’io insistevo per aver una prova.... Non la si è potuta avere,
pazienza.... Non ne ha colpa nessuno.... Intendo benissimo che
sarebbe una follia il girare il mondo in cerca di un bastimento.... Ma
bisogna convenire ch’è un destino iniquo. E vi sarà della gente che
c’invidia perchè siamo ricchi!
Il signor Roberto non esagerava accennando alle tristi condizioni di
sua moglie. La vidi nella giornata e mi fece una pena immensa.
Aveva dato un crollo in poche settimane. Era ridotta a pelle ed ossa,
aveva gli occhi infossati e più d’un filo bianco si mesceva a’ suoi bei
capelli biondi.... E quello sguardo, quello sguardo!
Mi accolse con una cortesia fredda, ben diversa dall’espansione
ch’ella m’aveva dimostrata negli ultimi tempi. Circa al mio viaggio, mi
disse soltanto: — Non ha saputo nulla.... Già era da immaginarselo.
Lieto ch’ell’avesse rotto il ghiaccio, mi credetti incoraggiato a riferirle
le indagini che avevo fatte, i nuovi indizi che avevo raccolti, i discorsi
che avevo sentiti, la dolorosa convinzione che avevo acquistata
dell’inutilità di ulteriori pratiche per accertare un avvenimento su cui
pur troppo non v’era più dubbio. M’aspettavo ch’ella protestasse
contro le mie parole, che, in un modo o nell’altro, ella sfogasse il suo
dolore.... Niente di tutto ciò.... Teneva la testa chinata sul petto, le
mani incrociate sulle ginocchia, non dava segno di approvazione o
dissenso.
Nell’uscire dalla stanza il signor Roberto sospirò: — È uno strazio.
Così non può durare....
Tale era anche la mia opinione. Ma c’ingannavamo tutti e due. Anzi,
in quanto a salute, la signora Agnese migliorò, riprese un po’ di
polpa e di colore. Non migliorò invece il suo stato morale, non ci fu
verso di scuotere il letargo nel quale ell’era piombata. Ella non
trovava qualche lampo d’energia che per respinger qualunque
proposta suo marito le facesse di viaggi o di distrazioni d’altra
natura.
Compiuto l’anno, gli assicuratori pagarono il risarcimento che ci
spettava, e nella pagina del nostro registro mercanzie intestata al
Riso giapponese col “King Arthur„ noi potemmo inscrivere nella
colonna dell’avere ch’era ancora in bianco la cifra rotonda di un
milione di lire, chiudendo con un utile ragguardevole questo conto,
nonostante le spese impreviste, nonostante la perdita degl’interessi.
Furono pagate contemporaneamente anche le 25 mila lire del
salottino giapponese ch’era stato assicurato a parte.
— Sia ringraziato il cielo, — esclamò quel giorno il ragioniere della
ditta. — Quelle due partite aperte gettavano un’ombra sinistra
sull’intera azienda.... Adesso che ci si è messa su una bella pietra
sepolcrale, si potrà respirar meglio e muoversi con più libertà.
Ebbene, quel giorno stesso il signor Roberto mi esternava per la
prima volta la sua intenzione di liquidare la casa. Non aveva più
amore al lavoro, non aveva più ambizione, non aveva più elasticità di
fibra e di spirito. Sentiva di non esser l’uomo d’un tempo,
d’infastidirsi a ogni contrarietà, di smarrirsi a ogni dubbiezza; quei
lunghi mesi d’ambascia l’avevano spossato, affranto. E poi con che
sugo avrebbe seguitato a logorare il cervello nelle intricate
combinazioni del commercio moderno?... Non aveva figliuoli e non
isperava d’averne; sua moglie non abbisognava di maggiori
ricchezze per vegetar come faceva; le occorrevano soltanto delle
cure sollecite, attente, e queste cure toccava a lui di prestargliele.
Con la coscienza delicata dei buoni egli si caricava di colpe
immaginarie. — Dovevo entrar subito nell’idea dell’Agnese, — egli
ripeteva, — e far sì che il capitano ci lasciasse la bambina
addirittura, chè già con un po’ d’insistenza la si sarebbe spuntata....
Oppure dovevo tagliar corto, dichiarar che non volevo l’Ofelia in casa
nè prima nè dopo, impedire a quella funesta tenerezza di nascere, di
crescere. Il mezzo termine adottato fu la cagion vera di tante
disgrazie.
Ohimè, la vera cagione era da cercarsi nella mente non equilibrata
della signora Agnese, ma questo il signor Roberto non intendeva
ammetterlo. Fermo nel tenersi responsabile di tutto, egli diceva che il
far l’infermiere era per lui, oltre che un debito d’affetto, una giusta
espiazione.
E persisteva nel proposito di ritirarsi dai traffici. Solo studiava il modo
di provvedere all’avvenire de’ suoi commessi, di volgere a loro
vantaggio il credito e le relazioni della sua ditta.
Di qui l’accomandita della quale io sono il gerente e che mi permise
di conservare intimità di rapporti con l’ottimo uomo. Però tra noi non
si discorre d’affari che quando io gli presento il bilancio, e anche
allora se ne discorre poco perchè egli ha in me una fiducia che credo
di non avere demeritata. Anzi talvolta egli mi rimprovera
scherzosamente di aumentar troppo il suo patrimonio.
Per lo più egli mi parla di sua moglie ch’egli ama con l’antico
trasporto e ch’è sempre nel medesimo stato, sospesa tra la sanità e
la malattia, tra la saviezza e la demenza. Quand’io vado a visitarla, e
ci vado ogni tre o quattro settimane, ella mi riconosce, mi porge la
mano, mi ringrazia d’essermi ricordato di lei, mette insieme poche
frasi insignificanti, e quindi ricade in un silenzio penoso. Ma se mi
alzo per accommiatarmi si scuote, e non manca di dire: — Torni: Già
mi trova al solito posto, nel mio salottino giapponese.
E nel salottino che conserva per ironia questo nome si vedono
ancora le fotografie dell’Ofelia e del King Arthur. Ma i mille ninnoli,
ma le lacche colorate, ma gli specchi dipinti, ma le mensole, i vasi
che dovevano adornare il salottino giapponese, dove sono? Dov’è il
King Arthur, dov’è la gentile Ofelia, dov’è il capitano Atkinson, dov’è
il cane Tom? Su quali alghe riposano, quanto mare li copre, chi
saprà mai nulla di loro?

· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
 NELL’ANDARE AL BALLO.

Il servo picchiò leggermente all’uscio, e disse con qualche

esitazione: — Signora....
Sola nel suo salottino, la signora Stella Marioli ripassava della
musica al pianoforte. Un resto di legna si consumava, scoppiettando,
nel caminetto; sopra una tavola sparsa di libri e giornali ardeva un
lume a Carvel.
— Che c’è? — chiese la signora, voltandosi sulla sedia.
— C’è una visita.
— A quest’ora? Lo sapete bene che di sera non ricevo.
— Lo so.... Ma il cavalier Gualberti mi ha ordinato di annunziarlo
ugualmente.
— È Gualberti? — soggiunse la signora Marioli come parlando tra
sè. — E pensò che per due volte consecutive egli era venuto di
giorno senza trovarla in casa. A ogni modo.... — Basta.... Che entri,
— ella disse a voce alta. — E portate da fare il tè.
Spense le due candele del pianoforte e andò a sedere accanto alla
tavola.
Era una donna sulla trentina, non bellissima ma piacente, vedova da
più di tre anni, senza figliuoli; chè il suo primo e unico bimbo l’era
morto in fasce. Viveva con la sua mamma ch’era vedova anch’essa;
ma i due quartierini erano perfettamente disobbligati con porta e
ingresso a parte. Madre e figliuola avevano spiriti indipendenti e
gusti alquanto diversi. Era poi questo spirito indipendente che
rendeva la signora Stella aliena dal rimaritarsi, quantunque, pur che
avesse voluto, non le sarebbero mancate le occasioni. Ma era ben
provvista di beni di fortuna, era in grado di saper difendersi dalle
insidie; che furia doveva avere di rimettere il collo sotto il giogo?
— In verità, Gualberti.... — ella cominciò rivolgendosi all’inatteso
visitatore con aria di mite rimprovero. Ma, al vederlo in abito nero e
cravatta bianca, soggiunse scherzosamente: — Meno male che non
sono che una stazione intermedia.... Via, sedete pure.... Già una
rondine non fa primavera.
Da un pezzo la signora Marioli dava del voi a Gualberti.
— Oh, signora Stella, — egli disse, — non sia così cattiva. Ho
commesso un’indiscretezza, lo so, ma passavo di qui e non ho
potuto resistere alla tentazione. Di giorno non mi riesce mai....
— Mi dispiace che abbiate fatto due volte la strada per nulla. Ero
fuori.... Di venerdì però....
— Il suo giorno di ricevimento?... Non me ne discorra neanche....
Abborro i giorni di ricevimento in generale e il suo in particolare.
— Perchè il mio più degli altri?
— Perchè un salotto pieno di visite è tanto più odioso quanto più è
simpatica la padrona di casa.
— Devo ringraziarvi del madrigale?
— Non è un madrigale; è l’espressione schietta del mio pensiero. E
poi, non lo nego, divento un selvaggio.
— Voi? Non si direbbe. — E la signora Stella diede un’occhiata alla
toilette inappuntabile di Gualberti. Quindi esclamò picchiandosi la
fronte:
— Adesso capisco.... Andate al ballo della contessa Vetturi....
— Sono uscito di casa con questa intenzione, ma....
— Non c’è ma che tenga. Se credete che la Vetturi vi passerebbe
buona la vostra diserzione, v’ingannate a partito.... E fulminerebbe
me se potesse supporre che ne fossi la causa.... Oh non voglio
correre di questi pericoli..... Sono terribili le collere della Vetturi.
— Lei le affronta impavida.... perchè sarà invitata anche lei....
— Oh, il mio è un invito platonico.... Sanno bene che non vado a
feste.... Ma voi....
— Sicchè mi licenzia.... Mi spedisce dalla Vetturi a veder accendere i
lumi.
La signora Stella guardò l’orologio.
— Infatti è presto; sono le nove e tre quarti. Vi concedo di rimaner
fino alle dieci e mezzo, il tempo da prendere una tazza di tè che vi
preparo subito.... Da qui a casa Vetturi ci saranno quindici o venti
minuti di strada; arriverete alle undici; proprio l’ora giusta.
— E dire che rinunzierei tanto volentieri ad andarvi.
— Caro amico, quando non si vuole andare a una festa, non si
comincia col mettersi in frac paré.
— È inesorabile.... Bisogna perdonare alle contraddizioni umane....
Mi son vestito macchinalmente, per forza d’inerzia; adesso domando
a me stesso che cosa vado a fare dalla Vetturi.
— Oh bella, quello che ci faranno gli altri. Ballerete.
— Se non ballo più.
— Vedrete a ballare.
— Non mi piacciono che i balli d’adolescenti.
— Carino, carino. Bals d’enfants addirittura.
— Anche i bals d’enfants. Ma, scherzi a parte, il ballo, se non vuol
essere una cosa ridicola agli occhi di chi vi assiste, deve apparir lo
sfogo ingenuo di una vitalità esuberante. E tale è appunto pei
giovani che hanno un bisogno irresistibile di muoversi, di saltare, di
volare, sarei per dire. Più tardi, dopo vent’anni per le femmine, dopo
venticinque per i maschi, esso non è che un libertinaggio o una
pagliacciata.
— Nientemeno! — proruppe la signora Marioli. — Sicchè voi,
consentaneo ai vostri principî, avete cessato di ballare a
venticinqu’anni?... Io ritenevo....
— Che avessi ballato anche dopo? Lo ammetto. Ma questo non
prova nulla....
— Sarà. Gradirei sapere a ogni modo se ballando nella vostra età
matura facevate atto di libertino, o di...
La signora Stella non finì la frase. Gualberti la finì lui.
— O di pagliaccio? Ecco, siccome l’andar in giro come una trottola
mi pareva supremamente grottesco, crederei piuttosto....
E si fermò lì.
— Intendo, — disse la signora. — La vostra era una colpa di
libertinaggio.... E chi sa che giudizi pronunciavate in cuor vostro sul
conto di quelle povere diavole che accettavano il vostro invito per
una polka o per un valzer?... Buon per me che non abbiamo mai
ballato insieme.
— Io non mi ricordo di averla mai vista ballare, — replicò Gualberti.
— È vero. Anche quando viveva mio marito ballavo pochissimo....
Non in omaggio alla vostra teoria, ma perchè vado soggetta alle
vertigini.... E se ci fosse una signora Gualberti, levatemi una
curiosità.... è il vizio di noi donne l’esser curiose.... come vi
regolereste con la signora Gualberti?
— Eh, chi può dire quel che farei? Se l’amassi, sarei debole, cederei
probabilmente a’ suoi desideri. Ma non nego che dovrei mandar giù
di gran bocconi amari a vederla palleggiata dalle braccia dell’uno a
quelle dell’altro. Senza contare ciò che vien dopo.... Ogni imbecille
che ha ballato con madama si crede in obbligo di portar la mattina
seguente i suoi biglietti da visita, in duplo come le quietanze, che il
marito babbeo è costretto a ricambiare, dando in questo modo la
facoltà a uno stuolo di cretini di venire in casa a corteggiargli la
moglie.
La signora Stella si mise a ridere.
— Che moralista diventate invecchiando, e che marito geloso
sareste!
— Geloso?... Secondo.... Se amassi mia moglie.... Sia sincera,
signora Stella, crede possibile amore senza gelosia?
— No, — ella rispose dopo averci pensato su un momento. — Pur di
non eccedere.
— D’accordo. È come il sale nelle vivande. Non si può farne senza,
ma non si deve abusarne.
— Parlate per aforismi stasera.... Ma torniamo a bomba.... Il vostro
programma coniugale è tuttora oscuro.
— Ha voglia di divertirsi alle mie spalle, lei, — esclamò il cavalier
Gualberti. — Che programma posso avere? È sicuro però che non
adotterei il sistema di coloro i quali nel gran numero di galanti lasciati
ronzare intorno alla moglie vedono una specie di salvaguardia contro
maggiori pericoli.... Tanto più ch’io ho certe opinioni tutte mie.... È la
sera che la faccio maravigliare coi miei paradossi.... Se gliene
dicessi un altro?
Durante questo tempo la signora Stella era stata sempre in piedi
affaccendata intorno alla teiera; adesso il tè era fatto ed ella ne
mescè una tazza al Gualberti, dicendogli:
— Mettete voi a vostro piacere lo zucchero, la panna e il rhum, e
spifferate pure il vostro ultimo paradosso.... Perchè è l’ultimo; sono
già le dieci e mezzo.
— Non baderà poi al minuto. Il mio paradosso è questo. La colpa
che perdono meno alla donna è la civetteria.
— Misericordia! — gridò la padrona di casa alzando le mani al cielo.
— A dir queste cose v’inimicherete l’intera corporazione.... S’è già
passato in giudicato che siamo civette tutte quante?
Gualberti fece un moto vivace di protesta.
— Nemmen per sogno.... Ne conosco una per esempio....
La signora Marioli gli accennò con la mano di non continuare.
— Son io quella, s’intende.... Gualberti, stasera siete in vena
d’originalità; non naufragate in un bicchier d’acqua.
— Le giuro che....
— Tiriamo via.... E invece di perdervi in cerimonie, spiegatevi
meglio.... Per voi dunque la civetteria è un peccato mortale.
— Sarò ingiusto, sarò eccessivo.... Ma già me ne rifaccio con un
eccesso d’indulgenza per altri peccati.
— Oh!... Per esempio?
— Io compatisco la sensualità, compatisco e spesso rispetto la
passione, anche illegittima.
— E non compatite la civetteria?
— No. La sensualità ha qualche cosa d’irresponsabile, è una
malattia del sangue, come la passione è una malattia, una nobile
malattia, del cuore. Sensualità e passione sono necessariamente
sincere; la civetteria non è che un artifizio; è un pervertimento
dell’ingegno rivolto a miseri fini, è un gioco crudele che alla lunga
spegne nell’animo di chi lo fa ogni lampo di gentilezza.... La donna
può esercitarvisi per anni senza restar presa nei lacci che tende; non
importa, ella è mille volte più corrotta, mille volte più condannabile di
quella che ha ceduto all’amore, qualunque sia quest’amore....
— Onde alla signora Gualberti, se ci fosse, — ripigliò in tuono
scherzevole la signora Stella — voi perdonereste un amante, due
amanti....
— Come corre! Veda.... Bisogna distinguere. Quando una donna
maritata ha un amante, il marito è un offeso, e chi è offeso non
guarda tanto pel sottile; non considera il fatto in sè stesso, ma il
danno, la vergogna, il ridicolo che ne deriva a lui.... È probabile ch’io
sarei come gli altri, è possibile che scaccerei dal mio fianco la donna
colpevole.... a’ miei occhi indubbiamente colpevole.... ma non credo
che da una catastrofe di questo genere mi sentirei umiliato come
dall’aver una moglie che tenesse a bada una dozzina di bellimbusti e
girasse tutta la sua vita intorno all’adulterio senza cadervi mai.
— Avete finito?
— Ho finito.
— Ebbene, quantunque siano le dieci e tre quarti, voglio dire anch’io
due parole.... Figuratevi se non protesto in nome del mio sesso
contro le vostre esagerazioni.... Una seconda tazza di tè?
— Sì, grazie, — rispose Gualberti, il quale non domandava di meglio
che di esser trattenuto.
— Nella vostra filippica ci può anche essere un fondo di vero —
soggiunse la signora Stella mentre gli porgeva la tazza colma, —
ma, santo Iddio, le cose che vi dispiacciono le vedete con una lente
d’ingrandimento che vi muta una zanzara in un elefante. Non amo
neppur io la civetta di professione, ma un po’ di civetteria non è poi
quel delitto abbominevole che voi credete. È la nostra arma, la
nostra difesa, la nostra vendetta contro voi altri.
— Una vendetta?
— Appunto, e non è difficile a intenderlo. Con voi uomini una donna
che non sia nè vecchia nè brutta (e già le brutte e le vecchie le
lasciate in disparte) non ha che tre vie da tenere. O consente a
sacrificarvi la sua riputazione, o vi mette alla porta ch’è quello che
meritereste spessissimo, o si prende argutamente gioco di voi.... Ora
capirete che sacrificarvi la propria riputazione è novantanove volte
su cento una follìa, e che il darvi lo sfratto ci condannerebbe
all’isolamento. Non resta quindi che il terzo partito. Con che fronte
venite ad accusarci di finzione, d’artifizio? Siete schietti, siete sinceri
voi altri? Che cosa sono le vostre frasi sdolcinate, le vostre
dichiarazioni patetiche? Sono la bandiera con cui tentate far passare
di contrabbando un vostro desiderio, un vostro capriccio. Voi
c’insultate, noi vi canzoniamo. Ve lo ripeto, io non amo le civette in
genere, però quando sento che una civetta ha corbellato un libertino
biasimo forse la donna, ma in quanto all’uomo dico: Bene gli sta.
— Ah, signora Stella, — replicò Gualberti deponendo la chicchera
sulla tavola. — si capisce che c’è un grande spirito di solidarietà fra
le donne se le migliori prendono con tanto fuoco le parti delle
peggiori!... Cercar scuse alle civette, lei che non ha ombra di
civetteria?
— Ne siete sicuro? E, in ogni caso, credete di farmi un elogio? Se
fosse un difetto? Se per lo meno fosse una disgrazia?
— Come mai?
Ella soggiunse con un sorriso triste:
— Eh caro Gualberti, è quello che dicevo poco fa.... Non volersi
compromettere con uno, non voler prendersi gioco di molti, è il vero
modo di restar sole.
Le parve di essersi lasciata sfuggire qualche parola di troppo e si
alzò bruscamente dalla seggiola.
— Basta così, ormai.... Voi mi avete sciorinato le vostre massime; io
ho rintuzzato la vostra baldanza maschile.... vi ritenete sempre
impeccabili voi uomini.... adesso non mi resta altro che darvi la
felicissima notte e augurarvi buon divertimento dalla Vetturi.
Gualberti s’era alzato anche lui, e stava forse per accommiatarsi
definitivamente, quando ad un tratto abbassò gli occhi sullo sparato
della camicia e mise un piccolo grido.
— Che cos’è accaduto?
— È accaduto.... — rispose alquanto confuso Gualberti — che dalla
Vetturi non ci posso andar più.
— E perchè?
— Perchè m’accorgo d’essermi fatta una macchia di tè sulla camicia.
La signora Stella non potè a meno di sorridere.
— Un altro giorno vi legherete la salvietta al collo.... Per fortuna
avete ancora tempo di passar a casa vostra a mutarvi.
— Questo poi no. Far toilette una volta, transeat, ma due? Non ho
una vocazione così pronunciata per la società. Sia compiacente,
signora Stella, e giacchè sono qui mi permetta di restarci ancora un
pochino. È tanto più gustoso il discorrer con una donna d’ingegno e
di cuore che l’andare a una festa a sentir le solite melensaggini.
Una nuvola si calò sulla fronte della signora Marioli; un sospetto lo
balenò nell’animo. Le venne il dubbio che quella macchia non fosse
accidentale, che Gualberti avesse lasciato cadere apposta una
goccia di tè sulla camicia per avere un pretesto di prolungar la sua
visita. E il pensiero di questo mezzuccio puerile l’offese, e
l’insistenza per rimaner da lei a quell’ora inusata l’afflisse. Ecco,
anche Gualberti del quale ella pregiava infinitamente lo spirito ed il
carattere assumeva dei modi che a lei non potevano convenire.... Le
sarebbe toccato metterlo a posto, forse non riceverlo più come non
aveva ricevuto più tanti altri.... Era un gran dolore.... O forse l’aveva
ella stessa trattato con soverchia familiarità?... Dio buono, che sia
necessario di star sempre in sussiego, di adombrarsi d’ogni atto,
d’ogni parola?... Che ogni minima deferenza debba bastare perchè
un uomo manchi di rispetto?...
— Oh Gualberti — ella ripigliò; e l’intonazione della sua voce
rivelava il suo animo commosso — non mi fate pentire di avervi
perdonata la licenza che vi siete presa.... Perchè io non vi avevo
mai, mai invitato a venire di sera.... Nè voi, nè altri, s’intende.... O
scendo da mia madre, o vado da qualche amica, o rimango sola....
Non è poi la fine del mondo il rimaner sola.... Lo so — ella proseguì,
quasi volendo spiegar a sè stessa la propria condotta — tanti
avevano insistito perchè io ricevessi una sera per settimana.... A che
pro?... Avrei forse potuto ricever soltanto quelli che desideravo?...
No certo, mi sarebbe convenuto subir prima di tutti quelli che
avevano fatto la proposta, i seccatori, gl’importuni, i balordi, quelli
che stimerebbero fallire a un debito d’onore se non facessero la
corte a una donna che non è un mostro, e che non ha nessuno che
la difenda.... Ebbene, no, non era affare per me.... avete ragione,
non sono abbastanza civetta.... D’altra parte, sfido io, una volta detto
di non ricever la sera, come posso fare eccezioni?... Avete avuto