Introduction: This piece demonstrates for the first time on this website the strong ideological links between Charlemagne's Europe, lauded by the leaders of the European Union (Tony Blair and Roy Jenkins among others have received the Charlemagne Prize of the German City of Aachen), and the Nazis' ambitions for Europe.
The Eurofederalist class created and annually awards the Charlemagne Prize to politicians who forced the integration of Europe because that prize and that aim contrasted with the past evils of European Fascism. We now reveal that even that is a lie for the Charlemagne Prize was created after the second world war by those who had been political leaders under the Nazis.
In 800 AD in Rome Charlemagne (in German Karl der Grosse) was anointed Holy Roman Emperor. His political ambition and religious bigotry had by then created a large empire built on the blood and bones of those who did not agree with his religious ideas and on the destruction of nations which rejected his imperial aims.
The re-creation of the Empire of Charlemagne has been the overt ambition of many European Catholics, the successors of Austria-Hungary (prominent among them the MEP Otto von Habsburg) and of course the (nation state hating) Vatican which saw in the historical uniting of French and German ("Frankish") Europe in 800 as the historical basis for the new supranational Empire of the European Union.
From the ambition of Josef Retinger to create a central European Catholic empire (for which he was expelled as a war danger from both France and Britain during the First World War) to the religious exterminations of non Catholics in Yugoslavia by the Croatian Ustashe (puppets of the Nazis and Italian Fascists) to the 1990s ethnic cleansing of 300,000 Orthodox Serbs from Croatia and the massacres by Croats of Bosnian Muslims, the influence of Charlemagne has been sustained into the 20th and 21st centuries. Croatia, now the most ethnically pure state in Europe, was described by the Vatican as a "Jewel" in its Crown. The founder of modern Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, wrote in a 1989 book "Genocide is a natural phenomenon, it is commanded by the Almighty in defence of the only true faith"
For a detailed description of Charlemagne see the book Fascist Europe Rising pages 109 - 113.
Note: The Emperor generally called Charlemagne in English (via French from the Latin Carolus Magnus) is called Karl der Grosse in German. The prize is known as the "Karlspreis" in German
AACHEN - The Aachen Charlemagne Prize is the oldest political distinction awarded by the German Federal Republic in the area of foreign policy. It honours merit in "Europe and European unification". It is awarded yearly on Ascension Day in the Coronation Hall of Aachen's Council House. Those honoured include prominent European politicians, heads of state and government, amongst others Alcide de Gasperi, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, Vaclav Havel, Roy Jenkins, Edward Heath, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. Since 1997 the "Charlemagne Prize Foundation" ("Karlspreis-Stiftung") has been co-ordinated with the prize. Its purpose is to "publicize the ideal and aspiration of the Charlemagne Prize throughout Europe". High ranking representatives of business, the German Minister for the Economy, the Minister President of North Rhine Wesfalia and the political advisor Werner Weidenfeld(*1) serve on its committees.
Those honoured by the Charlemagne Prize (the first was Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi(*2)) are chosen by the "The Charlemagne Prize Society(Karlspreisgesellschaft), a circle of influential members of the Aachen establishment whose discussions are secret. It was called into being in 1949 by the efforts of the Aachen textile merchant, Kurt Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer, who had previously been a member of the Nazi Party and of five other Nazi organisations, maintained that he had always tended to a "fundamental belief in Europe". The Charlemagne Prize Society was founded by him with the intention of awarding a "European prize which should be associated with the Imperial Ideal (Reichsidee) of the Emperor Charlemagne, his palace and burial place ".(both in Aachen)
"UNITER OF THE BRANCHES OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE"
Supposedly the Charlemagne Prize is connected with Charlemagne because of his empire (Reich), set up around 800 AD, which could be reckoned a a forerunner of the German-French "core of Europe". In fact the Charlemagne Prize, first awarded on May 1st 1950, was connected most closely with the Charlemagne myth which was very popular in the German Reich from 1871, especially in the Aachen area because of his "Imperial Idea" and supposed role as "Creator of European unity".
The Nazis legitimated their plans for a European New Order with heavily emphasised allusions to Charlemagne. The post war image of Charlemagne as "Unifier of the Christian West" was preceded by his Nazi portrayal as "Unifier of the German tribes". Charlemagne was compared with Hitler, his Reich and Greater Germany. The Nazis identified his policy with the Germanocentric New Order of Europe and cited his campaign against the "hunnish" Avars in support of their war of annihilation in the East. The then Gauleiter , Josef Grohe, declared at a celebration (Feierstunde) on the twelve hundredth anniversary of Charlemagne's birth in April 1942 that Aachen was the "starting point for the formation of the German people".
The Charlemagne Prize Proclamation of 1949 and the official speeches of the Aachen burgomasters of the early Fifties are heavily stamped with national ("voelkisch") thinking. They show the Charlemagne prize had become associated with the folk-myth of Charlemagne and the German Reich. This association was favoured not least because "The milieu which had carried and realized the aggressive pan-Germanic myth of Aachen " was in agreement with "that which also established the "Christian-Western" Charlemagne Prize". This is clearly exemplified by the career of the Aachen Professor of Philosophy, Peter Mennicken, who had authoritative influence over the symbolism of the Charlemagne prize and the "liturgy" of its award ceremonies.
"CULTURE" AS A BRIDGE TO THE POST-WAR ERA
Mennicken joined the SA (Storm Troopers) in 1933 and the Nazi Party in 1937. He used his lectureship at the Technical High School of Aachen in the service of expansionist "Western research" and worked for two so-called "societies for (international) understanding" which were informal offshoots of the Propaganda Ministry, used for German propaganda in the Netherlands and Belgium. Through him the Aachen elite tried to convey a sympathetic picture of Germany and to mobilize ethnic, regional and separatist resentments in the other side of the border in subtle ways - through the medium of apparently non-political cultural exchanges which offered a "border-surmounting" and "community-building" picture of Aachen. This would serve as a bridge into the post war era.
Correspondingly, Mennicken succeded in making a clerical-conservative new edition of his "Aachen mysticism" after 1945.
"BUILDING STONE OF IMPERIAL EUROPE"
To this day the Charlemagne Prize stands in the tradition of the ethnically ("voelkisch") imprinted German Imperial Ideal. ".. Charlemagne wanted, as we do today, to preserve the diversity of peoples whilst simultaneously leading them together" - so it was said in the encomium for the then German Federal President, Roman Herzog, in 1997. A critic summarizes"The short-circuiting of Middle Ages and modernity, of Reich and Europe, produces a 1200 year original myth (Ursprungmythos) for an integrated Europe and its German-French core(...) . The Charlemagne Prize transforms the political leaders of European integration into heirs of the once and future European Reich. The myth of the European mission of Charlemagne and his town belongs among the building stones of imperial Europe".
(*1) A highly influential foreign policy advisor (see previous reports)
(*2) Founder of the Pan-European Union.
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