DER FREMDE EUROPÄER

Hannah Arendt once stated, with regret, that with the founding of the state of Israel the Jewish people lost their identity based on millennia of being "the stranger". In a similarway, I think that, after centuries of being strangers - but not foreigners! - to each other, our European special identity is endangered by the European construction. Far from being an opponent of the unification process, I believe that this endeavor should not be understood as an attempt to create (or recreate) a European cultural identity in change of the old national identities. Following the example of the urban way of life, we have to estrange each other further, as social groups and nations, to provide the cultural, ideological,political diversity needed by the functional mechanisms of the Union. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]