Cosmopolitan Europe: A Strasbourg Self-Portrait

John Western

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317159094
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Geography
• Index: History

The past hundred years of Europe are distilled in the experiences of the citizens of Strasbourg. From the turn of the twentieth century until 1945, Europe's ruling idea of nationalism rendered Strasbourg/Straßburg the prize in a tug-of-war between the two greatest continental powers, France and Germany. Then, in the immediate post-war period, ideals for European unity set up various European institutions, some headquartered in Strasbourg, which have gradually created a partially supranational Europe. At the end of the 1950s, a third theme arises: the large-scale settling in Strasbourg and other such richer, western European cities of persons from poorer lands, frequently ex-colonial territories, whose appearance and cultural practices render them essentially "different" to local eyes: expressions of racism thereby jostle with professions of multiculturalism. Now in the globalisation era, the issue of "immigration" has broadened yet further into transnationalism: the experience of persons who are embedded in varying manner in both Strasbourg and in their land of origin. Based on in-depth, lively interviews with 80 men and 80 women ranging from 101 to 20 years, and from all over the world (France, Germany, Alsace-Lorraine, Portugal, Italy, ex-Yugoslavia, Albania, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Cameroon, and Afghanistan amongst other countries), the author draws out of these compelling testimonies all sorts of compelling insights into issues of identity, race, nationality, culture, politics, heritage and representation, giving a unique and valuable view of what it means (and has meant over the past century) to be a European.

Part 1 City of an Old Europe: Nationalism and Binationalism in Strasbourg/Straßburg

“Better to be the Germans of France than the French of Germany.”

(Tomi Ungerer)

“When we were first coming here, there was a good line in a book on wines I was reading which said something like the Alsatians were definitely not French, and defiantly not German”

(Francis Brady, Irish Council of Europe functionary, 2 March 2009)

Prologue Strasbourg, Betwixt and Between

DOI: 10.4324/9781315574417-1

What is going on in Strasbourg, this city that I shall claim to be emblematic of Europe? Is Europe losing its essence, its very European-ness, under the influence of some adventitious transnationalism, whose vehicle is in part that of immigration from far-flung, poorer lands? Or is a New Europe being created in this crucible? If some species of cosmopolitanism is indeed incubating here, are we Strasburgers to embrace it or to recoil from it? And simultaneously, just how much are we to cherish the Old Europe of a fading Alsatian-ness, neither French nor German but a marchland blending of those cultural realms, nestled in one of the more comely humanized landscapes of Europe?

Such enormous questions—is Europe melting or melding?—are unanswerable in any final sense, and I am well aware I can only address them with imprecision. Yet they are real questions, and they arise from fifteen or more years of close acquaintance with this fine city. Even more so, the close acquaintance is with its citizens, and these are surely questions on those citizens’ minds. For this study is ethnographic in method. It is based on Strasburgers themselves. Over a seven-year period, 80 men and 80 women answered a 13-item open-ended questionnaire. However, this was only the formal side of how I learned from Strasburgers. In addition, to live with one’s family in three different city neighborhoods, to be doing an academic job unconnected to any personal pursuit of research for the three years 1997 to 2000, to have one’s children in the French schools, to make and keep Strasburger friends, was indeed to encounter the city. To this one adds in many years’ worth of encounters with Strasburgers who were not formally interviewed, or my encounters with all the differing nooks and crannies of the city, plus so much secondary information from written sources. The trove of information and sentiment which I gathered both through the formal interviewing and through the osmosis of the quotidian round seemed so vast and varied as to be almost indigestible at first. It took some time to begin to discern larger themes, to see, I trust, at least some of the wood for the trees.

The trees stand there in their thousands, placed before me for my notice mostly by those 160 interviewees responding to my intendedly imprecise questions. So to term this study of Strasbourg a self-portrait both is and is not misleading. Misleading, first, because it was I as author who had to conjure a coherent picture—“the wood”—from such a vast array of raw data. Also misleading, you might protest, because the data arise from questions that I guilefully framed. Hardly a city’s spontaneous “self-portrait” by its own citizens, but instead a creative selection by this outsider who might well have had something of his own in mind? Yet, simultaneously, I could claim something of the opposite. That is, the term “self-portrait” is not misleading, because the phrasing of the questions was so intentionally general that an almost limitless array of responses was possible. In choosing how to respond, Strasburgers were making their own selections, their own judgements. Many chose to steer clear of certain fundamental facets of the life of the city, such as for example Protestant-Catholic rivalries. I was then honor-bound to respect such silences and to accord greatest attention to those facets they mentioned most in their stories—so these are indeed the Strasburgers’ portraits of their city, not mine. The larger themes—“the wood”—do then spring, again, from attending to their stories of this city and of its place in Europe.

Perhaps one is best advised to view this study’s form as a melding of these two approaches, whose separation in the previous paragraph is rather contrived. Certainly, the first-mentioned mode, the author-as-sole-creator model, does not apply here. This study’s form is not what was once conceived as that of the conventional academician: my gaze is not of one who stands back, who observes, coolly judges, and commits to paper. Nor was my goal some comprehensive evaluation of the academic literature dealing with modern urban France, from which one might proceed to a structured and manageable “research problem.” Instead, I wallowed, almost, in the ethnographic fieldwork, so references to others’ work are few. Citations of published works in the bibliography are outnumbered almost four-to-one by those 155 separate interviewees (out of 160) who at some point or other in the book are directly quoted or referred to. This is not to convey disrespect for the publications of others, nor does it mean that basic material for understanding modern Strasbourg has been ignored. I found certain works indispensable, such as those of Bernard Vogler (1994) on the cultural history of Alsace, or the human geographies of Étienne Juillard (1968) or of Richard Kleinschmager (1997). Then there were Jean-Marie Mayeur’s chapter on Alsace (1986) in Pierre Nora’s Les Lieux de mémoire, or Tony Judt’s (2005) synthesis of the whole European context in Postwar. Yet but for the fact they were just mentioned in the two previous sentences, they would not appear in the bibliography. It is only in the introduction and conclusion to this study that there are any substantial clusters of references to secondary sources.

The Particular and the General

Naturally enough, these secondary scholarly sources occur in such a bookended position because, first, in the introduction, one is setting a wider context for what could otherwise give the appearance of being one enthusiastic miniaturist’s study of one particular city. Instead, what general themes of interest—to a reader who may know virtually nothing of Strasbourg—can be conveyed by making the link to, for example, some classic sociological observations such as those of Robert Merton? And second, in the conclusion, what general themes of interest to this same reader might be drawn out by attending to some individual contemporary Strasburger’s experiences of, say, urban angst, and by intentionally juxtaposing them to comparable observations of such as Oscar Lewis (1961), William Julius Wilson (1978), Elijah Anderson (1990), or Loïc Wacquant (2008)?

What I am attempting by pursuing this study in this way is very straightforward. I am arguing from the particular to the general. The form of the particular is predominantly that of primary interview material: wholly original, self-generated data. That the book’s epigraph highlights “stories” expresses my sentiments. I wished the portrait to be enjoyable reading, that whatever learning present might be worn lightly. (Therefore I’ve almost totally avoided footnotes.) My most strongly-felt purpose was to draw out from the stories a grounded portrait of the city I have come to esteem greatly. On its own, however, this tableau solely of one city will not do. Or rather, one might do a little better if one attempted to generalize the findings for members of some broader audience. One would hope to lead them to an appreciation of why this case is so fine and so instructive, why it can stand for all the cities of contemporary Western Europe. To know Strasbourg today is to know urban Europe—that’s the claim.

The poet William Blake put it best when he encouraged us to see a world in a grain of sand. Why might Straßurg/Strasbourg be the particular grain of sand in which the world of Europe may be seen? This is not some capricious claim, made uniquely by myself as partisan. Consider that, for one, a ‘public intellectual’ of so encompassing a scope as Ian Buruma wrote in 1996 that, “If there is such a thing as ‘core Europe’… then Alsace, with Strasbourg (or Strassburg) as its capital, is it.” Or, to scale down the focus to that of my own academic discipline of geography, one might scrutinise a well-regarded, recent (and now in a second edition) undergraduate textbook entitled The Europeans. The authors (Ostergren & Le Bossé 2011) choose to launch right into this comprehensive 400-page survey of the continent by exclusively spending their first two pages on depicting one specific city: it is of course Strasbourg.

In addition to such generalized assertions, I would offer three further observations. The first, that during the first half of the twentieth century, Europe’s ruling issue was that of contending nationalisms, and delivered us two world wars. The most striking rivalry of all was the Franco-German one. It focused in large measure on Alsace-Lorraine, with Strasbourg as its capital. Here was Strasbourg serving as crucible—that very characterisation which appeared at the start of this prologue—but as crucible of an Old Europe. One elderly interviewee spoke bitterly of Strasbourg having been “crucified” by these nationalistic rivalries.

Second, that during the last third of the twentieth century, and continuing to the present, one of the very highest-profile issues for Europeans has been “immigration.” The term seems to imply not only the arrival of persons from poorer lands, but also most likely persons of color and of cultural difference: so-called minority persons. In Strasbourg, as in so many other Western European cities—London, Paris, Leicester, Rotterdam, Antwerp—a significant component of the current population was drawn as labor from ex-colonial territories. In French cities, probably the most remarked-upon such persons are the North Africans: Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians: “les Arabes.” This is also true for Strasbourg: accusations of racism, both phenotypic (based on different appearance) and cultural (based on different, adjudged alien, ways), thus inescapably perturb any contemporary discussion of identity in this city.

Third, labor was also drawn by those same macroeconomic forces to the continent’s economic giant, West Germany. That country, however, had no recent colonial past, due to the punitive provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. So it was that from the 1960s West Germany received, noteworthily, Turkish labor. Even prior to the ‘60s, the economies of Alsace and West Germany had already been intimately, and intentionally, intertwined. Strasbourg sits right across the Rhine bridges from Germany’s prosperous Land of Baden-Württemburg. Not coincidentally, here today in Alsace is the largest Turkish community in France, Paris included.

Put these three together, and it appears that Strasbourg is indeed the exemplar of Western European urban centers. That is, it has undergone trials by nationalism to a degree unmatched except for a few other unfortunate cities (Günter Grass’ Danzig comes to mind). It has experienced post-colonial immigration. It has also experienced large-scale Turkish settlement. Furthermore, compared with other French cities, sub-Saharan Africans from such ex-colonial territories as Benin or Cameroon are proportionately few in Strasbourg. Such persons are usually non-Muslim. Whereas, uniquely, Strasbourg has both Maghrebian (“the Arabs”) and Turkish/Kurdish settlers in significant degree. As Strasbourg University political scientist Samim Akgönül put it to me, does it not then follow that Strasbourg would likely possess, among its minority groups, some of the very highest proportions in France that are Muslim? Thus, if ever there were a place in which to sense the widespread unease about an Islamic Europe-in-the-making, given expression recently by many politicians of the popular Right and by observers such as Christopher Caldwell (2009), then this might surely be it? Strasbourg as, this time, crucible of a New Europe?

In one sense to have studied Strasbourg was mere serendipity. Could not the preceding paragraphs be seen simply as ex post facto rationalization of my choice of the city? In response, I’d submit that perhaps the initial setting of one’s feet in Strasbourg may have been pure serendipity, but soon one sensed that this city had something of import to tell about the general European case. That is, I began to sense its possibilities as a “strategic research site.” This term of Robert Merton the scholar is getting at the same notion so lyrically expressed above by William Blake the poet. Merton in a much-cited reflective essay, expresses the point academically: “The sociological literature is chockfull of work that combines intrinsic interest in the particular sociocultural case with instrumental interest in it as leading to provisional general conclusions. [Thus, furnishing a classic example] …Thomas and Znaniecki (1918-1920) examine the historical case of The Polish Peasant in Europe and America both for its distinctive (‘unique’) characteristics and for its presumably generic patterns of social … change” (Merton 1987: 15, 14). So it was that upon very first arrival in Strasbourg at New Year 1994 I was immediately attracted by the look of the city and what I took to be its distinctive, unique characteristics. I thought to myself, there was nowhere else with a fate quite like this, scored by the exigencies of having bestrode the angry Rhineland fissure between the greatest nation-states of continental Europe. Many older Alsatians whom I met were clearly invested in urging this very perspective upon me: “Understand, John: we are uniquely complex; we have a Double Culture; and from this stems the unique experience of suffering that has been visited upon us.”

Ten years later (for so it was) when I finally became free to start actively pursuing research in this city of Strasbourg that I had come to know, it became evident—despite the protestations of so many Alsatians that their predicament was truly unique—that there were plenty of other places and cities in Europe where similar politico-cultural complexities had forever been troubling the waters. Evident high-profile examples were Trieste, Thessaloniki/Salonica, and Breslau/Wroclaw. But also, in this apparently natural unity called France that I as an outsider had been taking for granted as “French,” Paul Claval insisted I appreciate the coercion that had been necessary to create such a Paris-centered polity. Among France’s cities, indelible diversities yet remained. Listen now as I tell you about Besançon, he adjured. I conceded that I knew more or less nothing of that city. He then, having lived and worked there for a significant period, proceeded to lay out the complex and diverse currents which continue to be discernible in Besançon. The moral?—that what I had taken to be the unique features of Strasbourg might not be so unique after all. For I do not know other French cities. I am unable to say to what degree the citizens of Grenoble, or of Bordeaux, or perhaps even more so, of Marseille (Mitchell 2011), feel their city to be “unique,” nor with what degree of justification. Heeding Claval’s admonition, I see it may be wiser to use a different adjective of Strasbourg: “unique” should be perhaps downgraded to “singular.” Perhaps.

Stories

Someone catches your eye as you stroll through a city. A creative writer might give imagination full rein—“What is it about that person? I must follow him”—and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Man of the Crowd results. As a practitioner of a different trade, that of the urban geographer, my inclination is more to speculate on just what the person I’m observing might know about this place. So I ask, “Tell me about your city.” In this book they reply. Their city of Strasbourg, at the center of Western Europe where the north-south Rhine corridor is crossed by the west-east Paris-Vienna road, turns out to be no ordinary place. Of ambiguous national status and an icon of Franco-German enmity, Strasbourg as capital of Alsace-Lorraine was twice during the twentieth century a casus belli. After those two world wars, the city was set up for a symbol of reconciliation and of a New Europe which was to transcend nationalist estrangements—but it has also become an exemplar of another rather unanticipated and perhaps uncomfortable New Europe: the multicultural one.

So what has it been like to have lived here over the past century? The earliest memories are those of a centenarian, for the year 1909 or so. What were the forces which shaped this now-deceased old gentleman’s life, whose course he related to me on a number of occasions in 2004? Surely one that would clamorously assert itself is nationalism? During the hundred-year period covered by this study some of the Europeans who have had the most overpowering experiences with nationalism have been Strasburgers. This abstract noun has powerfully molded, and sometimes battered, their identity.

Nationalism is a protean term. The noun has spawned numerous offspring individually designated simply through the addition of a prefix. Strasbourg seems to me to offer at least four of these. Thus, binationalism specifies the political predicament of Alsace-Lorraine in the Old Europe, an unsought France-or-Germany predicament in which Strasburgers found themselves pinned during the first forty or so years of the century-long period covered by this study. Even if the political predicament is now apparently done with, Strasburgers also suffered a parallel cultural predicament which exists to this day, for many of these interviewees, whatever their age, continue to be preoccupied by binational elements of their identity: they are not simply “French.” In the wake of World War II, internationalism becomes directly implanted in Strasbourg, with the establishment in 1949 of the Council of Europe. This organization stands as a first step in the project of creating a New Europe. Supranationalism has taken this project further, and is symbolized by the subsequent establishment of the European Union’s European Parliament in Strasbourg. There is indeed a distinction to be made between these two latter “isms,” but in general the two may be conflated when eyeing “the Construction of Europe” and the institutions it has brought to Strasbourg. It has also brought people, namely those particular Strasburgers popularly known as Eurocrats. Such high-level personnel will address their identity as New Europeans in this study—as do many other Strasbourg interviewees as well. Then comes transnationalism, a term that has gained currency over the last score of years. As globalization proceeds to change all our lives, transnationalism at its most basic refers to those who live in a manner “simultaneously embedded in more than one country” (Glick Schiller et al. 1995: 48).

There are plenty of transnational Strasburgers from afar who will speak of their complex and sometimes hybrid identities, be they persons who might nonetheless seem invisible or nearly so to the older, local Strasbourg society (such as the Irish, Italians, or Portuguese); or conversely those who, to s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword: Prismatic Identities: Memory, Migration and The Making Of Europe
• PART 1: CITY OF AN OLD EUROPE: NATIONALISM AND BINATIONALISM IN STRASBOURG/STRASSBURG
• PART 2: CITY OF A PROVISIONAL EUROPE: TRANSNATIONAL STRASBOURG?
• PART 3: ENVOI
• Appendix: The Questionnnaire
• Bibliography
• Index