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From Geneva to Washington: The lived internationalism of Walter Kotschnig between the League of Nations and the United Nations, 1925–45

Tomás Irish Orcid Logo

The International History Review, Pages: 1 - 17

Swansea University Author: Tomás Irish Orcid Logo

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Abstract

This paper explores the career of the internationalist Walter Kotschnig between the two world wars. Born in Austria in 1901, Kotschnig spent much of the 1920s and 1930s working in Geneva with a range of international bodies before he moved to the United States in 1936, where he would later work with...

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Published in: The International History Review
ISSN: 0707-5332 1949-6540
Published: Informa UK Limited 2025
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa68709
Abstract: This paper explores the career of the internationalist Walter Kotschnig between the two world wars. Born in Austria in 1901, Kotschnig spent much of the 1920s and 1930s working in Geneva with a range of international bodies before he moved to the United States in 1936, where he would later work with the State Department planning the establishment of the United Nations. Across these decades, Kotschnig developed a critique of dominant liberal internationalist thought on both sides of the Atlantic; his thought was the result of a ‘lived internationalism’, and rooted in the material practicalities of living a life that straddled international borders; these ideas in turn became deeply influential in the wartime planning of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and its Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
Keywords: Internationalism; League of Nations; humanitarianism; education; United Nations
College: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Funders: Research for this article was kindly funded by the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies.
Start Page: 1
End Page: 17