Central and Eastern Europe – serie

László Péter, whose fourteen carefully selected essays are edited in this posthumous collection, was an indefatigable seeker of the most appropriate terminological modelling and narrative reconstruction of Hungary’s late nineteenth and early twentieth century progress from an essentially feudal entity into a modern European state. The articles examine thorny subjects, such as the growing tensions between the nationalities living within the multi-ethnic kingdom; language rights; autocracy, democracy and civil rights in Hungary perceived in a wider European context; the concept of the ‘Holy Crown’; the army question; church-state relations; the role of the intellectuals; and the changing British perception of Hungary. The central focus of the author’s microscope is reserved for a substantive re-evaluation of the Settlement between Hungary and the Austrian Empire in 1867, which had a decisive impact on the eventual fate of the old kingdom of Hungary and of the rest of Central Europe.

The Republic of Latvia is a fascinating mirror of the development of European democratic culture and reflects both the rise of democracy in Eastern Europe after the end of World War I and its deterioration into authoritarianism in the early 1930s. The regime, which lasted for only six years (1934-1940), was shaped by the controversial figure of Prime Minister and Leader of the People (Vadonis) Karlis Ulmanis. This new, archive-based study illustrates the development of authoritarianism in the region, shows controversies and similarities and places the regime's leader in the international context of European authoritarian culture. The book shows how mass culture and technologies, ancient drama and European modernism were combined to reinforce the idea of legitimacy of a new non-democratic regime.

The Habsburg Empire often features in scholarship as a historical example of how language diversity and linguistic competence were essential to the functioning of the imperial state. Focusing critically on the urban-rural divide, on the importance of status for multilingual competence, on local governments, schools, the army and the urban public sphere, and on linguistic policies and practices in transition, this collective volume provides further evidence for both the merits of how language diversity was managed in Austria-Hungary and the problems and contradictions that surrounded those practices.The book includes contributions by Pieter M. Judson, Marta Verginella, Rok Stergar, Anamarija Lukić, Carl Bethke, Irina Marin, Ágoston Berecz, Csilla Fedinec, István Csernicskó, Matthäus Wehowski, Jan Fellerer, and Jeroen van Drunen.