Written between 1904 and 1912, Romain Rolland’s novel presents an ideal vision of a link between France and Germany which relies on dialogue and artistic exchanges. The reader sees French society through the eyes of a German composer who is forced to leave his country and go to France. The successive depictions of Germany and France at the beginning of the 19th century tend to shed light on the similarities between the two countries, beyond the political, social and cultural differences. This link between the two countries, adversaries since 1870, acquires material form in the friendship between the German composer and the French writer Olivier, but moreover in the artist Jean-Christophe Krafft himself, who not only aims at creating a symphony which celebrates the strength of European civilization, but also restores to different degrees the relations between the characters, the nations, and different ideologies through his art and his conception of a harmonious connection between man and the universe. This novel offers an interesting vision of European history and of the succession of eras, and insists on the absurdity of the conflicts which led to World War I. This article aims to show how the genre of Künstlerroman, the artist’s novel, is used to critique the notion of national identity.