Infrastructures, infrastructural cooperation and the continuity of European Integration: The European Postal and Telecommunication Union

传统的历史研究认为，第二次世界大战是欧洲一体化历史的一个缩影。尽管人们倾向于将一体化进程视为始于19世纪的长期连续性的一部分，但战争时期的特征仍然是决定性的割伤。虽然在20世纪20年代后半期，欧洲在经济和政治一体化方面有了强大的运动，但1939年至1945年之间的几年里，冲突占据了主导地位。该项目打算挑战这种说法。它以欧洲邮政和电信联盟(欧洲邮政和电信联盟)为中心，这是一个在德国和意大利领导下于1942年成立的国际组织。它涵盖了广泛的欧洲国家(轴心国家和中立国)，并顺利运作了两年。除此之外，从20世纪20年代到50年代，还有很强的制度和个人连续性。该项目的出发点是--尽管第二次世界大战期间发生了根本的意识形态、政治和军事冲突--基础设施框架内的欧洲一体化进程并未完全中断。相反，第二次世界大战似乎加速了这一特定领域的跨国合作。法德关系在这方面发挥了关键作用，因为协作、合作和竞争的相互作用成为欧洲一体化的决定性驱动力之一。为了探讨这些复杂的问题，总项目将被分成三个部分：第一部分将致力于欧洲邮政和芬梅尔德维林迄今不为人知的机构历史，第二部分将处理这一特定领域从20世纪20年代到30年代期间欧洲一体化的长期结构，而第三部分将比较邮政和电信一体化与同一时期的其他基础设施(如内河航运)。这样做，该项目一方面将为战争期间的法德关系和欧洲一体化历史提供新的线索。从机构角度来看，该项目将促进法国和德国领先的历史研究小组在邮电领域跨国合作领域的合作，并将联合法德历史学、历史基础设施研究和欧洲一体化历史等研究领域。项目设计能够对专题进行多角度分析，并就复杂的相互依存关系重建多个具体国家的观点。它还将加强德国和法国之间以及不同跨国研究网络之间的机构合作。因此，该项目将为法德合作开辟新的主题和机构联系。

Traditional historical research regards the Second World War as a caesura for the history of European integration. Despite a tendency to view the integration process as part of a long-term continuity beginning in the 19th century, the war period is still characterized as a decisive incision. While there was a strong movement towards the economic and political integration of Europe in the second half of the 1920s, the years between 1939 and 1945 were dominated by conflict. The project intends to challenge this narrative. It is centred around the Europäischer Post- und Fernmeldeverein (European Postal and Telecommunication Union), an international organisation founded in 1942 under German and Italian leadership. It covered a wide range of European States (axis and neutral) and worked smoothly for two years. Apart from that, there are strong institutional and personal continuities from the 1920s to the 1950s. The starting point of this project is that - in spite of the fundamental ideological, political and military conflicts of the Second World War - European Integration processes in the framework of infrastructures were not completely interrupted. On the contrary, World War II seems to have accelerated transnational cooperation in this particular sector. Franco-German relations played a key role in this context because the interplay of collaboration, cooperation and competition became one of the decisive driving forces for the integration in the Europäischer Post- und Fernmeldeverein. In order to explore these complex problems the general project will be split into three parts: The first will be dedicated to the so far unknown institutional history of the Europäischer Post- und Fernmeldeverein, the second will deal with the long term structures of European Integration in this particular field covering the period from the 1920s to the 1930s, whereas a third part will compare postal and telecommunication integration with other infrastructures in the same period (e.g. inland navigation). Doing this, the project will shed new light on Franco-German relations during the war on the one hand and European Integration history on the other. From an institutional perspective, the project will foster the cooperation between leading historical research groups in France and Germany in the fields of transnational cooperation in the post and telecommunications sector, and it will unite research areas like Franco-German historiography, historical infrastructure research and European Integration History. The project design enables a multi perspective analysis of the topic and the reconstruction of plural country-specific perspectives on the complex interdependencies. It will also strengthen institutional cooperation between Germany and France as well as between different transnational research networks. Thus, the project will open up new topics and institutional connections for Franco-German cooperation.