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The European Dream

Aleida Assmann

Four Lessons from History

The EU symbol is a circle of stars. For a long time, this trope has been understood, in the official rhetoric of the EU, as suggestive of ‘unity in diversity’. Today we have to ask ourselves: What keeps the stars from falling off into different directions? Does Europe yet have a guiding principle?

Analogously to the ‘American dream’, Aleida Assman presents a ‘European dream’ to indicate four lessons that Europeans have drawn from their history. These lessons, Assman argues, constitute the open project of Europe. Whether it yet has a future or not, will depend not least on whether these lessons can survive as a shared outlook.