Discussing Pax Germanica The Rise and Limits of German Hegemony in European Integration

Introduction

Emmanuel Comte and Fernando Guirao

Part 1: Pax Germanica through the ages

1. The European Union of the German nation

Emmanuel Comte and Brendan Simms

2. The Habsburg peace and its lessons for today’s Europe

Caroline de Gruyter

3. Economics and power in German national identity

Harold James

Part 2: The rise of German hegemony in European integration

4. The sources and effects of German hegemony on European integration

Emmanuel Comte

5. Germany and France – The elusiveness of a joint hegemony

Wolf Lepenies

6. How Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl made Europe

Kristina Spohr

Testimony: German pre-eminence in Europe

Herman Van Rompuy

Part 3: The constraints and limitations of German hegemony

7. Spectres of German dominance: Anxieties aroused and averted since 1950

Charles S. Maier

8. Solving the German question through European integration

Wilfried Loth

9. European integration history revisited: Around German leadership in the European Monetary System

Fernando Guirao

Part 4: The difficulties of German hegemony in a new century

10. The failure of German hegemony in European energy policy

Stephen Gross

11. German hegemony in the European Union? Evaluating the ‘crisis years’ from 2010

Simon Bulmer and William Paterson

12. Hegemony and Germany – An odd couple

Joachim Schild

Conclusion

Emmanuel Comte and Fernando Guirao

Biography

Emmanuel Comte is a senior research fellow of the European Programme at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy in Athens (ELIAMEP) and a professorial lecturer at the Vienna School of International Studies. He is the author of The History of the European Migration Regime (2018).

Fernando Guirao is Jean Monnet History Professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona and deputy director of the Barcelona Center for European Studies (BACES). His most recent book, The European Rescue of the Franco Regime, 1950–1975 (2021) has merited the 2021 Joan Sardà prize.

"Finally a book that answers Europe's most vexing question: how to fit Germany onto the map without endangering the continent's peace and prosperity. The authors, a superb mix of specialists across fields, treat politics as inseparable from economics and culture. What the wartime alliance ultimately enabled was not the destruction of German hegemony but its transformation: now enacted not by German force, but through European consensus."

John Connelly, University of California, Berkeley, USA

“In … Discussing Pax Germanica: The Rise and Limits of German Hegemony in European Integration, Herman Van Rompuy ... writes matter-of-factly, ‘In the years of my mandate, there was only one time when the position of the European Council did not correspond to the position of Germany…’ So which way Germany goes matters more to Europe than the future course of any other European country.”

Timothy Garton Ash, University of Oxford, UK, in The New York Review of Books, May 23, 2024

“The authors have succeeded in offering a new, original perspective on the role of the Federal Republic in European integration.”

Robin de Bruin, University of Amsterdam, Integration, April 2025

"Anyone interested in European and German history and the future of the EU will benefit from reading the book. 

Overall, this edited volume offers valuable insights on peace systems, and it is particularly relevant in the current context of increased geopolitical tensions, contested globalization and limited economic growth"

Laura Pierret, European University Institute, International Affairs