The Fourteenth Annual Conference of the “Research Network on the History of the Idea of Europe” was hosted by the University of Innsbruck from 6 to 8 September 2023. Organized by three local convenors, the conference focused on the role of limits of Europeanness in debates on difference and belonging in the 16th to 21st centuries. In the introduction, STEFAN EHRENPREIS (Innsbruck) mentioned the Europe-related research activities at Innsbruck University. NIELS GRÜNE (Innsbruck) outlined the overall approach that refers to a basic tension inherent in any idea of Europe: Notions of Europe link some set of “cultural values” to a geographical area on the western fringe of the Asian landmass, but at the same time they allow for a certain degree of internal diversity. The ways in which such mental maps of cultural values served to underpin discourses of difference and belonging in the light of Europeanness were at the heart of the conference. Finally, DOROTHEE BIRKE (Innsbruck) stressed the interdisciplinary character of the conference, as reflected in the multi-perspective composition of the panels. Scholars from several disciplines were invited to examine discourses of inclusion and exclusion, of centres, peripheries and internal hierarchies, and views from the fringes of what was perceived as Europe in various contexts.

The presentation by JOACHIM BERGER (Mainz), research coordinator of the Leibniz Institute of European History, revolved around the multi-faceted Europe-related research initiatives at this institution. In this context, he highlighted recent projects at the IEG on topics such as mobilities, belongings, internal and external demarcations, and negotiated differences, which were core issues for the question posed by the conference on the limits of Europeanness.

The first panel “Europeanness (Re-)Considered”, devoted to general conceptual issues, was opened by MATTHIJS LOK (Amsterdam), who examined the construction of centres and peripheries in late 18th century historiography. Using the example of the Mainz history professor Niklas Vogt and his oeuvre, Lok traced central discourses on Europe that postulated the superiority of northwestern European regions over the southern and eastern peripheries based on political, economic, and religious heterogeneity. Drawing on a little-known article by Sartre, philosopher ELISA REATO (Paris) illuminated the images of Europe in this work. The crucial point in this context was Sartre's diagnosis that the central French problems were in essence European problems, manifested in political, social, economic, and moral aspects. Literary scholar NEUS ROTGER (Barcelona) presented a paper on the ideas of Europe and European literature in light of global literary studies. She showed the potential of a decentered understanding of Europe for the study of complex and fluid identities. These considerations underscore the multilayered asymmetries in understanding transcultural relations on a global scale.

The second panel explored “Utopias and Dystopias”. FLORIAN AMBACH (Innsbruck) discussed the transitional phase in the work of the German romantic writers August Wilhelm Schlegel and Friedrich Schlegel in the context of early 19th century images of Europe. On the basis of Friedrich’s “Europa” and August Wilhelm’s Berlin lectures, he aimed to reconstruct in all its controversies the anatomy of this transition from a cosmopolitan enthusiasm for revolution to the desire for restoration. FERDINAND MOWINCKEL (Florence) dealt with Carl Bonnevie's thinking on Europe. His focus was on showing that Scandinavian national identities were compatible with the establishment of a concerted European block and that the Norwegian elite in the 1920s envisioned an early version of European political unity. MARJET BROLSMA (Amsterdam) focused on the war of words between pro- and anti-Nazi Dutch language media in 1940-1945. She suggested that this propaganda war between the German occupation and the Allied liberation efforts primarily revolved around concepts of Europe to legitimize or deconstruct Nazi rule in the Netherlands, making this notion a central tool in the public sphere.

In the next panel on “Migrant Views”, MARIA ADAMOPOULOU (Budapest) dealt with the “Gastarbeiter” system in post-war Germany and explored how it served as a lever for the rapprochement of different notions of Europe. From the Greek perspective, her contribution showed how concepts of Europe were used on many levels to discuss Greek labour migration to Western Europe and how their rights to be accepted into the European family were promoted during the long 1970s. FRANCESCO VIZZARRI (Gießen) pointed out that the two largest organizations for Italian guest workers in Germany (ACLI and FILEF) promoted the “concept” of Europe in the 1970s in order to be able to be integrated into society there, which in the long term also led to a set of ideas, visions and political practices that advocated multiculturalism in Europe. Legal scholar WERNER SCHROEDER (Innsbruck) addressed the laws constituting the framework of EU accession. Using historical and current examples, he explained that, given the absence of a clear definition of Europe in the EU treaties, argumentation is based on geographical, cultural, and religious criteria, depending on the context. Important factors include the concept of privileged partnership and the need for a consensus on the advantages or disadvantages of a further enlargement.

In his keynote lecture, FRITHJOF BENJAMIN SCHENK (Basel) provided a longue durée of the relations between Russia and Europe from the 17th century onwards. The October Revolution and the founding of the Soviet Union were emphasized as important events, where Russia located itself as a progressive force in Europe – a conviction that was further cemented after 1945. Schenk analyzed post-Soviet conceptions of Europe in Russia up to the present and traced the ambiguous dynamics of how Russian governments and media since the 2000s propagated anti-Western narratives, and at the same time fashioned Russia as a stronghold of true, conservative European values, to underpin its own geostrategic and ideological position.

In the subsequent panel on “Refuge and Exile” ALEXANDRA PREITSCHOPF (Klagenfurt) analyzed Russian emigrants' images of Russia in the interwar period. People who left Russia following the October Revolution came from a variety of backgrounds: Monarchists, bourgeois liberals, social democrats, and disillusioned communists found support in Western Europe for their criticism of the Bolsheviks, who were defamed as "Asian barbarians." Political scientist PATRICIA CHIANTERA-STUTTE (Bari) examined a variety of literary dystopias about Europe and showed that different scenarios and discourses shaped a complex imaginary world, e.g. fears about invasion by another (often Muslim) civilization. RIEKE TRIMÇEV (Greifswald), also from political science, demonstrated the shift in European mental maps by analyzing newspaper articles about the refugee crisis from six different countries in the period from 2015 to 2022. Some media arguing in a culturalist manner characterized the migrants as barbaric invaders, whereas others wanted to overcome their own histories of violence using a self-reflective approach.

In the panel “Europe Confronting the Nation”, ERKJAD KAJO (Pavia/Athens) discussed Albanian and Greek intellectuals who reflected on the affiliation of these countries, located in southeastern Europe, to Europe in the 19th century. In this context, people from Greece and Albania, as well as the Balkans in general, were perceived as culturally different from Western Europe. Literary scholar ANNA MARTA DWORAK (Rzeszów) examined the image of Russia of Polish exiles of the 19th century, among them Ewa Felińska, Rufin Piotrowski, and Jakub Gordon. She contrasted these travelers with the French writer Astolphe de Custine, whose work decisively shaped the image of Russia in Western Europe. Anti-colonial sentiments, which intensified in India after 1918, brought many Indian students to German universities. In this context, a postulated common Aryan and Indo-European past was often emphasized. ARNAB DUTTA (Groningen) reconstructed the complex senses of belonging of these students in the context of a globally acting British Empire and changing ideas about the internal structure of Europe.

In the second keynote, INA HABERMANN (Basel) from English studies addressed the United Kingdom's relations with the Mediterranean and how they influenced the British idea of Europe. Notable writers accompanied the increased British involvement in the Mediterranean in literary terms, e.g. by linking it to ancient Greece, Rome and Byzantium. As tourism increased and when confronted with the manifold social and economic problems, the idealized image of the Mediterranean began to crumble. Habermann demonstrated how the Brexit discussions were influenced by the conviction of a separation from the European mainland.

Due to cancellations, the last panel of the day on “Peripheries and Centres” consisted of only one speaker. FILIP TOMIĆ (Zagreb) dealt with Stjepan Radić (1871–1928) and showed that this Croatian-born political leader of the Habsburg Empire and Yugoslavia tried to outline the process of a political, economic, and cultural rise to ascendancy of Europe, to be able to offer the vision of a more equitable modernity, based on peasant rights as the core of the nation.

The first panel on Friday was devoted to “Differences and Identity Claims”. Based on a comparative analysis of the ceiling painting in the Würzburg residence and the depictions of Cleopatra in Palazzo Labia by the painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, art historian TORSTEN KORSTE (Sorengo/Berlin) examined the civilizational arrangement of continents and countries – in the case of the first example in the sense of Europe's unassailable advantage over other continents, and in the case of the second by depicting a temporal perspective of clothing fashion as a praise of Venetian superiority. HELEN WILLIAMS (Norwich) explored the changes in the self-perception of the United Kingdom during World War I, where there was an increased reliance on the term "England". This in turn led to conflicts with "British" identity as well as reinterpretations of the relationship between the United Kingdom and Europe.

In the following panel on “Travelling Concepts”, LUCIO VALENT (Milan) focused on the literary work of Emilio Salgari, whose fictional novels deal with a wide range of orientalist themes on different continents. Valent highlighted the main discursive lines that contributed to the formation of an Italian national identity and the accentuation of a civilizational superiority of Europe. ROSS CAMERON (Glasgow/Strathclyde) discussed images of Europe during the Balkan Wars (1912/13) in English travelogues, which moved between two poles, the triumph of Western progress and Oriental violence. Some descriptions by British travelers characterized the Balkans as a bastion of "enlightenment."

PATRICK PLASCHG (Innsbruck) opened the last panel on “Borders and Spaces” with a presentation on barrier concepts in correspondence letters of diplomatic actors in the War of the Spanish Succession. He argued that the older concept of a Europe united under Christianity was increasingly replaced by a functional geopolitical idea of a balance of powers. For the demarcation of Europe from the Ottoman Empire, however, the argument of religion continued to be relevant. MURIEL GONZALES ATHENAS (Innsbruck), examining maps from the period 1790 to 1860, demonstrated that in Western Europe a spatialization of thought became dominant and Eurocentric ideas of space, culture and civilization advanced the demarcation from other continents.

The conference provided important insights into various facets of negotiating difference and belonging in the light of Europeanness. The interdisciplinary approach to discourses on the limits of Europeanness, relating to diverse times and spaces, opened a productive debate on how Europe was conceived in terms of cultural values, politics, and society. In particular, it was found that common ideas about European imaginations and notions have been a pivotal part of almost all debates between the 18th and 21st centuries, because social as well as national perspectives can be shown to have risen sharply during that period. What emerged from this discussion, and deserves further research, is that “Europe” as a category of cultural mental mapping generates powerful mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion.

Conference overview:

Opening Session

Welcome Addresses
Veronika Sexl (Innsbruck) / Sebastian Donat (Innsbruck)

Presentation of the Research Network on the History of the Idea of Europe
Matthew D’Auria (Norwich) / Jan Vermeiren (Norwich)

Introduction
Dorothee Birke (Innsbruck) / Stefan Ehrenpreis (Innsbruck) /Niels Grüne (Innsbruck)

Joachim Berger (Mainz): Negotiating Differences and Belongings in Europe: Findings and Perspectives from a Research Institute

Panel 1: Europeanness (Re-)Considered
Chair: Silke Meyer (Innsbruck)

Matthijs Lok (Amsterdam): In Praise of Diversity: The Limits of Europeanness in Pluralist Narratives of History

Elisa Reato (Paris): Reflections on the European Question

Neus Rotger (Barcelona): Europe and Europeanness in Global Literary Studies

Panel 2: Utopias and Dystopias
Chair: Jan Vermeiren (Norwich)

Florian Ambach (Innsbruck): Nationalizing Europe or Europeanizing the Nation? Transforming Images of Europe in the Work of the Schlegel Brothers (1801–1805)

Ferdinand Mowinckel (Florence): The Scandinavian European: Carl Bonnevie’s Vision of a United Europe in the Interwar Years

Marjet Brolsma (Amsterdam): A War of Words: Contested Notions of Europe in Second World War Propaganda

Panel 3: Migrant Views
Chair: Dorothee Birke (Innsbruck)

Maria Adamopoulou (Budapest): Southerners or Europeans? The Greek Gastarbeiter in West Germany

Francesco Vizzarri (Gießen): The Other Europe of Migrants: Italian Workers’ Organisations in West Germany and Their Idea of “Europe” in the 1970s

Werner Schroeder (Innsbruck): Accession Perspectives for European States to the EU

Keynote 1
Frithjof Benjamin Schenk (Basel): Europe as Russia’s “Constituting Other”: From the Politics of Westernisation in the 18th to the “Post-European Age” in the 21st Centuries

Panel 4: Refuge and Exile
Chair: Christoph Singer (Innsbruck)

Alexandra Preitschopf (Klagenfurt): Bolsheviks as “Asian Barbarians”, Russian Democrats as “True Europeans”? Images of Russia and Self-Perception of Russian Émigrés in Interwar Anticommunism

Patricia Chiantera-Stutte (Bari): Europe and the EU in Some Works of the Dystopian Literature after 1989

Rieke Trimçev (Greifswald): The Shifting Mental Maps of Europe during Refugee Crises, 2015–2022

Panel 5: Europe Confronting the Nation
Chair: Philipp Zitzlsperger (Innsbruck)

Erkjad Kajo (Pavia/Athens): Debating Europeanness from the Margins: Geographical Imagination and Nation-Building in the Albanian and Greek Political Thought

Anna Marta Dworak (Rzeszów): Two Portraits of Nineteenth-Century Russia – Russia in La Russie en 1839 by the Marquis Astolphe de Custin and in the Diaries of Polish Exile Diarists

Arnab Dutta (Groningen): Europeanness and the Conceptual Divide between the British Isles and the Continent: Indian Students in Interwar Europe

Keynote 2
Ina Habermann (Basel): Sailing to Byzantium? The Riddled Relationship between Britain and the Mediterranean

Panel 6: Peripheries (and Centres)
Chair: Matthew D’Auria (Norwich)

Isabella Walser-Bürgler (Innsbruck): Flickers from the Fringe: Negotiating Europe in Early Modern Latin Texts on Borderland Regions [cancelled]

Ulrich Tiedau (London): A Turn of the Century Proponent of European Federation from the Continent’s ‘Periphery’: Jacques Novicov (1850-1912) [cancelled]

Filip Tomić (Zagreb): Stjepan Radić’s Europe: (Di)vision of the Continent from the Periphery of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Panel 7: Differences and Identity Claims
Chair: Stefan Ehrenpreis (Innsbruck)

Torsten Korte (Sorengo/Berlin): European Würzburg and Oriental Venice: Notions of Cultural and Historical Difference in Giambattista Tiepolo’s History Paintings

Helen Williams (Norwich): Some Foreign Field: Written Notions of English Identity Relative to Europe after the First World War

Panel 8: Travelling Concepts
Chair: Niels Grüne

Lucio Valent (Milan): Sailing Oceans, Steppe and Jungles: Europe, the Europeans and the Worldwide Cultural Intersections in Emilio Salgari’s Literary Production

Ross Cameron (Glasgow/Strathclyde): The Balkan Wars (1912-13) and the Idea of Europe in British Travel Writing

Panel 9: Borders and Spaces
Chair: Ulla Ratheiser

Patrick Plaschg (Innsbruck): Conceptualising the “Barrier”: Spatial Planning Concepts of Integration and Separation as Value-Laden Common European Instruments of Diplomatic Actors to Secure Peace during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713/14)

Muriel Gonzales Athenas (Innsbruck): European Geographies at the End of the Early Modern Period: Techniques of Construction

Nicole Brandstetter (München): Discourse of Exclusion and Border Crossings in John Lanchester’s Novel The Wall [cancelled]

Final Discussion