Cosmopolitan Outsiders

This book reconstructs the intellectual and social context of several influential proponents of European unity before and after the First World War. Through the lives and works of the well-known promoter of Pan-Europe, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, and his less well-known predecessor, Alfred Hermann Fried, the book illuminates how transnational peace projects emerged from individuals who found themselves alienated from an increasingly nationalizing political climate within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the new nation states of the interwar period. The book’s most important intervention concerns the Jewish origins of crucial plans for European unity. It reveals that some of the most influential ideas on European culture and on the peaceful reorganization of an interconnected Europe emerged from Jewish milieus and as a result of Jewish predicaments. 

“Cosmopolitan Outsiders adds significantly to recent work asserting the relevance of early twentieth-century plans for European unity to the story of post-1945 integration, brings German scholarship on Fried and Coudenhove-Kalergi to an Anglophone audience, and makes intelligent, nuanced, and persuasive arguments that Pan-Europe must be understood with reference to a specifically Austrian Jewish internationalism, and that colonialism lay at its heart. … ought to be required reading for historical and political geographers interested in these fields.” (Benjamin J. Thorpe, Journal of Historical Geography, July, 2017)

“Katherine Sorrels’ book presents a thoughtful analysis of the ideological origins of European unity. She demonstrates the pivotal roles played by two marginalized Austrian figures, the Jewish pacifist Alfred Hermann Fried and the mixed-race Catholic aristocrat Richard Coudenove-Kalergi; and she argues persuasively that social and political marginality itself shaped their thinking about European integration. This book is as illuminating as it is timely.” (Roger Chickering, Georgetown University)

“Sorrels demonstrates the abiding legacy of Austria-Hungary for Europe. She explores the affinities between the Jewish pacifist, Alfred Fried, and the aristocratic founder of interwar Paneuropa, Coudenhove-Kalergi, and reveals their cosmopolitanism as grounded in their marginality: Jews and aristocrats alike found a rapidly racializing nationalism and the interwar nationalizing state inhospitable. Affirming marginality, empire, and internationalism against racial hegemony, nationalizing state and ethnonationalism, Sorrels shows Jewish internationalism as pivotal to visions of European unity.”  (Malachi Hacohen, Duke University)

“This book offers a fresh, new perspective on the origins of ideas on European unification. It shows how Jewish predicaments and perspectives gave rise to some of the most important ideas for achieving European peace through integration. This makes it a timely intervention into current debates on the Christian character of Europe and an important contribution to Jewish and intellectual history.” (Ari Joskowicz, Vanderbilt University)

Katherine Sorrels is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati, USA. Much of her work relates to the question of how political ideologies and scientific theories have been used to draw boundaries of exclusion and how marginalized thinkers and activists have reinterpreted those ideologies and theories to argue for a more inclusive form of international life.