Abstract
Denis de Rougemont, born in 1906 in Couvet (in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel), has been firmly supported by his disciples at the University Institute of European Studies (University of Geneva). Indeed, his life, his ideas and his works have been noticeably glossed by them (Ackermann, 1996; Deering, 1991; Saint-Ouen, 1995), as well as by other experts in the European dimension of his life trajectory (Graber, 2010; Jacob, 2000; Schmidt-Surdez & Robert, 1995; Stenger, 2015). The recognition he gained as a thinker and as a cultural Europeanist activist has gone beyond the barriers of his native Switzerland, as shown by the Robert Schuman prize and the Robert Schuman medal awarded to him by the University of Bonn (1970) or the diploma he received from the Academy of Athens (1976). This chapter aims at providing a brief overview of Rougemont’s contributions to the idea of Europe, with a special emphasis on two aspects: federal Europe and Europe of the regions.
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Notes
- 1.
Passerini (2009: 213).
- 2.
Denis de Rougemont, “À cette heure où Paris…”, Gazette de Lausanne, 17th June 1940, p. 1.
- 3.
Victoria Ocampo was an intellectual and a philanthropist from Argentina. She owned Villa Ocampo (which she donated to UNESCO in 1973), where she welcomed writers and artists from all over the world. She was also the founder and the owner of the journal and the publishing house Sur, which published the translation of several works written by Rougemont.
- 4.
He benefited from the Five-Year Plan of the Bollingen Foundation, which granted him an annual fellowship (7500 dollars/year) from 1944 to 1948 (Stenger, 2015: 371). Paul Mellon, the grandson of the founder of the Pittsburgh Mellon Bank, married Mary Conover Brown in 1935. During the war, he served in Europe with the OSS.
- 5.
The London Charter—the foundational text of the Council of Europe—established that the Committee of Ministers was in charge of deciding the agenda of the only annual session of the Parliamentary Assembly. It was not until 1951 that this Charter was amended so that the Assembly got rid of the Committee’s control and its members started to be elected by means of a direct system based on co-option instead of being chosen by the governments.
- 6.
The document’s title was Feet on the ground. A study of Western Union and can be consulted here: https://www.cvce.eu/recherche/unit-content/-/unit/04bfa990-86bc-402f-a633-11f39c9247c4/5f92e123-862b-489c-a6cc-59755eb5c0f5/Resources#bca1b6d1-e7b0-4967-abc1-e1390852c875_fr&overlay (consulted on 20th May 2021). Before being the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1948–1950), Hugh Dalton was Chancellor of the Exchequer (1945–1947), President of the Board of Trade (1942–1945), Minister of Economic Warfare (1940–1942) and Chairman of the Labour Party (1936–1937).
- 7.
In February 1958, Hendrick Brugmans—the then Rector of the College of Europe in Bruges, the president of the Association of European Studies and a member of the Board of Directors of the European Centre for Culture—wrote a letter to Madariaga where he confessed that he was pessimistic about the future of the European Centre for Culture, which amassed a debt of 200,000 Swiss Francs. Brugmans ended his letter by stating that he strongly admired Rougemont as a writer but was not so sure about his leadership skills. Letter from Brugmans to Madariaga, 6 February 1958. Fondo Madariaga del Instituto José Cornide de Estudios Coruñeses (FM-IJCEC). Box 171/2.
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Domínguez Castro, L., Rodríguez Lago, J.R. (2022). Denis de Rougemont: An Europos Federalist. In: Ramiro Troitiño, D., Martín de la Guardia, R., Pérez Sánchez, G.A. (eds) The European Union and its Political Leaders. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96662-1_11
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