«Notte da tregenda». Friedrich Meinecke e la catastrofe europea (1917-1930)

The aim of this article is to analyze the outlook of an historian, Friedrich Meinecke, on Europe’s dramatic and violent transformation between 1917 and 1930. Meinecke’s conception of history and its course, as his political thought, were formed studying the classics of German historiography, like Ranke and Droysen. However, he lived a time of deep crisis, in which the ideas of Europe and European culture of his predecessors appeared more and more to be a thing of a distant, unreachable past. To analyze Meinecke’s interpretation of the causes and developments of Europe’s crisis, we will take into consideration his widely renowned chef d’oeuvre, Die Idee der Staatsräson in die neuere Geschichte (Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’État and Its Place in Modern History, 1924). In addition, some of his lesser known, and never translated, articles will also be taken into account.