What is Central Europe? Where do its borderslie? Does it even exist? Attempts to define itusually yield more questions than answers. Butperhaps the wrong questions are being asked.Luka Ivan Jukic disentangles the enigma of CentralEurope through its history of birth, death andrebirth. Countries like Poland, Croatia and evenUkraine proudly proclaim themselves part of thisregion, and so part of Western civilisation. Butthe term originally described an unrecognisablydifferent worldone formed in the eighteenthcentury by the unique inheritance of the House ofHabsburg across a decentralised Germany and asprawling Danubian realm; by the rise of standardHigh German; and by an intermediate positionwithin a continent defined by the advanced Westand backwards East.Amid the displacement and destruction of theworld wars and their aftermath, this extraordinarycivilisation was shattered, reduced to thefrontline of a global Cold War. Its unexpectedreincarnation in the 1980s, as an ideologicalantidote to the Soviet East, spawned myths andpolemics, but little clarity. Yet Central Europestill seems to feature in every crisis today, fromRussian aggression to European disunity. Whydoes it remainsuch a powerful political idea inour times?
