Revolutionary Pacifism and European Unity

In 1909, Alfred Fried, Nobel laureate and co-founder of the German Peace Society, argued before the International Peace Bureau in Basel that the only way forward for the nations of Europe was to join together in a confederation he called Pan-Europe. His argument was grounded in ‘revolutionary pacifism’, a form of pacifist thought Fried developed on the basis of contemporary sociological and evolutionary theory. Fried’s proposal provided the model for the most successful pre-1945 movement for European integration, the Pan-European Union founded in 1923 by Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi. Coudenhove-Kalergi was a Catholic aristocrat, but those who inspired and supported him, Fried among them, hailed from largely Jewish Viennese social reform movements whose members had promoted European unity even before the First World War. Though a direct link exists between Fried’s and Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-European proposals, Fried’s influence has been almost completely ignored. This paper will explore the link between Fried’s ‘revolutionary pacifism’ and his investment in transnational integration. Specifically, I will discuss Fried’s understanding of ‘revolutionary pacifism’ as the promotion of association within and between societies through rapid and rational intellectual struggle, the result of which would be European unity. Finally, I will argue that Fried’s pacifism and Pan- European proposals must be understood against the context of the dilemma posed to Jewish intellectuals by the increasing linkages between nationalism and anti-Semitism in the early twentieth century.