Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Der Gentleman is a short treatise on the Western ideal of the gentleman, published in Zürich by Thomas-Verlag. Writing between the world wars, the author sets out to define a human ideal he believes the West has inherited from antiquity, Christianity, and chivalry, and to argue that this ideal is the only foundation on which free politics can stand. The book is an essay in cultural criticism and moral pedagogy rather than a story: it traces the genealogy of a type of person, describes his virtues, and closes with a case for why those virtues matter to the future of democracy.
“Das Ritterideal entstand aus einer Synthese von christlichen und heidnischen Werten.”
Freedom For What?
The book opens with an epigraph from Nietzsche, who, the author notes, rightly completed the question “freedom from what?” with a second one: “freedom for what?” Freedom and politics, on this view, are meaningless unless they are borne and justified by a human ideal they serve. Coudenhove-Kalergi then sets two cultural ideals against each other. Bolshevism’s ideal, he writes, is the termite swarm, which destroys everything in its path in order to raise its totalitarian state-building from the ruins. The West’s ideal is the perfected personality, whose freedom is limited only by the freedom-claims of fellow human beings.
That Western ideal, he argues, rests on three historical foundations: antiquity, Christianity, and knighthood. The ancient ideal is personality, freedom, and harmony; the Christian ideal is holiness, divine sonship, and love of neighbor; the knightly ideal is bravery, loyalty, and honor. The knightly ideal itself arose from a synthesis: when the Frankish, Saxon, Gothic, Lombard, Alemannic, Burgundian, and Norman warriors adopted Christianity after the migration of peoples, they did not abandon their Germanic morality of bravery, honor, and loyalty but sought to transfigure and fulfill it with Christian ideals. From that fusion came the medieval vision of the noble human being, with its demanding code: highest strength in perfected form; loyalty to liege lord, friend, and ally; childlike humility before God and fate; bravery against the enemy and in misfortune; courtesy toward the lady; readiness to help the poor, widows, and orphans; reverence for age; magnanimity toward the defeated; respect for one’s own honor and others’; truthfulness and pride in every situation; self-mastery and severity toward oneself.
From Castle to Bourgeoisie
Chivalry crystallized in the castles of Europe’s nobility and received its final polish in the struggles between Crusaders and Saracens. The belief that honor stands higher than life gave knighthood a superhuman splendor that shines to the present. Knighthood faded, but chivalry remained: Europe’s nobility preserved it as the most precious legacy of its great epoch. Nobility lost political power, first to kings and then to burghers, but kept social power, and its way of life worked not through compulsion but through exemplary model on the rising bourgeoisie. Chivalric values and forms, insofar as they were not bound to the knightly estate, were received by the bourgeoisie, producing a bourgeois lifestyle of chivalric stamp. England led the world here, gradually shaping from chivalric elements a human ideal adapted to bourgeois life: the Gentleman.
The Gentleman ideal, in the author’s account, is the epitome of Western humanity because it joins the pagan-Germanic and Christian values whose synthesis is chivalry with the ancient ideal of the Stoic sage—the influence of the Renaissance and Humanism on English schools and universities being at work here. The Stoic becomes the philosophical complement to the medieval knightly ideal, and Attic kalokagathia is reborn in modern England. The ideal encompasses the whole human being in three dimensions—body, character, spirit—and seeks to train no athletes, saints, or geniuses but developed human beings.
Honor and Form
It is, above all, an ideal of honor and form. A man of honor without forms is not yet a gentleman; one with perfect forms but no honor cannot be one either—only the union of both produces the ideal. “Gentleman” literally means “gentle man”: a cultured human being as opposed to the wild man, barbarian, or gangster. Gentleness is as essential to him as strength: he is not only brave but courteous, not only sincere but tactful, not only honest but amiable; he values not only a pure heart but a clean shirt. He respects others as he wishes to be respected, avoiding irritation and offenses against good taste. Here lies the root of the so-called rules of propriety that form the rite of the world community of gentlemen: a man who eats with a knife may be a great hero, saint, genius, or sage, but no gentleman, since he takes no heed that his table companions must constantly fear he might cut his lips or tongue. Higher than all codified rules stands tact of the heart, exemplified by the English king who, hosting an exotic prince, drank the finger bowl when he saw his guest, ignorant of its purpose, sipping from it. The seemingly complicated ritual of the gentleman thus rests on simple commands of empathy and good taste.
The Stoic Core and the Chivalrous Code
As a legacy of Stoic wisdom, the true gentleman is of utmost patience. Self-mastery is the core of the type: he is neither dazzled nor swayed but keeps his bearing. This attitude corresponds to the philosophy of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius—unshakeability of the soul in pain and pleasure, in suffering and joys; the belief that self-perfection is a higher goal than enjoyment of life, and that a brave and serene soul can master not only life’s sufferings but also the terrors of death. Through this stoic attitude the modern Briton becomes similar to the classical Roman, who through the same attitude became master of the ancient world as the Englishman became the top type of the Occident. Both recognized that world-domination begins with self-domination, and that only he deserves, attains, and maintains authority who is stricter toward himself than toward others. British prestige, the author argues, rests not only on power but on authority: the gentleman ideal replaces million-strong armies. Of all the products England exports, it is the most valuable, for it has become the ideal of modern man far beyond the Occident’s borders and the symbol of British world-standing.
Woman and the Dame
In his attitude to woman the gentleman differs from the ancient Roman, who, like the Greek and the Oriental, saw the female sex as a second-rank kind of human. Only chivalry combined the Christian cult of Mary with the high social position of woman among the old Germans into a revaluation of the ancient valuation: for the knight, woman is a higher and purer being than man, whose physical superiority imposes the moral duty to honor and protect her. This chivalric legacy remained alive for the gentleman, who is always a degree more courteous and considerate to woman than to man, seeing in every woman a being like his mother and owed part of the reverence he feels for his mother. Nothing degrades a man more deeply, on this view, than brutality and inconsiderateness toward a defenseless woman—and nothing ennobles him more than readiness to fight for female honor and safety.
Along with the cult of women, chivalry created an ideal image of woman: the Dame. In the Middle Ages she was the counterpart of the knight; today she is the counterpart of the gentleman. Just as the gentleman is the epitome of all male virtues, the Dame is the epitome of all female ones, joining ethical with aesthetic values. A woman may have a heart of gold and a character of diamond: if she is unwashed she cannot be a Dame, nor if she goes into society with dirty fingernails. Her mission is to be a symbol of perfection and a servant of custom, form, and beauty; if denied the grace of outer beauty, she can bring her inner beauty to specific perfection and become a guardian of aesthetic values. This is what Goethe meant in Tasso: “Willst Du genau erfahren, was sich ziemt, so frage nur bei edlen Frauen an.” The culture of the gentleman, the author concludes, is unthinkable without the concept of the Dame as complement and counterpart.
Fair Play and the Sports Ground
The gentleman is chivalrous not only toward woman but also toward the enemy. In personal, political, and business struggle he uses only honest weapons and respects fair play as the highest law. He prefers to risk defeat rather than win with poisoned weapons. He rejects the principle that the end justifies the means, believing that base means also defile the purest ends. He keeps his word even when no one can compel him and when it involves the heaviest sacrifices: for his honor’s sake. He does not hate his opponent but respects him if he fights with the same pure weapons. Thus the gentleman becomes a chivalrous opponent, a loyal friend, a reliable business partner, an agreeable fellow man.
The best educator to the gentleman, the author holds, is rightly understood sport: it demands the same chivalric attitude as once the tournament; it demands self-control, strictest observance of the rules, and absolute justice and impartiality of the referee. The true sportsman rejoices without envy over a fine and deserved success of his opponent, almost as much as over his own. After the fight opponents shake hands as a sign of mutual respect and recognition. He learns to win without arrogance and to lose without resentment; loyal observance of the rules matters more to him than victory, and he prefers to lose in honor rather than win with injured honor. That England is at once the home of modern sport and of the gentleman concept is no accident: they belong together. The continent took over sport from England as an element of popular education, but not in the spirit of the gentleman ideal. In many states sport is regarded as an element of physical culture but not of character formation—as preparation for military training, but not for political. Yet sport differs from gymnastics in its pedagogical significance precisely in that it serves character formation equally with physical formation.
Here, the author says, lies a serious failure of continental pedagogy: it does not consciously educate the young generation to gentlemen, and it lacks a clear human ideal as goal and guideline of personality formation. The young face a chaos of values: one has learned through film to see his ideal in the ruthless gangster, the unrestrained criminal; another sees his ideal in the Christian ascetic and saint who turns the left cheek when the right is struck; a third takes his ideal from the sports ground—the boxer with the big biceps and small brain; a fourth sees his ideal in the bookworm, with a great library in his head but slack limbs and a bloated body.
The Gentleman and the Future of Democracy
The book’s closing argument contrasts these fragmentary ideals with the universal type of the gentleman, who stands with both feet in life yet thinks and acts justly, bravely, decently, and humanely. His body is trained in sport without his mental and character formation suffering; he unites sound common sense with idealism, and capability with imagination. This ideal requires neither the moral electness of the saint nor the intellectual electness of the genius: every person of average gifts and average disposition can attain this thoroughly human, by no means superhuman, ideal. Hence it suits itself as a guideline for national education, since its values can be understood by every unspoiled young person. The scout movement, which honors these ideals, proves through its world success the effectiveness and vitality of the gentleman idea in the present.
The future of the gentleman ideal is also decisive for the future of politics. So long as it finds no general recognition, most statesmen have no reason to keep their signatures under treaties or to refrain from making election promises they do not intend to fulfill. Only where the gentleman ideal is recognized can a democracy rest on firm and healthy foundations; there voters entrust the leadership of parties and the state to decent people—people to whom they would willingly also entrust the management of their property or the guardianship of their children: in a word, gentlemen. It is no accident that England is at once the cradle of the modern gentleman ideal and of modern democracy, since democracy is inseparably bound to recognition of the principle of fair play and respect for unwritten laws. Thus democracy has functioned exemplarily in England while it has failed in many continental states.
Gangsters Against the Free State
A minority that tries to sabotage the majority’s politics, and a majority that tries to destroy the opposition, are gravediggers of democracy. Once relations between parties are dictated by the law of power and the survival of the stronger, even the best constitution fails; the struggle for power continues until the strongest enslaves or destroys the weaker and establishes his dictatorship. Today, the author writes, politics lies partly in the hands of gangsters who are proud of cheating an opponent, breaking a treaty, betraying a friend, attacking a defenseless person—who feel themselves above good and evil, decent and indecent, noble and base, and are admired by much of public opinion precisely for that, just as successful gangsters are admired in the cinema. While this condition lasts there is neither secured peace nor secured freedom. Machiavellianism has brought success to individuals and statesmen but has simultaneously ruined the world. Only when the simple law of the gentleman becomes the guideline of states’ domestic and foreign policy can the political chaos be overcome that today inevitably leads to ever new revolutions, wars, and dictatorships. Because the state is no organic being but consists of people, its renewal must begin from the renewal of the person. The more strongly the idea of the gentleman prevails, the more the idea of the total state must fade.
A Class Ideal Made Human
The gentleman ideal itself, the author concedes, still needs clarification in the sense of pure humanity, for it still clings to a remnant of bourgeois class character and class arrogance (as does the concept of the Lady), which compromises it in wide circles. As once the chivalric estate ideal was received and renewed by the bourgeoisie, so it must again be received and transformed by workers and peasants, until its human and Western character comes fully into its own. For the gentleman ideal is not only aristocratic but at the same time democratic. It rests on justice and freedom and respects others’ rights as its own. It is tolerant because it rejects every fanaticism, including that of Bolshevism and Fascism, which stand in sharpest opposition to it. It stands in no contradiction to other worldviews because it is bound to no world picture and no religion: a gentleman can equally be a believing Christian, Jew, Mohammedan, or freethinker. It is liberal because it has personal freedom as premise and goal. Only the free man can be a gentleman—not the enslaved. Whoever may not dare to speak his opinion; whoever is forced to denounce friends; whoever may not associate with whom he will; whoever may not be loyal and chivalrous because the political superior or leader does not permit it—cannot be a gentleman. Therefore the worst soil for the flourishing of gentlemen is the total state, the best soil the free state.
Free people of free England, in centuries-long tradition, created the artwork of the gentleman and raised it to their form of life. The future of the West, the book concludes, depends on whether this ideal prevails or declines. The young generation needs an ideal toward which it can strive; once it has fully grasped the gentleman ideal, it will have firm ground under its feet. England’s youth strives to approach it, knowing that accumulating knowledge does not suffice; that it is more important to distinguish between good and evil, decent and indecent, clean and unclean, noble and base, than to master the most difficult problems of higher mathematics. For every man is by nature a fighter: everything depends on whether he is resolved to conduct the struggle for existence as a knight or as a gangster. But this ideal can unfold only in free states that have respect for the personality, for justice and truth, and therefore also for the immortal idea of the free, formed, and perfected human being.
Manners as Politics
Der Gentleman belongs to the interwar literature of cultural diagnosis, and its central move is to treat manners as politics. Coudenhove-Kalergi’s gentleman is not a matter of etiquette but a theory of authority: self-command as the root of legitimate power, fair play as the root of democracy, and the free state as the only soil in which the type can grow. The genealogy he constructs—antiquity, Christianity, and knighthood fused into chivalry, chivalry received by the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie refined by Stoicism into the English gentleman—is offered as a counter-history to the totalitarian ideals of his moment, above all the “termite swarm” he attributes to Bolshevism. The book’s later chapters widen the ideal beyond its class origins, insisting that workers and peasants must receive and transform it, and that its tolerance and indifference to any particular religion or worldview make it compatible with a plural society. Whether one reads it as a defense of a genuinely democratic civility or as an attempt to universalize a distinctly English bourgeois code, the argument is consistent: politics fails where gentlemen are absent, and the renewal of the state must begin with the renewal of the person.
