www.iwm.

at
Post No. 88 Spring 2005
Newsletter of the INSTITUT FÜR DIE WISSENSCHAFTEN VOM MENSCHEN, Vienna
and of the INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN SCIENCES at Boston University

Contents POLITICAL SALON

Speaking in the IWM library, Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis
3 Conference
The Orthodox Spirit described the “catastrophic effect” of Islamic extremism, but
and the Ethic of Capitalism expressed hope that the similarities between Islam and
6 Fellows Meeting Christianity could produce a common understanding. The March
Looking Back on a Successful Year
9 discussion addressed the tense relationship between Islam
8 Eurozine Editorial Board Meeting and the West and was the second in a series of “Political
10 Tischner Debate Salons” hosted by the IWM and the Austrian daily newspaper
Justice, Freedom, and Solidarity
Die Presse.
12 IHS at Boston University
The US and Europe:
Still Sharing the Same Values?
The Muslim World and Europe
22 Notes on Books Bernard Lewis, professor emeritus of
Jerzy Szacki on Near Eastern studies at Princeton
Barbarian Europe University and the author of more
Marci Shore on than two dozen books, spoke about
The Production of Presence the relationship between the Muslim
world and Europe. Sharing the po-
25 Krzysztof Michalski dium with Lewis were Die Presse edi-
Johannes Paul II 1920 – 2005 tor-in-chief Michael Fleischhacker and
IWM rector Krzysztof Michalski.
Gastbeiträge / Guest Contributions In his introductory talk, Lewis re-
25 Giuliano Amato marked that Islam is necessary for the
Bauwerk Europa very idea of Europe: “There is a sense
29 Wojciech Orlinski in which Europe is defined by Islam,” he said. “It was that In welchem Verhältnis ste-
Stereotyping: part of Christendom which remained after the Islamic con- hen der Islam und der
The Horrors from the East quest of the seventh century.” After the conquest, noted Westen zueinander? Auf
Lewis, Europe’s “frontiers were established by the Arabs in diese Frage versuchte der
9 Ausschreibung the south, the Turks in the southeast and the Tatars in the east.” Islamwissenschaftler
Research Fellowship: Bernard Lewis im Rahmen
The Meaning of Death in Society European Views of Islam des zweiten „Politischen
Today The Muslim world describes Europe, but Lewis believes Salons“ am 9. März zu ant-
that Europeans still have a tendency to view Islam in sim- worten. Zwar betonte er in
plistic terms – either as a religion that is irredeemably vio- der Diskussion mit Micha-
lent or as one that is essentially benign. “The truth,” Lewis el Fleischhacker, Die Pres-
said, “is in its usual place: somewhere in between.” se, und Krzysztof Michals-
According to Lewis, throughout most of history, Is- ki, Rektor des IWM, die
lamic religious institutions were more tolerant and peaceful Konfliktträchtigkeit des
than their Christian counterparts. For centuries, as Europe prekären Verhältnisses,
embarked on its religious wars and pogroms, the Ottoman zugleich verwies Lewis je-
Empire served as a haven for Catholics fleeing Protestant doch auf Chancen durch
persecution, Protestants fleeing Catholic persecution, and die Ähnlichkeit islamischer
Jews fleeing both. und christlicher Welt-
Lewis also noted that Islam, because of its view of war- konzeptionen.

GZ: 05Z036175 M - P.b.b. Verlagspostamt 1090 Wien

 Bernard Lewis POLITISCHER SALON
Bernard Lewis ist Profes-
sor Emeritus of Near
Eastern Studies an der
Universität Princeton und
langjähriges Mitglied des
Wissenschaftlichen Bei-
rats des IWM. Er gilt als ei-
ner der renommiertesten
Islamwissenschaftler der
Gegenwart und unter-
sucht die Beziehung zwi-
schen Islam und dem We-
sten seit mehr als sechs
Jahrzehnten. Sein Werk
What Went Wrong, eine
Untersuchung der Um-
stände, die zur Dominanz
des Westens über den Is-
lam führten, hielt sich 2002
18 Wochen lang in der
Bestseller-Liste der New
York Times. Das Buch ba-
siert auf Vorlesungen die
Lewis 1999 am IWM gehal-
ten hat und die 2001 unter
dem Titel Kultur und Mo-
dernisierung im Nahen
2 Osten im Passagen Verlag,
Wien, erschienen sind.
Ausgewählte
Publikationen:
Die Wut der arabischen
Welt
Frankfurt/Main 2003
Kultur und Modernisie-
rung im Nahen Osten.
IWM-Vorlesungen zur
modernen Philosophie,
Wien 2001
Die Araber. Aufstieg und
Niedergang eines Welt-
reichs
München 1995
Der Atem Allahs.
Die islamische Welt und
der Westen
München 1994
No. 88 Spring 2005
fare as a religious obligation, elaborately regulates
the conduct of combatants. There are clear stric-
tures, Lewis commented, that guarantee the hu-
mane treatment of civilians and prisoners and that
limit the types of weapons allowed.
According to Lewis, Islam does not condone
suicide under any circumstances: “The condemna-
tion of suicide is very clear and very unequivocal,”
he said, noting that some Islamic texts say that those
who commit suicide are doomed to repeat the act
for eternity.
Tolerance and Extremism in Muslim History
“On the whole I would say that the record of toler-
ance – until very recently – has been better in the
Islamic world than in the Christian world,” Lewis
said. But then how can the current rash of kidnappings
and suicide bombings by Muslims be explained?
Lewis traced their ideology back to
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an eighteenth-
century Islamic scholar born on the Arab Peninsula.
Wahhab sought to purge Islam of what he saw as
idolatries such as grave worship and prayers to
saints. The result was a theology that was literalist
and puritanical, a creed that Lewis called a “fanati-
cal, violent and intolerant Islam.”
The Rise of the Saud Dynasty
Fleeing persecution for his teachings, Wahhab
found refuge in the city of Diriyah, home to tribal
leader Muhammad bin Saud. In 1744, the two
formed an alliance, formalized by the wedding of
Saud’s son to Wahhab’s daughter, and the House of
Saud rose to become the dominant state in Arabia,
with Wahhab’s interpretation of Islam as the state’s
official religion.
In 1924, the Saud dynasty conquered the
Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, an event
that earned the Saudis great respect among Mus-
lims and gave rise to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The 1938 discovery of oil in this kingdom pro-
vided the Saudis with revenue to disseminate
Wahhab’s beliefs through religious schools,
mosques, and newspapers in Muslim expatriate
communities throughout Europe and the United States.
Stopping the flow of oil-money
“We now have a situation in which this fanatical,
marginal, eccentric version of Islam is the most
strongly supported, the most widely dissemi-
nated,” said Lewis. “And this is having what I can
only describe as a catastrophic effect.” The only way
to stop the spread of Wahhab’s beliefs, according to
Lewis, is to find a substitute for oil. “Stop the flow
of money and we can stop the whole thing.”
Following Lewis’ remarks were questions by
Die Presse’s Fleischhacker and the IWM’s Michalski.
In the discussion, Lewis touched upon the history
of Turkish military coups, which he defended as a
means of combating government corruption. An-
swering critical questions from the audience, Lewis
also defended the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. “An
odious tyranny has been overthrown,” he said.
“And we see the beginnings of a remarkably prom-
ising movement towards democracy, which I think
may very well spread to the rest of the region.”
Building on the Resemblances
Despite Lewis’ sober view of the current state of
Islam, the London-born historian sees the potential
for an understanding with the West: “What
brought Islam and Christendom into conflict is not
their differences but their similarities,” he noted,
citing that followers of each religion believe that
they alone possess the one true faith and have the
obligation to spread it. “When you have two reli-
gions with this common self-perception, this com-
mon sense of mission, geographically adjoining
each other, I would say clash and conflict are inevitable.”
But this common ground could also lead to
understanding: “I see that as the best hope for the
future, building on the resemblances.”
Eoin O’Carroll
Bernard Lewis is Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern
Studies at Princeton University and a long standing
member of the IWM Academic Advisory Board. He is one
of the most eminent Islam scholars of today and has
explored the relationship of Islam and the West for more
than six decades. Following the September 11, 2001,
attacks in the United States, Lewis saw interest in his work
surge. What Went Wrong?, his examination of how the
Muslim world became overshadowed and dominated by
the West, spent 18 weeks on The New York Times
bestseller list in 2002. The book is based on a series of
lectures he delivered at the IWM in 1999.
Selected Publications:
From Babel to Dragomans: The Multiple Identities
Interpreting the Middle of the Middle East
East New York 1998
Oxford/New York 2004
The Future of the Middle
The Crisis of Islam: Holy East
War and Unholy Terror London 1997
New York 2003
The Shaping of the
What Went Wrong? Modern Middle East
Western Impact and New York 1993
Middle Eastern Response
Oxford/New York 2002
Eoin O’Carroll is candidate for an MS degree in Print
Journalism at Boston University and currently IWM Ju-
nior Visiting Fellow.
 CONFERENCE
There are over 200 million Eastern Orthodox Christians in
the world, many of them located in strategically important
The Political Salons were established in 2004 as a new
countries, such as Russia, the Balkans, and the Middle
discussion forum on current political and societal
questions. The series is jointly organized by the IWM and East. The question of how the Orthodox world will deal
Die Presse and supported by the Austrian Ministry of
Defense. with democracy and the market economy was the focus of
an international conference, which took place at the IWM
Die Politischen Salons wurden 2004 als neues
Diskussionsforum zu aktuellen politischen und gesell- on March 7-9,. 2005.
schaftlichen Fragestellungen eingerichtet. Die Reihe
wird gemeinsam vom IWM und der Presse organisiert
und von der Direktion für Sicherheitspolitik des Bundes-
ministeriums für Landesverteidigung unterstützt.
The Orthodox Spirit and the Ethic
of Capitalism
“The ghost of Max Weber is hanging over this Die Frage nach dem Um-
table,” said Peter Berger, Professor Emeritus of Reli- gang der orthodoxen
gion, Sociology and Theology and Director of the Welt mit Demokratie und
Institute for the Study of Economic Culture at Marktwirtschaft stand im
Boston University, on the first morning of the con- Zentrum einer internatio-
ference titled “The Orthodox Spirit and the Ethic nalen Konferenz am IWM
of Capitalism.” Around the table in the IWM li- (7.-9. März), die in Zusam-
brary were a dozen social scientists and Orthodox menarbeit mit dem Institu-
Krzysztof Michalski, Ralf Dahrendorf, and Michael Fleischhacker theologians gathered to discuss how the beliefs and te on Culture, Religion and
at the first Political Salon on November 18, 2004 institutions of Christianity can provide a moral World Affairs an der Bo-
foundation for 21st century capitalism. ston University sowie dem
Berger was not the only one to invoke the au-
Nächster Politischer Salon am 23. Mai: thor of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capi-
J.M. Dawson Institute of
Church-State Studies an 3
talism, which in 1904 first proposed that modern der Baylor University or-
General a.D. Dr. h.c. Klaus Naumann ist am 23. Mai 2005 zu capitalism has its origins in Calvinist asceticism. ganisiert und von der
Gast beim dritten Politischen Salon. Er diskutiert zum Weber’s spirit was felt in the IWM library many Lynde and Harry Bradley
Thema „Europa – ein Pol in einer multipolaren Welt?“. times during the conference, materializing in the Foundation unterstützt
participant’s questions: What values of production wurde.
Klaus Naumann war von 1991-1996 Generalinspekteur come out of Orthodoxy? Is
der deutschen Bundeswehr und von 1996-1999 Vorsit- the pursuit of wealth compat-
zender des NATO-Militärausschusses. Er ist Beirats- ible with the pursuit of salva-
mitglied des International Institute for Strategic Studies, tion? How can Orthodox
London und seit November 2003 Vizepräsident der churches foster the levels of
Atlantic Treaty Association. trust between people, busi-
nesses and governments nec-
essary for free trade? Can Or-
Next Political Salon on May 23: thodox theology be construed
to provide, in Berger’s words,
General a.D. Dr. h.c. Klaus Naumann will discuss the a “moral legitimization of indi-
question “Europe – one Pole in a Multipolar World?” on vidual enterprise?” And if it
May 23, 2005 at the third Political Salon. can, should it? Peter Berger
The talks were the second in a series of three
Klaus Naumann was Chief of Staff of the German Federal organized by Boston University’s Institute on Cul-
Armed Forces (1991-1996) and Chairman of the NATO ture, Religion and World Affairs and the J.M.
Military Committee (1996-1999). He is a member of the Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at
Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies Baylor University in Waco, Texas. The series is sup-
and since November 2003 Vice President of the Atlantic ported by a grant from the Lynde and Harry Brad-
Treaty Association. ley Foundation, a conservative philanthropy group
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Orthodoxy and Global Pluralism

Delivering the keynote address, Berger, a Vienna-
born sociologist well known for his work on reli-

No. 88 Spring 2005

 The Orthodox Spirit and the Ethic of Capitalism CONFERENCE
gion and economic culture, remarked on
the challenges faced by Orthodoxy in
modern, pluralist societies. In such societ-
ies, Berger argued, religion’s “taken-for-
grantedness” has vanished. The beliefs
and values of religion have become a mat-
ter of personal choice. Orthodoxy, says
Berger, must now compete with other reli-
gions to gain followers in pluralist societ-
ies.
The Eastern Orthodox churches
have more than 200 million members
worldwide. The religion has its roots in the
earliest days of Christianity. In the first
millennium after Jesus, churches in this
tradition were part of a unified Christen-
dom, but longstanding political and theo-
logical differences led in 1054 to a split
between churches in the eastern and west-
ern halves of the old Roman Empire, with
churches in the East rejecting the legiti-
macy of the Pope. Following this split, the
autonomous churches in the east became
organized mostly around national and
ethnic lines.
Despite 70 years of persecution un-
der the Soviet government, the Russian
4 Orthodox Church remains the largest of
the eastern churches, with an estimated
70 million adherents. This fact, combined
with the sharp increase in inequality and
poverty in Russia following the conver-
sion of the world’s largest state-run
economy to a market economy, made the
relationship between Russian capitalism
and Russian Orthodoxy a natural focus
for the conference.
The “Crisis of Public Morality”
The first morning began with a discussion
of a paper by Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin,
a senior spokesman for the Moscow Patri-
archate which heads the Russian Ortho-
dox Church. Chaplin’s paper detailed the
“disastrous crisis of public morality”
caused by the rapid dismantling of the
Soviet system and called for Russian Or-
thodoxy to develop a “solid moral founda-
tion” for economics. The paper called
upon the Orthodox hierarchy to address
Russian economic developments, with
special attention to economic globaliza-
tion, and to criticize international financial
groups when appropriate.
Janos Kovacs, permanent fellow at
the IWM, saw in Chaplin’s paper a cri-
tique of neoliberalism, but no critique of
communism. But despite the paper’s criti-
No. 88 Spring 2005
cism of the handling of Russia’s rapid manitarian effort. With the help of the
privatization, Pavel Shashkin of the Mos- Orthodox Church of America, in the
cow Patriarchate said he saw no conflict 1990s the Russian church distributed
between Orthodoxy and capitalism, tens of millions of dollars in food and
which he called the “most effective form of medicine to those most affected by the
economic development.” Russia, he said, economic crisis. “The Church’s response
needs “capitalism, but a socially respon- was massive,” said Leonid Kishkovsky of the
sible capitalism,” such as that found in Orthodox Church of America. “There
Western European economies. Boston were, at the time, few humanitarian insti-
University’s Elizabeth Prodromou shared tutions.”
Shashkin’s wariness of extremes saying
that countries must avoid excesses of Mistrust of the Church
predatory capitalism and state capitalism. Indeed, Orthodoxy remains Russia’s larg-
est civic organization. Despite its promi-
The Third Way – an Illusion nence, however, some participants noted
But none doubted that some form of capi- that the Church still fails to inspire confi-
talism is needed for development. “The dence. In his paper, Marsh presented data
rich do well under any system,” said from the World Values Survey, which
Berger. “It’s the poor who benefit from showed that many Russians who identify
capitalism.” Berger went on to dismiss the themselves as Orthodox pray every day,
model, held by some Roman Catholic but only 38 percent say that they trust the
theologians, that it is possible to craft a co- Church. Vladimir Mau of the Academy of
herent alternative to capitalism and social- National Economy in Moscow agreed
ism. “The third way,” he said, “is an illu- with this assessment. “I’m not sure if the
sion.” Irinej Dobrijevic of the Serbian Or- Church created a bank, people would put
thodox Church also rejected the third money in it,” he said. Sharyl Cross, a pro-
way, but agreed that a theological ap- fessor of political science at the U.S. Air
proach was needed. He said that he saw in Force Academy, was skeptical, saying that
Orthodox thinking growing efforts at a she had seen data showing that the
“doctrinalization of capitalism.” Church was Russia’s most trusted institu-
But Orthodox thinkers have come to tion.
global capitalism’s ethical
dimension only recently. As
pointed out by Baylor
University’s Christopher
Marsh, it was only in Febru-
ary 2004 – more than 12
years after the dissolution of
the USSR and the begin-
ning of Yeltsin’s “shock pro-
gram” of economic restruc-
turing – that the Russian
Orthodox Church released
its “Code of Moral Prin-
ciples and Rules in Eco-
nomic Activity,” a set of
moral guidelines resem-
bling the biblical Ten Com-
mandments. “The Church
was largely uninvolved dur-
ing the first ten years of eco-
nomic transition,” Marsh
said.
The Church hierarchy
may not have been drafting
moral principles of econom-
ics during the 1990s, but it
was undertaking a vast hu-
 The Orthodox Spirit and the Ethic of Capitalism CONFERENCE

But all agreed that mistrust of the Russian Or- Working in this firm, I am sure that I will not be set Participants
thodox Church persists, partly because of the up or swindled or cheated. I can fully rely on these
Church’s dealings in the alcohol and tobacco indus- people.” Right Reverend Hilarion
tries and partly because of reports in 2000 that the Many participants agreed that Orthodoxy Alfeyev, Russian Ortho-
current head of the Church, Patriarch Alexy II, had could contribute to the civic engagement necessary dox Church in the EU
collaborated with the Soviet security services since for capitalism to work. But despite the many allu-
the 1950s. As for the last charge, Kishkovsky said sions to Weber’s work, none wished to say that Or- Peter L. Berger, Boston
that the Church should not be singled out. “Every thodoxy would do for capitalism in the East of University
institution was penetrated by the Soviet state,” he Christendom what Protestantism did for it in the
said. “The Moscow Patriarchy is no exception.” West. Sharyl Cross, U.S. Air
Many Russians also lack confidence in their For one thing, capitalism at the beginning of Force Academy
country’s other institutions, such as the police, the the 21st century is different from capitalism in early
courts, and businesses. In some instances, the mis- modern Europe. As the title of the conference sug- Reverend Irinej
trust appears among the institutions themselves. gests, what is needed now is not only a spirit of Dobrijevic, Serbian
entrepreneurship, but also a firm ethical frame- Orthodox Patriarchate
Hyperbolic Distrust work. “We’re not talking about capitalism emerg-
Irina Papkova of Georgetown University presented ing,” said Marsh. “We’re talking about the adapta- Valentina Fedotova,
a paper describing the resistance of many in the tion of capitalism.” Russian Academy of
Church to the government’s plan in 2000 to assign More importantly, Orthodoxy, with its strong Sciences
electronic tax identification cards to all citizens. tradition of monasticism, lacks Calvinism’s ten-
Many believed that the government had planned dency to see wealth as a sign of salvation. The eco- Ingeborg Gerda Gabriel,
to introduce bar codes that contained lines that nomic values that come out of Orthodox thought University of Vienna
could represent the number 666. According to the will naturally reflect an emphasis on the transcen-
Book of Revelation in the New Testament, 666 is dent. “The contribution of the Orthodox Church Daniela Kalkandjieva,
the “number of the beast,” whose arrival is associ- will never be that the goal is economic success,” said University of Sofia
ated with a series of disasters culminating with the Kishkovsky. “The goal will always be the acquisi-
destruction of the world. Many also believed that tion of the Holy Spirit.”
the numbers assigned by the government would Eoin O’Carroll
Very Reverend Leonid
Kishkovsky, Orthodox 5
somehow replace their given names, which in Or- Church in America
thodoxy is given in a special rite on the eighth day
after birth. Program Janos Kovacs, IWM
Some parishes went as far as to deny commun- Permanent Fellow
ion to those who had completed their tax forms. Keynote speech
The Church leadership criticized those priests, but Orthodoxy and Global Pluralism Vasilios Makrides,
also called upon the government to set up another Peter Berger University of Erfurt
recordkeeping system so that those who refused the Professor Emeritus of Religion, Sociology, and Theology;
electronic cards could still receive benefits. Partici- Director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture Christopher Marsh,
pants agreed that such hyperbolic distrust – wide- at Boston University Baylor University
spread belief that the government is in league with
the Antichrist – severely hampers economic devel- Session 1: The Russian Orthodox Church and the Vladimir Mau, Academy
opment. A system in which strangers exchange Economy of National Economy,
goods and services on a large scale requires a high Session 2: Russian Orthodoxy and Civil Society Moscow
level of generalized trust in civic institutions. Session 3: Comparative Perspectives on Orthodoxy
But all agreed that government alone cannot and Economic Development Inna Naletova, Vienna
foster such trust. “Confidence cannot be imposed
by legislation,” said Mau. “You cannot pass a law Irina Papkova,
that courts should not be corrupt or that businesses Eoin O’Carroll is candidate for an MS degree in Print Georgetown University
should be moral. You need tradition.” Journalism at Boston University and currently IWM Ju-
nior Visiting Fellow. Michael Plekon, City
Firm Ethical Framework Needed University of New York
The Russian Orthodox Church may be well posi-
tioned to extend its moral traditions into the eco- Elizabeth Prodromou,
nomic sphere. Near the end of Chaplin’s paper, an Boston University
accountant for a firm “whose entire corporate cul-
ture is based on Orthodoxy” is quoted describing Pavel Shashkin,
her experience. Moscow Patriarchate
“[O]ur culture implies common responsibil-
ity, confidence in other people, full trust in them.

No. 88 Spring 2005

 FELLOWS MEETING
The IWM dedicated its 2005
Fellows Meeting to the circle of
IWM friends, the Institute’s
newly founded network of
friends and supporters. At the
annual meeting, Prince
Schwarzenberg
Schwarzenberg, a
longstanding friend of the IWM,
spoke on “The Recent
Revolutions in Europe.”
Das diesjährige Fellows-Treffen des IWM stand
im Zeichen des neu gegründeten Netzwerkes
von Freunden und Förderern des Instituts: den
IWM friends
friends. Den traditionellen Vortrag bestritt
an diesem Abend Fürst Schwarzenberg
Schwarzenberg, lang-
jähriger Freund des Instituts und Vorsitzender
des IWM-Kuratoriums, mit seinen “Reflexio-
nen zu den jüngsten Revolutionen in Europa”.
6 but also on outside support. To widen this
Prince Schwarzenberg
Gottfried Boehm, Cornelia Klinger
Gerald Rainer, Hans-Henning Horstmann
No. 88 Spring 2005
Looking Back on a Successful Year
The annual Fellows Meeting has always
been an occasion to look back on the past
twelve months and to share news and in-
formation with the friends of the Insti-
tute. This year, more than 80 people gath-
ered in the Institute’s library. Krzyzstof
Michalski, Rector of the IWM, opened the
evening, calling the meeting “a peak of our
annual activities for more than twenty
years.” He continued describing the
Institute’s program as a combination of
“abstract, scholarly reflection on various
topics, an interest in societal and political
processes and the wish and desire to
change what we think should be changed.”
The New Network: IWM Friends
But, as Krzysztof Michalski said, this
work not only depends on the IWM itself
support, the Institute has initiated the
IWM friends, a new network that offers
the opportunity to actively support the
Institute’s manifold activities, among
them numerous public events and the fel-
lowship programs for junior and senior
scholars. Already, more than 40 people
have joined the circle of IWM friends.
And, as Krzysztof Michalski said, he was
proud to welcome some of them at this
year’s Fellows Meeting.
In the future, the Institute also wants
to include in the circle of IWM friends
many of its numerous former fellows and
guests who together constitute an out-
standing, exceptionally diverse interna-
tional network of researchers and intellec-
tuals. Accordingly, the IWM wants to of-
fer more opportunities for them to take
part in its programs but also to intensify
the exchange with and among them.
The Revolutions of 1989
Michalski then introduced Prince
Schwarzenberg, chairman of the IWM
Board of Patrons and a longstanding
friend and supporter of the Institute. A
member of the Czech Senate, Schwarzen-
berg is well known for his strong backing
of the Czech dissidents and became chief
advisor to President Vaclav Havel after the
“Velvet Revolution.” In 1989, he was
honoured with the European Human
Rights Award for his commitment to hu-
man rights issues and is broadly respected
for his dedication to the consolidation of
Europe.
Karl Schwarzenberg’s talk, titled “Re-
flections on the Recent Revolutions in
Europe,” started with a surprise: “You
came under false pretext,” he told the au-
dience, “there were no revolutions.” To ex-
plain this statement, he gave his definition
of the term revolution: “a violent turnover
with the establishment of new elites.”
No Change of Elites
The major changes throughout Central
Eastern Europe in 1989 were peaceful. “It
was an implosion of the Soviet empire,”
said Schwarzenberg, who went on to de-
scribe the situation in Poland, Hungary,
the Czech Republic, and the GDR.
But even given differences in the
situation of these countries, his conclusion
remained the same for all of them: There
was no violence and no change of the
elites, the second “key element of a revolu-
tion” according to Schwarzenberg. “If we
look at all those countries, we can see that
ten, fifteen years after 1989 the greater
part of the communist intelligence were
again in leading positions – not only in
politics, but also in economy and adminis-
tration,” Schwarzenberg said.
The Negative Side of the Change
According to Schwarzenberg, the negative
side of this way of change is apparent to-
day: The long communist regime has
strongly affected society. “The most hor-
rible effect of those fifty years of totalitari-
anism was what this time did to the char-
acters of the people,” Schwarzenberg said.
As a result, he today perceives a “stunning
loss of morals,” and in his talk referred to
the high degree of corruption and a
“sometimes incredibly irresponsible be-
havior in politics” in the former commu-
nist countries.
 Looking Back on a Successful Year FELLOWS MEETING We would like to express our sincere gratitude
to all the people who have already joined the
circle of IWM friends and who are supporting
The Multi-dimensions of Revolution the Institute:
In the discussion following Schwarzen-
berg’s talk, Gerhard Botz, Director of the Shlomo Avineri, Bogdan Barbu, Rudolf Beer,
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Histori- Nelly Bekus Goncharova, Otmar Binder, Pierre
cal Social Science, pointed out that revo- Bruyre, Helga Casper, Herberth Czermak, Ralf
lutions are not only about “a rapid and Dahrendorf, Klas Daublebsky, Brigitte Döring,
deep reaching change in the political rul- Malgorzata Dymnicki-Gawrys, Klaus Feld-
ing classes, but also in the political system mann, Rita Felski, Norbert Griesmayer, Sieg-
and in the multi-dimensions of society, in ried Herbert Gruber, Hans Peter Haberland,
economy and in the mentality. Markus Haffner, Georg Hoffmann-Ostenhof,
Aleksander Smolar, member of the Hans-Henning Horstmann, Slavica Jakelic,
IWM Academic Advisory Board and Johann Kainrath, Andreas Kappeler, Lubor
President of the Stefan Batory Founda- Karlik, Hans Kirchmeir, Herbert Klauser, Max
Anette Laborey, Christopher Schönberger
tion in Warsaw, agreed with Kothbauer, Ivan Krastev, Christine Kronaus,
Schwarzenberg: “We are talking about po- Karl Lewalski, Gerda Mehta, Eva Menasse,
litical revolutions. Certainly, there were no Jyoti Mistry, Erich Mladek, Franz Piribauer,
revolutions because there was continua- Martin Rokita, Ingrid Sager, Elisabeth
tion,” he said. Nevertheless, Smolar sees a Scherbantin, Camillo Schwarz, Otto
much deeper transformation of the eco- Steinhauser, Charles Taylor, Chris Taylor,
nomic, social, and political system after Armand van Nimmen, and Martha Willinger.
1989 in the countries discussed than after
the communist revolution. “The latter
took at least twenty years to transform
economy and society. Here, you had – al-
most from one day to another – a com-
plete breakdown of the political system,”
Smolar said.
Justus de Visser, Susanne Fröschl
Timothy Snyder, Assistant Professor of 7
History at Yale University and currently
IWM Visiting Fellow, noted that the
American Revolution met Schwarzen-
berg’s criteria, its outcome involving the
end of military occupation and the writ-
ing of a new constitution. According to
Snyder, these might be features worth
noting of the revolutions of 1989 as well –
even more so, as Schwarzenberg concen-
trated on the continuity of elites. “But So-
viet elties,” said Snyder, “the people who
had real power, are gone, at least from
Barbara Baumann, IWM, welcomes the IWM
Eastern Europe.” friends at the Fellows Meeting.
Andreas Kappeler, Tania Zhuzhenko

www.iwm.at/friends

The audience of Prince Schwarzenberg’s talk in the Institute’s library, including Aleksander Smolar, No. 88 Spring 2005
Christiane Hartnack, Raoul Kneucker, and Helga Nowotny
 MEETING
After meetings in Bratislava, Coimbra, Hamburg and Vienna in previous years, it was again the turn
of IWM’s Transit - Europäische Revue to invite the Eurozine team and editorial board to discuss and
plan future contents and events as well as recruitment and fund raising strategies. Based in Vienna,
Eurozine is an independent network of and portal for European cultural journals and a multilingual
magazine of its own. We take the opportunity to inform IWM Post readers about this endeavour
which has been successfully contributing to building a European public sphere.

Eurozine Editorial Board Meeting

Redaktion und Redaktions-
komitee des europäischen
Zeitschriftennetzwerks und
Online-Magazins Eurozine
(www.eurozine.com) hiel-
ten vom 4. bis 6. März auf
Einladung von T ransit –
Europäische Revue am
IWM ihr regelmäßiges
Arbeitstreffen ab. Die am
IWM herausgegebene
Zeitschrift Transit zählt zu
den Gründungsmitglie-
dern von Eurozine.
8 Eurozine’s editorial office is based in Vienna.
Michaela Adelberger,
Märt Väljataga,
Carl Henrik Fredriksson,
Gaby Zipfel, Klaus Nellen,
António Ribeiro
How Does Eurozine Work?
Eurozine links and promotes leading cultural maga-
zines from all over Europe. Drawing on its network
of currently 53 partners from 34 European coun-
tries (as well as many more affiliated journals) it
publishes contemporary essays on its website. By
providing a Europe-wide overview of current
themes and discussions, as published in the cultural
journals involved in the project, Eurozine facilitates
communication and exchange between the jour-
nals themselves and offers a rich source of informa-
tion for an international readership. By presenting
the best articles from its partners and their countries
in a variety of languages, as well as original texts on
the most pressing issues of our times, Eurozine
opens up a new space for transnational debate.
The network was founded in 1998 by the journals
Transit, Kritika & Kontext (Bratislava), Mittelweg
36 (Hamburg), Ord & Bild (Gothenburg), Revista
Critica de Ciencias Sociais (Coimbra) and
Wespennest (Vienna). Main funders are Gemeinde
Wien MA7, Bundeskanzleramt - Sektion Kunst,
European Commission / Culture 2000, Ham-
burger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft
und Kultur, and the European Cultural Founda-
tion.
Partner journals include Esprit (Paris), Glänta
(Gothenburg), Index on Censorship (London),
Krytyka (Kiev), le Monde diplomatique (Berlin),
Neprikosnovennij Zapas (Moscow), Osteuropa (Ber-
lin), Reset (Rome), Varlik (Istanbul), Vikerkaar
(Tallinn), Zeszyty Literackie (Warsaw).
What is Eurozine about?
Most articles in Eurozine are organized around Fo-
cal Points reflecting debates on current issues in
politics, culture and society, such as „Europe talks
to Europe – towards a European public sphere?“,
“Politics of border making and (cross-)border iden-
tities”, “[Re]Constructing the Balkans”, “Politics of
translation”, “Changing Europe: Enlargement,
Identity, Diversity”, “Solidarities“, „Transnational-
isation” and “Transitional Justice”. The next Focal
Point will be dedicated to “European Histories” on
the occasion of the 60th anniversary of V-Day in
May. Among further possible topics discussed dur-
ing the meeting were “The Future of War” and
“Cultural Citizenship”; also the idea to develop a
section presenting contemporary literature and lit-
erary criticism in Europe.
Last but not least, Eurozine organizes the an-
nual European Meetings of Cultural Journals. Last
year’s conference in Tallinn was devoted to the
question “The Republic of Letters? Cultural Jour-
nals in a European Public Space”. The 18th meet-
ing will take place in November 2005 in Istanbul
under the title “Neighborhoods.”
Eurozine Editorial Board Meeting
IWM Library
March 4-6, 2005

Michaela Adelberger Antonio Sousa Ribeiro

Managing Director, Managing Editor, Revista
Eurozine Critica de Ciencias
Carl Henrik Fredriksson Sociai; Professor of
Editor-in-Chief, Eurozine German Studies,
Klaus Nellen University of Coimbra
Managing Editor, Transit Märt Väljataga
– Europäische Revue; Editor, Vikerkaar
Permanent Fellow, IWM Gaby Zipfel
Co-Editor, Mittelweg 36

www.eurozine.com

No. 88 Spring 2005

1 4
The objective of the fellowships is to sup-
O b j e c t i v e
port research that:
_ contributes to the present understand-
ing of death and dying, considering his-
torical, cultural, religious, and societal
aspects
_ analyzes the implications for society as
well as society’s coping with death
_ creates awareness for ethical, legal,
political and scientific issues related to
death and dying.
Transdisciplinary and comparative ap-
proaches looking at a specific question (or
set of questions) from a broader angle will
be given preference.
2 4. Ph.D. and Post-doctoral candidates are
C o n d i t i o n s
The fellowships shall enable doctoral, post-
doctoral or senior scholars to concentrate
on their research while working in resi-
dence at the Institute for Human Sciences
(IWM) in Vienna for three to six months
during the academic year 2005/06. The
Research Fellows will receive a stipend to
compensate for a loss of income and to
cover travel, accommodation and other liv-
ing expenses. The amount of the stipend
will be determined with prospective fellows
according to the “no gain, no loss” prin-
ciple based on the current income of the
recipient. Furthermore, fellows will be pro-
vided with an office and personal com-
puter, and will have access to e-mail,
Internet, in-house research facilities and
other relevant sources in Vienna. During
their stay fellows will take part in the schol-
arly community and activities of the IWM.
3 ences to submit proposals for Research Fellowships at
Candidates for the fellowships must:
R e q u i r e m e n t s
_ be pursuing a Ph.D. degree in the humani-
ties or social sciences, or
_ be engaged in post-doctoral research
at an academic institution, or
_ hold a senior academic position
with a research focus related to the ob-
jective of this program.
In addition to pursuing their own research
project, prospective fellows will be asked
E l i g i b i l i t y
to provide editorial assistance during their
Research Fellowship in the publication of a
collection of essays, which will result from
the project on “The Meaning of Death in
Society Today.” Perfect command of Ger-
man and English is a prerequisite.
The application consists of the following
Research Fellowships
P r o c e d u r e
materials:
1. the application form (please download
from www.iwm.at/f-death.htm) The Meaning of Death
2. a concise research proposal (max. 4
pages) in English or German, including: in Society Today 2005/06
_ the scientific problem(s) addressed
_ a critical consideration of current rel-
A p p l i c a t i o n
evant research and literature
_ research goals and expected results The Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften,
the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and the Institut für die
_ the planned work and time schedule (if
Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM), Vienna, have
the proposal is part of a larger, ongo-
launched a project in 2003 on “The Meaning of Death
ing project, please indicate which part
in Society Today” with the support of the Fritz Thyssen
you intend to complete during the fel- Stiftung. It is based on the presumption that European/
lowship) Western modernity is characterized by a break with tra-
3. a Curriculum Vitae dition in many aspects, including its relation to death.
The secularization of modern society has ended the role
of religion as the leading normative discourse covering
asked to provide two letters of reference
by senior faculty familiar with their work. all levels and aspects of society. It has led to the
Senior scholars are asked to substanti- privatization of all religious questions, including the cen-
ate their expertise in the field with their tral dilemma of giving meaning to life and death. In a
publication record. series of four workshops, this project sets out to discuss
the specific occidental and epochal understanding of
death – not least with regard to the possible ‘end of
Deadline for application is
modernity,’ which might eventually lead to a change in
May 15, 2005
our relation to death again.
Please send your application to:
Institut für die Wissenschaften vom
Menschen The project aims at the scientific examination of and
scholarly reflection on death with regard to the specific
Fellowship Coordinator
and presently relevant issues related to the subject, their
Spittelauer Lände 3
1090 Wien
genesis as well as possible scenarios for their develop-
ment in the future. For a more detailed outline of the 9
AUSTRIA project’s theme and main questions, see www.iwm.at/f-
death.htm.
or submit by e-mail to:
fellowships@iwm.at
To complement this project, the Berlin-Brandenburgische
Subject header:
Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Akademie der Künste,
Fellowships on “The Meaning of Death” Berlin, and the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen
jointly invite scholars in the humanities and social sci-
5
the IWM, Vienna.
A jury of experts will meet in June 2005 to
S e l e c t i o n
evaluate the applications and select the
finalists.
The jury includes:
Alois Hahn
Professor of Sociology, University of Trier Institut für die
Wissenschaften
Cornelia Klinger
vom Menschen
Professor of Philosophy, Eberhard-Karls-
University Tübingen; Permanent Fellow,
IWM
Christoph Markschies
Professor of Church History, Humboldt
University Berlin; Member, Berlin-
Brandenburgische Akademie der
Wissenschaften
Applicants will be notified of the jury deci-
sion in July 2005. It is not required for the
jury to publicly justify its decisions.
No. 88 Spring 2005
 TISCHNER DEBATE
The IWM and Warsaw University have jointly launched a new series in memory of the Polish priest
and philosopher Jozef Tischner, founding president of the IWM. The Tischner Debates serve as a
forum for discussion between politicians, scholars, and intellectuals on a variety of relevant issues.
The first debate, “On Solidarity,” took place on March 7 at Warsaw University.

Justice, Freedom, and Solidarity

Gemeinsam mit der Uni- Almost 800 people came to listen to the first
versität Warschau hat Tischner Debate in the Auditorium Maximum at
das IWM eine neue Ver- Warsaw University. They were welcomed by
anstaltungsreihe begon- Krzysztof Michalski, Rector of the IWM; Marcin Krol,
nen: In Erinnerung an den Professor of History of Ideas at Warsaw University;
polnischen Priester und and Piotr Weglenski, Rector of Warsaw University.
Philosophen Jozef Tisch- The panel consisted of Kurt Biedenkopf, Ombuds-
ner, Gründungspräsident man of the German government for the labor mar-
des IWM, diskutieren Po- ket reform and former Prime Minister of Saxony;
litiker, Wissenschaftler Marek Borowski, Chairman of the “Social Democ-
und Intellektuelle in War- racy of Poland” party; Jan Maria Rokita, Chairman
schau zu aktuellen of the “Citizens Platform,” Sejm; Aleksander Smolar,
Themenfeldern. Die erste President of the Stefan Batory Foundation, War-
Tischner-Debatte am 7. saw; and Jerzy Szacki, Professor of Sociology at War-
März stand unter dem saw University.
Thema „Über Solidarität“. Kurt Biedenkopf opened the debate with a
short speech on generational interdependence and
the demographic gap in today’s Europe through
10 the prism of the German experience, focusing on
the balance between three key phenomena essential
to a free society: justice, freedom, and solidarity.
Biedenkopf drew attention to the growing dis-
proportion between generations, a situation that
has swung the balance of Germany’s social security
system. The once economically efficient system be-
came problematic with the decline of the birthrate
and the lower GDP growth. In European societies,
said Biedenkopf, the problem has raised the “aware-
ness that solidarity is a two-way street.” It addresses
the question of justice for the older generation as
well as the question of freedom for the younger one.
situation as unjust or as a limitation of their free-
dom. Therefore, “if the state exceeds a plausible
load, it begins to provide an excuse for avoiding the
load and this can erode solidarity even in a free soci-
ety,” said Biedenkopf.
According to this, individualism in European
societies counteracts increased demands of solidar-
ity and thus damages a net of dependences be-
tween two other key ideas: justice and freedom.
Concluding his introductory speech, Biedenkopf
said that “if solidarity does not exist within a society,
the society can only exist under conditions of force
and dictatorship,” which would be a negation of
European identity.
The Practice of Solidarity
Following Biedenkopf ’s statement the audience
posed a series of questions, starting with the practice
of solidarity. Marek Borowski expressed his belief
that the distributive functions of the state as a tool
for preserving solidarity in a society have greater
economic efficiency than competition-based sys-
tems. According to him, a state should provide pen-
sions for the older generation as well as scholarships
for the young to provide an opportunity for those
individuals who push the whole society to greater
prosperity. In practice, he sees no possibility for a
free choice of non-state social insurance agencies or
for limiting the burdens of people with a higher
income because doing so would in turn limit the

The Challenge of Indi-

vidualization
One of the biggest chal-
lenges to solidarity,
Biedenkopf argued, is
the gradual individual-
ization of our societies, a
strong and rapid pro-
cess. Due to the decrease
of the working popula-
tion and the increase in
the number of retirees,
the state burdens people
who are employed with
more and more taxation
and other loads. These
people may perceive this Marcin Krol, Marek Borowski, Kurt Biedenkopf, Aleksander Smolar, Jerzy Szacki

No. 88 Spring 2005


state budget and possible actions to help
the poor.
Solidarity, Diversity, and Moral Unity
Next, Aleksander Smolar focused on the
problems of solidarity, diversity, and moral
unity in society, drawing a comparison be-
tween continental Europe and the Anglo-
Saxon countries, where he sees a lower ac-
ceptance of redistributive functions of the
state. Smolar identified several crucial dan-
gers to the idea of solidarity in Europe,
among them the new individualism and
the budgetary crisis. This leads to a crisis of
the general concept of a welfare state,
which in Smolar’s words is “an institution-
alized form of social solidarity.”
Jan Maria Rokita concentrated on the
history of solidarity in Poland. He said that
the free Poland was born out of the idea of
solidarity, which initially meant to the Pol-
ish people a devotion for the collective
good that overcomes selfishness. He
claimed that solidarity had then been rein-
terpreted as a force against communist op-
pression, mostly because of the Solidarnosc
movement. In the meantime, the primary
idea of solidarity was lost and, according to
Rokita, egoism has now taken its place.
Referring to Kurt Biedenkopf’s speech,
Rokita pointed out that in Poland there is
a lack of generational solidarity between
the relatively secure older generation and
the younger one, which receives little sup-
port in comparison to their elders despite
high unemployment rates among young
graduates. He concluded that he does not
believe in rebuilding solidarity through an
increase in the index of goods-redistribution.
Krzysztof Michalski, Lech Kaczynski, Lord Dahrendorf, Miroslawa Marody
Justice, Freedom, and Solidarity TISCHNER DEBATE
The Idea of Solidarity – Extinct?
The fourth speaker, Jerzy Szacki, con-
cluded that, despite fervent arguments
taking place in respect to the idea of soli-
darity, the idea itself seems almost extinct.
He defined solidarity as a “way between
individualism and collectivism.” In the
sphere of practice, he argued, this would
mean to search for common conclusions
even in the most polarized disputes about
goals and ideas, as opposed to disputes
aimed only against political opponents.
Szacki expressed his doubts that solidarity
would exist in a society without a threat or
an enemy; he also considered the possibil-
ity of solidarity as an everyday quality as
unlikely at present.
The panelists summarized their
standpoints in their final remarks. Marek
Borowski proclaimed that consensus and
solidarity are essential to every commu-
nity. Jan Maria Rokita stressed the impor-
tance of three political tools for nourishing
solidarity in a society: political language as
a method of mass-education, increasing
the effectiveness of legal instruments, and
investments in non-governmental organi-
zations, that stimulate social solidarity.
Jerzy Szacki expressed his distrust in
radical changes in Polish politics because
of the lack of positive historical examples
and drew attention to the importance of
the virtue of solidarity, admitting that the
moral question is to be properly addressed
to make significant changes in a state. Kurt
Biedenkopf said that “there is much more
solidarity in society than we see but it is
not very transparent;” according to him,
this is mostly a matter of personal solidar-
ity. Biedenkopf finally warned of equating
solidarity with equality, which would re-
sult in a feeling of disappointment.
Wojciech Przybylski
The series of the Tischner Debates is sup-
ported by the City of Warsaw, the Austrian
Cultural Forum, Warsaw, the journal
Rzeczpospolita, and the Polish Broadcasting
Corporation. The second debate, “On Inequal-
ity,” took place in Warsaw on April 11. On May
20, participants of the third Tischner Debate will
discuss “The Public Role of Religion.”
Józef Tischner (1931-2000) was one of the most
eminent contemporary Polish philosophers.
The first chaplain of Solidarnosc, he was an
exceptional moral authority and, at the same
time, one of the most famous and beloved
figures in Polish public life.
Die Reihe der Tischner-Debatten wird von der
Stadt Warschau, dem Österreichischen Kul-
turforum, Warschau, der Zeitung Rzeczpos-
polita und dem Polnischen Rundfunk unter-
stützt. Die zweite Debatte, “Über Ungleichheit”,
fand am 11. April in Warschau statt. Am 20. Mai
werden die Teilnehmer der dritten Tischner- 11
Debatte zur “Öffentlichen Rolle der Religion”
diskutieren.
Józef Tischner (1931-2000), einer der
einflussreichsten polnischen Philosophen des
20. Jahrhunderts und der erste Seelsorger der
Solidarnosc, war eine herausragende morali-
sche Autorität und gleichzeitig eine der belieb-
testen Persönlichkeiten des öffentlichen Le-
bens in Polen.
Wojciech Przybylski is Reasearch Assistant at
the Erasmus of Rotterdam Chair, Warsaw
University, and project coordinator of the
Tischner Debates.
No. 88 Spring 2005
 IHS BOSTON
The Institute for Human Sciences at Boston University was founded in 2001 as a forum for non-
partisan debate, research, and education. Its activities cover a wide range of issues with a special
focus on the relationship between Europe and the United States.

The US and Europe: Still Sharing the Same Values?

Peter Schneider, Quentin Peel
Roman Szporluk, Lilia Shevtsova
12
Piotr Sommer,
Irena Grudzinka Gross
(IHS Executive Director),
Rosanna Warren
Stanley Hoffmann, Sir Stephen Wall,
John Rankin
(British Consul General to New England)
On January 27, in cooperation with the Goethe-
Institut Boston, the Institute for Human Sciences
hosted a panel discussion with Berlin-based author
Peter Schneider and International Affairs editor of
the Financial Times, Quentin Peel. The discussion
took place as part of the Institute’s ongoing series on
the transatlantic relationship. It centered on the
breakdown in the relationship between the US and
Europe following the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001, and the famous Le Monde headline
„Nous sommes tous Américains.“
According to Peter Schneider, the Iraq war was
merely a magnifying glass, revealing deeper ten-
sions. He did not dismiss the threat posed by inter-
national terrorism, which he believes is real. But, he
argued, the US administration abused the legiti-
mate fears of Americans after 9/11 to create a “cul-
ture of fear” – thus explaining the re-election of
George Bush following the well-publicized decep-
tions leading up to the war in
Iraq. Distinguishing between
“real” and “perceived” fear, he
noted that the cities that had ex-
perienced the actual terror voted
overwhelmingly against politi-
cians engaged in the culture of
fear. Making Simon Schama’s dis-
tinction between “worldly” and
“godly” America, he said Europe
and “worldly” America must come together to de-
fend our enlightenment inheritance of secular hu-
manism.
Quentin Peel, citing the results of the
German Marshall Fund poll, argued that the
differences between the US and Europe run
deeper than the partisan divide in the US. He
said he believes that the US and Europe do
share essential enlightenment values, but dif-
fer over the “absoluteness” with which they
are prepared to pursue them. Europeans do
not like absolutes, hence their aversion to
Bush’s attempt to divide the world into good and
evil. The real problem, Peel concluded, between the
US and Europe is that we think we know each
other, but we do not.
Ukraine and Russia in Today’s World
On March 14, Institute board member Lilia
Shevtsova, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endow-
ment for International Peace in Moscow, and Ro-
man Szporluk, Mykhailo Hrushevs’ky Professor of
Ukrainian History at Harvard University, discussed
the recent “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine which
brought opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to
power over Russian-backed prime minister Viktor
Yanukovych.
Shevtsova, speaking for what she called a lib-
eral democratic minority in Russia, said Ukraine
represented a “test” for the maturity of the post-
Soviet space. She said the revolutions in Georgia
and Ukraine were different than earlier uprisings in
Eastern Europe in so far as they were revolutions
not against dictatorships but against the imitation
of democracy. The implication is that the political
system in Russia is not sustainable. She outlined the
challenges facing Yushchenko and expressed hope
that Ukraine would emerge as a benevolent zone
through which Russia also can be integrated into
Europe.
Szporluk offered a historical perspective on the
“Orange Revolution” of 2004, tracing its origin
back to the formation of the Soviet bloc and the
end of the Polish-Ukrainian conflict in 1945. Ac-
cording to him, the overcoming of the long-stand-
ing Polish-Ukrainian antagonism was an important
factor leading to the “Orange Revolution.” Russia
did not foresee the events of 2004, because the
authorities did not understand the moral and psy-
chological nature of this revolution, less an imita-
tion of the revolution in Georgia than of move-
ments in Poland and Czechoslovakia, nor did they
foresee the level of insult on the part of Ukrainians
at having Yanukovych imposed on them.
Muslims in Europe
In cooperation with the European Studies program
at Boston University and the Departments of An-
thropology and International Relations, the Insti-
tute organized a conference on the complex role of
Muslims and Islam in the European public sphere
(on April 5). The keynote address, entitled “Being
British, Feeling Muslim,” was given by Farhan
Nizami, Director of the Oxford Centre for Islamic
Studies and Prince of Wales Fellow in the Study of
the Islamic World, Magdalen College, Oxford.
Nizami asked whether a religious commitment
to Islam is compatible with being a citizen in a mod-
ern European state. According to Nizami, living in
accordance with faith inevitably puts the believer
in a position at odds with the values and assump-
tions of a materialistic culture, but the resultant
threat is perceived differently when the challenge
comes from Islam versus the established religion.
The stereotypes of Muslims create a climate of fear

No. 88 Spring 2005


and distrust. He stressed the need for a
new definition of European identity in
which all citizens have an experience of
tolerance and belonging. Muslims for
their part do not possess the confidence to
respond to this challenge, giving rise to
helplessness, anger, and extremism. The
world is changing, Nizami concluded,
and our categories of self-image have to
grow with these changes.
Nizami’s speech was followed by a
panel discussion featuring Jocelyne
Césari, Visiting Associate Professor in the
Department of Anthropology at Harvard
and the Harvard Divinity School; Jytte
Klausen, Associate Professor of Compara-
tive Politics at Brandeis University, and
Ahmet Yukleyan, PhD candidate in the De-
partment of Anthropology at Boston Uni-
versity and IWM Junior Visiting Fellow
(July – December 2005). Speakers dis-
cussed the diverse ethnic, religious, and
generational identities among Muslims,
exploring the different ways in which
Muslims are adapting and integrating as
well as resisting their European setting.
Jenny White, Associate Professor of An-
thropology at Boston University, served as
moderator.
The Institute is now planning a series
of meetings on the theme “Muslims in
Europe” over the next three years.
From Elsewhere: Poetry and National
Borders
A poetry reading and discussion with the
Polish poet Piotr Sommer and Rosanna
Warren, Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Pro-
fessor of the Humanities at Boston Uni-
versity and newly elected member of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters,
took place on April 6. Sommer read a selec-
tion of poems from Continued, his new
book of poetry in English translation.
Warren read some newer poems as well as a
selection from her book Departure. Fol-
lowing the readings by both poets, Insti-
tute director Irena Grudzinska Gross
moderated a discussion about the ties be-
tween their work as poets and translators,
and questions of nationality and culture.
Rosanna Warren acknowledged that
despite the references to European culture
in her poetry, she is an “American” poet.
But while she understands the need for a
national myth to create a literature, she
rebels against nationalism. She said there is
“Another Republic” where she longs to be
citizen, referring to the anthology of Euro-
pean and Latin American poetry edited by
Charles Simic and Mark Strand. The im-
plication of Warren’s comment: there is a
way in which poetry, for all its
embeddedness in culture, transcends na-
tional borders. Sommer added that it tran-
scends such categories as “classical” as well.
He made the point that English is a lan-
guage without a nationality, so this may be
particularly true of poetry in English.
The UK, the EU, and the United States?
On April 7, Sir Stephen Wall, principal ad-
visor to Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, Ro-
man Catholic Archbishop of Westminster,
and former EU advisor to Tony Blair, gave
a lecture on Britain’s changing relation-
ships with the EU and the United States.
He said, “Britain finds itself torn more
than in the past between the United
States whose closest friend it wants to be
and its European partners with whom its
interests most closely align.” A strong sup-
porter of the EU, which he called the most
important political development” of his
lifetime, he argued that Britain’s future lies
with Europe. Over British and French
fears of loss of national sovereignty, he
stressed the importance of supranational
institutions able to manage “the querulous
relationship between countries that re-
main fiercely nationalistic” and at the same
time “capable of harnessing the shared
value systems and economic interests of
the member states and creating value
added for the membership of the Union
as a whole.” Referring to the pending ref-
erenda on the EU constitu-
tional treaty, he concluded,
“Unless Blair, Chirac and
Schroeder, and the other
governments of Europe can
rediscover and champion the
supranational vision of Eu-
rope we will not carry con-
viction with our publics or
maintain our coherence and
Ahmet Yukleyan, Augustus Richard Norton,
Farhan Nizami, Jenny White, Jocelyne Césari,
Jytte Klausen
The US and Europe IHS BOSTON
momentum. And we will be a querulous
partner of the United States, not an effec-
tive one.” Responding to Sir Stephen was
Stanley Hoffmann, Paul and Catherine
Buttenwieser University Professor at
Harvard University. Professor Hoffmann
shared Sir Stephen’s hopes that the consti-
tutional treaty would be ratified in both
France and Britain, noting that both
countries had taken an unnecessary risk in
putting the treaty to a vote.
The Future of Humanitarian Aid
On April 12, the Institute hosted a panel
discussion on the “Future of Humanitar-
ian Aid” with Janina Ochojska, founder
and President of the Polish Humanitarian
Organization, the first such organization
created in Eastern Europe to help victims
of war, natural disasters and severe poverty
in, among other places, Kazakhstan,
Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq;
and Larry Cox, Senior Program Officer of
the Human Rights and International Co-
operation Unit at the Ford Foundation.
Ochojska discussed the issues and chal-
lenges facing humanitarian aid and devel-
opment assistance in today’s world, and 13
outlined the “ten commandments” which
direct the way her organization provides
aid in an effort to ensure that “the aid does
not become humiliation instead of relief,
addiction instead of problem solution, or
humanitarian industry instead of real aid
to human beings.” She gave several ex-
amples from her work in war-torn and di-
saster-ridden countries and stressed the
need for knowledge, which forms the ba-
sis of solidarity, shaping our awareness and
the will to help.
Larry Cox addressed some of the po-
litical dilemmas faced by humanitarian or-
ganizations today, and the criticisms lev-
eled at them. He noted, for example, the
growing convergence between human
rights work and humanitarianism, but
whereas some, notably David Rieff, find
this trend worrisome, Cox argued they
share the same values and are fighting the
same enemies and “need each other if the
fight is going to be won.” He did, how-
ever, express worry over the militarization
and commercialization of human rights
and humanitarian aid.
No. 88 Spring 2005
 TUESDAY LECTURES
Every Tuesday evening the
IWM hosts a speaker, often a
current fellow or guest, who
holds a public lecture related
to one of the Institute’s projects
or research fields. An e-mail
information service on
upcoming events is available at
www.iwm.at.
Jeden Dienstag ist die Bibliothek des IWM
Schauplatz eines öffentlichen Vortrags, gefolgt
von einer informellen Diskussion. Fellows und
Gäste des Instituts sowie internationale Wis-
senschaftler und Intellektuelle werden einge-
laden, ihre aktuellen Forschungsergebnisse zu
präsentieren. Einen E-Mail-Informations-
service zu bevorstehenden Veranstaltungen
bietet die Website des IWM, www.iwm.at.
14
No. 88 Spring 2005
Tuesday Lectures
FEBRUARY 1
Wang Hui
China’s New Order: Society,
Politics, and Economy in
Transition
In 1989, Wang Hui participated in the
massive student demonstration of
Tiananmen Square, which ended in a
massacre when the People’s Liberation
Army was ordered to fire on the demon-
strators. In his lecture on neo-liberalism
and the events of 1989, Wang Hui delved
into the question of whether the Chinese
social movement of 1989 was a social or a
student movement. According to him, it
was a broad social movement, with partici-
pants and supporters from all areas of Chi-
nese society. Wang Hui also pointed out
that foreign policy has had a strong impact
on the cultural and social
changes that have oc-
curred in China since
1989, and that, while
there are still faults in
China’s social policy, the
huge strides taken as a re-
sult of 1989 should not
be ignored.
Wang Hui is Research Professor in the School
of Humanities and Social Sciences at Tsinghua
University and currently the editor of Dushu
(‘Reading’), a Chinese intellectual journal.
In cooperation with
FEBRUARY 15
Marci Shore
Pastries, Herring and Caviar:
How the Polish Avant-Garde
Found Its Way to (and from)
Marxism
A circle of Polish intellectuals born around
1900 embarked on a journey from the
cafés to the corridors of power. Marci
Shore’s lecture traced the lives of these in-
tellectuals and explored why and how
these writers came to embrace Marxism at
different moments, and what the implica-
tions were of those choices. This genera-
tion came to Marxism for the most part in
the 1920s, before Stalinism, before social-
ist realism, before Marx-
ism meant the imposition
of Soviet communism in
Poland. Their Marxism
was a much more multi-
valent and contestatory
one, chosen at moments
when there was little
space for opportunism.
Marci Shore is Assistant Professor of History
at Indiana University and currently IWM
Visiting Fellow.
FEBRUARY 22
Philipp Ther
Deutsche Geschichte als
imperiale Geschichte
Überlegungen zu einer
transnationalen Geschichte
Zentraleuropas
Die Historiographie ist
nach wie vor von einem
Denken in nationalen Ka-
tegorien geprägt. In seinem
Vortrag unternahm Phil-
ipp Ther den Versuch, an-
hand der imperialen Ver-
flechtungen der deutschen
und polnischen Geschich-
te im 19. Jahrhundert und
in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts
neue Ansätze für eine transnationale Ge-
schichte Zentraleuropas herauszuarbei-
ten. Dies könnte mit Blick auf das
Habsburgerreich auch für die österreichi-
sche Geschichtswissenschaft von Interesse
sein.
Philipp Ther ist Juniorprofessor für Polen-
und Ukrainestudien an der Europa-
Universität Viadrina und war von Oktober
2004 bis März 2005 Körber Visiting Fellow am
IWM.
MARCH 1
Herbert Gottweis
Verwaltete Körper – Biopolitik
im 21. Jahrhundert
Vor dem Hintergrund eines tendenziellen
Rückzugs des Staates aus der Gesund-

heitspolitik stellte Herbert Gottweis in sei-
nem Vortrag die Frage nach der gegenwär-
tigen und zukünftigen Entwicklung von
Biopolitik. Neue Problemstellungen be-
züglich der ethischen Implikationen der
veränderten biopolitischen Ordnung ent-
stehen angesichts der Möglichkeiten ex-
perimenteller Medizin und der Dezentra-
lisierung der Bio-Macht. Gottweis zeich-
net die biopolitische Zukunft als ein Dik-
kicht von Verhandlung und Auseinan-
dersetzung, das von der Vermischung der
politischen Ökonomie der Gesundheits-
politik und der Gesellschaftspolitik mit
ethisch-moralischen Erwägungen geprägt
ist. In dieser Konvertierung des ethischen
Diskurses zu einer „Politik des Lebens“,
wie er es nennt, besteht das spezifisch
Neue der Biopolitik im 21. Jahrhundert.
Herbert Gottweis ist Professor für
Politikwissenschaft an der Universität Wien
und Research Associate des BIOS Centre an
der London School of Economics.
MARCH 7
Peter Berger
Orthodoxy Confronting
Modernity
Peter Berger’s lecture was the keynote ad-
dress of a conference, see the report on p. 3
in this issue of the IWM Post.
MARCH 15
Barbara Cassin
Le vocabulaire européen des
philosophies. Dictionnaire des
intraduisibles
L’un des problèmes que pose l’Europe est
celui des langues. On peut choisir une lan-
gue dominante, dans laquelle se feront dé-
sormais les échanges, ou bien jouer le
maintien de la pluralité. Récemment, Bar-
bara Cassin a publié avec un collectif
d’auteurs «Le vocabulaire européen des
philosophies», qui s’inscrit dans la seconde
optique. Ce «Dictionnaire des intraduisi-
bles» a l’ambition de constituer une carto-
graphie des différences philosophiques
européennes, en capitalisant le savoir des
traducteurs. Il explore le lien entre fait de
langue et fait de pensée, et prend appui
sur ces symptômes que sont les difficultés
de passer d’une langue à l’autre - avec
TUESDAY LECTURES
mind, entend-on la même chose qu’avec war Czechoslovakia
Geist ou qu’avec esprit? created not one sys-
tem of retribution,
Barbara Cassin est directrice de but two: prior to the
recherches au Centre National de la communist coup of
Recherche Scientifique et codirecteur de la February 1948,
collection L’Ordre philosophique aux Editions Slovakia had one set
du Seuil. of laws and courts,
while the provinces
En coopération avec of Bohemia, Moravia,
and Silesia shared another. The two ap-
proaches to alleged collaborators, which
APRIL 5 Czech and Slovak courts adopted, re-
Arjo Klamer vealed significant differences between
Money and its Limits how Czechs and Slovaks viewed their re-
spective relationships to the wartime and
Have you ever bought a friendship? And post-war regimes. In his presentation,
is trust to be bought with money? The Benjamin Frommer discussed the causes,
market economy has its limits and so does course, and consequences of this “dual ret-
money. Not everything is for sale. In his ribution.”
lecture, Arjo Klamer, a cultural economist,
presented a different perspective on the Benjamin Frommer is Assistant Professor of
economy by including the social or third History at Northwestern University, Evanston,
sphere. According to him, this will affect and currently IWM Visiting Fellow.
the way we see the functioning of markets
and the government. Money proves to be
an important social instrument, that is, an
instrument by which people negotiate
APRIL 19
Carol Bacchi 15
their social relationships. Approaches to Gender
Mainstreaming. What’s the
Problem Represented to Be?
Gender mainstreaming
and gender analysis are
promoted widely as
novel techniques for
achieving gender equal-
ity. The question is if
Arjo Klamer is Chair of Economics of Art and these strategies can
Culture, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and achieve beneficial out-
Research Professor of Economics, The comes for diverse
George Washington University. groups of women.
Starting from the assumption that gender
In cooperation with mainstreaming has several incarnations,
the lecture aimed to give a critical analysis
Königlich Niederländische Botschaft of specific mainstreaming programs with
the help of a methodological tool for inter-
12. APRIL rogating policy proposals. This tool is
Benjamin Frommer called “What’s the problem represented to
One Country, Two Reckonings: be?” The analysis showed that gender
Czech and Slovak Retribution mainstreaming initiatives in fact represent
Against Nazi Collaborators, the problem in quite different ways, and
1945-1948 that these differences matter a great deal.
In the wake of the Second World War, Carol Bacchi is Associate Professor of
countries throughout Europe established Politics at the University of Adelaide and
special tribunals to prosecute and punish Guest of the IWM in April.
Nazi collaborators and war criminals. Post-
No. 88 Spring 2005
 Visiting Fellows
All IWM Fellows are asked to present their research
projects in the institute’s quarterly newsletter. Some of the
current Fellows have already given a more detailed insight
into their work in the previous newsletter.

Frits Bolkestein the frontier on both sides of the former “Iron Cur-
Former member of the tain.” In particular, he aims to evaluate how indi-
European Commission; viduals, communities, and governments experienced
Visiting Professor, Uni- and managed the borderlands in the context of the
versities of Leiden and Cold War and its aftermath.
Delft
Length of stay: April – June 2005 Ludger Hagedorn
Project: Fin de siècle of the IWM Research Associate, Patocka Project;
Austro-Hungarian Empire Purkyne-Fellow of the Czech Academy of Sciences,
Prague
Petr Dudek Project: Projekt Europa: Die politische Philosophie Jan
Senior Producer, BBC World Service, Czech Section Patockas
Milena Jesenska Fellow
Length of stay: April – June 2005 Diana Ivanova
Project: Is Communism in Central Europe a Closed Chapter? Freelance journalist, Sofia
Research: Following the democratic revolutions, communist Milena Jesenska Fellow
parties in most countries in Central and Eastern Length of stay: January – March 2005
Europe changed their names and “softened” their Project: Human Library on Socialism
ideologies. The consequences were diverse: some of In 2004, Diana Ivanova was
16 these parties weakened or even disappeared, some
Research:
one of the initiators of an
thrived. In the Czech Re- internet-based storytelling
public, something entirely project about socialism – the
different happened: The first website in Bulgaria to offer
Czech communist party personal stories from the time of socialism,
(KSCM) altered its name www.spomeniteni.org. She tries to develop further
only slightly, offered nothing the idea of the project as a “human library on social-
but formal apology for the ism” through collecting stories, interviews, and talks
crimes committed in the so- in Prague and Bratislava. Her interest also lies in the
cialist period, and stuck to its possibility for new narratives about the past to be
traditional anti-German, born in and shared through the internet.
anti-American, and generally
anti-Western vocabulary. In Susanne Lettow
return, the party saw its popular support growing. Lehrbeauftragte Gender Studies,
Dudek aims to describe reasons for the popularity Institut für Philosophie, Freie
of old-style communists in the Czech Republic and Universität Berlin
to compare it with the fates of former communist Lise Meitner Fellow
parties in other post-communist countries. Length of stay: October 2004 – October 2005
Project: Gender in the Philosophical De-
Benjamin Frommer bates on Biotechnology
Assistant Professor of His- Research: At the beginning of the 21st cen-
tory, Northwestern Uni- tury, information- and biotechnology seem to be
versity, Evanston the key technologies of the future. The technologi-
Length of stay: September 2004 – June cal revolutions of biological reproduction, food pro-
2005 duction, and medicine are far-reaching processes
Project: Living in the Shadow of with consequences, especially concerning gender
the Iron Curtain: The relations, which are not yet foreseeable. Lettow’s
Czech/Slovak - Aus- project centers on the question of how these pro-
trian/German Border- cesses are articulated in philosophical discourse.
lands, 1945 – 2000
Research: Ben Frommer is writing a comparative history of

No. 88 Spring 2005

 Wojciech Orlinski
Journalist at
Gazeta Wyborcza, Length of stay:
Warsaw
Milena Jesenska
Fellow
Length of stay: April – June
2005
Project: Beer Drinkers,
Vampires, and
Freedom Fighters: Central Eastern Europe as Seen
via Stereotypes of Global Popular Culture
Research: Popular culture stereotypes are a very important yet
often neglected factor shaping decisions in demo- Length of stay:
cratic societies. Even if the actual decision makers
are inspired by more sophisticated sources of knowl-
edge, they will be still judged by their voters, who
in turn are inspired by television series and comics
rather than university lectures. In his project,
Wojciech Orlinski attempts do describe, in a non-
judgmental way, the stereotypical portrayal of Cen-
tral Eastern Europe in global popular culture. Length of stay:
Marci Shore
Assistant Professor of History, Indiana University
Length of stay: July 2004 – August 2005
Project: The Wonder of Words: Cosmopolitanism and the
Avant-garde in East-Central Europe, 1919 – 1930
Research: The project focuses on East-Central European
avant-garde movements, exploring how the avant-
gardes’ understanding of the materiality of language
shaped their philosophy.
Marta Simeckova
Editor at the Slovak
daily Sme, Length of stay:
Bratislava
Milena Jesenka
Fellow
Length of stay: January – March
2005
Project: New Democracies
and Their Questions
Research: In her project, Marta Simeckova attempts to search
for the “inner sense” of the enlargement of Europe.
Together with her colleague, Andrea Pukova, editor
of the Slovak monthly review Anthropos and of the
Slovak daily Sme, she collects a series of interviews Length of stay:
with people from Western and Central Europe. This
is intended to create a colorful mosaic of people
who represent the Europe of today as a “mental
body.” The questions raised by her project center
around the perception of Europe: What is the inner
meaning of a common Europe, of the cohabitation
of Western Europe and the edge, of the center and
the periphery? Who are the Europeans, and, more-
over, who are the “new others“? The ultimate goal of
the project is to discover what Europe means from
the specific perspective of its periphery.
Timothy Snyder
Assistant Professor of History, Yale University
July 2004 – August 2005
Project: Brotherlands: A Family History of the Slavic, Ger-
man, and Jewish Nations
Research: The method for this family history of nationality in
Europe is the serial biography of prominent fami-
lies whose members chose different national identi-
ties, 1848 – 1948.
Michael Staudigl
Habilitand (Phänomenologie, Politische Philoso-
phie), Universität Wien, APART-Stipendiat der ÖAW
October 2003 – Juni 2005
Project: Phänomen Gewalt. Perspektiven phänomeno-
logischer Forschung
Endre Szecsenyi
Associate Professor of Philosophy,
Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow
January – March 2005
Project: Hannah Ahrendt and the “Aes-
thetic” Freedom
Research: Hannah Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s
Political Philosophy are the starting
point of Endre Szecsenyi’s research.
In these lectures, Arendt’s major interest is to elabo-
rate the political aspects of taste as sensus communis – 17
but at the expense of its aesthetic nature.
Philipp Ther
Junior Professor of Polish and Ukrainian Studies,
Europa-Universität Frankfurt/Oder
Körber Visiting Fellow
October 2004 - March 2005
Project: The History and Legacy of 20th Century Ethnic
Cleansing in Europe
Research: Philipp Ther’s research project focuses on the 20th
century as an age of ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Over its course,
about 50 million people have been forced to per-
manently leave their homelands within Europe alone.
Marcin Zaremba
Senior Lecturer of History, Univer-
sity of Warsaw
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow
April – May 2005
Project: Fear in Communist Poland 1994-
1989
Research: The model for Zaremba’s re-
search is a book by the French
historian Jean Delumeau, La Peur
en Occident. The project focuses on the diverse types
of fear in Communist Poland: fear of approaching
the front, of the Red Army. The fear connected
with robberies by Russian soldiers; the fear of col-
lectivization; of persecutions as well as pacifications
by NKWD and the native “security”; the fear of the

No. 88 Spring 2005

 next war; the fear of authorities and authority’s fear Indeed, both Mach and
of society; the fear of price increases and the fear of Husserl speak explicitly of a
worsening life conditions. Two separate chapters will higher standpoint, and by
address the fear of the Germans and the Jews. harmonizing their two “reduc-
tions,” their two crusades to
“save the phenomena,”
Junior Visiting Fellows Charak hopes to illustrate the
affinities between post-mod-
ernism in the philosophy of
Asli Baykal science and the core philosophical project of politi-
Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology, Boston University cal and social awareness.
Length of stay: February – July 2005
Project: Surviving the Post-Soviet Transition. Changing Fam- Susan Costello
ily and Community Relations in Uzbekistan Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology, Boston University
Research: Asli Baykal’s dissertation explores the pressures on Length of stay: January – June 2005
Uzbek society caused by the collapse of the USSR. Project: Tibetan Pastoralists’ Uses of Wealth in an Environ-
She examines the impact such changes have had on ment of Risk: Choosing Between Tribal and Reli-
“traditional” means of social organization, such as gious Moral Ideals and Market Efficiency?
family and neighborhood. Her research focuses on Research: Susan Costello’s dissertation describes the conditions
personal and family relations – and how individu- of pastoral production, consumption, and exchange
als have attempted to cope with rapid changes in of the Tibetan nomads who live in the high altitude
their power, authority, and responsibilities. Tension Golok Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai
has also been apparent at the community level. In Province, China.
the post-Soviet context, social networks, rituals of
sharing, and the informal economy now promote Eoin O’Carroll
the accumulation of wealth among the elite rather Candidate for MS degree in Print Journalism, Boston
than redistributing wealth to the poor. Uzbek people University
under socialism were familiar with status inequali- January – June 2005
18 ties, but now poverty, particularly with the loss of
Length of stay:
Project: Regardless of Frontiers: Press Freedom in the EU’s
benefits they enjoyed under state socialism, has come Newest Members
alongside inexplicable wealth. Research: On May 1, 2004, the EU grew from 15 to 25
states, eight of which had spent a generation be-
Greg Charak hind the Iron Curtain. Eoin O’Carrol’s report will
Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy, University of Califor- study the challenges faced by reporters in Hungary,
nia, San Diego; Fullbright Fellow, Institut Wiener Kreis Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia,
Length of stay: February – March 2005 Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Project: Reduction and Liberal Renewal
Research: Greg Charak has long been interested in the rela- Emilia Palonen
tionship between philosophy and liberalism, and Ph.D. Candidate in Ideology and Discourse Analysis,
particularly in the historical responses of the former University of Essex
to the “crises” of the latter. His aim is to relate these Körber Junior Visiting Fellow
interventions to the elusive, at times controversial, Length of stay: March – August 2005
and almost always misunderstood notion of the Project: Europe in the Contemporary City Image of
“higher standpoint.” With this in mind, Charak Budapest, Graz, and Vienna
has come to Vienna to study the origins of positiv- Research: Cities are in constant transformation with new build-
ism and phenomenology, which have been de-
scribed – and derided – as the two
“foundationalist” philosophies of the
20th century. It seems that despite the
eventual industrializations of these
two “movements,” we find in their
original spirit and motives a common
goal, a noble attempt at consciousness
and communication, at liberal re-
newal, amidst Europe’s greatest crisis.

Emilia Palonen, Asli Baykal, Astrid

Swenson, Susan Costello with her
son Giuseppe, Eoin O’Carroll

No. 88 Spring 2005

 ing projects and restoration plans. The projects on
the cityscape and the articulation of the cities’ na-
tional and international standing also deal with the
constant reconstruction of the city image(s) seeking
to determine the identity, location, and appearance
of Budapest or Vienna. Emilia Palonen’s project on
Budapest, Vienna, and Graz focuses on contempo-
rary articulations of “Europe” that occur through
the articulations of these city-images. She will inves-
tigate how Europeanness is argued for in the trans-
formation of the city image, what meanings are in-
vested in the concept of “Europe,” and how it is
related to other concepts, such as nationhood and
the metropolis. The basic assumption of the research
is that Europe only exists in articulation and gains
its meaning from its uses and its discursive relation-
ships to other concepts. Palonen’s project makes a
contribution to the understanding of the meanings
of “Europe” in contemporary politics and culture.
Research: Emily Rohrbach’s research con-
cerns early nineteenth-century his-
toriographical debate and compet-
ing notions of contemporaneity in
British and European historical
writings.
Astrid Swenson
Ph.D. Candidate in History, Cambridge University
Length of stay: Körber Junior Visiting Fellow
Project: January – June 2005
Conceptualizing Heritage in 19th Century France,
Germany, and Britain
Research: Within the framework of the Körber Foundation’s
fellowship on “History and Memory in Europe”
the project addresses the need to historicize the cen-
tral, yet often so poorly defined concepts of “heri-
tage” and “memory.”

Emily Rohrbach
Guests
Ph.D. Candidate in English Literature, Boston University Carol Bacchi
Length of stay: January – June 2005 Associate Professor of Politics, University of Adelaide
Project: European Historiography 1770-1830, Revolution Month of stay: April
in Literary Time

19

No. 88 Spring 2005

 Publications
Carol Bacchi
Guest
“Policy”, in: Blackwell Companion to Gen-
der Studies, P. Essed, A. Kobayashi and D.
T. Goldberg (eds.), London: Blackwell,
2005.
Muriel Blaive
Körber Junior Visiting Fellow 2004
Une déstalinisation manquée. Tchécoslova-
quie 1956, préface de Krzysztof Pomian,
Bruxelles: Éditions Complexe, 2005.
Susanne Lettow
Lise Meitner Fellow
Öffentlichkeiten und Geschlechterverhält-
nisse. Strategien, Erfahrungen, Subjekte, Su-
sanne Lettow, Ulrike Manz, Katja Sarkows-
ky (Hrsg.), Königstein/Ts.: Ulrike-Helmer-
Verlag, 2005; „Zone der Unbestimmtheit.
Biopolitik und Geschlechterverhältnisse
bei Foucault, Agamben und Hardt/Negri“,
in: ebd.
20 Eoin O’Carroll
Junior Visiting Fellow
„Die Grenzen der grenzenlosen Pressefrei-
heit“, in: science.ORF.at (online publiziert
am 5. April 2005).
Emily Rohrbach
Junior Visiting Fellow
Book review on Kevis Goodman, Georgic
Modernity and British Romanticism: Poetry
and the Mediation of History, in: Revue
d’Etudes Anglophones (forthcoming).
Marci Shore
Visiting Fellow
“Conversing with Ghosts: Jedwabne,
Zydokomuna, and Totalitarianism,” in:
Kritika: Explorations of Russian and Eur-
asian History, vol. 6, no. 2 (spring 2005).
No. 88 Spring 2005
Timothy Snyder
Visiting Fellow
Kommentar: „Vereintes Europa, geteilte
Geschichte“, in: Transit – Europäische Re-
vue, Nr. 28 (2004).
Book review: „The Old Country,“ on
Anatol Lieven, America Right or Wrong: An
Anatomy of American Nationalism, in: Times
Literary Supplement (March 23, 2005).
“Ukraine’s Orange Revolution,” with Timo-
thy Garton Ash, in: New York Review of
Books (April 14, 2005); German transla-
tion forthcoming in Transit No. 30.
Michael Staudigl
Visiting Fellow
Perspektiven des Lebensbegriffs. Randgänge
der Phänomenologie (Europaea memoria
34), M. Staudigl, S. Nowotny (Hrsg.),
Hildesheim: Olms, 2005.
Marcin Zaremba
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow
„Propaganda sukcesu. Dekada Gierka”, in:
Propaganda PRL, wybrane problemy, Piotr
Semkow (ed.), Gdansk: IPN, 2004.
“The Second Step of a Ladder: The Cult
of First Secretaries,” in: The Leader Cult in
Communist Dictatorships. Stalin and the
Eastern Bloc, Balazs Apor, Jan C. Behrends,
Polly Jones, E. A. Rees (eds.), London/New
York: Palgrave Macmillan 2004.
„Zorganizowane zapominanie o holokaus-
cie w dekadzie Gierka: trwanie i zmiana”,
in: Kwartalnik Historii Zydow (March
2004).
Travels and Talks
Carol Bacchi
Guest
Lecture: “Gender Analysis: Introducing the
Canadian Approach,” Department of Cor-
rectional Services, Adelaide, South Austra-
lia (March 18, 2005).
Lecture: “Gender Impact Assessment: In-
troducing the Netherlands Approach,”
Department of Health, Adelaide, South
Australia (April 6, 2005).
Cornelia Klinger
Permanent Fellow
Vortrag: „Ungleichheit als Prinzip moder-
ner Gesellschaften: Arbeit und Ge-
schlecht“, im Rahmen der Marburger
Arbeitsgespräche 3, In Arbeit: Zukunft,
Institut für Politikwissenschaft, Marburg
(24. Februar 2005).
Vortrag: „Kanonbildung in der Philoso-
phie”, im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung
Gendered Subjects IV: „Ein Kanon ganz für
uns allein?“, Universität Wien (15. März
2005).
Vortrag: „Warum das Glück (k)ein ‚Vogerl’
ist. Individuelle Glücksvorstellungen im
gesellschaftlichen Kontext”, Sigmund
Freud-Gesellschaft, Wien (11. April
2005).
Janos Matyas Kovacs
Permanent Fellow
Participation in an international conference
launching the DIOSCURI project,
Budapest (February 4-5, 2005).
Susanne Lettow
Lise Meitner Fellow
Vortrag: „Biotechnologie und Geschlech-
terverhältnisse in der Philosophie“, Insti-
tut für Philosophie der Universität Wien
(10. März 2005).
Vortrag: „Kybernetik, Subjekt, Geschlecht.
Antiessentialismus als technologisches
Modell und philosophische Strategie“, In-
stitut für Wissenschaft und Kunst (IWK),
Wien (13. April 2005).
Krzysztof Michalski
Rector of the IWM
Interview: “‘The economy alone is not
enough’, Values and Disvalues”, in: EAST
Europe and Asia Strategies, No 3 (February
2005).
Interview: “Na Skrzyzowaniu idei i zycia”,
in: Newsweek Polska (February 13, 2005).
Interview: „Das Leben Karol Wojitylas ist
sein wirkliches Werk“, in: Der Standard
(26./27. Februar 2005).
Interview: „Czlowiek w obliczu zla”, in:
Rzeczpospolita (March 6, 2005).
Chair of the first Tischner Debate, “On Soli-
darity,” (together with Marcin Krol, Pro-
fessor of the History of Ideas) at the Audi-
torium Maximum, Warsaw University; see
report in this issue of the IWM Post, p. 10-11.
Lecture: “What holds Europe together?”
European Economic and Social Commit-
tee, Brussels (March 10, 2005).
Chair of the second Tischner Debate, “On
Inequality,” at the Palac Kultury I Nauki,
Warsaw (together with Marcin Krol, Pro-
fessor of the History of Ideas); introduc-
tion: Lord Dahrendorf, member of the Brit-
ish House of Lords; participants: Zyta
Gilowska, member of Parliament,
Platforma Obywatelska (PO);Lech
Kaczynski, Mayor of Warsaw; Miroslawa
Marody, Professor of Sociology at Warsaw
University; and Wiktor Osiatynski, Pro-
fessor of Law at the Central European
University (April 11, 2005).
Emilia Palonen
Junior Visiting Fellow
Presentation of the paper “Fidesz in Buda-
pest: creating the frontier, occupying space”
(translated into Hungarian and discussed
in Hungarian) at a series of workshops on
Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Party discourse,
Research Centre for Political Discourses,
Institute for Political Sciences, Hungarian
Academy of Sciences (February 8, 2005).
Emily Rohrbach
Junior Visiting Fellow
Presentation of an introductory paper, “Ro-
mantic Self-Reflection and Critical Recep-
tion in the Wake of the New
Historicism(s),” and chair of the panel on
“Romantic Self Reflection,” Northeast Mod-
ern Language Association Convention,
Cambridge, Mass. (April 2, 2005).
Birgit Sauer
MAGEEQ Senior Researcher
Vortrag: “Demokratie und Geschlechter-
gerechtigkeit”, im Rahmen der Tagung Die
Zukunft der Demokratie des Instituts für
Politikwissenschaft, Universität Regens-
burg, Bildungszentrum Wildbad Kreuth
(3.-4. Februar 2005).
Lecture: „Toleration, Identity, and Differ-
ence. A comment to Anna Elisabetta
Galeotti,“ at the conference Tolerance. Its
Scope and Limits, University of Vienna
(March 4-5, 2005).
Lecture: “What happened to the model
student? State feminism in Austria since
the 1990s,” ECPR Joint Session, Granada
(April 14-19, 2005).
Timothy Snyder
Visiting Fellow
Radio Interview: “Who is Julia Tymoshen-
ko?” FM4, Vienna (February 2, 2005).
Lecture: “The Nazi and Soviet Occupa-
tions of Eastern Europe: Some Preliminary
Comparisons,” Harvard Academy for In-
ternational and Area Studies (March 11, 2005).
Lecture: “Condemned to Compare: The
Soviet and Nazi Occupations of Poland and
Ukraine,” at the international conference,
Open Wounds: Reflections on Nazism, Com-
munism, and the Twentieth Century,
Einstein Forum, Potsdam (April 15, 2005).
Michael Staudigl
Visiting Fellow
Vortrag: „Zur Bestimmung von Gewalt im
Spannungsfeld von Affektivität und
Intentionalität“, im Rahmen der Konfe-
renz Affekt, Affektion, Affektivität der Öster-
reichischen Gesellschaft für philosophi-
schen Ost-West-Dialog, Otterthal (11.-15.
April 2005).
Vortrag: “Perspektiven und Grenzen
phänomenologischer Gewaltanalyse“,
StipendiatInnenwochenende der Österrei-
chischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
Wien (15. April 2005).
Lecture: “Phenomenological Reflections on
Violence and their Impact on Phenomeno-
logical Methodology,“ at the third annual
conference of the Nordic Society for Phe-
nomenology, Phenomenology – from theory
to practice and back again, University of
Bergen, Norway (April 22-24, 2005).
Participation in the workshop Agamben
und seine Quellen, Czech Academy of Sci-
ences, Prague (April 28-29, 2005).
Mieke Verloo
Non-Resident Permanent Fellow
Presentation: “Challenges for the Euro-
pean Union,” at the conference Beijing
+10. Progress made within the European
Union, Luxembourg (February 3, 2005).
Presentation of the SWOT analysis on
Dutch Equal Opportunities Policies, at a
seminar, Rethinking Equal Opportunities
Policies, Soeterbeeck, Netherlands (Febru-
ary 3, 2005).
Marcin Zaremba
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow
Lecture: “At the Edge of Rebellion: Polish 21
Workers in the Late Sixties. On the Onset
of the December 1970 Events,” at the con-
ference European Workers in 1968,
Hattingen (February 11-13, 2005).
Varia
Maria Han gewann den 1.
Preis beim Philosophie-
wettbewerb „Jugend
denkt“ der Kulturstiftung
Hannover. Sie ist von
April bis Juni 2005 zu
Gast am IWM in Wien
und wird sich in dieser
Zeit schwerpunktmäßig mit Philosophie
im Bereich Ethik beschäftigen.
Romana Lanzerstorfer ist Doktorandin der
Politikwissenschaft an der Universität Wien
und absolviert derzeit ein Praktikum am
IWM. Sie arbeitet vor allem in den
Bereichen Presse- und Öffentlichkeits-
arbeit sowie bei der Redaktion von Transit
– Europäische Revue mit.
No. 88 Spring 2005
 NOTES ON BOOKS
The IWM regularly asks its fellows, guests, and friends to share their thoughts on current
publications. In this issue of the IWM Post, Jerzy Szacki writes on Barbarzynska Europa by Karol
Modzelewski. Marci Shore introduces The Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey by
Hans Ulrich Gumprecht.
Barbarian Europe
I do not know what experts are going to
say about this book. Those few I have
asked were full of praise, although they
certainly did have various doubts and of-
ten found one or another of the author’s
theses questionable. However, I would not
attach much importance to their reserva-
tions: in the humanities original ideas
rather inevitably lead to controversies, and
in any case the dispute itself is usually
more valuable than correctness. The latter,
after all, so frequently approaches bore-
dom.
In this case, we are dealing with a
truly fascinating work, a specialized work
which is intentionally addressed not only
to specialists. Moreover, this is a work that
inspires contemplation not only of those
questions to which the book is dedicated,
22 but also of the fact that historiography
does not have to be an esoteric field, even
in the absence of superficial efforts to
popularize it.
Those questions are quite numerous
so let me just mention those few that fasci-
nate me most. The first one concerns the
European heritage that has been subject
of discussions for so many years, discus-
sions that repeatedly draw upon various
clichés about Mediterranean culture or
Christianity. Certainly, those clichés
should be repeated. However, Modzelewski
is definitely right in posing in this context
a question about barbarians, that is, those
native residents of the whole European
continent who formed a world that was
alien and inscrutable to people of Classical
antiquity and who were later subjected to
Christianization, gradually becoming a
part of the whole named Europe. This
question is accompanied by the convinc-
ing presumption that taming barbarians,
Germans, Slavs, Balts, etc. did not mean
and could not mean total extermination of
their culture.
The second issue, which is actually
the central one in Modzelewski’s book, is
the nature of that barbarian culture. The
author believes it is possible and necessary
to attempt a synthesis which would ignore
No. 88 Spring 2005
to some degree significant differences in
space and time to obtain a reconstruction
of a specific social type that the bygone
Barbarian world most probably used to
be. Therefore, the table of contents in
Modzelewski’s book appears to be that of a
book written by a sociologist or anthro-
pologist as opposed to a historian. How-
ever, one further glance at it would be suf-
ficient to correct this impression. The
point is that the author is a historian who,
while inspired by the contemporary social
sciences, at the same does not disregard the
rigors of the historical craft and is knowl-
edgeable about details as only a historian
could be.
The third issue that I found particu-
larly interesting in the book is the reflec-
tion on intercultural communication, be-
ginning from a comparison between the
positions of a historian and an ethnologist,
who is attempting to learn secrets of an
alien culture, an attempt made more diffi-
cult by the fact that the sources originate
in yet another culture.
In short, we were presented with a
work of the highest caliber. So far it is avail-
able only in Polish. Its French edition is
soon to be published.
Karol Modzelewski
Barbarzynska Europa
(Barbarian Europe)
Warszawa: Iskry, 2004.
Karol Modzelewski, born in 1937, is Professor
of History at Warsaw University. In 1964, he was
co-author with Jacek Kuron of an open letter
to the members of the Communist Party, for
which he was imprisoned for more than three
years. He was elected a Senator in the first
democratic election in 1989. His main area of
scientific research as a historian is early Polish
history (tenth to thirteenth century).
Jerzy Szacki is Professor for Sociology at
Warsaw University and a member of the IWM
Academic Advisory Board.
The Production of
Presence
The author of The Production of Presence:
What Meaning Cannot Convey is a Ger-
man intellectual who fell in love with Cali-
fornia and Rio de Janeiro, a postwar-born
Bavarian from Würzburg who as a child
enjoyed playing in the ruins of Germany’s
then second-most destroyed city. In his
early adulthood he was haunted by warm
memories of a maternal grandfather who,
he later suspected, had been a Nazi. In his
later adulthood he was haunted by the
news that his Doktorvater, the renowned
reception theorist and literary scholar
Hans Robert Jauss, had in his youth been
a member of the SS. Gumbrecht “began
to become obsessed with the famous ques-
tion how I would have acted myself before
1945 – if somebody like Jauss, by whose
mind I felt so attracted, had been a Nazi
until the apocalyptic end.”
In 1989 Gumbrecht left Germany –
and Europe – for a professorship at
Stanford University. At the turn of the
century he accepted American citizenship.
“[T]he main reason,” he writes, “behind
my coming to America was indeed the
wish to escape this responsibility-by-con-
tiguity. Of course I know that there is no
real escape...” Gumbrecht is a German in-
tellectual who became a scholar of litera-
ture in the romance languages, an Ameri-
can academic, and a thinker deeply influ-
enced by – and to some extent obsessed
with – Heidegger, and at once tormented
by the implications of such a closeness.
“Out of all the philosophers whose
work I more or less know it is,” Gumb-
recht writes in an autobiographical essay,
“quite paradoxically, Martin Heidegger
who I think offers a rationalization for my
double reaction of feeling contaminated
by ‘my’ German past and of choosing
American citizenship. I am referring to the
famous passage in paragraph 74 of Being
and Time where Heidegger says that only
‘by handling down to [oneself ] the possi-
bility [one] has inherited (i.e. the history
of one’s nation), [one can] take over [one’s]
own thrownness and be in the immediate
present for [one’s] time.’” In short,

“[a]ccepting to be German means that I feel person-
ally and publicly accountable for what Heidegger
would describe as part of my thrownness…”
It might seem, not unreasonably, that this
delving into the biography of the author of an aca-
demic book is gratuitous. Yet in this case perhaps
not: for the book itself is very much an autobio-
graphical essay, the story of a philosophical trajec-
tory by a thinker who refuses to separate “life” from
intellectual inquiry. Gumbrecht’s prose is alto-
gether unique. His English sparkles precisely be-
cause of its idiosyncratic quality – it is “a bit off,”
and in this way fresh, somehow unconstrained by
the conventions of English-language academic
writing. Gumbrecht is fond of anecdotes. Yet his
writing could not simply be described as “anec-
dotal.” It is, perhaps, better understood through its
confessional motif, an urge to self-disclosure, a play-
fulness with academic pretensions. He has a ten-
dency to write of himself neither in the first-person
singular nor in the royal “we,” but rather in the
third-person, which reflects his particular style of
self-questioning and self-irony. He harbors at times
a suspiciousness of himself, which nonetheless
could not be described as self-hatred. Pervading
Gumbrecht’s writing is still something more: a love
for the humanities, for intellectual inquiry, and an
insistence that this life of the mind can never be
divorced from quotidian, everyday experience –
that fate and burden the Russians call byt, but
which for Gumbrecht is something not only bur-
densome, but also liberating, even at moments tan-
talizing.
The Production of Presence is to some extent an
epilogue, perhaps a postscript, to Gumbrecht’s daz-
zling book of several years earlier In 1926: Living at
the Edge of Time (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1997), which begins by presupposing a pre-
conscious desire to “speak to the dead.” Gumbrecht
situates the book as being descriptive as opposed to
analytical, as being concerned with simultaneity as
opposed to sequentiality. In Sausurrean terms, In
1926 is that oxymoronic entity: a synchronic his-
tory. The book is in fact a work of art, a portrait of a
moment, of a year the author finds particularly ap-
pealing, in some way seductive. The chapters are
not chapters but rather “entries,” embracing both
the tangible and the intangible. Among those “ma-
terial” entries are Americans in Paris, bullfighting,
jazz, hunger artists, telephones, and mummies.
Among the “non-material”: action vs. impotence,
authenticity vs. artificiality; immanence vs. tran-
scendence; sobriety vs. exuberance. The author’s
desire is fairly explicit: to induce in the reader a
feeling of presence – of being present – in the past.
The Production of Presence is an essay (by an
author enamored – despite himself – of Heidegger)
contesting the dominance of metaphysics and in
Jerzy Szacki, Marci Shore NOTES ON BOOKS
particular the centrality of interpretation in the
Western arts and humanities. A Marxist sympa-
thizer in his youth, Gumbrecht dates the origins of
his search for something transcendent of the
hermeneutic to a 1979 colloquium in Dubrovnik.
At that time it was not the colloquium but the city
that was so memorable to Gumbrecht and his Bra-
zilian colleague who travelled there with him:
“what really impressed the two friends was the
beauty and the liveliness of that Croatian city
[Dubrovnik] – an impression they then quite des-
perately wanted to associate with Yugoslavia’s offi-
cial status as a socialist country.” Marci Shore is Assistant
While Marxism was put aside, a certain long- Professor of History at In-
ing (nostalgia?) for materiality lingered. In The Pro- diana University and
duction of Presence, Gumbrecht articulates a crisis of currently Visiting Fellow at
Western modernity and intellectual culture re- the IWM.
vealed in the lack of connection to presence, to ma-
terial Being. The book is a reflection on the tension Das IWM lädt regelmäßig
between “presence effects” and “meaning effects” – Fellows, Gäste und Freun-
and the tendency in Western academic culture to de des Instituts dazu ein,
undervalue the former. The author’s voice, at times ihre Gedanken zu aktuel-
self-mocking, is more gentle than polemical. He len Publikationen mit den
situates himself both within and against Lesern der IWM Post zu
“postmodern” theory. Whatever the problems of teilen. In dieser Ausgabe
“postmodernity” in the humanities (the unambigu- schreibt Jerzy Szacki
ously pejorative connotation of “substance,” the re- über Barbarzynska Euro-
jection of physicality in favor of discursive con- pa (Barbarisches Euro- 23
structs), Gumbrecht concedes, the age of moder- pa) von Karol Modzelewski,
nity – that is, historical time and all it implied: Marci Shore führt ein in
Hegel, progress, teleology – has come irrevocably to The Production of Pre-
an end. sence: What Meaning
Gumbrecht privileges Erleben over Erfahrung Cannot Convey von Hans
(seeing in the former more of a sense of “lived expe- Ulrich Gumprecht.
rience,” and in the latter more of a sense of “inter-
preted experience”). He appeals above all for “put-
ting more emphasis on the presence element in aes-
thetic experience.” True aesthetic experience – more
specifically, “moments of intensity,” – demands
presence, Gumbrecht insists. In fact it demands the
privileging of presence over meaning. “Presence,”
in Gumbrecht’s understanding, is very close to
Heidegger’s notion of “Being”: “Both concepts, Be-
ing and presence imply substance; both are related
to space; both can be associated with movement.
Heidegger may not have elaborated the dimension
of ‘extreme temporality’ as much as some contem-
porary thinkers try to do; but what I have tenta-
tively called ‘the movements’ of Being in
Heidegger’s conception make it impossible to think
of Being as something stable. The most important
point of convergence, however, is the tension be-
tween meaning (i.e. that which makes things cul-
turally specific), on the one hand, and presence or
Being, on the other.”
We – by whom Gumbrecht means above all
(but not only) those engaged in the humanities –
inhabit a Cartesian world, or perhaps otherwise
No. 88 Spring 2005
 Jerzy Szacki, Marci Shore NOTES ON BOOKS
stated a phenomenological world in
which consciousness is the focal point.
About this Cartesian world Gumbrecht
says: “And are we not precisely longing for
presence, is our desire for tangibility not so
intense – because our own everyday envi-
ronment is so almost insuperably con-
sciousness-centered?” In short, life is else-
where. And we are missing it. The book is
a plea for repossession of aesthetic experi-
ence, and the expression of a hope that
this ästhetisches Erleben, the physicality of
aesthetic experience, “may give us back at
least a feeling of our being-in-the-world.”
As in In 1926, here, too, Gumbrecht
makes an appeal for the value of history as
a making present of the past. The implica-
tion is nontrivial for historians: it means a
certain license for imagination over didac-
ticism. It means as well a certain liberation:
the writing of history as effecting a space
whereby the reader can make an imagina-
tive leap into a time and a place where he
24
No. 88 Spring 2005
or she was not. The historian has always Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
been a detective, trying to glean the con- The Production of Presence: What Meaning
tours of a whole from what fragments re- Cannot Convey
main. Yet the primacy of presence suggests Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004
that the historian can act as a magician as
well, conjuring up a moment – its sounds,
sights, smells, tastes – so that it can be felt.
Perhaps understood, perhaps not, but felt
above all and in any case. For historians it
means quite a bit of chutzpah. And a rather
thrilling voyeurism.
Gumbrecht believes we all sublimi-
nally desire this, this venture into the past,
away from ourselves, and supposes this is
perhaps because “by crossing the life
world threshold of our birth, we are turn-
ing away from the ever-threatening and
ever-present future of our own deaths.” In
any case, a return to “presence” in history
means a certain empathy – for better or for
worse, with all the potential jouissance and
trauma that implies – for those who are
now dead.

Johannes Paul II.
1920 – 2005
Mit dem Tod von Johannes Paul II hat das Institut für die
Wissenschaften vom Menschen einen Freund verloren.
Er war eine der ersten Personen, der wir – mein in-
zwischen verstorbener Freund und Partner Jozef Tischner
und ich – Anfang der achtziger Jahre von der Idee der
Gründung des Institutes erzählt haben. Ich kannte Karol
Wojtyla von seiner Zeit in Krakau, wo er als Mäzen der
Wissenschaften und Künste – auch wenn sie nichts mit
der Kirche und dem Katholizismus zu tun hatten – wirk-
te, um die Versäumnisse des damaligen totalitären Staates
wettzumachen. Jozef Tischner war mit ihm befreundet.
Schon in diesem ersten Gespräch unterstützte der
Papst unsere Idee stark und von Herzen - obwohl wir kein
katholisches, sondern ein unabhängiges, keinem Be-
kenntnis und keiner Ideologie verpflichtetes Institut
gründen wollten. Um seine Unterstützung zu bekräfti-
gen, hat er unseren Wissenschaftlichen Beirat immer wie-
der zu mehrtägigen Symposien in seiner Sommerresidenz
in Castel Gandolfo eingeladen. Es wurden deren acht,
das letzte fand 1999 statt. Führende Gelehrte nahmen
daran teil: Ralf Dahrendorf, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Hans-
Georg Gadamer, Ernest Gellner, Bronislaw Geremek,
Leszek Kolakowski, Dharma Kumar, Emmanuel Lévinas,
Paul Ricoeur, Charles Taylor, George Weidenfeld, C.F
von Weizsäcker und eine Reihe anderer. Der Papst hörte
den Diskussionen aufmerksam zu, unterhielt sich wäh-
rend der Mahlzeiten angeregt mit den Teilnehmern -
mischte sich aber nie in unsere Einladungspolitik. Die
Symposien waren auch nicht von ihm oder vom Vatikan
finanziert, sondern von der Stuttgarter Robert Bosch Stif-
tung, teilweise auch von der Hamburger Körber Stiftung.
Es hat uns viel Zeit und Mühe gekostet klarzuma-
chen, dass diese Sympathie und Unterstützung des Pap-
stes nicht bedeutet, dass das Institut für die Wissenschaf-
ten vom Menschen eine katholische Einrichtung (eine
Art Vorfront-Institution der Kirche) ist. Es gab in der
Geschichte des IWM viele, die meinten, es mit einem
ideologischen oder politischen Etikett versehen zu müs-
sen, darunter eben dieses. Schließlich gelang es uns aber
doch, die meisten von ihnen von unserer Unabhängig-
keit zu überzeugen. Das IWM genießt heute breite Aner-
kennung als ein Ort der geistigen Auseinandersetzung
unterschiedlicher Weltanschauungen und Standpunkte
auf der Basis gegenseitigen Respekts – so, wie wir es uns
damals, vor mehr als zwanzig Jahren, erträumt hatten.
Diesen Traum – und seine spätere Verwirklichung – hat
Johannes Paul II mit Sympathie und Unterstützung be-
gleitet.
Seine Sympathie und Unterstützung werden wir in
dankbarer Erinnerung behalten.
Krzysztof Michalski
Ein längerer Nachruf von Krzysztof Michalski ist auf Polnisch in
der Wochenzeitung Tygodnik Powszechny erschienen (Nr. 16,
17. April) und wird in Kürze auf Deutsch in Transit – Europäische
Revue (Nr. 29) veröffentlicht. Eine gekürzte Version ist im Stan-
dard (9./10. April) erschienen.
GASTBEITRAG
In der vorletzten Ausgabe der IWM Post stellten
Mitglieder der vom IWM einberufenen
Reflexionsgruppe zur geistigen und kulturellen
Dimension Europas zentrale Arbeitsergebnisse der
Gruppe vor (“What Holds Europe Together?”, Nr. 86,
Herbst 2004). In seinem Kommentar zu diesem
Europa-Papier plädiert Giuliano Amato für eine
Sichtweise, welche die gemeinsame europäische
Kultur nicht als gegeben, sondern als stets neue
Herausforderung und nie zu vollendende Aufgabe
begreift.
Bauwerk Europa
Das Europa-Papier von Kurt Biedenkopf,
Bronislaw Geremek, Krzysztof Michalski
und Michel Rocard zielt genau auf das ent-
scheidende Dilemma, vor dem Europa
steht. Und die Vorschläge der Autoren, wie
man sich ihm stellen kann (was nicht schon
gleichbedeutend mit seiner Lösung ist),
zeugen von einem ungewöhnlichen, tief-
greifenden Verständnis unserer „Einheit in
der Vielfalt“ und der Mittel, über die wir 25
verfügen, um aus den darin beschlossenen Giuliano Amato, former
Chancen das Beste zu machen. vice-chairman of the
Das Dilemma ist nicht neu, aber es hat European Convention, is
im erweiterten Europa eine neue Dimensi- a member of the IWM
on angenommen: einerseits das Projekt Eu- Board of Patrons; he was
ropas als neuer politischer Einheit auf der Prime Minister of Italy
Basis gemeinsamer Werte, gemeinsamer from 1992-1993 and from
Ziele und gemeinsamer Rechte, wie sie in 2000-2001.
der Verfassung niedergelegt sind, und an-
dererseits die verstärkte Vielfalt und Ver-
schiedenartigkeit in unserer erweiterten Fa-
milie, die das Projekt in Gefahr bringen
könnten. Das Projekt – so das Argument –
könne nicht mehr auf die gemeinschaftli-
che Vision und den politischen Willen bau-
en, die im goldenen Zeitalter der anfängli-
chen wirtschaftlichen Integration als Basis
dienten, denn deren Potential scheine er-
schöpft. Gleichzeitig nehme die Verfas-
sung, indem sie das Projekt für das erweiter-
te Europa neu zu bestimmen versuche, eine
Art von „impossible mission“ in Angriff,
denn es lasse sich kaum erwarten, dass Eu-
ropa in seiner neuen, heterogenen Zusam-
mensetzung imstande sei, die erforderliche
neue Vision zu formulieren.
Falls sich diese pessimistische Sicht
durchsetzt, kann das für unsere Zukunft
ziemlich ungute Folgen haben: einen Man-
gel an Vertrauen in die Verfassung, die
No. 88 Spring 2005
 Giuliano Amato GASTBEITRAG

Rückkehr alter Träume; ein Kerneuropa Kitt dienen? gibt kein weltumspannendes, einheitli-
als politisches Subjekt, das den übrigen Hier beweist das Papier wirkliche ches Rechtssystem) sowie die gemeinsa-
Ländern des erweiterten Europa als Wirt- Scharfsicht: Keine Aufzählung oder Fest- men Anliegen, die Europa verfolgt. Eben-
schaftsraum gegenübersteht; und schließ- schreibung europäischer kultureller Werte so setzt die bekannte Lehre von John
lich die Bereitschaft, sich mit der Vorstel- ergebe einen Sinn, wird erklärt, und den- Rawls, dass Demokratie „prozedural“ vor-
lung abzufinden, dass wir zu verschieden- noch existiere eine europäische Kultur. Es zugehen habe, wenn es an einer von allen
artig sind, um eine Einheit zu verwirkli- handele sich dabei um einen Kontext mit geteilten Vorstellung des Guten mangelt,
chen, die über ökonomische Belange hin- offenen Grenzen, dem eine ständige Kon- im Grunde bereits ein substanzielles Ein-
ausgeht – ein Szenario, auf das einiges hin- frontation mit dem Neuen greifbare In- vernehmen voraus, denn sonst wäre nicht
zudeuten scheint. Wie lässt sich dagegen halte verleihen könne und tatsächlich einmal eine solche Übereinkunft auf reine
angehen und wo können wir die Mittel auch verleihe – vorausgesetzt, es existiere Verfahrensregeln denkbar (und durch-
und Kräfte hernehmen, um Europa als eine politische Führung, die in Erfüllung setzbar).
ein integrales politisches Projekt zu erhal- ihrer Aufgabe emotional mitreißend, ar- Die große Frage ist, welches die ge-
ten? Das Europa-Papier erklärt mit aller gumentativ klar und sachlich überzeu- meinsamen kulturellen Wertvorstellun-
Entschiedenheit, die zur Stärkung des gend genug sei; denn unsere gemeinsame gen sind, die unserer europäischen politi-
Zusammenhalts nö- schen Identität (und
tigen Energien mithin dem europäi-
müssten „in der ge- schen Gebäude) zu-
meinsamen europäi- grunde liegen und
schen Kultur ge- wie sie Anerkennung
sucht und gefun- gefunden haben.
den“ werden; und Hier trifft die Analy-
unsere europäischen se des Papiers den
Religionen, die un- entscheidenden
trennbare Bestand- Punkt. Das europäi-
teile unserer ver- sche Bauwerk war
schiedenen Kultu- und ist auch weiter-
26 ren seien, könnten hin ein Prozess, in
in hohem Maße dessen Verlauf es die
dazu beitragen, un- Aufgabe der Füh-
sere Völker zusam- rung und aller euro-
menzuführen, statt päischen Entschei-
sie (wie in der Ver- A meeting of the Reflection Group on the Spiritual and Cultural Dimension of Europe, Berlin 2004 dungsträger war und
gangenheit) zu ent- weiterhin sein wird,
zweien. Kultur – so das Dokument – sei keine Ge- neue Schritte zu unternehmen und dar-
Ist das in dem neu geschaffenen Rah- gebenheit, sondern eine Aufgabe. zutun, von welchen politischen und
men (der in nicht allzu ferner Zukunft Ich persönlich stimme mit dieser rechtlichen Gründen sie sich dabei leiten
vielleicht noch umfassender sein und die Analyse überein, die uns nicht zuletzt der lassen. Die meisten unserer gemeinsamen
Türkei und die Balkanländer einschließen heimlichen, aber unbestreitbaren kulturellen Werte sind uns allererst im
wird) ein gangbarer Weg zu einer stetig Schwachstelle im Konzept des Zuge dieses Prozesses bewusst geworden,
fortschreitenden Integration? Kultur ist Verfassungspatriotismus innewerden um dann allgemein anerkannt zu werden.
das, worin wir uns voneinander unter- lässt. Die Grundlage dieser Art von Patrio- Als der Europäische Gerichtshof im Jahr
scheiden, und Tatsache ist, dass in Europa tismus müsse, meint Habermas, ganz und 1963 erstmals entschied, dass wir Rechte
mehr von „Kulturen“ als von »Kultur“ die gar politischer Natur sein, denn alles Kul- gegen unseren eigenen Staat einklagen
Rede ist. Genau aus diesem Grund trennt turelle trenne. Wir können aber nicht in können, gab es noch keine Liste dieser
die von Jürgen Habermas weiterentwik- dem für ein europäisches Projekt erforder- Rechte. Und seit dieser ersten Entschei-
kelte Idee eines „Verfassungspatrio- lichen politischen Willen übereinkom- dung haben wir einhellig die „den Mit-
tismus“, wie ihn auch ein künftiges euro- men, wenn diesem nichts als gemeinsame gliedsstaaten gemeinsamen Verfassungs-
päisches Volk teilen könnte, diesen Patrio- ökonomische oder politische Interessen traditionen“ als »allgemeine Prinzipien“
tismus von unserer jeweiligen kulturellen, zugrunde liegen. Ein solcher politischer unseres gemeinsamen europäischen
ethnischen und nationalen Identität. Da- Wille, wenn es ihn gibt, setzt notwendig Rechts anerkannt. Lässt sich da nicht klar
mit eine politische Identität uns einen gemeinsame kulturelle Wertvorstellungen und deutlich sehen, wie aus unterschiedli-
kann – so die Überlegung -, muss sie in voraus, ohne die wir das europäische Ge- chen nationalen Kulturen ein gemeinsa-
einem gemeinsamen Vorhaben gründen bäude nicht akzeptieren und mittragen mer kultureller Nenner herausdestilliert
und nicht in den „präpolitischen“ Wert- würden – die Rechtsstaatlichkeit, die in und in eine Reihe gemeinsamer allgemei-
vorstellungen, die uns jeweils auszeich- ihm herrscht, die Bestimmung und den ner Prinzipien übersetzt wird? Ebenso
nen. Wo also findet sich die „gemeinsame Schutz all jener Rechte des Einzelnen, die hatten wir 1993 noch keine übergreifen-
europäische Kultur“, und wie kann sie als „unser“ Rechtssystem mit sich bringt (es de Regelung, die den Schutz der Rechte

No. 88 Spring 2005


von Minderheiten als wesentlichen Aspekt unseres
gemeinschaftlichen Lebens festhielten. Als der Eu-
ropäische Rat, der im selben Jahr in Kopenhagen
zusammenkam, die Bedingungen für künftige Bei-
tritte verabschiedete (der Schutz von
Minderheitenrechten war Bestandteil dieser Be-
schlüsse), stellte sich heraus, dass über diese Frage
durchaus Konsens herrschte.
Es ließen sich noch viele weitere Beispiele an-
führen (denken wir an die Todesstrafe, die unsere
Kultur ablehnt, wie sich herausstellte, als das Ver-
bot in die Charta unserer Grundrechte aufgenom-
men wurde), aber das Prinzip dürfte bereits klar
sein und bestätigt die anfängliche These, dass unse-
re gemeinsame Kultur keine Gegebenheit ist, son-
dern eine Aufgabe. Und solange diese Aufgabe er-
füllt wird, entdecken und anerkennen wir immer
Neues, was sich dem Fundus unserer Gemeinsam-
keiten hinzufügen lässt. Nicht einmal die Charta
der Grundrechte, der in Kürze Rechtskraft verlie-
hen werden dürfte, wird diese entscheidende Auf-
gabe zu einem Abschluss bringen. Die Charta ist
eben dem Vorwurf ausgesetzt worden, dass es sich
bei ihr um einen starren, endgültigen Katalog von
Werten und Rechten handele, der die Lähmung
und Stillstellung des von mir beschriebenen Pro-
zesses zur Folge haben werde. Dem ist aber keines-
wegs so. Gelähmt würde der Prozess, wenn Europa
den einzigartigen Charakter verlöre, der die Voraus-
setzung für sein bisheriges Wachsen und Gedeihen
bildet – nämlich (wie das Papier es formuliert) die
Fähigkeit zu ständiger Entwicklung und Erneue-
rung. Bleibt diese Fähigkeit erhalten, so wird die
Charta selbst zur Quelle weiterer Entdeckungen
und Anerkennungen. Schwände sie, so würden wir
feststellen, dass wir unüberbrückbar verschieden
sind und dass es nur „Kulturen“ ohne gemeinsa-
men Nenner gibt. Die heikle Balance, die das Mot-
to „in Vielfalt geeint“ ausspricht, würde zerbre-
chen.
Diese heikle Balance ist es, die der ständig er-
neuerten Mischung unserer gemeinsamen Kultur
ihren gleichwohl unverwechselbaren Charakter
gibt. Und wir haben keinen Grund, den Prozess
der Erweiterung, selbst wenn er in späteren Stadien
die Türkei und die Balkanländer einschließt, als ei-
nen Enteignungsprozess zu fürchten, solange die
Giuliano Amato GASTBEITRAG
Mischung durch den wechselseitigen Austausch In issue 86 of the IWM
angereichert wird, der die Aufrechterhaltung der Post, members of the IWM
Balance garantiert: die neuen Mitglieder bringen Reflection Group on the
ihre Eigenarten in unsere Familie ein und unterlie- Spiritual and Cultural Di-
gen gleichzeitig dem Einfluss der gemeinsamen mension of Europe pre-
Familienwerte. sented central results of
Welche Rolle kann in diesem komplexen their work (“What holds
Prozess den Religionen zufallen? Tatsächlich spie- Europe together?“, fall
len sie unabhängig von jeder bewussten Anstren- 2004). Giuliano Amato’s
gung, sie ins Spiel zu bringen, je schon dadurch commentary on this paper
eine Rolle, dass sie – wie bereits festgestellt – unab- proposes a view which
dingbarer Bestandteil unserer Kulturen (man be- conceives the common
achte den Plural!) sind. Die eigentliche Frage ist, ob European culture not as
sie zu einer Stärkung der magischen Balance beitra- something given but as a
gen oder sie durch Zuspitzung unserer Verschie- constant challenge and a
denartigkeit stören können. Meine These hier wäre, never accomplished task.
dass den Religionen ein außerordentliches Potential
zur Stärkung der Balance innewohnt. Ob es sinn-
voll genutzt wird, liegt bei ihren jeweiligen Füh-
rungen und den Männern und Frauen guten Wil-
lens.
Den monotheistischen Religionen unserer
Weltregion ist ein grundlegendes Prinzip gemein-
sam: die Überzeugung, dass alle menschlichen We-
sen Kinder ein- und desselben Gottes sind. Dieses
eine Prinzip genügt (oder sollte zumindest genü-
gen), um zu verhindern, dass irgendein religiöser
Unterschied in Anspruch genommen wird, um 27
Identitätskonflikte zu begründen. Darüber hinaus
eignet den moralischen Prinzipien, in denen diese
Religionen ebenfalls übereinkommen – Achtung
vor dem Mitmenschen oder sogar Nächstenliebe,
Solidarität und ein unserem Leben ein-
beschriebener Sinn, der sich nicht auf die Befriedi-
gung egoistischer Bedürfnisse einschränken lässt –
eine doppelte Bedeutung. Erstens sind sie ihrer
Natur nach kein Spaltpilz, sondern ein Kitt. Zwei-
tens wirkt dieser spezifische Kitt als Gegenmittel
gegen die zerstörerischen Kräfte, die in unseren
(westlichen) Gesellschaften wirksam sind und zur
Folge haben, dass der Gemeinschaftssinn an moti-
vierender Kraft verliert, dass Reichtum und Kon-
sum immer mehr Wert beigemessen wird und dass
sich im Namen von Karrieren und Lebensaus-
sichten, die immer weniger von kollektiven Bin-
dungen und Handlungen abhängen, das Schicksal
des Einzelnen immer stärker von dem der Anderen
abkoppelt. Von daher wage ich zu be-
haupten, dass angesichts des Mangels an
alternativen Mitteln zur Eindämmung
dieser Tendenzen die Unterstützung
durch die Religionen gänzlich unentbehr-
lich ist.
Unnötig anzumerken, dass die er-
hofften segensreichen Wirkungen religiö-
ser Glaubensvorstellungen und Prinzipien
keine selbstverständlichen Gegebenheiten
sind, sondern dass sie ihrerseits nur die
© Audiovisual Library of No. 88 Spring 2005
the European Commission
 Giuliano Amato GASTBEITRAG

Frucht einer zu erfüllenden Aufgabe sein
können – einer Aufgabe, deren sich die
Religionen mit ihren interkonfessionellen
Dialogen bereits angenommen haben,
während das genaue Gegenteil von jenen
politischen Interessen verfolgt wird, wel-
che die Religion instrumentalisieren, um
ethnische Konflikte anzufachen. Für die
Zukunft der gemeinsamen europäischen
Kultur als einer Quelle für den Zusam-
menhalt des erweiterten und sich erwei-
ternden Europas hängt viel von diesen
gegensätzlichen Rollen der Religion ab.
Wenn Religionen dazu beitragen, be-
stimmte Kulturen nach außen hin abzu-
schließen, oder, schlimmer noch, für den
Beweis der Unverträglichkeit von Grup-
pen, Ländern oder Zivilisationen herange-
zogen werden, dann gerät das Grund-
gefüge Europas in Gefahr. Werden hinge-
gen die Prinzipien und Werte der Religio-
nen nach Maßgabe ihres innersten und
wahrhaftigsten Wesens entfaltet (und dies
Wesen schließt die Verschränkung mit
den Kulturen anderer Länder ein), so wird
jenes Gefüge dadurch enorm verstärkt
und zugleich unser Sinn für die magische
Balance zwischen Einheit und Vielfalt
vertieft.
Europa ist ein wundervolles Bau-
werk, aber auch eine nie zu vollendende
Aufgabe, eine Herausforderung, mit der
sich jede Generation erneut konfrontiert
sieht. Je mehr Europa wächst und sich er-
weitert, umso mehr hängt sein künftiger
Zusammenhalt von seinen Führungen
und von seinen Bürgern ab. Wenn unsere
gemeinsame Kultur die Quelle ist, aus der
die für unseren Zusammenhalt nötige
Kraft geschöpft werden muss, dann müs-
sen wir uns dessen bewusst sein, dass folg-
lich auch wir selbst diese Quelle speisen
und dass unsere Politiker dies anerkennen
müssen. Allen, denen Europa etwas be-
deutet, könnte man in Abwandlung der
Worte eines einst allseits verehrten ameri-
kanischen Präsidenten zurufen: „Frag
nicht, was Europa für dich tun kann, frag,
was du für Europa tun kannst!“
Aus dem Englischen von Ulrich Enderwitz
© Transit – Europäische Revue
Giuliano Amato, ehemaliger stellvertretender
Vorsitzender des Europäischen Konvents, ist
Mitglied des IWM-Kuratoriums; von 1992 bis
1993 und von 2000 bis 2001 war er italienischer
Premierminister.
Das Europa-Papier und weitere Kommentare
dazu sind deutsch in Transit – Europäische
Revue, Nr. 28 (Winter 2004/05) erschienen.
www.iwm.at/transit

28 70!
Cents! 50 cents

for! 10 cents

Culture! 5 cents
5 cents

“Europe is not only about markets, it is also about
values and culture. (…) If the economy is a neces-
sity for our lives, culture is really about what makes
our life worth living.”
José Manuel Barroso,
President of the European Commission
The European Union currently spends roughly 7 cents per
EU citizen and per year on its culture programme. The
European Cultural Foundation (ECF) and the European Fo-
rum for the Arts and Heritage (EFAH) have launched a
campaign to back the cultural vision set out by President
Barroso – a campaign to increase the annual budget by
tenfold, to 340 million.

Join the list of supporters

www.eurocult.org www.efah.org

No. 88 Spring 2005

GUEST CONTRIBUTION
The image of Central Eastern Europe in popular culture is the subject of an essay the Polish
journalist Wojciech Orlinski is currently writing. In his guest contribution, he details one of the many
aspects to be found in films, videogames, and books: the horrors from the East. He takes the reader
on an adventurous – and often comic – trip through “traditional” landscapes such as Count Dracula’s
Transylvania or as the imaginary country of Molvania, “a land untouched by modern dentistry.”
Stereotyping: The Horrors from the East
Visiting a bank in Vienna, I noticed a multi-lingual
message with lots of flags of the Central-Eastern
European states. Among them, there was a flag of
my own country, which was a nice welcoming sur-
prise. It was accompanied by a message in Polish
saying, “The safety vault is automatic and alarmed.
Our employees cannot open it on their own.” It was
a rather clear message about what sort of guests
from our region this bank is expecting.
Already in the 18th century, Eastern Europe
was imagined in the West as being inhabited by
savage people, wild beasts, and supernatural mon-
sters. There is for example Count Dracula, located
in Transylvania by the imagination of the Irish
writer Bram Stoker in 1897. But the horrors from
the East are also prominent in popular culture cre-
ated locally. Victor Bocan, the Czech designer of
the video game Operation Flashpoint, portraying
the Russian invasion of a small fictitious country
(called Republic of Nogova and strongly resem-
bling the Czech Republic), said in one interview:
“Obviously, Operation Flashpoint: Resistance is a
realistic game; so forget zombies, ghouls or giants,
although I have to admit that some Russian officers
are really evil.”
Metropolis Software, the Polish developers of
another computer game set in Poland – “Gorky 17”
– went a bit further in terms of the eastern horror.
The storyline is set in 2009, shortly after the admis-
sion of Poland to NATO and the EU (it is quite
ironic that when the game was being designed in
the late 1990s, both seemed to be matters of the
distant future; the game was actually released the
same year Poland joined the NATO). A special task
force of NATO troops is sent to investigate a secret
Russian military facility near the Polish city of
Lubin, known under the codename Gorky 17,
only to discover that Russian experiments on genet-
ics and mind control have bred monsters of various
kinds. “Gorky 17” was successful enough on the
international market to justify the release of two
sequels. From my point of view, it is interesting that
Polish and Czech game designers aiming for the
global market consciously (and maybe to some ex-
tent cynically) take advantage of the stereotypes of
the East to win international recognition.
One of the wittiest examples of the “fear of the
East” is the fake tourist guide Molvania. A Land
Untouched by Modern Dentistry, written by a trio of
Australian TV comedy producers. The guide looks
very much like a real tourist guide, with maps, pho-
tographs, and suggestions of where to eat or stay.
However, the fictitious Central-European state of
Molvania turns out to be a real house of horrors.
Most of the jokes included in this book revolve
around the same scheme: having described some-
thing that actually might be a genuine tourist at-
traction, the authors finally turn it into a grisly joke.
For example, when describing the beauty of the Die Darstellung von Mittel-
“Vzinghta Gorge,” the authors mention a “spec- und Osteuropa in der
tacular cable-car” that “sadly no longer operates,” Populärkultur ist Gegen-
but you can still admire a “memorial plaque dedi- stand eines Essays, an
cated to the service’s last 23 passengers.” dem der polnische Jour-
The authors’ immense imagination saves this nalist Wojciech Orlinski
scheme from becoming monotonous after a few
repetitions. But the story always remains the same:
derzeit arbeitet. In seinem
Gastbeitrag gibt er Ein- 29
in a nice restaurant, guests are reminded to tip their blick in einen der vielen
waiters generously as they carry concealed weapons. Aspekte, die sich in Filmen,
An interesting ski trail leads through a minefield. Videospielen und Bü-
The country capital is worth seeing via bicycle – chern finden lassen: die
and an English language brochure on this subject is Schrecken aus dem Osten.
readily available at the casualty ward of the local Er nimmt den Leser mit auf
hospital. eine abenteuerliche –
Partially, this usage of the “Eastern horror” und oft amüsante – Reise
comes from the fact that this book is actually a two- durch „traditionelle“
layered joke. It is not just a parody of Central East- Landschaften wie Graf
ern Europe, but also a parody of a certain style of Drakulas Transylvanian
tourist advisory, in which the hardships of travel are oder den imaginären Staat
presented as an attraction in themselves. Neverthe- Molwania, „Land des
less, it is very interesting that the authors of schadhaften Lächelns“.
“Molvania” have particularly chosen Central East- Wojciech Orlinski arbeitet
ern Europe as a background for this parody on how im Kulturressort der Polni-
to make your travel unnecessarily tough and dan- schen Tageszeitung
gerous. Tom Glaser, one of the trio of authors, ex- Gazeta Wyborcza und ist
plains it this way: “We trace the origins of derzeit Milena Jesenska
‘Molvania’ to a trip that the three of us made over a Fellow am IWM. Sein Inter-
decade ago to Portugal. It might just have been a esse gilt vor allem den
coincidence but every monument or tourist attrac- vielfältigen Ausprägun-
tion we visited seemed to be closed for repairs. At gen der Populärkultur.
one point, we started making up fake guidebook
descriptions. (…) When we eventually got around
to writing the book, we decided to place our fic-
tional country in Eastern Europe because we fig-
ured no one was too sure of the exact geographical
boundaries in that part of the world.”
It turns out that the real inspiration for
No. 88 Spring 2005
 Castelgandolfo-Gespräche
Herausgegeben von
Krzysztof Michalski
Verlag Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart
Von 1983 bis 1998 veranstaltete das Institut für die Wissenschaften vom
Menschen regelmäßig Treffen seines Wissenschaftlichen Beirats in der Som-
merresidenz des Papstes. Diese Kolloquien dienten der Förderung des Gedan-
kenaustausches zwischen den verschiedenen Disziplinen, Weltanschauungen
und politischen Überzeugungen: „Schritte ins Offene und Gemeinsame“,
wie Hans-Georg Gadamer im Geleitwort zum ersten Band der „Castelgan-
dolfo-Gespräche“ schrieb.
Am Ende des Millenniums
Zeit und Modernitäten
Band VIII
30 Mit Beiträgen von:
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Charles Taylor, Robert Spaemann,
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schild, Ralf Dahrendorf
Aufklärung heute
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Mit Beiträgen von:
Stanley Rosen, Paul Ricoeur, Charles
Taylor, Hans Maier, Hans-Ludwig
Schreiber, Józef Tischner, Jean Betke
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Katznelson, Robert Spaemann, Claus
Leggewie
Identität im Wandel
Band VI
Mit Beiträgen von:
Krzysztof Michalski, Charles Taylor, Paul
Ricoeur, Leszek Kolakowski, Robert
Spaemann, Ira Katznelson, Bernard
Lewis, Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde,
Richard Schröder, Maarten C. Brands,
Bronislaw Geremek
Klett-Cotta
No. 88 Spring 2005
Die liberale Gesellschaft
Band V
Mit Beiträgen von:
Ralf Dahrendorf, Charles Taylor, Ronald
Dworkin, Frans A. M. Alting von Geusau,
Gertrude Himmelfarb, Leszek Kolakowski,
Robert Spaemann, Roger Kardinal
Etchegaray, Bernard Lewis
Europa und die „Civil Society“
Band IV (vergriffen)
Mit Beiträgen von:
Edward Shils, Charles Taylor, Emmanuel
Le Roy Ladurie, Ernst-Wolfgang Böcken-
förde, Reinhart Koselleck, Owen
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Mit Beiträgen von:
Franz Kardinal König, Carl-Friedrich von
Weizsäcker, Reinhart Koselleck, Krzysztof
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Mit Beiträgen von:
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gang Böckenförde, Robert Spaemann,
Charles Taylor, Emmanuel Lévinas
Wojciech Orlinski GUEST CONTRIBUTION
Molvania was actually Portugal – a country located
as far to the west of Europe as geographically pos-
sible. In fact, experienced travelers can see that
many of the book’s photographs were actually
taken in southern Italy or on the Iberian Peninsula.
But the Australian authors are right to talk about
geographical ambiguity “in that part of the world”.
One can safely assume that no other part is so
densely inhabited by purely imagined nations.
Apart from the fictitious states already men-
tioned in this paper there are also Slaka, invented by
British writer Malcolm Bradbury; Orsinia, created
by the American science fiction writer Ursula Le
Guin; and Vulgaria, where the British writers Ian
Fleming and Roald Dahl located some parts of their
book for children, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”
Video game designers also seem to enjoy locating
their fictitious states on this part of the globe – apart
from the games that we have mentioned already,
there is for example “Republic: The Revolution”,
designed by Elixir; a game that simulates leading
the democratic opposition in the “post-soviet Re-
public of Novistrana”; or Volgia as the setting of a
dark political thriller videogame, “In Cold Blood”
by Revolution Software.
Comic book fans will certainly know the Cen-
tral European states of Syldavia and Borduria as the
settings of popular albums from the Tintin series by
the Belgian author Herge. And one should not for-
get Krakozhia, home of Victor Navarski, the main
protagonist of a recent movie by Steven Spielberg,
“The Terminal.” And last but not least the kingdom
of Ruritania, first mentioned by Anthony Hope in
his novel The Prisoner of Zenda, but then used by
various authors whenever they needed an imagi-
nary country for their narrative (including econo-
mists from the Austrian School).
These imaginary states are usually created by
people of the West and most often, while they are
ostensibly located somewhere to the East, they are
actually used by the West to depict the West in
disguise – just as Molvania is really Portugal. The
same happens with countries that do exist in reality.
One of the best examples is Bram Stoker’s
Transylvania. Needless to say, Stoker never has been
to Transylvania nor had he any particular interest in
that region. As we know today, he originally consid-
ered the Austrian province of Styria to be the birth-
place of his famous blood-thirsty count, whose
name was supposed to be simply “Count
Wampyr”. However, he accidentally found a men-
tion of “Voivod Dracula”, with the explanation that
Dracula means “devil” in the local language of the
“Wallachians” – thus Count Wampyr changed his
name and moved with his coffin about a thousand
kilometers to the East.
While Vlad Dracula was indeed a historical
medieval ruler, he has no visible connection with

Bram Stoker’s Dracula, just as Bram
Stoker’s Transylvania has little to do with
the real region, now a part of modern Ro-
mania. In Stoker’s novel, the young solici-
tor Jonathan Haker travels east to
Transylvania hoping to strike a good deal
on real estate with the mysterious Count.
As a result, he finds himself imprisoned
and haunted by female vampires. He
bravely manages to escape their charms,
but Count Dracula arrives in England.
Lots of horror and carnage on English soil
follow, but it all ends well when Jonathan,
acting under firm guidance of good old
professor Van Helsing, manages to chase
Dracula back into his castle and finally kill
him for good.
Sexual innuendo throughout the
book makes it obvious, that the story is not
about Eastern Europe, but about subcon-
scious fears and desires of Victorian soci-
ety. Thus, the stereotypical portrayal of
the Eastern horror is not about Eastern
Europe, it is about the West looking for
skeletons in its own closet. This is even
more obvious in the case of the book’s un-
official movie adaptation, “Nosferatu,”
shot by F.W. Murnau in 1922. As it was
aptly demonstrated by Siegfried Kracauer
in his book From Caligari To Hitler, Ger-
man expressionist horror movies were por-
traying the fears of the German middle-
class in the Weimar Republic, fears that
culminated in putting blind trust in
Hitler as a sort of alleged Van Helsing who
promised to chase the dreadful eastern
monsters back to their homelands. It is
even striking to what extent the visual lan-
guage used to create horror in Murnau’s
“Nosferatu” resembles the language of
Nazi propaganda.
Stoker’s “Dracula” and Murnau’s
“Nosferatu” present the stereotype of the
Eastern horror in its purest form. It can be
described as: 1. A young and naive West-
erner invites someone from the East or ac-
cepts an invitation and travel eastwards (or
both); 2. Something terrible happens due
to this mistake and he suffers greatly; 3.
Other Westerners also suffer or their lives
are in jeopardy; 4. Luckily, under the
guidance of an experienced and wise rep-
resentative of the Western civilization, the
young and naive Westerner is able to re-
pair all the damages he has caused.
During the Cold War, this scheme
was often repeated in James Bond spy
thrillers, where agent 007 was playing the
role of the experienced and wise represen-
tative of the Western civilization, whereas
democratic Western governments were
cast for the “young and naive” role, as they
foolishly allowed refugees from the East –
such as Max Zorin or Auric Goldfinger –
to settle in the West and run their profit-
able businesses, while it’s all too obvious
that these businesses are nothing but a
cover for their real activity in Soviet intelli-
gence. Finally, some kind of Van Helsing
must arrive and save the day – Western
civilization prevails in the end.
This scheme makes it easy to under-
stand why the authors of the guide to
“Molvania” have chosen this particular re-
gion. If you want to make a macabre joke
about a young and naive Western tourist
who went somewhere to see great vistas
and subsequently died in a cable-car acci-
dent, it’s natural – and stereotypical – to
make him travel to Eastern Europe. In re-
ality it could also happen in – say – Italy,
but it wouldn’t be as funny, as there
would be no appeal to the stereotypes we
all have in mind.
By saying “we”, I mean also those
who live in Central-Eastern Europe. We
get the joke and we laugh at it, because –
to quote Mayakovsky – we think it’s “not
about us, it’s about our neighbors.” Poles
will think that Molvania is actually
Belarus, Czechs will locate it perhaps in
Slovakia, Hungarians most probably will
say it’s very much like Romania. We all
know the “fear of the East” as it is some-
thing deeply rooted in our own popular
culture. And in fact, it is something sig-
nificantly older than popular culture it-
self; its origins can be traced to the ancient
times and the period of the barbaric inva-
sions from the East.
This stereotype unfortunately has
visible political implications for the con-
temporary European Union. After all, the
idea of enlarging the boundaries of the
Union is all too similar to the first part of
the “eastern horror” stereotype, when the
naive Westerner invites someone from the
East. Economists and politicians say that it
was a rational thing to do – but the sub-
conscious fear of those raised on spy thrill-
ers and vampire tales also takes its toll.
To quote The London Times from
March 24, 2005: “France heaved a sigh of
relief yesterday after it emerged from the
European Union summit in Brussels that
President Chirac had won his battle
Wojciech Orlinski GUEST CONTRIBUTION
against the monster that has been terroriz-
ing his country. The creature’s name is
Bolkestein’s directive (…) Frits Bolkestein,
a Dutch member of the last Commission,
merely sought to implement a 45-year-old
commitment to open European frontiers
for the service industries that now account
for 70 per cent of its economy (…) Left-
wing opponents have succeeded in de-
monizing the directive as the harbinger of
the hell of ‘social dumping’. In the popu-
lar view, this means invasion by cut-price
Polish plumbers, Estonian electricians and
Slovenian surgeons, who will push French
professionals out of business.”
Anyone who ever tried to find a good
plumber in Warsaw must at least giggle
trying to imagine something like a horde
of Polish plumbers invading France, espe-
cially when you consider that all of them
would have to speak French fluently
enough to apply for a job in this language,
while in fact finding one that would speak
proper Polish might be difficult enough.
The fear of francophone Polish plumbers
is no more rational than fearing Nosferatu
or James Bond villains. However, it is not
just the French who are haunted by these 31
nightmares after 2004 – nightmares of
monsters likely to come from the East.
Since in reality we cannot hope to be saved
by Professor Van Helsing or Commander
Bond, the least we can do is to inform
these monsters in their native language
that the safety vault is automatic and
alarmed.
Wojciech Orlinski is a journalist working at the
cultural desk of the Polish daily Gazeta
Wyborcza and currently Milena Jesenska
Fellow at the IWM. He specializes in the many
aspects of popular culture.
No. 88 Spring 2005
 IWM EVENTS

Upcoming Events
The following events will take place at the
IWM at 6 p.m.
Die folgenden Veranstaltungen finden um
18:00 Uhr in der Bibliothek des IWM statt.

24. Mai 21. Juni Impressum

Reihe: Über Morgen On Modern History of Central and Eastern Europe Responsible for the
Lucian Hölscher Norman Naimark contens of the IWM Post:
Professor für Neuere Geschichte an der Ruhr- Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East Euro-
Universität Bochum pean Studies at Stanford University and currently Institut für
Hat die „Zukunft“ eine Zukunft? Körber Visiting Fellow at the IWM die Wissenschaften
Kommentator: Stalin and Europe: Soviet Foreign Policy and vom Menschen
Karl Öllinger European Politics, 1945-1953
Abgeordneter zum Nationalrat, Sozialsprecher und Spittelauer Lände 3
stellvertretender Bundessprecher der Grünen 1090 Wien
In Zusammenarbeit mit Tischner Debates AUSTRIA
der Grünen Bildungswerkstatt
The IWM and Ph. (+43 1) 313 58-0
31. Mai Warsaw University F. (+43 1) 313 58-30
Christa Bürger have jointly
bis 1998 als Professorin am Institut für Deutsche launched a new iwm@iwm.at
Sprache und Literatur der Universität Frankfurt/M. series in remem- www.iwm.at
tätig brance of the
Peter Bürger Polish priest and Editor
bis 1998 Professor für Literaturwissenschaft und philosopher Jozef
32 Ästhetische Theorie an der Universität Bremen Tischner, former
Sabine Aßmann

Adorno – Adorno President of the IWM. Editorial Assistance

In Zusammenarbeit mit dem Renner Institut Romana Lanzerstorfer,
Anna Verner
2. Juni, Achtung! Donnerstag The Public Role of Religion
Reihe: Über Morgen May 20, 2005, Warsaw University Production Manager,
Susan Buck-Morss Layout
Professor of Political Philosophy and Social Theory at Introduction: Charles Taylor Iris Strohschein
Cornell University, Ithaka Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern University, Chi-
Visual Experience and Global Imagination cago; Chair of the IWM Academic Advisory Board Photos
Kommentatorin: Renate Apostel,
Marie Ringler Participants: Audiovisual Library of
Gemeinderätin und Kultursprecherin der Wiener the European Commis-
Grünen Adam Boniecki sion, IHS Boston
In Zusammenarbeit mit Editor-in-chief, Tygodnik Powszechny University, IWM,
der Grünen Bildungswerkstatt Jaroslaw Kaczynski Bruno Klomfar
Chairman of the “Law and Justice” party
7. Juni Marcin Krol Design
On Modern History of Central and Eastern Europe Professor of the History of Ideas; member of the IWM Gerri Zotter
János Mátyás Kovács Academic Advisory Board
Professor of Economics and IWM Permanent Fellow Tadeusz Mazowiecki The IWM Post is
“Little America” On the Role of Eastern European A Leader of the “Democratic Party”; former Prime published four times a
Economic Cultures in the EU Minister of Poland year. Current circulation:
6200. Printed by Rema
14. Juni Print.
Frits Bolkestein
Former member of the European Commission and cur- © IWM 2005
rently IWM Visiting Fellow
Fin de siècle of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

NO. 88 Spring 2005