"For the peoples of Central Europe today — Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Hungarians and others — Eastern Europe is an outdated designation, particularly because it can be deployed to relegate a country to Russia's sphere of influence." Central Europe existed in the 19th century in two German-speaking empires, the German and the Austro-Hungarian, but that construct was destroyed by the two world wars and the communist occupation. This book seeks to explain how it came to be, "how and why it was absolutely destroyed," and how it lives on as an idea. It is an attempt to "disentangle" the history of the region from the sum of its parts.
In 1790, Leopold II of Austria was elected the Holy Roman Emperor. The empire was a vast entity consisting of "titles, rights, privileges, and obligations as much as territories," and as Voltaire famously quipped, "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." Most of the territories of the Habsburg's were not even in the Holy Roman Empire. The ancient realm was terminated in 1806, and the region reverted to its two loosely organized empires, Austria and Prussia, and the dozens of smaller principalities that had always existed outside their remit. Throughout the region, the first half of the century saw increasing liberalism, attempts at creating constitutions, and a general groundswell of interest in relaxing the rigidity of the governing bodies. Change was in the air.
Revolution broke out throughout the continent in 1848, and immediately led to regime change in Paris and the resignation of Metternich in Austria. Both Berlin and Vienna saw masses in the streets and demands for constitutional monarchies, personal freedoms, and parliaments. Many of those who spoke the multiple non-Germanic languages of the Austrian Empire demanded freedom, and in Hungary they took up arms. The forces of repression prevailed, but without a return to absolutism. "Prussia became a constitutional state" with a parliament, and Austria's emperor was replaced with his young nephew. Although the revolutions had failed, societies were much improved with multiple personal freedoms granted and vast increases in modernization that made Berlin and Vienna two great European capitals.
In the 1840s and 1850s, a young Otto von Bismarck began to envision a Germany free of any Austrian entanglements. He viewed the Habsburg desire to continue as a German-Slavic and Magyar state as counterproductive, and concluded that Germany united under Prussia was the best outcome for the nation. As Minister-President, Bismarck maneuvered Austria into a war it lost in a month, and then created a North German Confederation. The Austrian response was to create the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, which satisfied most Hungarians but outraged the South Slavs. Bismarck followed up with a war with France that led to the German Empire. And although Central Europe appeared to be consolidating, it still "remained a confusing patchwork of states and societies." The last decades of the century saw increased industrialization and public education, but also consistent rises in nationalism and anti-Semitism.
The Great War and its ensuing peace decimated the region and created a world of instability and uncertainty. "Old hierarchies crumbled and violence took their place. People were brutalized, impoverished, disoriented, and polarized by four years of war." All of the new countries — Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia — tried to create successful societies out of disparate populations with little in common and no history of working within democratic structures. All were under different stressors that were further aggravated by the Depression. "The New Europe that promised so much in 1918 seemed to everyone to be crumbling before their very eyes." Hitler's war destroyed Central Europe and left it occupied by the Red Army.
The Soviets encouraged a Pan-Slavic political ideology to support the new communist system in Europe. However, "it rapidly dawned that the new model was simply a transplantation of Soviet Stalinism." The Prague Spring shocked the communist world and required 500,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 6,000 Soviet tanks to suppress. In the 1970s, the concept of Central Europe belonging in the West and not "captive" began to receive more and more attention in the minds of its citizens. Central Europe dramatically left communist oppression behind after the Wall came down in November 1989.
In 2011, Otto von Habsburg, son of the last emperor, was mourned in St. Stephen's Cathedral and laid to rest in the Imperial Crypt in the Capuchin Church in Vienna. Central Europe had come back to life. "By correcting the aberration of communism, the nations of Eastern Europe rejoined the Western mainstream where they belonged. Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Baltic States joined the EU in 2004." The idea of Central Europe lives on.
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