14th visegrad summer school kraków july 09, 2015 where is central europe? michal vašečka masaryk...
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14th Visegrad Summer School Kraków
July 09, 2015
Where is Central Europe?
Michal Vašečka
Masaryk University
V4 as embodiment of Central Europe?
Visegrád Congress /1335/ attended by John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia, Charles Robert, King of Hungary, and Casimir III, King of Poland.
Visegrád meeting /1991/ attended by the President of Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel, the President of Poland, Lech Wałęsa, and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Hungary, József Antall.
Central Europe? How to define it? 1. Cultural definitions (?)
2. Space of cultural trauma /Kundera/ (?)
3. Zwischeneuropa (?)
4. Mittleuropa (?)
5. Bloodlands (?)
6. Small ethno-linguistic national states (?)
7. Region of great „brains“ (?)
8. Institutionalized Central Europe - V4 (?)
or…
Central Europe? How to define it?
Kundera´s rediscovering of Central Europe
Kidnapping of Central Europe: „This is why the countries in Central Europe feel that the change in their destiny
that occurred after 1945 is not merely a political catastrophe: it is also an attack on their civilization. The deep meaning of their resistance is the struggle to preserve their identity - or, to put it another way, to preserve their Westernness.“
Reaction of the „West“: „Europe hasn't noticed the disappearance of its cultural home because Europe
no longer perceives its unity as a cultural unity.“
Central Europe as Eastern Europe: „By virtue of its political system, Central Europe is the East; by virtue of its
cultural history, it is the West. But since Europe itself is in the process of losing its own cultural identity, it perceives nothing but a political régime in Central Europe. To put it another way - it sees only Eastern Europe within Central Europe.“
Realm of Central EuropeFrom Kundera´s „Return of
Central Europe“ to building of common identity
Region of shared history and shared values
Region of specific modernization and specific historical roots of civic and political culture
Historical roots of civic and political culture
Unfinished Modernization ► discrepancy between structural and cultural dimension of modernity
Egalitarianism ► anti-intellectual tradition
State Paternalism ► anti-liberal sentiments
Lack of Trust ► weak civic and political participation
Europe as a social construct
Europe is a triumph of imagination over geography - Europe as a subcontinent (or peninsula?) of Asia or Euroasia
Central Europe as a social construct
Central Europe - fixation of mind within larger imagined entity
Liquid borders of Europe and consequently even more liquid borders of Central Europe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia-lZA47XBE
Central Europe as a part of former „Soviet Block“
Central Europe (MittleEuropa)Eastern EuropeBalkan countriesRussiaCentral AsiaCaucasus countries
Hansa citiesCities of Adriatic shore
Mitteleuropa
Mitteleuropa - Friedrich Naumann (1915):
Imaginative geopolitics - creation of political and economic union, under „natural“ domination of Germany and Austro-Hungarian empire
Enthusiasm: Recreation of Holy Roman EmpireDominant position of „Central Powers“Prevention of development of land bridge
between British possessions in Africa and India
Mitteleuropa
German Mitteleuropa (by political and cultural criteria) covering Austria, Croatia, Czech republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Baltic states and parts of Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Serbia, France and Italy.
MitteleuropaConcept of Mitteleuropa - what if?
The very model of ethno-linguistic nation-state might have been limited to some oddball cases in Western Europe, while Central Europe might have consisted of multilingual federal states or federations – and be under domination of Germany and German culture.
Conceptualisations of Central EuropeJesuits:
Europa Occidentalis (British isles, France, Malta, Greek-speaking orthodox
territories, western minor Asia, Crete, Cyprus, and former Crusaders states)
Europa Centralis (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Denmark,
Netherlands, Holy Roman Empire, and Switzerland)
Europa Orientalis Poland-Lithuania, Kingdom of Hungary, Ottoman
Balkans
Hispania and Rome
Conceptualisations of Central EuropeSchool atlas of European history: Historical Geography of Europe (1882)
Central Europe identified with Western Roman Empire - Charlemagne´s realm, later to become France and Holy Roman Empire
After 1871 concept of Central Europe, centered on France and newly-founded German Empire, was extended to embrace all of Italy and Austria-Hungary. Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Denmark were seen as part of Central Europe.
Conceptualisations of Central Europe
Philips´s Historical Atlas: Medieval and Modern (1927)
Divide between Central and Eastern Europe is difficult to grasp - but Central Europe progressively expands eastwards
Eastern Europe was identified with Russia and Ottoman Empire
Conceptualisations of Central Europe
Austro-German conceptualization of Central Europe
Großer historischer Weltatlas or AustroSchweizerscher Mittelschulatlas:
Central Europe identifiable with Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg´s realms, and Prussia - German Empire and Austria-Hungary.
Conceptualisations of Central EuropeThird Reich
Anschluss of Austria, incorporation of Czech lands, and division of Europe on the religious border between Western and Eastern Christianity made Third Reich onto a political embodiment of Central Europe.
Germany controlled almost all territories associated with Central Europe in its most extensive variant.
Population defined as ´racially inferior´ was to be ameliorated either by Germanization, expulsion, or extermination.
Conceptualisations of Central Europe
After the World War II
Central Europe was not to be found anywhere, Western and Eastern Europe were defined clearly.
No nuance or gradation of argument – black and white perspective.
Conceptualisations of Central Europe
Atlas of Central Europe (Andrew Rónai, 1945)
Atlas's base map focuses on the arch of the Carpathians and the Danubian basin and shifts Central Europe eastwards.
Placing historical Hungary in the very heart of Europe.
Conceptualisations of Central EuropeHistory of East Central Europe (UWP, 1974)
East Central Europe implies West Central Europe.
But - West Central Europe ceased to exit…
Intellectuals from „wrong side“ of the fence identified with Central Europe in order to differentiate themselves from the uniformity and homogeneity of the Soviet world.
Conceptualisations of Central EuropeHistorical Atlas of Central Europe (P.R. Magocsi, 1993)
End of the intellectual Cold War division of Central Europe - Magocsi divided Europe into three vertical sections.
Köztes-Európa, 1763-1993 (Pándi Lájos, 1997)
Monumental atlas of „Zwischeneuropa“.
Leaving Central Europe…V4 (1991)
CEFTA (1992)
European Union enlargement (2004)
Recent rise of nationalism in Central Europe - real tragedy of Central Europe
Bibó´s „The poverty of the small states of Eastern Europe – genuine Central European concept, going beyond German concept of Kleinstaaterei
Do we need Central Europe?Kroutvor (1988): „A united Europe already existed in
the past, it was the Central Europe, as embodied by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy - whatever our opinion may be of this defunct state.“
Political cooperation - EU, military cooperation, diplomacy, common energy policies, etc.
Economic cooperation
Cultural cooperation
Divided we stand?
Divided we stand?
Divided we stand…
And the winner is…
Central Europe without Central Europeans?
V4 functions, it embodies Central Europe - but just part of it, to identify it with its „core“ of it would highly problematic…
There is not a single polity with entirely natural borders… V4 is a great concept, but it excludes others from „Central Europe“.
Culture of apple strudel is still here… But Central Europe is disappearing from imagination of „Central Europeans“… Do they need it? Or - is it purely an intellectual concept?
… More convinced Central Europeans now live on the shores of the Atlantic than in the region itself…
Constructing Central Europe?People keep imagining and re-imagining Europe and
Central Europe…
Central Europe and its unique experience lives and reproduces itself as a social construct within cinematography of particular Central European countries.
Central Europe has always been a fascinating crossroad of ideas and ideologies as well as the birthplace of wars and totalitarian systems. The search for Central European identity is by far the best portrayed in Central European films. They show moral dilemmas od individuals and nations of Central Europe and can explain exhaustion by Central Europe.
Central European CinemaThe Shop on Main Street - Ján Kádar, Elmar Klos
Non-heroic "ordinary" man in the midst of the turmoil caused by the necessity of making crucial life-and-death decisions. Tragedy in the lives of human beings facing moral disintegration in the Slovak "puppet" Nazi state in WWII.
Oscar winner.
Central European Cinema Closely Watched Trains - Jiří Menzel
Tragicomic private problems of a young man working at a small Central Bohemian railway station in the course of WWII. Individual lives in the omnipresent war situation. Humor, love, sex, and death in a film based on a novel by the renowned Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal.
Oscar winner.
Central European CinemaAshes and Diamonds - Andrzej Wajda
Film focuses on a small Polish town celebrating the end of the war while new animosities are arising. Passion and anger, visual dynamism that includes the heavy use of symbols. The metaphorical message of the film suggests that Polish identity was harmed not only by the fascist period, but also by the import of Communism from the Soviet Union, a daring statement in the 50s.
Central European CinemaMephisto - István Szabó
Based on a novel by Klaus Mann, a deeply disturbing film about the complicity of ordinary people under fascism. In early 1930s Germany, the title character, an ambitious actor, takes a dangerous path.
Best Foreign Film 1982.
Central European CinemaThe Tin Drum - Volker Schlondorff
Oscar award-winning adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Gunter Grass' allegorical novel depicting Oscar, the son of a German rural family living in 1925 in Danzig/ Gdańsk. The little boy decides "never grow up". This is a visionary work of art full of surreal, imagery, eroticism and fierce satire.
How do we see each other? Mutual Perceptions of the Visegrad Citizens
Mutual Images
To what extent do you trust the nations living in V4 countries (% of responses „definitely + somewhat trust“) Source: IVF 2003.
56
43
59 62
77
66
39
71
48
87
75 71
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Czechs Hungarians Poles Slovaks
Hungar. PolesSlovaks Czechs
How do we see each other? Mutual Perceptions of the Visegrad Citizens
Mutual Images
When thinking about the other nations do you perceive them as similar or different ? (% of very + somewhat similar) Source: IVF, 2003.
37 40
22
6557
82
41
59
41
83 85
52
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Czechs Hungarians Poles Slovaks
Hungar. PolesSlovaks Czechs
How do we see each other? Mutual Perceptions of the Visegrad Citizens
Evaluation of willingness to cooperate (% of responses „high“). Source: IVF 2003
6
12
7
23
20
8
74
38
25
5
9
15
13
6
16
9
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Czech republic
Hungary
Poland
Slovakia Czechs Hungarians
Poles Slovaks
How do we see each other? Mutual Perceptions of the Visegrad Citizens
Contacts across the borders
„Have you visited any of other three V4 countries since January 2002 (in last 1,5 years) for business or private purposes?“ Source: IVF, 2003.
34
32
2426
45
23
14
5
3
15
28
9
0 10 20 30 40 50
Slovaks
Poles
Hungarians
Czechs
Czech R. Hungary
Poland Slovakia
Visegrad in the EU – Common versus Individual Approach ?
Identification of Regional Interests ?
“Should your country only defend its own interests in the European Union, or should it also take into account the interests of the Visegrad members?“ Source: IVF, 2003.
39
56
39
53
4540 43
36
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Slovaks Poles Hungarians Czechs
My country should only defend its own national interests in the EU
My country should also take into account the interests of other Visegradmembers