Herwarth Walden’s 1923 Call for a ‘United States of Europe'
'Berlin is America, in microcosm'
This essay was originally published in 1923 by Herwarth Walden in his arts-and-culture magazine, der Sturm (the Storm). This can be read as Walden’s appeal for Germans (and Europeans) to overcome the nationalist/state borders that had caused yesterday’s world war — as well as the next one, which many Europeans could see coming, although it was still more than 15 years in the future…. -ts
Herwarth Walden: ‘Of Note’ 21. February, 1923
Berlin is the capital of the United States of Europe.
Traveling in various directions, the city is equidistant
from the Neckar, the Rhine, the Elbe and the Danube;
from all these rivers, each one steeped in desolate poetry;
or — speaking botanically — overgrown with it.
Why haven’t our honorable industrial groups
still not established the United States of Europe?
They are otherwise quite adept at producing subsidiaries,
their filial offspring, their family branches….
Well, in any case, it already exists,
this capital of the United States of Europe.
Berliners have their own language,
which only the Russians understand.
In High German, it is called the ‘Berliner Dialect’.
It is only spoken by real Berliners,
who can be found all over the world —
but not in Berlin.