ABSTRACT
France and French attitudes to Germany after 1945 constituted the clue, as the core of a new Europe had to be the reconciliation between France and Germany. The history of Franco-German relations goes long back. It had been a complicated relationship; however, the antagonism, or to be more precise the rivalry between the two neighbor states over territory, dominance, and hegemony on the European Continent was of a more recent date. The Franco-German rivalry and conflict at the same time meant national identity through delimitation: each side did understand herself as negation of the other. The Franco-German axis or 'couple' became the dynamic factor in the European development. European identity should relate to certain European values, above all human rights, as was stressed in the German proposal for a European constitution. Europe was the vision of the German elite, a Europe that would mean the reconciliation of Germany with its European neighbors as well as the full rehabilitation of Germany.
