The Politics of the<i>Abendland</i>: Christian Democracy and the Idea of Europe after the Second World War
Rosario Forlenza
This article traces the deep cultural and experiential foundations that animated Christian Democratic Europeanism between mid-1940s birth of European Economic Community in late 1950s. It shows how language Europeanness, generated a period multiple intense crisis, congealed around symbolisms Christianity spirituality. More specifically, it connects post-Second World War vision Europe to 1920s German-Catholic articulation Abendland (the West), understood as supranational symbolic space alternative Soviet Union United States imbued with anti-materialist, anti-socialist anti-liberal principles. The argument here is that, mutated form context Cold War, this view sustained political reconstruction Western after horrors Second ‘European’ thought Democracy commitment project integration.
Contemporary European History