Michael Miller: First Pan-Europeans? Jews and the Paneuropean-Union

Live and Online-Lecture and Discussion with Prof. Dr. Michael Miller, Budapest/Vienna (in English!)

Richard Nikolaus Coudenhove-Kalergi, founder of the Paneuropa Union, was an enigmatic figure: aristocrat, cosmopolitan and passionate opponent of anti-Semitism. The Paneuropa Union, which imagined a Europe without borders, had among its members – in addition to many a member of the nobility seeking new orientation – numerous Jews who felt attracted by the idea of a tolerant, fraternal Europe. And this despite the fact that the Paneuropa Union saw itself as a Christian movement. Michael Miller’s lecture deals with the Paneuropa Union of the interwar period, its attraction to Jews, its confrontation with the Jewish question of the time, and its advocacy of pacifism and transnational reconciliation. In the end, the Pan-European Union was on the losing end – and at the same time became a forerunner of the European Union after the catastrophe of World War II.

Michael Miller directs the Nationalism Studies Program at the Central European University in Vienna/Budapest, where he also teaches in the Jewish Studies Program. His research focuses on the impact of nationality conflicts on the religious, cultural, and political development of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. Miller is a founding member of the International Consortium for Research on Antisemitism and Racism. His book Rabbis and Revolution: the Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation was published in 2011. He is currently working on a history of Hungarian Jewry.