Central Europe is a geographical region of Europe between Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Western Europe and Northern Europe Europe.[ Lecture 14: The Origins of the Cold War. Historyguide.org. Retrieved 29 October 2011.]
The region is variously defined but often includes Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland.
Since the Cold War, the countries that make up Central Europe have historically been and in some cases continue to be
Central Europe began a "strategic awakening" in the late 20th and early 21st centuries,
Historical perspective
Middle Ages and early modern period
In the early Middle Ages, Central Europe had a diverse landscape, with various ethnic groups inhabiting the region.
Germanic peoples, among them the
Franks,
Alemanni and
Bavarians, were predominantly situated in the west, and Slavic tribes were predominantly in the east.
However, the region encompassed a wide spectrum of additional tribes and communities.
From the late 6th century to the early 9th century, the area roughly corresponding to the Pannonian Basin was part of the Avar Khaganate, the realm of the Pannonian Avars.
The Holy Roman Empire was founded at the turn of the 9th century, following the coronation of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III.
The earliest recorded concept of Europe as a cultural sphere, instead of simply a geographic term, was formed by Alcuin of York in the late 8th century during the Carolingian Renaissance and was limited to the territories that practised Western Christianity at the time. "European" as a cultural term did not include much of the territories in which the Orthodox Church represented the dominant religion until the 19th century.
Following the Christianization of various Central European countries, elements of cultural unity emerged within the region, specifically Catholic Church and Latin. Eastern Europe remained Eastern Orthodox, and was dominated by Byzantine Empire cultural influence. After the East–West Schism in 1054, significant parts of Eastern Europe developed cultural unity and resistance to Catholic Western and Central Europe within the framework of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Church Slavonic and the Cyrillic alphabet.
Francia 814.svg|Frankish Empire and its Tributary state in 814
East Francia 843.svg|East Francia in 843
Great moravia svatopluk.png|Possible furthest extent of Great Moravia under Svatopluk I (870–894)
Duchy of Poland 1000.svg|Duchy of Poland under the Piast dynasty in 1000
Duchy of Bohemia 1000.svg|Duchy of Bohemia (Czech Duchy) in 1000
Kingdom of Germany 1004.svg|Kingdom of Germany in 1004
Kingdom of Hungary 1190.svg|Kingdom of Hungary in 1190
Croatia 1260.png|Kingdom of Croatia in 1260
Holy Roman Empire (c. 1600).svg|Holy Roman Empire in 1600
Map of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1619–1621).png|Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its in 1619
According to the historian Jenő Szűcs, Central Europe at the end of the 1st millennium became influenced by Western European developments. Szűcs argued that between the 11th and 15th centuries, Christianization influenced the cultures within Central Europe, and well-defined social features were also implemented in the region based on Western characteristics. The keyword of Western social development after the turn of the millennium was the spread of Magdeburg rights in some cities and towns of Western Europe. They began to spread in the mid-13th century in Central European countries and brought about self-governments of towns and counties.
In 1335, the Kings of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary and Croatia met in the castle of Visegrád
In 1386, Jogaila, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, converted to Christianity (specifically Catholicism) and subsequently became King of Poland through marriage to Queen Jadwiga of Poland. That initiated the Christianization of Lithuania and resulted in the Union of Krewo, signifying a personal union between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. The union commenced an enduring political alliance between the two entities and laid the foundations for the later establishment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569.
Between the 15th and the early 16th centuries, the Kingdom of Croatia, which was then in personal union with the Kingdom of Hungary, served as a significant maritime gateway of Central Europe, with its ports facilitating key trade routes between Central Europe and the Mediterranean.
Before World War I
Before 1870, the industrialization that had started to develop in Northwestern and Central Europe and the United States did not extend in any significant way to the rest of the world. Even in
Eastern Europe, industrialization lagged far behind.
Russia, for example, remained largely rural and agricultural, and its autocratic rulers kept the peasants in serfdom.
[Jackson J. Spielvogel: Western Civilization: Alternate Volume: Since 1300. p. 618.]
The concept of Central Europe was already known at the beginning of the 19th century,
but it developed further and became an object of intensive interest towards the 20th century. However, the first concept mixed science, politics, and economy and was strictly connected with the aspirations of German states to dominate a part of European continent called
Mitteleuropa. At the Frankfurt Parliament, which was established in the wake of the March Revolution of 1848, there were multiple competing ideas for the integration of German-speaking areas, including the
mitteleuropäische Lösung (Central European Solution) propagated by Austria, which sought to merge the smaller German-speaking states with the multi-ethnic Habsburg monarchy, but was opposed by Prussia and others. An imperialistic idea of
Mitteleuropa also became popular in the
German Empire, which was established in 1871 and experienced intensive economic growth. The term was used when the Union of German Railway Administrations established the
Mitteleuropäische Eisenbahn-Zeit (Central European Railway Time)
time zone, which was applied by the railways from 1 June 1891 and was later widely adopted in civilian life; the time zone's name has been shortened to the present-day Central European Time.
The German term denoting Central Europe was so fashionable that other languages started referring to it when indicating territories from Rhine to Vistula or even the Dnieper and from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans.[A. Podraza, Europa Środkowa jako region historyczny, 17th Congress of Polish Historians, Jagiellonian University 2004] An example of this vision of Central Europe may be seen in Joseph Partsch's book of 1903.[Joseph Franz Maria Partsch, Clementina Black, Halford John Mackinder, Central Europe, New York 1903]
On 21 January 1904, Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftsverein (Central European Economic Association) was established in Berlin with economic integration of Germany and Austria (with eventual extension to Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands) as its main aim. Another time, the term Central Europe became connected to the German plans of political, economic, and cultural domination. The "bible" of the concept was Friedrich Naumann's book Mitteleuropa[F. Naumann, Mitteleuropa, Berlin: Reimer, 1915] in which he called for an economic federation to be established after World War I. Naumann's proposed a federation with Germany and the Habsburg monarchy as its centre that would eventually unite all external European nations through economic prosperity.
Interwar period
The
interwar period (1918–1938) brought a new geopolitical system, as well as economic and political problems, and the concept of Central Europe took on a different character. The centre of interest was moved to its eastern part, particularly to the countries that had rappeared or reappared on the map of Europe. Central Europe ceased to be the area of German aspiration to lead or dominate and became a territory of various integration movements aiming at resolving political, economic, and national problems of "new" states, being a way to face German and Soviet pressures. However, the conflict of interests was too major, and neither the
Little Entente nor
Intermarium (
Międzymorze) ideas succeeded. The Hungarian historian Magda Ádám wrote in her study
Versailles System and Central Europe (2006): "Today we know that the bane of Central Europe was the
Little Entente, military alliance of
Czechoslovakia, Romania and Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), created in 1921 not for Central Europe's cooperation nor to fight German expansion, but in a wrong perceived notion that a completely powerless Hungary must be kept down".
[István Deák (2006) The English Historical Review, Volume CXXI, Issue 490, page: 338: The Versailles System and Central Europe [2]] The events preceding World War II in Europe, including the so-called
Western betrayal such as the
Munich Agreement, were very much enabled by the rising nationalism and ethnocentrism that typified that period.
The interwar period brought new elements to the concept of Central Europe. Before World War I, it embraced mainly German-speaking states, and non-German speaking territories were an area of intended German penetration and domination, with German leadership being the 'natural' result of economic dominance.
According to Emmanuel de Martonne, in 1927, Central Europe encompassed Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Switzerland, northern Italy and northern Yugoslavia. The author uses both Human and Physical Geographical features to define Central Europe but failed to take into account the legal development or the social, cultural, economic, and infrastructural developments in those countries.[[3], [4] and [5] ; Géographie universelle (1927), edited by Paul Vidal de la Blache and Lucien Gallois]
The avant-garde movements of Central Europe contributed to the evolution of modernism and reached their its peak throughout the continent during the 1920s. The Sourcebook of Central European avantgards (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) contains primary documents of the avant-gardes in the territories of Austria, Germany, Poland (including western parts of present-day Belarus and Ukraine, and southern parts of Lithuania), Czechoslovakia (including the Czech Republic and Slovakia), Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia (including present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia) from 1910 to 1930.
Mitteleuropa
With the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire around 1800, there was a consolidation of power among the
Habsburgs and the
Hohenzollerns as the two major states in the area. They had much in common and occasionally cooperated in various channels, but more often competed. One approach in the various attempts at cooperation, was the conception of a set of supposed common features and interests, and this idea led to the first discussions of a
Mitteleuropa in the mid-nineteenth century, as espoused by
Friedrich List and Karl Ludwig Bruck. These were mostly based on economic issues.
Mitteleuropa may refer to a historical concept or a contemporary German definition of Central Europe. As a historical concept, the German term Mitteleuropa (or alternatively its literal translation into English, Middle Europe) is an ambiguous German concept. According to Fritz Fischer Mitteleuropa was a scheme in the era of the German Empire by which the old imperial elites had allegedly sought to build a system of German economic, military and political domination from the northern seas to the Near East and from the Low Countries through the steppes of Russia to the Caucasus. Later on, Professor Fritz Epstein argued the threat of a Slavic "Drang nach Westen" (Western expansion) had been a major factor in the emergence of a Mitteleuropa ideology before the Reich of 1871 ever came into being.
In Germany, the word's connotation was also sometimes linked to the pre-war German provinces east of the Oder-Neisse line.
The term "Mitteleuropa" conjures up negative historical associations among some people although the Germans have not played an exclusively negative role in the region. Most Central European Jews embraced the enlightened German humanistic culture of the 19th century. Jews at the turn of the 20th century became representatives of what many consider to be Central European culture at its best, but the Nazi conceptualisation of "Mitteleuropa" sought to destroy that culture. The term "Mitteleuropa" is widely used in German education and media without a negative meaning, especially since the end of communism. Many people from the new states of Germany do not identify themselves as being part of Western Europe and therefore prefer the term "Mitteleuropa".
Central Europe during World War II
During World War II, Central Europe was largely occupied by Nazi Germany. Many areas were a battle area and were devastated. The mass murder of the Jews depopulated many of their centuries-old settlement areas or settled other people there and their culture was wiped out. Both
Adolf Hitler and
Joseph Stalin diametrically opposed the centuries-old Habsburg principles of "live and let live" with regard to ethnic groups, peoples, minorities, religions, cultures and languages and tried to assert their own ideologies and power interests in Central Europe.
[Igor Lukes, "Central Europe Has Joined NATO: The Continuing Search for a More Perfect Habsburg Empire". SAIS Review (1999): 47–59.] There were various Allied plans for state order in Central Europe for post-war. While Stalin tried to get as many states under his control as possible, Winston Churchill preferred a Central European Danube Confederation to counter those countries against Germany and Russia. There were also plans to add Bavaria and Württemberg to an enlarged Austria.
There were also various resistance movements around Otto von Habsburg that pursued that goal. The group around the Austrian priest
Heinrich Maier also planned in that direction, which also successfully helped the Allies to wage war by, among other things, forwarding production sites and plans for V-2 rockets,
Tiger tanks and aircraft to the United States.
[Peter Broucek "Die österreichische Identität im Widerstand 1938–1945" (2008), p 163.] Otto von Habsburg tried to relieve Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and northern Yugoslavia (particularly the territories of present-day Croatia and Slovenia) from German and Soviet influence and control.
[Olga S. Opfell "Royalty Who Wait: The 21 Heads of Formerly Regnant Houses of Europe" (2001), p 133.] There were various considerations to prevent German and Soviet power in Europe after the war. Churchill's idea of reaching the area around Vienna before the Russians via an operation from the Adriatic had not been approved by the Western Allied chiefs of staff.
As a result of the military situation at the end of the war, Stalin's plans prevailed and much of Central Europe came under Soviet control.
[Gerald Stourzh "Geschichte des Staatsvertrages 1945–1955" (1980), p 4.][Wolfgang Mueller "Die sowjetische Besatzung in Österreich 1945–1955 und ihre politische Mission" (German – "The Soviet occupation in Austria 1945–1955 and its political mission"), 2005, p 24.]
Central Europe behind the Iron Curtain
during the Cold War:
]]
Following World War II, parts of Central Europe became part of the Eastern Bloc. The boundary between the two blocks was called the Iron Curtain. Austria, Switzerland and Yugoslavia remained neutral.
The post-World War II period brought blocking of research on Central Europe in the Eastern Bloc countries, as its every result proved the dissimilarity of Central Europe, which was inconsistent with the Stalinist doctrine. On the other hand, the topic became popular in Western Europe and the United States, much of the research being carried out by immigrants from Central Europe.[One of the main representatives was Oscar Halecki and his book The limits and divisions of European history, London and New York 1950] Following the Fall of Communism, publicists and historians in Central Europe, especially the anti-communist opposition, returned to their research.[A. Podraza, Europa Środkowa jako region historyczny, 17th Congress of Polish Historians, Jagiellonian University 2004]
According to Karl A. Sinnhuber ( Central Europe: Mitteleuropa: Europe Centrale: An Analysis of a Geographical Term)
The opening of the Iron Curtain between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a peaceful chain reaction, at the end of which there was no longer an East Germany and the Eastern Bloc had disintegrated.[Hilde Szabo: Die Berliner Mauer begann im Burgenland zu bröckeln (The Berlin Wall began to crumble in Burgenland – German), in Wiener Zeitung 16 August 1999; Otmar Lahodynsky: Paneuropäisches Picknick: Die Generalprobe für den Mauerfall (Pan-European picnic: the dress rehearsal for the fall of the Berlin Wall – German), in: Profil 9 August 2014.][Ludwig Greven "Und dann ging das Tor auf", in Die Zeit, 19 August 2014.] It was the largest escape movement from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. After the picnic, which was based on an idea by Otto von Habsburg to test the reaction of the USSR and Mikhail Gorbachev to an opening of the border, tens of thousands of media-informed East Germans set off for Hungary.[Miklós Németh in Interview, Austrian TV – ORF "Report", 25 June 2019.] The leadership of the GDR in East Berlin did not dare to completely block the borders of their own country and the USSR did not respond at all.
This broke the bracket of the Eastern Bloc and Central Europe subsequently became free from communism.[Otmar Lahodynsky "Eiserner Vorhang: Picknick an der Grenze" (Iron curtain: picnic at the border – German), in Profil 13 June 2019.][Thomas Roser: DDR-Massenflucht: Ein Picknick hebt die Welt aus den Angeln (German – Mass exodus of the GDR: A picnic clears the world) in: Die Presse 16 August 2018.][Andreas Rödder, Deutschland einig Vaterland – Die Geschichte der Wiedervereinigung (2009).]
Roles
According to American professor
Ronald Tiersky, the 1991 summit held in Visegrád attended by the
Czechoslovakia, Hungarian and Polish presidents was hailed at the time as a major breakthrough in Central European cooperation, but the Visegrád Group became a vehicle for coordinating Central Europe's road to the European Union, while development of closer ties within the region languished.
American professor Peter J. Katzenstein described Central Europe as a way station in a Europeanization process that marks the transformation process of the Visegrád Group countries in different, though comparable ways. According to him, in Germany's contemporary public discourse "Central European identity" refers to the civilizational divide between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. He argued that there is no precise way to define Central Europe and that the region may even include Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Serbia.
Definitions
The issue of how to name and define the Central European area is subject to debates. Very often, the definition depends on the nationality and historical perspective of its author. The concept of "Central Europe" appeared in the 19th century. It was understood as a contact zone between the Southern and Northern areas, and later the Eastern and Western areas of Europe. Thinkers portrayed "Central Europe" either as a separate region, or a buffer zone between these regions.
In the early nineteenth century, the terms "Middle" or "Central" Europe (known as "Mitteleuropa" in German and "Europe centrale" in French) were introduced in geographical scholarship in both German and French languages. At first, these terms were linked to the regions spanning from the Pyrenees to the Danube, which, according to German authors, could be united under German authority. However, after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the French began to exclude France from this area, and later the Germans also adopted this perspective by the end of World War I.
The concept of "Central" or "Middle Europe", understood as a region with German influence, lost a significant part of its popularity after WWI and was completely dismissed after WWII. Two defeats of Germany in the world wars, combined with the division of Germany, an almost complete disappearance of German-speaking communities in these countries, and the Communist-led isolation of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Yugoslavia from the Western world, turned the concept of "Central/Middle Europe" into an anachronism. On the other side, the non-German areas of Central Europe were almost universally regarded as "Eastern European" primarily associated with the Soviet sphere of influence in the late 1940s–1980s.
For the most part, this geographical framework lost its attraction after the end of the Cold War. A number of Post-Communist countries rather re-branded themselves in the 1990s as "Central European.", while avoiding the stained wording of "Middle Europe," which they associated with German influence in the region. This reinvented concept of "Central Europe" excluded Germany, Austria and Switzerland, reducing its coverage chiefly to Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania and Yugoslavia.
Academic
The main proposed regional definitions, gathered by Polish historian Jerzy Kłoczowski and others, include:
[Jerzy Kłoczowski, Actualité des grandes traditions de la cohabitation et du dialogue des cultures en Europe du Centre-Est, in: L'héritage historique de la Res Publica de Plusieurs Nations, Lublin 2004, pp. 29–30 ]
-
West-Central and East-Central Europe – this conception, presented in 1950,
[Oskar Halecki, The Limits and Divisions of European History, Sheed & Ward: London and New York 1950, chapter VII] distinguishes two regions in Central Europe: the German West-Centre and the East-Centre covered by a variety of nations from Finland to Greece, placed between the great empires of Scandinavia, Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union.
-
Central Europe as a region comprising countries in mainland Europe speaking West Germanic (Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland) and West Slavic languages (the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland).
[Erich Schenk, Mitteleuropa. Düsseldorf, 1950]
-
Central Europe as the area of the cultural heritage of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth – Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian historians, in cooperation (since 1990) with Polish historians, insist on the importance of this concept.
-
Central Europe as the area of the former Habsburg monarchy
-
A concept underlining the links connecting Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine with Russia and treating the Russian Empire together with the whole Slavic peoples Orthodox population as one entity – this position is taken by Russian historiographers.
-
A concept putting the accent on links with the West, especially from the 19th century and the grand period of liberation and formation of Nation-states, an idea that is represented by the South-Eastern states, which prefer the enlarged concept of the "East Centre" expressing their links with Western culture.
Former University of Vienna professor Lonnie R. Johnson points out criteria to distinguish Central Europe from Western, Northern, Eastern and Southern Europe:
-
One criterion for defining Central Europe is the frontiers of medieval empires and kingdoms that largely correspond to the religious frontiers between Catholic Church Western and Central Europe and Orthodox Eastern Europe. Following that criterion, the pagans of Central Europe were converted to Catholicism, but in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, they were brought into the fold of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
He also thinks that Central Europe is a dynamic historical concept, not a static spatial one. For example, a fair share of Belarus and Right-bank Ukraine are in Eastern Europe today, but years ago, they were in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Johnson's study on Central Europe received acclaim and positive reviews in the scientific community.
Encyclopedias, gazetteers, dictionaries
The World Factbook
defines Central Europe as: Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland.
The Columbia Encyclopedia includes: Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Switzerland. While it does not have a single article defining Central Europe, Encyclopædia Britannica includes the following countries in Central Europe in one or more of its articles: Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Croatia,
the Czech Republic, Germany,
Hungary, Lithuania,
Poland, Romania,
Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland.
The France Encyclopédie Larousse defines Central Europe as a region comprising Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Liechtenstein, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland.
The German Encyclopaedia Meyers Grosses Taschenlexikon ( Meyers Big Pocket Encyclopedia), 1999, defines Central Europe as the central part of Europe with no precise borders to the East and West. The term is mostly used to denominate the territory between the Schelde to Vistula and from the Danube to the Moravian Gate.
The German Ständige Ausschuss für geographische Namen]] (Standing Committee on Geographical Names), which develops and recommends rules for the uniform use of geographical names, proposes two sets of boundaries. The first follows international borders of current countries. The second subdivides and includes some countries based on cultural criteria. In comparison to some other definitions, it is broader, including Luxembourg, Estonia, Latvia, and in the second sense, the Kaliningrad Oblast and parts of Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Italy, and France.
According to Meyers Enzyklopädisches Lexikon,[Band 16, Bibliographisches Institut Mannheim/Wien/Zürich, Lexikon Verlag 1980] Central Europe is a part of Europe composed of Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Switzerland, and northern marginal regions of Italy and Yugoslavia (northern states – Croatia and Slovenia), as well as northeastern France.
Geographical
There is no general agreement either on what geographic area constitutes Central Europe, nor on how to further subdivide it geographically.
At times, the term "Central Europe" denotes a geographic definition as the Danube region in the heart of the continent, including the language and culture areas which are today included in the states of Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine and usually also Germany.
Governmental and standards organisations
The terminology EU11 countries refer the Central,
Eastern Europe and
Baltic states member states which accessed in 2004 and after: in 2004 Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, and Slovakia; in 2007 Bulgaria, Romania; and in 2013 Croatia.
The EU-funded Interreg region "Central Europe" includes the following countries and regions:
-
Austria
-
Croatia
-
Czechia
-
Germany: Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, Thuringia, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
-
Hungary
-
Italy: Lombardy, Trentino - Alto Adige, Aosta Valley, Veneto, Emiglia Romagna, Liguria, Friuli - Venezia Giulia
-
Poland
-
Slovakia
-
Slovenia
The Central European Free Trade Agreement includes the following countries:
=== Map gallery ===
and Ronald Tiersky, a strict definition of Central Europe means the Visegrád Group. , Mitteleuropa''. Düsseldorf, 1950]]
States
]]
The choice of states that make up
Central Europe is an ongoing source of controversy.
Although views on which countries belong to Central Europe are vastly varied, according to many sources (see section Definitions) the region includes some or all of the states listed in the sections below:
Depending on the context, Central European countries are sometimes not seen as a specific group, but sorted as either Eastern or Western European countries.
Croatia is alternatively placed in Southeastern Europe.
Lithuania is alternatively placed in Northeastern Europe.
]]
Other countries and regions
Some sources also add regions of neighbouring countries for historical reasons, or based on geographical and/or cultural reasons:
-
Bosnia and Herzegovina (as a former part of the Habsburg monarchy and Yugoslavia, alternatively placed in Southern or Southeast Europe)
-
Estonia (considered to have been part of extended definitions of 'Mitteleuropa', alternatively placed in Eastern, Northeastern or Northern Europe)
-
Italy (South Tyrol, Trentino, Trieste and Gorizia, Friuli, Lombardy, and Veneto or all of Northern Italy)
-
Latvia (considered to have been part of extended definitions of 'Mitteleuropa')
-
Romania (Transylvania, along with Banat, Crișana, Maramureș,
[Sven Tägil, Regions in Central Europe: The Legacy of History, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1999, p. 191] Bukovina[Klaus Peter Berger, The Creeping Codification of the New Lex Mercatoria, Kluwer Law International, 2010, p. 132]
-
Russia (Kaliningrad Oblast)
-
Serbia (primarily Vojvodina and Zemun, alternatively placed in Southeast Europe)
[Irena Kogan: Delayed Transition: Education and Labor Market in Serbia [8], Making the Transition: Education and Labor Market Entry in Central and Eastern Europe, 2011, chapter 6][WMO, UNCCD, FAO, UNW-DPC [9] , Country Report: Drought conditions and management strategies in Serbia, 2013, p. 1][Government of Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's speech at the Energy Forum following a joint meeting of the Serbian and Hungarian cabinets [10] , Government of Hungary on Serbia, 2018]
-
Ukraine (Transcarpathia,
Geography
Geography defines Central Europe's natural borders with the neighbouring regions to the north across the
Baltic Sea, namely Northern Europe (or
Scandinavia), and to the south across the
Alps, the Apennine peninsula (or Italy), and the
Balkan peninsula across the Soča–Krka–
Sava–Danube line. The borders to Western Europe and Eastern Europe are geographically less defined, and for this reason the
Culture and historical boundaries migrate more easily west–east than south–north.
Southwards, the Pannonian Plain is bounded by the rivers Sava and Danube – and their respective floodplains.[ Danube Facts and Figures. Bosnia and Herzegovina (April 2007) (PDF file)] The Pannonian Plain stretches over the following countries: Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia, and touches borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Ukraine ("peri- Pannonian states").
South of the Eastern Alps (spanning Austria, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Slovenia and Switzerland),
The Central European Phytochorion stretches from Central France (the Massif Central) to the Northern Balkans, Central Romania (Carpathians) and Southern Scandinavia.[Wolfgang Frey and Rainer Lösch; Lehrbuch der Geobotanik. Pflanze und Vegetation in Raum und Zeit. Elsevier, Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, München 2004 ]
Demography
Central Europe is one of the continent's most populous regions. It includes countries of varied sizes, ranging from tiny Liechtenstein to Germany, the second largest European country by population. Demographic figures for countries entirely located within notion of Central Europe ("the core countries") number around 173 million people, out of which around 82 million are residents of Germany.
Other populations include: Poland with around 38.5 million residents,
Czech Republic at 10.5 million,
Hungary at 10 million,
Austria with 9.2 million, Switzerland with 8.5 million,
Slovakia at 5.4 million,
Croatia with 4.3 million,
Lithuania with 2.9 million, Slovenia with 2.1 million
and Liechtenstein at a bit less than 40,000.
If the countries which are sometimes also included in Central Europe were counted in, partially or in whole – Romania (20 million), Latvia (2 million), Estonia (1.3 million), Serbia (7.1 million)
Economy
Currencies
Currently, the members of the
Eurozone include Austria, Croatia, Germany, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland use their own currencies (
Czech koruna,
Hungarian forint, Polish złoty, respectively), but are obliged to adopt the Euro. Switzerland uses its own currency (
Swiss franc), as does Serbia (
Serbian dinar) and Romania (
Romanian leu).
Human Development Index
[[File:2013 UN Human Development Report Quartiles.svg|upright=1.35|thumb|World map by quartiles of Human Development Index in 2013:
]]
In 2018, Switzerland topped the HDI list among Central European countries, also ranking No. 2 in the world. Serbia rounded out the list at No. 11 (67 world).
Globalisation
The index of globalization in Central European countries (2016 data):
Switzerland topped this list as well (#1 world).
Prosperity Index
Legatum Prosperity Index demonstrates an average and high level of prosperity in Central Europe (2018 data).
Switzerland topped the index (#4 world).
Corruption
[[File:Transparency international 2015.png|thumb|upright=1.35|Overview of the index of perception of corruption, 2015:
]]
Most countries in Central Europe tend to score above the average in the Corruption Perceptions Index (2018 data),
Rail
Central Europe contains the continent's earliest railway systems, whose greatest expansion was recorded in Austrian, Czech,
German Empire, Hungarian and Swiss territories between 1860-1870s. By the mid-19th century Berlin, Vienna,
Zurich, Pest and
Prague were focal points for network lines connecting industrial areas of
Saxony,
Silesia, Bohemia, Moravia and Lower Austria with the Baltic (
Kiel,
Szczecin) and Adriatic (
Rijeka, Trieste). By 1913, the combined length of the railway tracks of Austria and Hungary reached . By 1936, 70% of the Swiss Federal Railway network had undergone electrification.
Rail infrastructure in Central Europe remains the densest in the world. Railway density as of 2022, with total length of lines operated (km) per 1,000 km2, from highest to lowest is Switzerland (129.2), the Czech Republic (120.7), Germany (108.8), Hungary (85.0), Slovakia (74.0), Austria (66.5), Poland (61.9), Slovenia (59.6), Serbia (49.2), Croatia (46.3) and Lithuania (29.4).
River transport and canals
Before the first railroads appeared in the 1840s, river transport constituted the main means of communication and trade. Earliest canals included Plauen Canal (1745), Finow Canal, and also
Begej (1710) which connected Timișoara to
Novi Sad and
Belgrade via the Danube. The most significant achievement in this regard was the facilitation of navigability on the Danube from the
Black Sea to
Ulm in the 19th century.
The economies of Central Europe tend to demonstrate high complexity. Industrialisation reached Central Europe relatively early beginning with Germany and the Czech lands near the end of the 18th century.
The industrialization of the cities of Romania
Agriculture
Central European countries are some of the most significant food producers in the world. Germany is the world's largest
hops producer with 34.27% share in 2010,
[Gnel Gabrielyan, Domestic and Export Price Formation of U.S. Hops School of Economic Sciences at Washington State University. PDF file, direct download 220 KB. Retrieved 25 April 2014.] Slovenia is one of the world's leading producers of honey.
Serbia is the world's 2nd largest producer of
Plum and 2nd largest producer of
Raspberry.
Business
Central European business has a regional organisation, Central European Business Association (CEBA), founded in 1996 in New York as a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting business opportunities within Central Europe and supporting the advancement of professionals in America with a Central European background.
Tourism
Central European countries, especially Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and Switzerland are some of the most competitive tourism destinations.
Education
Languages
Education performance
Student performance has varied across Central Europe, according to the Programme for International Student Assessment. In the 2012 study, countries scored medium, below or over the average scores in three fields studied.
Higher education
Universities
The first university established east of France and north of the Alps was in
Prague in 1348 by Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor. The Charles University was modeled upon the University of Paris and initially included the faculty of law, medicine, philosophy, and theology.
[Joachim W. Stieber: "Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel and the secular and ecclesiastical authorities in the Empire: the conflict over supreme authority and power in the church", Studies in the history of Christian thought, Vol. 13, Brill, 1978, , p.82; Gustav Stolper: "German Realities", Read Books, 2007, , p. 228; George Henry Danton: "Germany ten years after", Ayer Publishing, 1928, , p. 210; Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius: "The German Myth of the East: 1800 to the Present", Oxford Studies in Modern European History Series, Oxford University Press, 2009, , p. 109; Levi Seeley: "History of Education", BiblioBazaar, , p. 141]
Central European University
In 1991,
Ernest Gellner proposed the establishment of a truly Central European institution of higher learning in Prague (1991–1995).
Eventually, the Central European University (CEU) project was taken on and financially supported by the philanthropist
George Soros, who had provided an endowment of US$880 million, making the university one of the wealthiest in Europe.
Over its 30-year history CEU has become one of the most internationally diverse and recognisable universities in the world. For example, as of 2019, 1217 students were enrolled in the university, of which 962 were international students, making the student body the fourth most international in the world.
CEU offers highly selective programs with a student to faculty ratio of 7:1.
In 2021, the admission rate into its programs was 13%.
CEU has thus become a leading global university in Europe promoting a distinctively Central European perspective while emphasizing academic rigor, applied research, and academic honesty and integrity.
CEU is a founding member of CIVICCA, a group of prestigious European higher education institutions in the social sciences, humanities, business management and public policy, such as
Sciences Po (France), The London School of Economics and Political Science (UK), Bocconi University (Italy) and the Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden).
Culture and society
Research
Research centres of Central European literature include Harvard University (Cambridge, MA),
Purdue University,
and Central European Studies Programme (CESP), Masaryk University,
Brno, Czech Republic.
Architecture
Religion
Central European countries are mostly
Catholic Church (Austria, Croatia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Poland and Slovenia) or historically both Catholic and
Protestant (the
Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Switzerland). Large Protestant groups include
Lutheran,
Calvinism, and the
Moravian Church affiliates. Significant populations of Eastern Catholicism and
are also prevalent throughout Central Europe. Orthodox Christianity is a minority denomination observed to varying extents across Central Europe.
Central Europe has been the center of the Protestant movement for centuries, with the majority of Protestants suppressed and annihilated during the Counterreformation.
Historically, people in Bohemia in today's Czech Republic were some of the first Protestants in Europe. As a result of the Thirty Years' War following the Bohemian Revolt, many Czechs were either killed, executed (see for Old Town Square execution), forcibly turned into Roman Catholics, or emigrated to Scandinavia and the Low Countries. In the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War, the number of inhabitants in the Kingdom of Bohemia decreased from three million to only 800,000 from multiple factors, including devastating ongoing battles such as the significant Battle of White Mountain and the Battle of Prague (1648). However, in recent years, most Czechs report as overwhelmingly non-religious, with some describing themselves as Catholic (10.3%).
Before the Holocaust (1941–45), there was also a sizeable Ashkenazi Jewish community in the region, numbering approximately 16.7 million people.
Certain countries in Central Europe, particularly the Czech Republic, Germany and Switzerland have sizeable atheist and irreligion populations. In 2021, 48% of the Czech population declared that they had no religion.
Cuisine
Central European cuisine has evolved over centuries because of social and political change and is generally diverse. However, the national cuisines of western Central Europe share notable similarities, as do the cuisines of eastern Central Europe. Sausages, salamis and cheeses are popular in most of Central Europe, with the earliest evidence of cheesemaking in the archaeological record dates back to 5,500 BCE (
Kuyavia region, Poland).
Other popular food items in Central Europe include soups, stews, pickled and fermented vegetables.
Schnitzel,
goulash and
are popular in the region.
Another common feature among Central European cuisines, particularly Austrian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Slovenian and Swiss cuisine, is the use of wild ingredients in traditional dishes, spanning from wild herbs to mushrooms and berries. Beer consumption is also prominent in parts of Central Europe, where the Czech Republic has the highest beer consumption per capita globally, followed by Austria, with Germany coming 4th. The cuisines of Central European countries that are included in broader definitions of Eastern Europe share similarities and traditions with other Eastern European cuisines. This is particularly evident in the cuisines of Lithuania and Poland, which feature dishes like borscht, pierogi and sour rye soup.
Human rights
Generally, the countries in the region have been progressive on the issue of human rights: death penalty is illegal in all of them, corporal punishment is outlawed in most of them and people of both genders can vote in elections. However, Central European countries are divided on the subject of same-sex marriage and abortion. Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Poland also have a history of participation in the CIA's extraordinary rendition and detention program, according to the Open Society Foundations.
Literature
Regional writing tradition revolves around the turbulent history of the region, as well as its cultural diversity.
Its existence is sometimes challenged.
Specific courses on Central European literature are taught at Stanford University,
[[13] ] Harvard University
and Jagiellonian University
as well as cultural magazines dedicated to regional literature.
Angelus Central European Literature Award is an award worth 150,000.00 PLN (about $50,000 or £30,000) for writers originating from the region.
Likewise, the Vilenica International Literary Prize is awarded to a Central European author for "outstanding achievements in the field of literature and essay writing".
Media
Sport
There is a number of Central European Sport events and leagues. They include:
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Central European Tour Miskolc GP (Hungary)*
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Central European Tour Budapest GP (Hungary)
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2008 Central Europe Rally (Romania and Hungary)*
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2023 Central Europe Rally (Germany, Austria and Czech Republic)
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Central European Football League (Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey)
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Central European International Cup (Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and Yugoslavia; 1927–1960)
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Central Europe Throwdown*
Football is one of the most popular sports. Countries of Central Europe hosted several major competitions. Germany hosted two FIFA World Cups (1974 and 2006) and two UEFA European Championships (1988 and 2024). Yugoslavia hosted the UEFA Euro 1976 before the competition expanded to 8 teams. Recently, the 2008 and 2012 UEFA European Championships were held in Austria & Switzerland and Poland & Ukraine respectively.
Politics
Organisations
Central Europe is a birthplace of regional political organisations:
-
Central European Defence Cooperation
-
Central European Free Trade Agreement
-
Central European Initiative
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Centrope
-
Middleeuropean Initiative
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Three Seas Initiative
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Visegrád Group
Democracy Index
Central Europe is a home to some of world's oldest democracies. However, most of them have been impacted by
totalitarianism, particularly
Fascism and
Nazism. Germany and Italy occupied all Central European countries, except Switzerland. In all occupied countries, the
Axis powers suspended democracy and installed puppet regimes loyal to the occupation forces. Also, they forced conquered countries to apply racial laws and formed military forces for helping German and Italian struggle against Communists. After World War II, almost the whole of Central Europe (the Eastern and Middle part) had been transformed into
communist states, most of which had been occupied and later allied with the
Soviet Union, often against their will through forged referendum (such as the Polish people's referendum in 1946) or force (northeast Germany, Poland, Hungary et alia). Nevertheless, those experiences have been dealt in most of them. Most Central European countries score very highly in the
Democracy Index.
Global Peace Index
In spite of its turbulent history, Central Europe is currently one of world's safest regions. Most Central European countries are in top 20%.
Central European Time
The time zone is a standard time, which is one hour ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. Countries using CET include:
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Albania
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Andorra
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Austria
-
Belgium
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Bosnia and Herzegovina
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Croatia
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Czech Republic
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Denmark
-
France
-
Germany
-
Hungary
-
Italy
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Luxembourg
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Monaco
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Montenegro
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Netherlands
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North Macedonia
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Norway
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Poland
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San Marino
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Slovakia
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Slovenia
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Serbia
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Sweden
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Switzerland
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Vatican City
In popular culture
Central Europe is mentioned in the 35th episode of
Lovejoy, entitled "The Prague Sun", filmed in 1992. While walking over the well-regarded and renowned
Charles Bridge in Prague, the main character, Lovejoy, says: "I've never been to Prague before. Well, it is one of the great unspoiled cities in Central Europe. Notice: I said: 'Central', not 'Eastern'! The
Czechs are a bit funny about that, they think of Eastern Europeans as
turnip heads."
Wes Anderson's Oscar-winning film The Grand Budapest Hotel depicts a fictional grand hotel located somewhere in Central Europe, which is in actuality modelled on the Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic. The film is a celebration of 1920s and 1930s Central Europe with its artistic splendor and societal sensibilities.
See also
-
Central and Eastern Europe
-
Geographical midpoint of Europe
-
Life zones of central Europe
-
Międzymorze (Intermarum)
General and cited references
Further reading
-
Ágh, Attila. Declining Democracy in East-Central Europe: The Divide in the EU and Emerging Hard Populism (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019).
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Baldersheim, Harald, ed. Local democracy and the processes of transformation in East-Central Europe (Routledge, 2019).
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Centre of Central European Studies, Agrarianism in Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries (2013) online review.
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Gardner, Hall, ed. Central and South-central Europe in Transition (Praeger, 2000)
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Lederer, David. Early Modern Central European History (2011) online review by Linnéa Rowlatt
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'Mapping Central Europe' in hidden europe, 5, pp. 14–15 (November 2005)
External links
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> The Centrope region
