European board games before Catan

Game designer Rob Newton asked on Twitter what people would consider "classic literature of the board game world." Fellow designer Jonathan Weaver responded in three categories - citing Chess and Go as "ancient literature," Monopoly as "classic American literature," and then added, "whatever the predecessor of Catan is would be classic European literature." Some time ago, I was inspired to go back and look at what board games Americans had available to them when Monopoly arrived.  Now I was faced with a similar question for Europe before Catan. I already knew that Clue was originally English and Risk came from a French design, but Weaver's response made me realize that I really couldn't identify other European games released prior to 1995. Surely Catan couldn't have been the first popular European board game, so I felt that some self-education was in order.