About the book

A European patriot, Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, son of an Austro-Hungarian diplomat and his Japanese geisha, thought and acted in terms of continents, not countries. He blazed a trail for European integration.

In the turbulent period following the First World War the charismatic young Count founded the Pan-European Union, offering a vision of peaceful, democratic unity for Europe, with no borders, a common currency, and a single passport. His political congresses in Vienna, Berlin, and Basel attracted thousands from Europe’s intelligentsia and the cultural elite, including Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, and Sigmund Freud. The Count infuriated Adolf Hitler. In Mein Kampf he referred to him as a ‘cosmopolitan bastard’.

Communists and nationalists, xenophobes and populists all hated the Count and his political mission. When the Nazis annexed Austria, the Count and his wife, the famous Jewish actress Ida Roland, narrowly escaped the Gestapo. He fled to the United States, where he helped shape American policy for postwar Europe. Coudenhove-Kalergi's profile served as the basis for the fictional resistance hero Victor Laszlo in the film Casablanca.

Timely and captivating, Martyn Bond's biography offers an opportunity to explore a remarkable life and revisit the impetus and origins of a unified Europe. And relates to contemporary debate on the future of the Continent.

Author

Martyn Bond has enjoyed three careers, as an academic, BBC Berlin correspondent and a European civil ; He now advises the University of Surrey’s Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence while writing on Britain and Europe.