Nachdenken über Europa

While cogitating over a span of 40 years on the state of affairs in Europe, which we find so disturbing today, Winfried Böttcher projected the past into the future. In 19 selected articles, Böttcher depicts his vision of a Europe that will be a regional and a federal entity in the future, a people formed from the European peoples – or no entity at all.
The texts in which Winfried Böttcher discusses European integration in school books, the relationship between politics and paedagogics, and the process of educating people to think as Europeans present his fundamental vision of Europe. In his studies on the arms race during the Cold War, the difficulties of creating a European single market, wars as a consequence of national and imperialist politics, and the causes and effects of globalisation, Böttcher has continually devoted his attention to the problems of his time. He realised very early on that European integration was heavily dependent on the idea of the nation state being quashed. Ever since, Böttcher has advocated a political order based on the principle of subsidiarity, in which regions are largely autonomous. He thus also depicts the essential features of a Europe capable of functioning in the future through a differentiated model of a new federal system based on his own ‘categorical imperative’ (“We need more Europe, less nation state and more democracy”) and consisting of three tiers: people, state and regions.