Shyness Banned! Ursula Hirschmann for a Federalist and Equal Europe
On the 30th anniversary of Ursula Hirschmann’s death, we honor her memory as one of the Founding Mothers of Europe.
Mita Marra
Bounded to other women, and men in the process of European integration, Ursula strove to merge federalist and feminist ideas spurring women in political engagement.
Getting to know Ursula
Ursula Hirschmann has been in the background of my education ever since I read the books by Albert Hirschman and Eugenio Colorni at the University of Naples. Those books would have become the foundations of my scholarship and teaching for seventeen years now. Yet, I then felt a void that I could not make sense of. I understood what that void was and how to deal with it after the age of thirty — with a painful separation and some more academic experience at the international level. While digging into the readings most dear to me, I was searching for a political and cultural orientation beyond the male-dominated references and models.
I wondered what Ursula’s experience was in the emotional bond with philosopher Eugenio Colorni and politician Altiero Spinelli and what was the relationship with her brother the prominent economist Albert O. Hirschman. The occasion was my visit to Albert and his wife Sarah Hirschman in Princeton in the spring of 1998. Although I had already read some of her letters to Colorni, it was in the meeting with Albert that I saw, for the first time, Ursula’s book published in Italian Noi senzapatria, — that would translate in English as Us Without Homeland. As Albert Hirschman showed it to me, discreetly inquiring if I was familiar with his sister’s stories, I shied away. I knew Albert’s friendship with Eugenio Colorni and his clandestine anti-fascist commitment with his mate Varian Fry, his fleeing to the United States, but I had no clue of his relations with Ursula and I did not have the courage to express my curiosity, asking for further information. I got the book after our meeting, but in that phase of my expatriate life — in the then golden world of young Italians abroad — gender equality was not an issue and I could not understand the uprooting Ursula experienced as a woman, daughter, mother, sister, and wife before and after World War II. I removed Ursula’s account of her family in Berlin, her subsequent involvement in love and anti-fascist politics in Paris and Trieste, and her marriage with Eugenio, and its crisis. In hindsight, I avoided confronting the difficulties that even a woman like Ursula had encountered in life.
Recently, I rediscovered Ursula in the commentaries hypothesizing her role as Colorni’s sparring partner between 1936 and 1942, and the 2019 biography that reconstructs her federalist commitment, alongside Altiero Spinelli, but also in the independent activity, she undertook during the seventies for the project Femmes pour l’Europe. As I read Ursula’s book again, I find it intimate and sincere, never indulging with a nostalgic tone in the narrative about herself, and her family, including Albert and Eugenio. I now appreciate the uniqueness of her story and the political engagement as Mother of Europe. Her example can still inspire new generations of young Europeans.
Knowledge and action for liberation
What I consider relevant now is Ursula’s attempt at integrating federalism and feminism for a united and equal Europe. In her writing of 1975, she passionately argued for women to take political initiative against any shyness that would hamper their leadership. She writes:
[…] There is the illusion of “before” and “after”. The idea of “first let’s only deal with our individual liberation”, “let’s form our consciences” is at the beginning of every liberation process. (The first organized workers’ groups thought of fighting only for the improvement of their living conditions and the blacks, at the beginning of their awareness, thought only of their civil rights). The former left the management of power to the bourgeoisie, the latter to whites. These forms of shyness are still strongly rooted in all of us. Before deciding to act politically we would like to learn more, understand better, have extra time available to accumulate knowledge, and reach greater maturity … In the meantime, we become mothers and grandmothers!
[…] We learn from men who from 30 onwards throw themselves into judging situations (without just thinking about it), and decide without worrying whether their information is complete, make mistakes after mistakes and then correct them from time to time: in a word, they act. Let us behave in the same way, we have the right and the duty to do so, let us try the courage to judge, to act, to make mistakes (my translation from Italian).
Her writing echoed the conversations Ursula likely had with Albert and Eugenio. For instance, Albert Hirschman’s Strategy of Economic Development (1958) focuses on “how one thing leads to another and lasts.” Or the theory of the Hiding Hand emphasizes the realization of limited knowledge, and the (re)action to potential failures. In Colorni’s philosophical reflection, knowledge has a moral tension and a goal of social betterment, and can guide action for ‘liberation’ — from cognitive biases, anthropomorphic illusions, and deceptive perceptions of senses. In the Dialogues of Ventotene between Eugenio Colorni and Altiero Spinelli, Colorni states:
[…] We cannot get out of ourselves, […] knowing for us it can only take place as learning […]”.
I can’t but consider this the premise for Ursula’s rhetoric stigmatization of anti-feminist Saint Paul’s view of women learning but never knowing the truth…I am convinced that Ursula, Eugenio, and Albert share a cognitive and political stance that sheds any intellectualism or scientism to cultivate curiosity, experimentation, and possibilism. This mental predisposition can support our commitment to strengthening Europe in the current time of uncertainty, yet revived federalist aspirations.
Three last policy-oriented points
First, taking action comes with the understanding of the interests at stake and the challenges that await us in molding and implementing the policies for the Next Generation EU. Pursuing environmental and socioeconomic sustainability will require both the analysis and courage to overcome that shyness, Ursula would consider the lacking assessment of what the situations would require us to do.
Second, political action inevitably faces compromises, a world of fears, defenses, and conquests — as Colorni viewed the challenges of ‘doing’ — the price for getting things done.
[…] Who is acting is necessarily more aggressive, less open, less available, less free than those who don’t. He must to a certain extent become deaf and blind, for what is outside his doing, love him with an exclusive, concentrated, selfish, mean love.
Third, the possibilist outlook typically endorsed by Albert Hirschman — Ursula’s courageous brother, versed in ‘doing’ but also inclined to reflection and doubt — could still offer a source of creativity and self-renewal for a united and equal Europe. Ursula writes:
[…] My brother was more courageous and soon took part in the discussions. But I noticed in what he said an effort to simplify, not only language but also thought […] he did not want to show too much of his knowledge so as not to appear as an “intellectual” in front of his companions […] (my translation from Italian book Noi senzapatria).
