An "active promotion of the European ideal"? References to Europe in British-German town twinning.

通过集中于英国和西德德国之间选定的城镇结对联系，本研究项目探讨了“欧洲”在这些联系中发挥的作用，其中包括广泛的经济，外交，政治和文化进程和需求。通过这样做，该项目旨在为“生活的欧洲”的史学研究做出贡献，从而解决欧洲当代史研究中的一个空白，迄今为止，欧洲当代史主要集中在欧洲机构以及经济和政治进程上。该项目特别关注基尔-考文垂和法兰克福-伯明翰的孪生联系，研究（1）这些联系何时以及为什么被框定为“欧洲”，（2）欧洲的哪些定义占主导地位;（3）城市如何促成了欧洲定义的转变。除其他外，欧洲理事会于1955年设立的欧洲奖将被用作解决这些问题的探针。基于城市具有内在逻辑这一关键假设，本项目审查了如何通过地方、区域、国家和国际各级之间的谈判进程形成和扩大个别结对联系。为了突出城镇结对的外交政策层面，该项目还将包括英国城市与东德德国的结对联系：虽然东德试图将城镇结对作为一种准外交工具，但这种联系--以及与之相关的期望--反过来证明是具有挑战性的。

By focussing on selected town twinning links between Great Britain and West Germany, this research project examines which role “Europe” played in these links, which characteristically consisted of a wide array of economic, diplomatic, political and cultural processes and demands. By doing so, the project aims to contribute to historiographical research into the “lived Europe”, thus addressing a research gap in European contemporary history, which has so far largely focussed on the European institutions and thus economic and political processes.With particular focus on the twinning links Kiel-Coventry and Frankfurt-Birmingham, the project examines (1) when and why these connections were framed as “European”, (2) which definition(s) of Europe dominated and (3) how cities contributed to these shifting definitions of Europe. Among other things, the Europe Prize, established by the Council of Europe in 1955, will be used as a probe to tackle these questions. Based on the key assumption that cities possess an intrinsic logic, this project examines how individual twinning links were formed and expanded upon through negotiation processes between the local, regional, national and international level. To highlight the foreign-policy dimension of town twinning, the project will also include the British cities’ twinning links with East Germany: while the GDR tried to use town twinning as a quasi-diplomatic tool, the links – and expectations connected with them – proved challenging in return.