Cosmopolitan Europeans? Jewish public intellectuals in Germany and Austria and the idea of ‘Europe’

Abstract

The recent Eurozone crisis and the outbreak of political and populist Euroscepticism pose an unprecedented challenge to advocates of the post-war ‘Idea of Europe’. In the United Kingdom and France, some of the most eloquent and impassioned defences of ‘Europe’ have been penned by Jewish intellectuals. The historian Walter Laqueur, the philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and journalists such as David Aaronovich, for example, have all rallied to the cause of ‘Europe’. This article will focus on the responses of Robert Menasse and Henryk Broder, two Jewish intellectuals from Austria and Germany, who have recently published powerful reflections on the European idea. Menasse’s polemic of 2012, Der Europäische Landbote (The European Courier), defends the idea of Europe as a ‘Friedensprojekt’, or ‘peace project’, and the European Union as an institutional antidote to the destructive power of nationalism and the self-interest of the nation-state. Broder’s bestselling book of 2013, Die letzten Tage Europas: Wie wir eine gute Idee versenken (The Last Days of Europe: How we are Scuppering a Good Idea), embraces ‘European values’ but launches a critique of a European Union which stifles pluralism and critical debate. This paper analyses how Menasse and Broder define the idea of ‘Europe’ and argues that, despite their differences, in form and content, the work of Menasse and Broder draws on a common tradition of enlightened cosmopolitanism as well as informs the renewed academic debate in the humanities and social sciences about the place of ‘cosmopolitanism’ in our global world.

Keywords:

• Robert Menasse
• Henryk Broder
• cosmopolitanism
• Europe
• Jews
• nation

Notes

1. Laqueur, The Last Days of Europe and After the Fall; Pinto, “I’m a European Jew – and No, I’m not Leaving;” Lévy, Left in Dark Times; Aaronovitch, “Europe Isn’t Just About the Economy, Stupid.” On Jews and the political culture of post-war Europe, see Beller, “Ist Europa gut für die Juden?”

2. Menasse, Der europäische Landbote. Translated into English by author. Since 2013 Menasse has also published articles and given speeches in defence of a United Europe. See Menasse, “FAQ Europa.” He is also a member of the “Reflection Group” of the transnational “New Pact for Europe” project.

3. Broder, Die letzten Tage Europas. Translated into English by author. See also his satirical television documentary Entweder Broder: Die Europa Safari.

4. On the “new cosmopolitanism” see Fine, Cosmopolitanism, 2–6.

5. On Cosmopolitanism as a contested concept today, see Neilson, “On the New Cosmopolitanism,” 111; Fine, Cosmopolitanism, 18.

6. As examples of opposing interpretations of cosmopolitanism, see Brennan, At Home in the World, who presents it as a tool of US-centred transnationalism, and Cheah and Robbins, Cosmopolitics; Beck, Cosmopolitan Vision; and Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Patriots” who emphasize its political and social potential and viability.

7. Broder, Die letzten Tage, 21.

8. Sander Gilman credits Broder with reviving the rich genre of the German-Jewish feuilleton or newspaper essay. See Gilman and Friedberg, A Jew in the New Germany: Henryk Broder, xi. See also Markwort, “Hurra, wir gratulieren!”

9. Menasse, Der europäische Landbote, 85.

10. Reiter, Contemporary Jewish Writing, 97, 84–9, 102–10; Beilein, 86 und die Folgen.

11. On the difference between “cosmopolitanism” and “multiculturalism” see Beck and Grande, Cosmopolitan Europe, 14.

12. On the association between cosmopolitanism and rootlessness see Neilson, “On the New Cosmopolitanism,” 111 and Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” 618.

13. Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” 624, and Beck and Grande, Cosmopolitan Europe, 16.

14. Fine, Cosmopolitanism, 40.

15. Ibid., x.

16. Broder, Die letzten Tage, 222.

17. Menasse, Der europäische Landbote, 108.

18. Ibid., 82.

19. Ibid., 82.

20. Broder, Die letzten Tage, 194.

21. Ibid., 11.

22. Ibid., 21.

23. Ibid., 114.

24. Ibid., 115.

25. Ibid., 85.

26. Ibid., 50.

27. Ibid., 48–9.

28. Menasse, Der europäische Landbote, 87.

29. Ibid., 66.

30. Ibid., 65–6.

31. Ibid., 64.

32. Ibid., 8.

33. Ibid., 22.

34. Ibid., 59.

35. “Der neoliberale Einfluss kommt über die nationalstaatlichen Interessen herein.” Menasse, Der Europäische Landbote, 57.

36. Ibid., 84. See also Ulrich Beck’s description of the EU as a “deformed cosmopolitanism” arising out of the egoism of member states. Beck and Grande, Cosmopolitan Europe, 20.

37. Menasse, Der europäische Landbote, 51, 82.

38. Ibid., 31.

39. Ibid., 47–8.

40. Ibid., 91, 93.

41. Ibid., 21, 49.

42. Broder, Die letzten Tage, 166.

43. Ibid., 87–8.

44. Ibid., 166.

45. Ibid., 165.

46. Ibid., 161, 166.

47. Menasse, Der europäische Landbote, 23.

48. Ibid., 24.

49. Ibid., 15, 17, 22.

50. Ibid, 20–3.

51. Ibid., 71–2.

52. Broder draws here on Enzensberger, Sanftes Monster Brüssel. Broder, Die letzten Tage, 79, 14.

53. Broder, Die letzten Tage, 89.

54. Ibid., 9.

55. Ibid., 42, 65.

56. Ibid., 106.

57. Ibid., 171.

58. Ibid., 215.

59. Ibid., 44.

60. Ibid., 107.

61. Ibid., 109.

62. Ibid., 184.

63. Ibid., 185.

64. Menasse, Der europäische Landbote, 90.

65. Broder, Die letzten Tage, 186.

66. Ibid., 192.

67. Ibid., 218, 220.

68. On Menasse’s desire to identify with proto-Enlightenment figures such as Rabbi Manasseh and Spinoza, see Reiter, “Die Geschichte der Marranan.” On Broder’s defence of Enlightenment values, see Broder, “Toleranz hilft nur den Rücksichtslosen.”

69. Menasse, Der europäische Landbote, 15, 95. Habermas, "Why Europe needs a Constitution," 17; Negt, Gesellschaftsentwurf Europa.

70. Menasse, Der europäische Landbote, 84.

71. Ibid., 102.

72. Ibid., 88. See also Menasse and Guerot, “For a European Republic.”

73. Outram, Enlightenment. See also Beck’s critique of the Enlightenment’s hegemonic “humanistic universalism” which posed a threat to pluralism. Beck, Cosmopolitan Vision, 49. See also Fine’s critique of Habermas’ new cosmopolitanism and the emphasis Fine places on “the role of political judgement on the part of ordinary citizens.” Fine, Cosmopolitanism, 40.

74. Menasse, Der europäische Landbote, 11–12.

75. Ibid., 95.

76. Ibid., 26–7.

77. Ibid., 42.

78. Ibid., 99–101.

79. Ibid., 88.

80. Broder, Die letzten Tage, 10.

81. Ibid., 27–9.

82. Ibid., 141.

83. Ibid., 81–2.

84. Ibid., 113.

85. Ibid., 116–7.

86. Ibid., 123.

87. Ibid., 122, 117.

88. Ibid., 10.

89. Schulz, Der gefesselte Riese.

90. Broder, Die letzten Tage, 163–4.

91. Ibid., 125–6.

92. Ibid., 167.

93. Ibid., 175.

94. Ibid., 208.

95. Ibid., 197.

96. Ibid., 222.

97. Fine, Cosmopolitanism, 4; Reiss, Kant: Political Writings; Bohman and Lutz-Bachmann, Perpetual Peace.

98. Cosmopolitanism and post-nationalism are not necessarily synonymous. Menasse goes further than many advocates of cosmopolitanism (who, for example, highlight the merits of postcolonial nationalism) in forcefully willing the demise of the nation-state. See Appiah’s attempt to reconcile cosmopolitanism and concepts of the nation in “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” 624.

99. See Appiah’s distinction between cosmopolitanism which “celebrates the fact that there are different local human ways of being”, as long, crucially, as these differences “meet certain general ethical constraints” and “humanism” which he finds “consistent with the desire for global hegemony.” Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” 621.

100. Menasse, Der europäische Landbote, 29.

101. On the pejorative connotations of the association between Jews and Cosmopolitanism, see Miller and Ury, “Cosmopolitanism: the End of Jewishness?,” 347.

102. Menasse, Der europäische Landbote, 67. On representations of Jews as the personification of rootless cosmopolitanism, see Koffman, “Figures of the Cosmopolitan.”

103. Cf. Beck’s notion of “cosmopolitan nationalism” in Beck, Cosmopolitan Vision, 49.

104. Menasse, Der europäische Landbote, 23.

105. Ibid., 88. Menasse defines nationalism as the “politischer Missbrauch von Heimatliebe” in Menasse, “FAQ Europa,” 12.

106. Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” 618.

107. Beck, Cosmopolitan Vision, 49. Cf. Fine, who is critical of the conservatism of cosmopolitans who attach “cosmopolitanism to an already strong and confident sense of belonging (whether it is Ghanaian village society, or post-war German constitutional democracy, or the European way of life, or indeed American democracy)”. Fine, Cosmopolitanism, x, 38.

108. Broder, Die letzten Tage, 193.

109. Ibid., 120–1.

110. Menasse regards the nation, not the region, as a “Fiktion,” but underestimates the extent to which regions and Heimat also contain fictional elements. Menasse, “FAQ Europa,” 16. On the concept of “Heimat,” see Blickle, Critical Theory. On more mobile concepts of “belonging” see Adelson, “Against Between.”

111. Broder, Die letzten Tage, 93.

112. See Broder, Hurra, wir kapitulieren! where he satirizes the willingness of Europe’s political and intellectual elites to appease militant Islamists who challenge European values.

113. Elsewhere Menasse situates himself in a tradition of intellectual dreamers such as Novalis and Zweig whose utopian thoughts about Europe have obeyed “einer nachhaltigen Vernunft”: Menasse, “FAQ Europa,” 7. See also Martin Meyer’s praise of Menasse’s ability to think against the grain of convention in his Laudatio to Menasse on his receipt of the Max-Frisch-Preis in 2014. http//www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/utopie-als-freiheit-als-kritik-1.18300308.

114. Broder, Die letzten Tage, 191.

115. See also Menasse’s public interventions and calls for creative discussion in, for example, Menasse and Guerot, “For a European Republic.”