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European Journal of Social Theory
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Mitteleuropa, Zentraleuropa, Mittelosteuropa

A Mental Map of Central Europe

Jacques Le Rider

ECOLE PRATIQUE DES HAUTES ETUDES, PARIS, lerider{at}canoe.ens.fr

The German term `Mitteleuropa' was coined to designate Central Europe at the time when the Habsburg monarchy exercised its domination over the Danube area and when the Eastern borders of the Reich proclaimed in 1871 were formed, thus from the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the First World War. Mitteleuropa constitutes an ambivalent `lieu de mémoire', a notion in which Central Europe has invested its memory of the past and its identity: such a notion is negative when it brings to mind the mental map of German imperialism both exploited and perverted in the Third Reich; it is positive when it is interpreted as a federative idea, opening supranational perspectives associating the countries of German culture with Slavic peoples — the Hungarians, the Romanians — and with the Jews. Since the formation of the `Habsburg myth' as a retrospective utopia of a defunct harmony of nationalities in the `third Europe' situated between Western Europe and the Russian world, the Austrian tradition has become the focus of the new notion of `Zentraleuropa', prefiguring Central European union.

Key Words: Central Europe • Habsburg monarchy • Holy Germanic Empire • imperialism • Mitteleuropa

European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 11, No. 2, 155-169 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1368431007087471
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