Mitteleuropa and Post-Modern European Identity

Bibliographic Data

ID7931985
AuthorsHans-Georg Betz, Hans‐georg Betz (corresponding author)
Year1990
Issue50
Pages173
Publication date1990-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew German Critique (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-033X • E-ISSN: 1558-1462
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/488216
OpenAlexW2324024078
LanguageEN
Citations received9

Contemporary Europe is going through a period of increasingly rapid change. The post-war order, symbolized by Yalta and built on the permanent division of appears to be trembling under the impact of a political and perhaps cultural earthquake with the main epicenter located in the eastern half of Europe. In the long run the most lasting result of this earthquake will probably be the re-emergence of nationalist passions in the Soviet Union, the last great multiethnic empire, and in the eastern part of Europe. Lithuanians and Estonians, Armenians and Kazakhs, even former Volga Germans now living in Kazakhstan, are reasserting their national identities. Nationalist passions are running high between Hungarians and Romanians over the mistreatment of the Hungarian minority by the Romanians, and the planned razing of hundreds of villages in Romania supposed to make room for Ceaucescu's latest agro-village project, and between Albanians and Serbs over alleged Albanian atrocities committed against the Serbian minority in Kosovo. In the wake of this earthquake a growing number of politicians, pundits, and academics have advanced a variety of ideas for a new structure capable of reorganizing the relations between the peoples of Europe. Gorbachev's notion that we are all living in one common house is among those quoted most often. Among Central European and increasingly among West German intellectuals and publicists another formula is being advanced the idea of Mitteleuropa. Its central goal, at least for its West German advocates, is what the noted West German historian Andreas Hillgruber has defined as the reconstruction of the destroyed center of Europe, either as a precondition for or

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Economic history · Empire · Ethnology · German · Identity (music) · Modernization theory · Nationalism · Passions · Political science · Politics · Serbian · Central European national history · German History and Society · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law

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