In his introduction to the event, Allianz Cultural Foundation's managing director Michael Thoss thanked the audience for the excellent attendance at this year's Allianz Lectures, declaring "there has been no sign of apathy concerning Europe here."

In the fall, a German book about the Allianz Lectures will be presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair. "Let's talk about Europe" is planned to continue in Vienna in cooperation with the Austrian daily "Der Standard".

As speakers for this last lecture in Munich, the Allianz Cultural Foundation and its partner Süddeutsche Zeitung had chosen four professional "Grenzgänger," people who have spent their lives crossing cultural borders. Thoss introduced them as "translators of cultural codes and communicators of the untranslatable."

The Grenzgänger were Juri Andruchowytsch, a Ukrainian writer, poet and essayist, Ilma Rakusa, an author, translator and publicist born in Slovakia and brought up in Hungary, Slovenia and Italy, Ilija Trojanow, a Bulgarian writer, translator and publisher, and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, a Swiss art historian and curator who heads the Serpentine Gallery in London. Editor Sonia Zekri from the Süddeutsche Zeitung chaired the discussion.

Juri Andruchowytsch started the ball rolling by relating an entry he made in his personal diary on a train ride from Basel to Berlin. He described a brief incident at Zurich central station where he watched a horde of Swiss police officers detaining a dozen Africans stumbling off the train, which looked to him like an annual convention of Swiss police.

He commented, "Europe's borders are elastic and so indistinct that they are always in danger of being damaged. They are everywhere and nowhere. It would be a sin not to use this 'borderlessness'. We have a very honorable mission – proving to Europe that it is much larger than it can imagine."

Ilma Rakusa also related a personal anecdote, about a trip to Sarajevo with a Bosnian friend who is also an author. When she arrived in Sarajevo, almost all the girls were wearing veils, and this concerned her. "It would be tragic if the liberal country of Bosnia were to drift into radical Islam," she said. In her opinion, it is Europe's, not America's job to restore peace in the Balkans. In her view, Europe should attend to its own Muslims and not leave this to countries such as Saudi Arabia.

Ilija Trojanow began his statement on where Europe ends by remarking that, "where the edge and where the center of Europe is depends on where you are standing and in which direction you are moving," and that, "Europe is the only peninsula in the world that has been inflated to create a continent."

He then made a brief excursion into the world of myths, speaking about the myth of Europe, before making the observation that "Europe was diverse from the very start." In his opinion, Islam is part of this diversity as there were Islamic influences in the major cultural centers for centuries. He made a strong case for keeping borders open, proclaiming that "anyone who isolates Europe is precipitating its demise and is doomed."

As an exhibition organizer in the 1990s, Hans-Ulrich Obrist realized that in contrast to the 1980s, there were suddenly a dozen cultural centers in Europe, with cities such as Glasgow joining the ranks of London, Paris and Berlin. He believes his role is to use exhibitions to promote global dialogs that make a difference.

Europe's cultural diversity should also show in the equality of its languages, Obrist added. He views the Europeans' focus on the English language as a "misguided development". He agreed with Trojanow that Europeans should also learn their neighbors' tongues as a second or third language. Trojanow: "If we limit linguistic diversity and promote only monocultures, humanity will collapse."

"Wenn wir die Vielfalt der Sprachen begrenzen und nur noch Monokulturen fördern" - so Trojanow – "gehen wir als Menschen zugrunde."

Andruchowytsch criticized EU bureaucracy treating all Ukrainians like potential criminals. Europe should follow Ukraine's example: it has abolished all visa regulations for EU citizens after the "orange revolution". Instead, Ukraine is kept in a kind of purgatory, a place on the threshold of Europe where people go through a cleansing and purging process so that they can enter Europe.

Like the rest of the podium guests, he believes Europe can in no way be equated with the EU; the concept of Europe is far wider than just the EU. They see Europe as a higher and greater idea, encompassing everything from liberty to diversity.

In answer to moderator Sonja Zekris' closing question as to whether Europe, the global project, had become more of a dream or a nightmare, Trojanow proclaimed airily that "everyone has the right to speak, but no one has the right to be understood. We agree that we want to understand each other." This would be a counter-concept to Europe as an "empire".

In her closing statement, Ilja Rakusa called history an organic, gradual process - Europe was growing closer, but it needs time. Andruchowytsch expanded on Rakusa's anti-empire demand, calling for Europe to be "not an empire, not a graveyard, not a museum, but a continent where people feel alive."