About our past

The Club for European Understanding and Communication was created in 2020, but is the result of the fusion of two earlier associations, on the one hand the “Europäische Institut für Demokratieförderung”, founded in 1999 due to the initiative of and inspiration by Her Serene Highness countess Dorothea Razumovsky princess of Solms-Lich (1935-2014), and on the other hand the “Razumovsky Gesellschaft für Kunst und Kultur”, which was created in 2002 by His Illustrious Highness Andreas, count Razumovsky (1929-2002), who had in turn followed his father Andreas, his uncle Camillo junior, his grandfather Camillo senior, his great-grandfather Leo, his great-great-grandfather Gregor as chef de famille according to the will of the founder of the House, His Grace Kyrylo Rozumovskyi, hetman of Right and Left Bank Ukraine and duke of the Zaporizhian Host (1728-1803).
As such, the Club for European Understanding and Communication, which was originally named “Salon Razumovsky – Club für europaverbindenden Diskurs” is to fulfil three functions: to guarantee a free and unhampered exchange of honest opinions based on mutual respect and acceptance between peers in keeping with the best European traditional forms of debate, as they were developed from ancient Greece, the Scholastic and the Age of Enlightenment to present day democracies. In those debates, all participants can expect to be treated by and are expected to treat their interlocutors with respect and consideration. To offer suitable locations for this purpose, the Club for European Understanding and Communication has taken up residence in and split management of the Salon Razumovsky in the Jacquingasse 57, in the Third District of Vienna.
In keeping with its avowed objective as originally defined by the “Europäische Institut für Demokratieförderung” to provide industriously verified information that is considered vital to shaping an independent opinion to a European general public, the Club for European Understanding and Communication supports the proliferation of facts – not “truths” – to an audience of all age-groups.
The tradition of the “Razumovsky Gesellschaft für Kunst und Kultur“, which went public in 2005 with a series of Salon Concertos with a cycle of interpretations of Ludwig van Beethovens Middle String Quartets No 59 1, 2 & 3, written for HIH count – later HSH prince – Andrei Razumovsky (Rasumofsky), to whom the maestro also dedicated his 5th and 6th Symphonies, predispositions the Club to continue the cultural work of the antecedent association. The proximity of the Club to the Razumovsky-family should not obscure or rather demands that clarified be the fact that the present day Razumovskys are neither directly descended from the servants of the Russian Empire HIH count Alexei Razumovsky, minister of education and science under Tzar Alexander I, nor from the abovementioned prince Andrei, plenipotentiary ambassador to the Congress of Vienna, but from their younger brother Gregor, who was a decidedly European protagonist of the Age of Enlightenment, lived in Switzerland and Austria, and never made any secret of his Ukrainian origin, as Robespierre`s envoy duly stresses in his “Mémoires Secrets sur la Russie Pendant les Règnes de Catherine II et de Paul Ier”