“Archives are a window to the past.” An Interview with HAEU Director Dieter Schlenker

Even though ECF is not an EU body, our archive has been transferred to the Historical Archives of the European Union [HAEU]. This ensures this collection—spanning seven decades of pan-European cooperation—will be accessible to researchers, students and the public.  The Historical Archives are hosted by the European University Institute [EUI]. With today being World Archives Day, it seems an appropriate moment to republish the interview we did with the Archives’ Director, Dieter Schlenker, for our annual magazine Common Ground.

ECF: Your website says: “The European University Institute is an international organisation and a university for research and higher learning in social sciences & humanities based in Florence. It was established in 1972 by the European Union’s founding member states – providing advanced academic training and cutting-edge research opportunities in the fields of economics, history, law, political and social sciences and beyond.” Why did the EU need such an institution?

 Dieter Schlenker [DS]: In 1951, the European Coal and Steel Community was founded by the Paris Treaty, and in 1957, the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) were created with the Rome Treaties. All three treaties did not assign to the new supranational European institutions specific political power in the field of higher education. Nonetheless, Article 9 of the Euratom Treaty draw the idea of “an institution of university status” for the Communities. This idea was originally conceived to provide a framework for common research and training efforts in the field of nuclear science, but soon evolved into different concepts and ideas about a European university. Negotiations were therefore long and arduous until a Convention for the establishment of a “European University Institute” – an inter-governmental organisation that combined both concepts of ‘university’ and ‘research institute’ in its name and mission – was finally signed in 1972 and the institute opened its doors in 1976 on the hills surrounding Florence.

The EUI was created as an international organisation, managed and financed directly by the member states of the European Communities. The institute was guaranteed freedom of research and teaching and combined education and research on post-graduate level as regards the major issues confronting European society and the construction of Europe.

ECF: The Historical Archives of the European Union is dedicated to preserving and making accessible the documentary heritage of the European Union. It serves as the single official repository for the historical documents of the EU’s institutions, bodies, and agencies and makes these documents available for public consultation and research under the 30-year access rule. What are some of examples of publications based on research in your archives?

 DS: The consultation, interpretation and contextualisation of primary sources preserved in public and private archives is indeed a key methodological element of historians. The access to the historical papers of EU institutions, bodies and agencies, was crucial to provide credible historical accounts on European integration. In particular the European Commission got active in preparing the opening of its archives to the public to provide primary sources for research, to raise the knowledge of European citizens on the history of European integration, and to raise the transparency and understanding of European decision-making. While preparing the opening of the archives, the Commission also launched a new ‘Liaison Group of Professors of Contemporary European History’, which started to publish the ‘Journal of European Integration History’, which still today is one of the main publication channels in the field. Moreover, in 1989 the Commission launched the Jean Monnet action, creating also dedicated chairs on European integration, to promote excellence in teaching and research in the field of European Union studies.

The first-generation researchers consulting sources at the HAEU were guided by an interest in diplomatic history, international relations and biographical studies and focused on the pioneers and founders of the European Union. We may mention Jean Monnet’s biography by François Duchêne, Robert Schuman’s biography written by Raymond Poidevin and, more recently, Piero Graglia’s biography of Altiero Spinelli. Later biographic studies also portrayed European officials. Important general historical accounts on the history of European integration were prepared by Alan Milward, Wilfried Loth and Antonio Varsori. More recent writings focused on specific European policies, Treaty reforms, enlargements and federalist studies. Finally, the Commission mandated a consortium of historians with writing its institutional history ”The European Commission: History and Memories of an Institution” covering the years 1958-2000 in three volumes.

ECF: The Archives also receives and preserves the collections of private individuals, movements, and associations that have had an important role in the history of European integration, like ECF. How, in your view, do these archives help in shaping future researcher’s views on historical developments?

DS: Soon after the establishment of the HAEU in 1984 by an agreement between the European Commission and the EUI, it was felt that the story of European integration is not fully told if only relying on EU-institutional sources. The ideas of a united Europe were developed during World War II by individuals engaged in the resistance, confined or imprisoned by fascist or nazi regimes, as the example of the Manifesto di Ventotene written by Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni shows. The federalist European movements born after the war organised the Congress of The Hague of 1948 which led, amongst others, to the establishment of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, the College of Bruges, and the European Cultural Centre in Geneva. Other important European organisations were established in the same period, such as the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation that managed the economic reconstruction of Europe under the Marshall Plan.

The archives of these organisations tell the multi-faceted story of European integration. Jean Monnet’s supranational European Community model announced in the Schuman Declaration of 1950, materialised in the European Coal and Steel Community and ultimately leading to the European Union, is rightly considered the most far-reaching and successful achievement of European integration.

Also the personal papers of pioneers, founders and decision-makers tell diverse stories on the history of European integration and enrich the official sources of EU institutions, which is why the HAEU expanded its mission towards the collection, acquisition, preservation of and access to private archives.

ECF: You have shared your hope that the ECF archives will offer new, exciting and previously unexplored sources for research on the cultural roots of European citizenship. How can these historical records help us now, when the idea of a shared European sentiment is under pressure?

DS: 80 years after the end of World War II, the achievement of European integration in forming a European Union based on common values and principles, such as peace, the respect of fundamental rights, democracy, and the rule of law, may seem a normal daily experience to us nowadays. But the recent economic and banking crises, the migration crisis, the Russian invasion in Ukraine, and the politics of the Trump government in the US, show the fragility of the post-war geopolitical order and threaten the European Union.

The individual identification with and the emotional belonging to Europe can draw inspiration from a common history and collective memories. The memories of the two key moments for contemporary Europe, the hour zero of 1945 and the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1989 that are considered birth dates for the European project were conceived as starting points for a common future. The historical records are a primary source and direct expression of this common history. They create links between the collective memory housed in institutional history and the individual experiences and memories.

ECF: In addition to its archival preservation and public access efforts, the HAEU promotes research on the history of European integration and engages in a range of outreach activities. It supports scholarly exploration and public engagement through research grant programs, academic events, and educational initiatives. Are these events and outreach activities only accessible for experts and can any European attend these? How could institutions like yours, or ours, offer more opportunities to non-academia to own European histories?

DS: The Historical Archives of the European Union promotes research on European integration and European Union by offering more than 300 institutional and private archival holdings with 800.000 files stored on 10.000 linear meters shelving. Through the Alcide De Gasperi Research Centre, a joint undertaking of the Archives and the History Department of the EUI, the HAEU proactively supports research initiatives in the field. The HAEU also manages more than 20 post-graduate research grant programmes to assist young scholars in visiting the Archives. Finally, the HAEU regularly hosts academic conferences and workshops, organises public events, open days, individual and group visits, and a broad education programme for schools that brings 1.000 school students to the seat of the Archives at Villa Salviati for civic education workshops. Thus, each year the Archives counts around 7.000 visitors in total.

This ambitious public engagement aims at offering not only an intellectual but also an emotional experience to citizens. More can be achieved through cooperation and networking, which is why the HAEU engages with its institutional stakeholders and depositing organisations so they become multipliers in raising the interest in the archives and the common European memory.

ECF: The House of European History in Brussels often offers their historical records for GIF contests – where audiences are stimulated to ‘hack’ historical material and transpose them into contemporary online life. How do you think about opening up historical archives in such ways?

DS: The House of European History and other cultural institutions, such as the European Cultural Foundation, can offer diverse and innovative ways to make history, memory and archives a tangible experience not only for experts but also for artists and public audiences. Archives can reach from textual to audio-visual items and can offer possibilities for artistic expression and transposition. The HAEU’s collections also comprise various competitions organised by federalist movements, the EU and the European Space Agency, that targeted young Europeans in an artistic and creative way calling for their ideas on Europe, inventing flags, symbols and images.

Similarly, the HAEU’s education programme connects individual and collective memories through family objects, letters or photos brought by students and confronted with official archival documents. The HAEU occasionally engaged in art competitions using archival documents, and the digital environment offers innovative and creative possibilities for an artistic interpretation of archives. The idea of a GIF-hack using the HAEU collections will certainly get on our to-do list, and the ECF could be our cultural partner for this initiative.

ECF: Lastly, what is your one question on our continent you hope seeing answered by historical research in your archives?

DS: Archives are a window to the past. They show how humans engaged and interacted in political, economic, social, scientific, cultural or educational spheres. While archives may sometime give clear responses to concrete questions, in general they would rather offer space for furthering reflection, interpretation and debate, rather than providing linear conclusions. The Historical Archives of the European Union provides specific and unique insight into political interaction on the transnational European level, a space for negotiations, decision-making and actions beyond the nation state. The ultimate question to the archives will be, whether the ties that were built and that are documented in the records are strong enough to build a solid future for the ‘ever closer union’ as it was envisioned in the preamble of the 1957 Rome Treaties.