ABSTRACT
In an act of outstanding magnanimity and farsighted confidence President Robert Maynard Hutchins and faculty members at the University of Chicago assembled a conference in 1949 on the occasion of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's two hundredth birthday. Goethe's 1949 bicentennial coincided with the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany. Europeanization of Europe could start: the year of 1989 with its courageous, gentle, nonviolent revolutions. There was complete unanimity among all political camps in Germany that after unification people wanted to be even more Europe-orientated and integrated than before. How can any European country be denied the prospect of membership in the European Union, if it is a free democracy and if it is willing and able to accept the so-called European acquis communitaire? Freedom and responsibility are inseparable. Goethe once stated that it would be presumptuous simply to declare oneself free. Without responsibility this would mean at the same time to be ready for subordination.
