Archivi tag: euregio magazine

Border identities

In the Basque area on the borders between France and Spain: an anthropological fresco of the socio-cultural changes post-Schengen and the stiff resistance to communication brought about by cultural and linguistic barriers

Bidasoa
Bidasoa

“We no longer have the frontier blocking us. Now we can move around as freely as we want. But still, I don’t feel we have stronger relations with people on the other side.” Woman of Spanish nationality shopping on the French side.
“The frontier was once an obstacle; this is no longer the case. But now this is another challenge”. Man of Spanish nationality, ex-customs officer and now employee of a gas station on the Spanish side.
“I feel we used to have much more in common with people on the other side. Young people for instance used to hang out with each other, go to the fiestas across the border, however difficult it was. But now… It’s more each to one’s own.” Man of French nationality, mayor of the French Basque village of Arnéguy, and employee in a butcher’s shop on the Spanish side.
“Even though we all live in the Basque Country, there is a lot that separates us from our neighbours in Spain. We have different tastes and ambitions. I feel this gap has got larger.” Woman of French nationality, farmer in a neighbourhood of Arnéguy which, according to an old tradition, shares its parish with Valcarlos, the neighbouring village on the Spanish side.
These quotations come from conversations held in January 2007 with four inhabitants of the border between France and Spain in the Basque Country. These four inhabitants have lived a significant part of their life in the area, and all of them have in some way been affected by the opening up of the frontier.
As a result of the removal of border controls within the EU due to the Schengen agreement, many communities located in border zones have had to reassess their relationship with their neighbours across state frontiers. The Franco-Spanish border in the Basque Country is one of these cases, where numerous cross-frontier initiatives have been launched over the last decade. An increasing number of inhabitants now cross the frontier on a regular basis. In parallel, numerous economic changes have taken place, of which the steady urbanisation of the border is a consequence. All this means that traditional identities are altered with new emerging symbolic references.
We now ask ourselves whether we can find a corresponding opening up of local mentalities. The comments made by our four inhabitants indicate the contrary. While all of them are familiar with Basque, the language spoken on either side of the frontier, and with Spanish or French, the language spoken across the frontier, and most of them have family and friends on both sides of the border, they do not confirm a further rapprochement with each other. The opening of the frontier in effect only means the dismantling of border controls. Free mobility across the frontier, and EU-funded projects designed to foster cross-frontier cooperation have, so far, had limited influence on encouraging further mutual identification between border inhabitants who place increasing emphasis on their own identity The frontier remains an undeniable presence in ways of thinking and behaving.
Since 1999, the municipalities of Hendaye, Irun and neighbouring Hondarribia have joined forces to create the Bidasoa-Txingudi consorcio, named after the river and bay around which they are located and which here serves as the demarcation line between France and Spain. This consorcio enables the three municipalities to work together on social, cultural and economic projects to reflect the new realities of life of border inhabitants. Many of these projects have so far been mainly of a symbolic sort, organizing cultural fairs, sports competitions, and publishing a new map featuring all three towns together. Even the name Bidasoa-Txingudi is now a commonly used term.

Nive Arneguy Valcarlos
Nive Arneguy Valcarlos

Further along the frontier to the east, in the mountainous region of the Basque country, the villages of Arnéguy and Valcarlos have more of a history of cooperation. Located only a hundred metres from each other and separated by a small river tucked in a narrow valley, farmers of the two villages have a centuries old tradition of sharing pastures for their animal herds. Valcarlos also traditionally shares its church with a neighbourhood of Arnéguy. Today, joint ventures are scarce, and no cooperation has been formalised. Currently, they are troubled by a project principally advocated by the region of Navarre, in which Valcarlos is located, to construct a motorway that would run through the valley. While most of the inhabitants of Arnéguy are against this, those of Valcarlos tend to favour it, disregarding its negative environmental impact, seeing in it an opportunity for easier access to Pamplona, the capital city of their region. Arnéguy, on the other hand, which continues to see its administrative relations in the French Basque Country looks the other way, and thus does not see the advantages of such a motorway. We see then that despite sharing a common space, inhabitants of either side use and perceive it quite differently.
In Bidasoa-Txingudi, meanwhile, while we notice the increased flourishing of businesses designed to attract the customer from across the frontier, it is not clear whether relations go any further than this. A television director in Irun for instance remains disillusioned; after his failed attempt to set up cross-frontier broadcasting with a partnership in Hendaye, he concluded, ‘cross-frontier cooperation just doesn’t exist really’. In local schools, cross-frontier exchanges are encouraged by the consorcio, but remain limited. This is due not only to institutional complexities but also because many parents remain unconvinced about the importance of further links with the language and culture of their neighbours.
It is revealing to note that on the border in the Basque Country, the occasions when a strong feeling of togetherness could be sensed was in moments of contestation. For instance, the Spanish governmental project to increase the size of the airport of Hondarribia was hotly opposed by a majority of the local population. We witnessed the inhabitants of the three towns demonstrating together, collaborating around this common cause, irrespective of their cultural and national differences. Another ‘other’ had emerged in the form of the threat of an airport enlargement.
In the period since 1993 many people have lost jobs that were directly linked to the existence of the frontier, such as customs officers, employees in state administrations and businesses that catered to frontier traffic. Most of the border controls have been pulled down, and the main roads linking either side of the frontier have been widened, adorned with new road signs indicating the name of the town and the European flag replacing any mention of state territory.
Today, new job opportunities are to be found in the services, tourist and property industry; new economies that have emerged but still in relation to the frontier. While border controls have disappeared, the frontier remains the demarcation of state control, and so with free trade and mobility new opportunities emerge. Many thought for instance that the ventas, so-called shops located by the demarcation line offering passers-by the last opportunity to buy national products, would disappear. Rather, ventas have become a great success, converted from modest shops into big commercial centres to which tourists flock, attracted by this last vestige of the frontier. Many local inhabitants now find employment in this highly lucrative business.
In Irun, the main town on the Spanish side, a large edifice has also been constructed over what until only recently was the train freight park where merchandise was inspected before crossing the frontier. This edifice is now an exhibition centre designed to host international commercial events. Another great change is in housing. In France, the relatively lower housing prices have encouraged the rapid construction of apartments which have for the most part been bought by people on the Spanish side. This has had the consequence of changing the demographics of the town of Hendaye, just a kilometre from Irun: Hendaye is now inhabited by a population of which just over 35% are of Spanish nationality (compared to 20% en 1999). Recently, another housing construction, managed by a Spanish business which only advertised its sales in Spain, provoked protest amongst Hendayans. They feel they are being overwhelmed by these new residents who still essentially live their social and cultural life on the Spanish side, where they also continue to have their jobs.
While border controls have disappeared, the beginning and end of a state territory remains visible in advertising panels, architecture and organisation of space. Modes of behaviour are different, as is even the way people perceive themselves as Basque. Although globalisation increasingly brings people to share more symbolic references and face similar concerns, their experiences remain translated by the particular institutional, political and cultural context in which they live. So the frontier remains in the mind. Identity exists in relation to an ‘other’. In order to have a notion of self, it is necessary to identify something that is different from oneself. Today with globalisation we find ourselves increasingly in a world where people have various origins and life experiences, and speak more than one language, and therefore have more complex identities. However, with the human tendency to want to order things, the clear categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’ remain tempting.

River Peio
River Peio

Globalisation is the new context in which cooperation and openness are a challenge. It is also paradoxical that it is the offer of financial support, for instance from the European Union, which spurs local actors to co-operate. For example, it is only since early 2007 that other border towns in the Basque Country have finally launched into cross-frontier collaboration. The president of the syndicate of the valley of Baigorri, next to Arnéguy and Valcarlos, declared then that, “we have the tools for cooperation, we now have to learn how to use them”, and recognised that “we will lose these funds if we do not organise ourselves in order to take advantage of them.” In this case, collaboration does not seem to come as spontaneously as it does in situations of contestation and urgency.
Today, cross-frontier cooperation projects are increasingly tackling the urgent problem of the environment and social needs. Such a more inclusive and long-term cooperation is positive. But for any real entente to take place it is necessary for inhabitants not only to learn to solve problems together but to get to know each other. It is noteworthy that all the informants for this article were aged over forty, and spoke at least two languages well. Amongst the younger generation this local multi-lingual fluency is rarer. With this reduced means of communication, the risk of alienation vis-à-vis one’s neighbour increases. It remains therefore to be seen how the younger generation of border inhabitants with their different linguistic capacities will construct their identity in this new context of so-called openness. x

Author of this story: Zoe Bray

Zoe Bray
Zoe Bray

Zoe BRAY is a social anthropologist currently specialized in the Basque Country and issues of nationalism and European integration. She has conducted research on identity politics in minority communities in European borders in affiliation with the European University Institute, Florence. Zoe is also a professional painter and illustrator. www.zoebray.net

Writer, translator and publicist with a degree in Pharmacy, he was a manager in the pharmaceuticals industry in Germany and Italy. Julius Franzot is bilingual (German and Italian) and was born in Triest, from where he works in support of Mitteleuropa through culture and politics.

Returning home ‘grown up’

Rok Uršič, leading researcher and successful businessman explains his philosophy: “consistent support for worldwide initiatives.” And admits “I partly contribute to lower European efficiency by saying that I’m proud that something was done in Slovenia”

Rok Uršič
Rok Uršič

Rok Uršič, Bachelor of Engineering Technology, is the 45-year-old founder, owner and CEO of the company Instrumentation Technologies that develops and designs specific technological solutions for particle accelerators, with its clients located on all continents with the exception of Africa. The company, which has shown record economic growth, employs 30 people and is located in the industrial zone of Solkan, a town adjacent to Nova Gorica, Slovenia.

Q What part does your company play in the global picture?
A  The company has been present in the global market since its very establishment 10 years ago in a small room in Solkan. It developed from my vision that Solkan, a Slovene town bordering Italy, should become home to a company whose products and services would make it a world player. As soon as I graduated, I was attracted by the idea of being part of something transcending Slovene borders. This belief grew stronger when I started working in Triest and later in the USA and Switzerland. My goal has always been to work in fields that have a global dimension. Globality is the essential element of our company, the foundation stone upon which our values, culture and, last but not least, the image of the firm are based.
Q You’ve described the beginnings of your company in terms of geography. Does the fact that you are located in Central Europe, in Slovenia, in a border region bear any special significance?
A  Not directly. Perhaps it has to do with the Slovene habit of always repeating that we are small and cannot go big. But greatness is a matter of heart. I know from experience that we have all it takes to write an important story here.
Q As a global player, how do you differ in terms of organisation, recruitment policy, and ongoing education?
A  What really counts is the fact that the majority of the employees are proud to work here. And another important fact: when it comes to technological development, Slovenia still lags behind other countries, and lower flexibility of the support environment can sometimes work to our disadvantage. But the other side of the coin is that we are highly differentiated in such an environment and, as a result, a magnet for new staff. We offer an ideal working climate to people who are dynamic and willing to accept new challenges and a certain amount of risk.
Q How far is Europe, in your opinion, from achieving its famous Lisbon goal of becoming the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based society in the world?
A  I believe there’s nothing wrong with the goal itself, we just have problems realising it. Americans, for example, are much more agile decision-takers than Europeans. Perhaps that is due to the fact that they already are the United States, while we still have to become united. Being more agile, they make mistakes, but they also correct them more rapidly. European and national structures should pay more attention to ‘bottom-up’ initiatives. Just by establishing the infrastructure that will facilitate co-operation between research and development, and industry, they will not make that happen. Besides, they should also support those breakthrough initiatives that boast global potential. Europe should adopt both approaches simultaneously. It should also develop a system of supporting those initiatives that cannot conveniently be pigeonholed at present. If someone had said ten years ago: “What the hell are you going to do with high tech in Solkan?” our story would have never begun. When the Slovene Prime Minister Janez Janša paid us a visit, we presented him a far-reaching initiative that doesn’t only concern our company. His positive response and his immediate support for the project proved a positive experience for me.
Q Europe is characterized not only by strong national interests, but also by strong national nonsensical claims. Do the fields of knowledge and technology reach beyond the national or even continental?
A  I have never separated knowledge from the emotional element that is always present in people, and part of this emotional element is national affiliation. I have to admit that I partly contribute to lower European efficiency by saying that I’m proud that something was done in Slovenia. The feeling, “Yes, this was done in Europe” comes only later. I’d say it’s the other way round in the USA. On the one hand, such attitude towards nationality, which will not die out that soon, makes Europe slower, but on the other it has many advantages. x

From the mouths of babes

“My daughter will learn Czech, right from the start, because we live a few metres from the border, because it is natural and logical, because to grow up bilingual represents a richness”. The experience of a life on the border between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic: adopting bilingualism as an education policy and an antidote to prejudice and non-communication

To reach Ostriz from the north, a few hundred metres from both Poland and the Czech Republic, you pass through Kunnerwitz, Hagenwerded, Schönau-Berzdorf an der Eigen and other anonymous and apparently uninhabited villages, where the pretty houses in a rural German style, are mixed with a touch of more functional Socialist post-war aesthetics.

Neisse-Nisa-Nysa
Neisse-Nisa-Nysa

Here you find huge council housing ‘barracks’ in the open countryside. But not only that. You can come upon a disused nuclear power plant flanked by the ordered blades of a wind farm – a sign of changing times.

Further on, miles from anywhere, stands an inert monster as high as a ten-storey house, an industrial digger – that seems to belong in Fritz Lang’s film ‘Metropolis’ – that, during the happy days of the DDR, excavated coal from underground. Or perhaps encounter an old Volkswagen van passing slowly through the village. Equipped with loudspeakers, to a melancholy musical accompaniment, blares out propaganda for the German National Party (NPD) – none other than the neo-Nazi party.

This corner of Germany is surreal for one who has not grown up here. It is a poor corner, one of the poorest of the poor former East Germany, a victim of the end of the coal era, like other regions in Europe such as the regions of Charleroi and Mons-Borinage in Belgium. As sometimes happens, the decay in the economic and socio-cultural fabric, along with its proximity to the border have encouraged the development of nationalistic, often extremist and sometimes racist sentiments. With 40% unemployment and two borders, the party of extreme right, the German heir to the concentration camps, this is not a hard area to make converts. “Germany for the Germans!” caws the old-timer in the van to the apparently empty houses and Soviet-style blocks.

Landscapes change and borders do too, but the situation which one meets puts forward themes that are already familiar. Borders and national identity, a history of national and regional conflicts, World War II and cultural stereotypes; a history of misunderstandings and an ignorance of one another, together with a history of barriers such as language, the main agent in the construction and maintenance of identity, diversity and prejudice.

I went to speak about this with Dr. Gellrich, in the heart of Ostriz, in a graceful Samaritan nunnery, less than ten metres from the river that separates Germany and Poland. Her name is Regina and she grew up, studied and worked in this border region of eastern Saxony behind the Iron Curtain, when in school she learned Russian and only Russian. She was not taught Czech or Polish. Regina tells me she loves the Czech Republic. “Why?” I ask. Her answer is simple and spontaneous: “Because I went there on holiday with my parents there – it being the only one, or one of the few states where you could go abroad without a third degree grilling by an officer of STASI!” This insight comes from personal experience, it’s direct.

We are back in the ‘80s and Regina attends the school in Zittau, her town. In interactions with the Czechoslovakian neighbours, even just going to buy meat or get petrol, Regina feels uncomfortable, unable to speak a word of Czech. Yet everyone on the other side speaks German, at least a little, for business you understand. But that’s not the point, she says. Language is not just communication: “a kilo of meat, a tankful of petrol.” Language mediates and reflects stereotypes and prejudices that underlie an asymmetrical relationship: “It’s you (either Polish or Czechoslovakian) the poor neighbours (or worse)”, “you that you must learn German.” Hence the decision to attend an evening course in the Czech language learning with difficulty, but enough to allow, even knowing only a little, to “open a new world: people have begun to interact with me in a different way, to open doors, to be more friendly”, she says. One discovers the value of language as an instrument for interaction and cooperation.

Shortly before the fall of the Wall in 1988, Regina gave birth to Susanna and thinks: “my daughter will learn

Nuclear Plant
Nuclear Plant

Czech, right from the start, because we live a few metres from the border, because it is natural and logical, because to grow up bilingual represents a richness”. It introduces a second important element: diversity and bilingualism as richness. At this time Czech is not taught in the schools or kindergartens, and it is a problem to learn it. But the solution can be found nearby, a few kilometres away. This is Regina’s idea, to put Susanna in a Czechoslovakian kindergarten. She makes contacts, takes on the bureaucracy, clashes with the prejudices of those who blurt out a shocked “But WHY?” or those who tell her “you don’t want to send your little one to THEM, do you?”. Even the teachers are against it.
But obviously the twenty years of holidays that have gone before are stronger than the nay-sayers. Susanna ends up attending the nursery school across the borders at Hradek nad Nisou in Czechoslovakia where all three borders meet and close to her home in Zittau in Germany. The experience proves positive, and the little girl adapts quickly and is happy at the nursery. Thus was born the idea of a formal cooperation between the border regions, so that other children can repeat Susanna’s experience.

At that time Regina has just finished a doctorate in mathematics with a thesis on ‘Mathematical models of fluids dynamics’ at Kennewitz and returns to Zittau, where they had promised her a permanent position. The Berlin Wall falls, however and Germany reunites, and many things change. Amongst the changes is the structure of the University of Zittau: there is now no place for Dr. Gellrich. Regina finds herself with a temporary job and her child at a nursery school that they want to close. She successfully leads the Parents’ Association in the fight to keep it open. Enriched with this experience, she manages to get a job as administrator in a German non-governmental organisation called Children Care, which among its many projects, promotes cross-border cooperation. She is the contact with the authorities. Her daughter at that time is already attending the nursery across the border and Regina then decides to proceed with a model of cooperation based on her personal experience.

She moves from Children Care to Pontes, an agency that works to develop cross-border cooperation between the Czech Republic, Saxony and Poland in the field of education. It is interesting to note that the association – and the ideas – have arisen in a spontaneous, bottom-up fashion from the needs of individuals or small groups of individuals, a model that has subsequently found support and form in institutions and the Euroregion Neisse-Nisa-Nysa.

Regina’s idea is to develop a transnational network of education in the triangle between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, starting from a model based on her own experience. It was decided to start with the kindergartens. “On the one hand we want to offer people the opportunity to enroll their children in kindergartens across the border and on the other to ensure that in the German kindergartens in the region there are two teachers present, one a German native speaker, the other speaking Czech (or Polish)” she says. They are also producing books and games for bilingual kindergartens, helping to organise meetings and language courses for parents, children’s parties, holidays, and various other activities, where parents can get to meet ‘the other half’. The project has developed so rapidly that Regina’s second daughter, Juliane born in 1994, has been able to take advantage of new educational system.

Susanna is growing and about to start primary school, but there are no schools that can offer bilingual education. Thus was born then the idea of creating a more structured cooperation, not only limited to kindergartens but that would cover a child’s entire education. They therefore organise schools where Czech and German (or Polish and German) children can attend together, and where the teaching and the lessons take place in both languages and the educational programmes are developed through mutual agreement. Some schools are equipped with dormitories, where the children stay during the week, returning home to their families at the weekend. Juliane now attends one of these schools and I wanted to talk to her and to hear about her experience. Juliane is now a young girl and is full of enthusiasm for her magnificent school, her magnificent classmates, the magnificent Czech Republic and the wonderful language she is learning. Speaking with her you begin to realise that she is not simply learning a language other than her own, but is growing up in a multicultural environment, where she is learning to confront the differences. “Some of my friends who do not attend the ‘mixed’ school think that the Czechs are dangerous, bad, and a bunch of thieves; and the Czechs think that the Germans are closed and unable to come into contact with them. I don’t like prejudice and I know that it’s not like that.” Juliane is now almost perfectly bilingual and it seems quite natural to her to live or work in the Czech Republic, if life should ever offer her the chance. This is not just some little thing in a region where unemployment is among the highest in Germany and she and her schoolmates will enjoy better job opportunities as a result of their training, born of this long-lasting transnational cooperation of which Regina is one of the architects.

This highlights the last aspect of cooperation in the field of language and education, the socio-economic one. I ask Regina what she would like to achieve in the future, and of her dreams. “That this cultural cooperation project can sweep away cultural stereotypes that still imprison much of the population divided by the three borders”. For example there is a very interesting project involving the Universities of Zittau, Liberec and Wrozlaw. It seeks to allow young Germans in the region to choose to live and work in the Czech Republic – “So close and so similar in spirit to the former East Germany”, rather than in faraway – and foreign – West Germany. Dreams of an administrator of the NGO Pontes, but also those of a mother who lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain and who spent her holidays in Czechoslovakia. x

Fabrizio Pizzioli is a researcher at the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. He has spent 8 years working on language and cognition. He is currently studying the neural basis of language in adults, the learning of language in children and diseases of language.

He is also concerned with cross-linguistic differences and learning in bilingual children.

We Are Cosmopolitan!

The myth of a united Europe a century ago: the rise of Ludwig Von Bruck, founder of the Austrian Lloyd navigation company and lynchpin in the economic, cultural and social growth of the regions around the Upper Adriatic

The sea throws back shimmering golden reflections, millions of rustling ears in a field on fire.

This is the second afternoon in a row that Ludwig spends, one minute sitting, the next lying on a pier down in the port, next to a red-hot iron mooring bollard. His forehead and shirtless chest are pearled with sweat, his Nordic skin reddened but not satisfied by its exposure to the full, unequivocally Mediterranean sun.
He’s trying to read an edition of Herder that his father, a bookbinder from the Rhineland, has made for him as a good luck token for his adventure. The prose is inherently knotty, and the reading made all the more tricky by the glaring whiteness of pages in the sunlight. But with his eyelids reduced to the narrowest slit, Ludwig stubbornly reads on.

Herder’s history of philosophy is like an electric shock; and Ludwig realises this even though he’s very young. Or perhaps precisely because he is so young he can feel the irresistible, dark charm of the pages. The fascination that comes with the words of prophets announcing an impending storm; when they are announcing the truth.

Ludwig reads about the Roman Empire, destroyed by its inability to hold together the different nations that made it up; punished for having repressed them, for having underestimated the strength of their development and not having understood that their cause was invincible. Superior, even holy, because it coincided with the idea of freedom.

Freedom and nationhood, merged together in a single myth, in a single poem. Herder, thinks Ludwig sarcastically, is perhaps the only contemporary thinker of our time. The only one to have developed a convincing idea on the direction taken by history here and now, in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and who understands what is driving it’s engine of progress.
Stretching, he rises to his feet. The stopover in Triest will last until the flow of volunteers into his band of freedom fighters dries up. Ten days, perhaps a few more, split between the pier and ‘This too a Philosophy of History’, hand-stitched for him by his father. Then, God willing, he would have given his help to Greek rebellion. After centuries of anxious barbarism, Greece is calling to arms her spiritual children, scattered around the world. A nation to liberate, far away across a glittering sea in his mind’s eye.
Hiding behind a load of carob beans, Ludwig gets rid of his trousers and dives into the water.
But the Greek project was not to God’s liking, it would seem. The political refugees returning from there (some as stowaways, some, the lucky ones on rafts, that, nine times out of ten, get smashed on some Dalmatian reef) tell of indiscriminate massacres, cynical agreements between the powers and idealists sent to the slaughterhouse.

The last batch of volunteers fails to materialise and so Ludwig does not leave but decides to stay on in Triest and thus becomes ‘von Bruck’.

Since then there’s been no nation to free – but a lot of prose and poetry. He is immediately employed by an insurance agency, a sector then undergoing very strong expansion. The boy is up to the job, alert and self-confident. Ten years later and he is already the director of that agency. Ten years later still and he’s the main organizer and founder of the Austrian insurance company Lloyd, as well as the chairman of its board of directors. Another ten years pass and Lloyd has turned into one of the most powerful trade and navigation companies in Europe, going from three ships initially to twenty and each day transporting tons of people, goods and mail throughout the Mediterranean, from Greece to Egypt and Turkey, expanding to open agencies in Calcutta, Bombay, Ceylon, Singapore and Canton.
Now, Lloyd is the most significant economic hub of the Hapsburg monarchy. From within, its managers develop the idea of a ‘natural’ link between the Middle East and the area of central Europe through the agency of Lloyd, via Triest.

On May 12th 1847, in what had now become his city, von Bruck delivers a speech at the tenth anniversary of the company’s foundation before the annual general meeting of the shareholders. The central concepts are ‘pragmatism’, ‘confidence’ and ‘progress’.

It has not always gone so smoothly. During the first two years of commercial activity debts are about to destroy his plaything and the company only saved thanks to the generous help of the state.
A reluctant intervention, which indicates an overall relationship between the government of Vienna and Lloyd which is more than a little stormy and radically contradictory.
The whole of the Hapsburg monarchy’s foreign economic and trade policy is frozen in the framework developed by Metternich in the 1820s to restore an order which had been shocked by the meteor Napoleon. It is a policy which states that it is based on the principle of balance within Europe, but in reality pursues nothing more than the existing status quo.
Vienna, the pivot of this Continental iceberg, stays on its feet thanks to the Austrian props in place in the West: in northern Italy – Lombardy and the Veneto. Liberalism and nationalism are genuine threats and ‘blasphemies’ that the palace of ice looks on as potentially fatal.

Perhaps because he had read Herder, perhaps because as a romantic boy he believed passionately in his message, von Bruck realizes that his ‘child’, his company of the restoration has no future; that beneath the surface of the continent huge forces are about to be unleashed, spurred on by liberal and nationalist ‘blasphemies.’ And those who are orchestrating these forces in Italy and Germany are merely dust-devils, flashpoints for a potentially far more destructive hurricane directed at European peace and the survival of the monarchy.
Von Bruck knows that wheels as large as these, once in motion, crush everything in their path. Of course, one should not go along with these ideas. What you must do is run ahead of them and channel them into a vision that is equally, if not more, grandiose and ambitious. How clever.
Vienna must understand that, for her, the West is now a lost cause, that Lombardy and the Veneto are lost, and that it is imperative that she look to the East, ridding herself of her Metternich straitjacket and riding the wave of capitalism and free trade. To do this she already has a branch that knows how to take up the weapon of trade as well being able to look eastward. Lloyd.

And if in Vienna immobility reigns, then one must go there and shake things up. If the centre does not respond, the periphery will occupy it and become the centre in its turn. If the State reacts confusedly, with projects at odds with your own, take the State in hand and bend it to your will.
In 1849 von Bruck was appointed Minister for Trade.
Early in July 1847, Richard Cobden, leader of the British liberals, is visiting Triest. An official banquet is organised in his honour. And of course, the master of ceremonies can only be von Bruck himself.
With a phlegmatic calm, but conscious of having the eyes of the government fixed upon him, von Bruck delivers a speech in favor of free trade and prudent only in its form.

Immediately after he finishes speaking he gives the floor to Francesco Dall’Ongaro, a young and fairly successful playwright in Venice and along the coast who harbours nationalist ideas and sympathies. He hopes that Italy will join a commercial league, a prelude to policy of aggregation that would include Triest. Von Bruck stops him halfway through his speech. He rises to his feet and thunders: “We are cosmopolitan, we have nothing to do with Italian nationality or German for that matter! Our nation is Triest.”
Total confusion breaks out and the diners are is now split into two parties. A punch-up is only narrowly avoided. A shocked Richard Cobden acts as peacemaker.
Speaking out that day in a nervous atmosphere that encourages open challenges is von Bruck. But also Ludwig.

To von Bruck one must not touch Triest. In the architecture of his plan, breaking the territorial continuity between the city and Central Europe is like removing the card, without which the whole castle will tumble down.
But within him he remains Ludwig, the boy who wanted to leave for Greece in the name of the freedom of nations. Why ‘Yes!’ to Greece, why ‘Yes!’ to Germany but ‘Yes, but only in part, without Triest’? Is Triest not predominantly an Italian city ethnically? Is it not that powerhouse of Italians that has pushed him to learn the local dialect and sign himself “Carlo Lodovico” in his private papers?
The inconsistency is obvious. Thence comes the perfect twist, the intellectual kidney-punch that makes him cry out: “Triest is a nation”. To preserve in its autonomy, like all the others.
A city-nation itself, with, in addition, a very special role.
The point is that the European markets are expanding, fuelled by a solid and demanding middle class. There are increasingly wide mouths needing to be filled with raw materials from the East, and the channel between these two worlds is the sea that, by its very name, lies in the middle: the Mediterranean. With a port that works as an exchange valve: Triest.

For von Bruck the middle class, divided vertically by nationality, resting in fact on a shared horizontal plane, which is that of its consumption and daily requirements.
He looks beyond this, he looks ahead.

In addition to any national peculiarities, he sees a society of producers and consumers united in the same needs, but not only this – even sharing the same values and lifestyle, in the fundamentals of a material and spiritual civilization. He looks forward, because it seems clear that the physical and cultural environment in which this civilization expresses itself is in power, and, God willing, right across the continent.
The vision of von Bruck, in a word, a united Europe.
And the only hope that the Viennese Empire has to escape the fate of Rome is to drive civil and economic growth in its component nations to its maximum. Certainly not by ignoring them or setting one against the other, but by harmonising them in a pragmatic goal – associating them with a future of shared development.
Only in this way, will Austria remain the centre of a peaceful and confederate Europe, that Ludwig von Bruck has always called: Mitteleuropa.
But the project was only to God’s liking a century later. Perhaps… x

Patrick KarlsenAuthor of this story: Patrick Karlsen
He is a PhD student of contemporary history at the University of Triest researching on the relationship between the Italian Communist Party and the border of the northern Adriatic. An essayist and poet, he writes for many regional and national titles in Italy.