In 1946, Europe’s leading artists, philosophers and writers formed a transnational society designed to defuse the tensions left by World War II. The Society of European Culture was founded by some of Western Europe’s most well-known intellectuals, including Albert Camus, André Gide, J.B. Haldane, Thomas Mann, Henri Matisse, Karl Jaspers, Carl Jung, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Schweitzer amongst others. Much like the American-funded ‘Congress for Cultural Freedom’, the SEC created an informal but powerful political and cultural network across the world—seeking to enable dialogue between the Soviet East and the liberal West and further a ‘trans-European’ cultural ideal.Here, in the first complete history of the organization, Nancy Jachec shows how the organization became the model for UNESCO and George Soros’ Open Society Network, how the organizations work became the inspiration for the Declaration of Human Rights and demonstrates the profound influence its members exercised during the signing of the Helsinki Accords of 1975. Its founder and chairman, Umberto Campagnolo, was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace prize, and is one of the great ‘forgotten men’ of a crucial period in world history, as the Iron Curtain fell.