The article examines far-reaching changes in the perception of Europe and of space more generally among German scholars of medieval history and public international law in the 1940s, changes that survived WW II and that are still with us today. Departing from the intense discussion of the figure of the pirate in the correspondence between Fritz Rörig and Carl Schmitt, two eminent scholars in their own respective fields, who met as part of the „Kriegseinsatz der Geisteswissenschaften“, we inquire into the entanglements of the development of scientific concepts for historical inquiry with contemporary political questions in this period. In short, we argue that the defeat of WW I, National Socialism and, more crucially, the experience of the early military success in WW II, acted as a catalyst for these scholars, pushing them to abandon the nation state as their constant reference point in favor for political entities beyond the state. Based on their shared belief that space was socially constructed, Schmitt developed the concept of a „völkerrechtlichen Großraumordnung“ which allowed him to make non-state-entities such as the postulated „Reiche“, „empires“, and „Großräume“ into subjects of public international law, and Rörig no longer conceived the Hanseatic League as a proto-nation state operating as part of proto-globalized world economy, conceptualizing it instead as the bearer of a European „Großraum“. The vagueness of these concepts allowed for their survival and reminting after 1945. While Schmitt’s ideas about space and „Reich“ were rediscovered no earlier than the 1990s, Rörig’s suggestions that historical phenomena such as the Hanseatic League should not be thought with reference to nation states but to Europe – ideas he had developed as a way of legitimising German conquest and expansion – continued seamlessly into the post-war era.