Central Europe

Definitions of Central Europe vary, but for the purposes of this course, the term refers to the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Together these two empires covered vast territories from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Adriatic in the south, from which many of the recent EU-accession states emerged. These empires experienced similar tensions to states in western Europe, for instance, over the relationship between church and state, the social consequences of industrialization, and the acquisition of overseas colonies. Their ethnic heterogeneity, however, gave rise to other, more serious divisions. German nationalism clashed with the nationalisms of Poles, Slovaks, Magyars and others. This course examines both the ?normal? problems of Central Europeans at this time and those that derived from the clash of nationalisms in these two empires. Figures familiar to western Europeans, such as Bismarck, William II and Francis Joseph I, all make appearances, as do others who are better known to central Europeans, such as Józef Pilsudski, Tomas Masaryk, and Rosa Luxemburg.