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‘Great friends’: Creating legacies, networks and policies that perpetuate the memory of the Fathers of Europe

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Abstract

This article highlights the uses of friendship by associations that perpetuate the memory of the Fathers of Europe. It demonstrates that the invention of the tradition of the ‘Fathers of Europe’ is not the monopoly of European institutions. It was made possible by the mobilization of associations of heirs that have perpetuated these Fathers’ memory since the 1960s. From a social history perspective, the article analyzes some case studies that show how associations of friends devoted to the Fathers of Europe have been created, and what kind of activities they have led throughout time. International friendship emerges as a set of reconstructed memories through the practices of the transnational spheres, by transforming a dead friend into an exemplary friend in order to legitimize a certain vision of the European past.

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Notes

  1. Toepfer has been a controversial figure due to his role and that of his foundation, The Alfred Toepfer Stiftung FVS, during the Nazi era. The awards given to prestigious European personalities are a way for Toepfer to improve his reputation.

  2. See oral archives Foundation Jean Monnet, Lausanne, interview by Leonard Tennyson, July 23, 1982.

  3. See the minutes of the General meeting, November 8, 1985, Historical Archives of the European Union, Florence (HAEU), private fund Emanuele Gazzo 243.

  4. Interview with one of the heads of the Foundation in November 15, 2005.

  5. Strauss was president of the Business Committee for the Arts founded by American businessmen under the initiative of David Rockefeller.

  6. See the minutes of the meeting of the executive of the Association, January 21, 1987, HAEU, private fund Pierre Uri 176.

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  1. Centre Maurice Halbwachs, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 48, Boulevard Jourdan, Paris, 75014, France

    Cornelia Constantin

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Constantin, C. ‘Great friends’: Creating legacies, networks and policies that perpetuate the memory of the Fathers of Europe. Int Polit 48, 112–128 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2010.33

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