‘You do not become a European by choice but by necessity’: The Alsace border region and its opening up to Europe in the writings of Otto Flake, René Schickele and Hermann Wendel

Abstract

The three writers Otto Flake, René Schickele and Hermann Wendel met in Straßburg in 1901. Together with other artists and writers they founded the group ‘Das jüngste Elsaß’ (also known as ‘Der Stürmerkreis’). One of the purposes of this artistic group was to shed the ‘hybrid state’ of Alsace as a border region and instead urge that Alsace take on a mediating role in a future united Europe. Their pacifist European approach, which they adhered to during World War I and later on in exile, originated from controversial debates emerging from the extreme tensions caused by German and French nationalism. The three writers viewed Alsace as a symbol of Europe. For their ‘border literature’ Europe offered the possibility of refraining from the concept of nationhood, which is based on homogeneity and therefore violent exclusion, something in which they did not find themselves represented.