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78-413: The history of Wielopole dates back to the 12th century, when it was a defensive gord , located on a hill called Stroszowa Góra , among the forests near the border between Lesser Poland and Red Ruthenia . It was first mentioned in 1124, in a document of papal legate Gilles de Paris . In 1266 Ruthenian Prince Swarno, supported by Lithuanians and Tatars, raided Eastern Lesser Poland , burning Wielopole to

156-447: A city or town : The names of many Central and Eastern European cities harken back to their pasts as gords. Some of them are in countries which once were but no longer are mainly inhabited by Slavic-speaking peoples. Examples include: The words in Polish and Slovak for suburbium , podgrodzie and podhradie correspondingly, literally mean a settlement beneath a gord: the gród / hrad

234-619: A Central European Danube Confederation to counter these countries against Germany and Russia. There were also plans to add Bavaria and Württemberg to an enlarged Austria. There were also various resistance movements around Otto von Habsburg that pursued this goal. The group around the Austrian priest Heinrich Maier also planned in this direction, which also successfully helped the Allies to wage war by, among other things, forwarding production sites and plans for V-2 rockets , Tiger tanks and aircraft to

312-539: A Geographical Term ) most Central European states were unable to preserve their political independence and became Soviet satellites . Besides Austria, Switzerland and Yugoslavia, only the marginal European states of Cyprus , Finland , Malta and Sweden preserved their political sovereignty to a certain degree, being left out of any military alliances in Europe. The opening of the Iron Curtain between Austria and Hungary at

390-639: A buffer zone between these regions. In the early nineteenth century, the terms "Middle" or "Central" Europe (known as "Mitteleuropa" in German and "Europe centrale" in French) were introduced in geographical scholarship in both German and French languages. At first, these terms were linked to the regions spanning from the Pyrenees to the Danube, which, according to German authors, could be united under German authority. However, after

468-493: A fire. During the Galician slaughter , a gang of peasants entered the castle, murdering several noblemen gathered there. In the mid-19th century, Wielopole belonged to Borgiasz de Zaręba Skrzyński, after whom the adjective Skrzyńskie was added to the name. It remained a small, provincial town, without rail transport, as Galician Railway of Archduke Charles Louis goes some 15 kilometers to the north. On September 24, 1914, Wielopole

546-540: A garden, and its English descendant horticulture . In Hungarian , kert , the word for a garden, literally means encircled . Because Hungarian is a Uralic rather than an Indo-European language, this is likely a loanword . Further afield, in ancient Iran , a fortified wooden settlement was called a gerd , or certa , which also means garden (as in the suffix -certa in the names of various ancient Iranian cities; e.g., Hunoracerta ). The Persian word evolved into jerd under later Arab influence. Burugerd or Borujerd

624-499: A group of wooden houses surrounded by a wall made of earth and wood, and a palisade running along the top of the bulwark. The term ultimately descends from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root ǵʰortós 'enclosure'. The Proto-Slavic word *gordъ later differentiated into grad ( Cyrillic : град), gorod (Cyrillic: город), gród in Polish , gard in Kashubian , etc. It is

702-480: A hollow. Others, built on a natural hill or a man-made mound, were cone-shaped. Those with a natural defense on one side, such as a river or lake, were usually horseshoe-shaped. Most gords were built in densely populated areas on sites that offered particular natural advantages. As Slavic tribes united to form states, gords were also built for defensive purposes in less-populated border areas. Gords in which rulers resided or that lay on trade routes quickly expanded. Near

780-820: A parish church of St. Mary. The town remained in private hands; after the Bishopric of Lebus, its owners were the Kamieniecki family, the Frysztacki family (1492 - 1518), and the Maciejowski family. In the late 15th century, 111 families resided in Wielopole, with a few artisans. In the first half of the 16th century, town’s owner Kacper Maciejowski began to invest in Wielopole, building a Renaissance castle. The town however did not emerge as an important trade center. It belonged to Sandomierz Voivodeship , and its situation deteriorated after

858-591: A significant trade route, restoring ports and revitalising commercial activity. Before 1870, the industrialization that had started to develop in Northwestern and Central Europe and the United States did not extend in any significant way to the rest of the world. Even in Eastern Europe , industrialization lagged far behind. Russia , for example, remained largely rural and agricultural, and its autocratic rulers kept

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936-643: A static spatial one. For example, a fair share of Belarus and Right-bank Ukraine are in Eastern Europe today, but 240 years ago they were in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . Johnson's study on Central Europe received acclaim and positive reviews in the scientific community. However, according to Romanian researcher Maria Bucur , this very ambitious project suffers from the weaknesses imposed by its scope (almost 1600 years of history). The World Factbook defines Central Europe as: Austria,

1014-564: A village. An unusual color film taken by a man who immigrated to America but visited Wielopole, his hometown, in 1938 can be found here. The Jewish population of Wielopole Skrzynskie numbered around 500 at the time of the German occupation in 1939. They were deported to slave labor camps, shot on site in Wielopole, and in August 1942 most were deported to the Belzec extermination camp where they were murdered on arrival. Very few of Wielopole's Jews survived

1092-449: Is a city in the west of Iran. The Indian suffix -garh , meaning a fort in Hindi , Urdu , Sanskrit , and other Indo-Iranian languages , appears in many Indian place names. Given that both Slavic and Indo-Iranian are sub-branches of Indo-European and that there are numerous similarities between Slavic and Sanskrit vocabulary, it is plausible that garh and gord are related. However, this

1170-549: Is a geographical region of Europe between Eastern , Southern , Western and Northern Europe. Central Europe is known for its cultural diversity; however, countries in this region also share historical and cultural similarities. Whilst the region is variously defined, it often includes Austria , Croatia , the Czech Republic , Germany , Hungary , Liechtenstein , Lithuania , Poland , Slovakia , Slovenia , Switzerland and Transylvania as part of Romania . From

1248-499: Is a part of Europe composed of Austria, Belgium , the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg , Netherlands , Poland, Romania and Switzerland, and northern marginal regions of Italy and Yugoslavia (northern states – Croatia and Slovenia ), as well as northeastern France. The German Ständige Ausschuss für geographische Namen (Standing Committee on Geographical Names), which develops and recommends rules for

1326-563: Is an ambiguous German concept. It is sometimes used in English to refer to an area somewhat larger than most conceptions of 'Central Europe'. According to Fritz Fischer Mitteleuropa was a scheme in the era of the Reich of 1871–1918 by which the old imperial elites had allegedly sought to build a system of German economic, military and political domination from the northern seas to the Near East and from

1404-590: Is no general agreement either on what geographic area constitutes Central Europe, nor on how to further subdivide it geographically. At times, the term "Central Europe" denotes a geographic definition as the Danube region in the heart of the continent, including the language and culture areas which are today included in the states of Bulgaria , Croatia , the Czech Republic , Hungary , Moldova , Poland , Romania , Serbia , Slovakia , Slovenia and usually also Austria and Germany. The terminology EU11 countries refer

1482-514: Is strongly contradicted by the phoneme /g/ in Indo-Iranian, which cannot be a reflex of the Indo-European palatovelar /*ǵ/. A typical gord was a group of wooden houses built either in rows or in circles, surrounded by one or more rings of walls made of earth and wood, a palisade , and/or moats . Some gords were ring-shaped, with a round, oval, or occasionally polygonal fence or wall surrounding

1560-406: Is widely used in German education and media without negative meaning, especially since the end of communism. Many people from the new states of Germany do not identify themselves as being part of Western Europe and therefore prefer the term "Mitteleuropa". During World War II, Central Europe was largely occupied by Nazi Germany. Many areas were a battle area and were devastated. The mass murder of

1638-659: The Carolingian Renaissance , limited to the territories that practised Western Christianity at the time. "European" as a cultural term did not include much of the territories where the Orthodox Church represented the dominant religion until the 19th century. Following the Christianization of various Central European countries, elements of cultural unity emerged within the region, specifically Catholicism and Latin . Eastern Europe remained Eastern Orthodox , and

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1716-705: The Christianization of Lithuania . It also resulted in the Union of Krewo , signifying a personal union between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. The union commenced an enduring political alliance between the two entities and laid the foundations for the later establishment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. Between the 15th and early 16th centuries, the Kingdom of Croatia, which

1794-592: The Cold War the countries that make up Central Europe have historically been, and in some cases continue to be, divided into either Eastern or Western Europe. After World War II, Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain into two parts, the capitalist Western Bloc and the socialist Eastern Bloc , although Austria, Switzerland and Yugoslavia (encompassing the territories of present-day Croatia, Slovenia and various other Balkans nations) declared neutrality. The Berlin Wall

1872-651: The Czechoslovak , Hungarian and Polish presidents was hailed at the time as a major breakthrough in Central European cooperation, but the Visegrád Group became a vehicle for coordinating Central Europe's road to the European Union, while development of closer ties within the region languished. American professor Peter J. Katzenstein described Central Europe as a way station in a Europeanization process that marks

1950-758: The Duchy of Carniola (part of present-day Slovenia), the various German Principalities and the Old Swiss Confederacy were within the Holy Roman Empire . By the end of the 18th century, the Habsburg monarchy , a prominent power within the Holy Roman Empire, came to reign over the territories of Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina , Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia, alongside parts of Serbia , Germany, Italy , Poland and Switzerland. Since

2028-820: The Eastern Bloc countries, as its every result proved the dissimilarity of Central Europe, which was inconsistent with the Stalinist doctrine. On the other hand, the topic became popular in Western Europe and the United States, much of the research being carried out by immigrants from Central Europe. Following the Fall of Communism , publicists and historians in Central Europe, especially the anti-communist opposition, returned to their research. According to Karl A. Sinnhuber ( Central Europe: Mitteleuropa: Europe Centrale: An Analysis of

2106-588: The Frankfurt Parliament , which was established in the wake of the March Revolution of 1848, there were multiple competing ideas for the integration of German-speaking areas, including the mitteleuropäische Lösung (Central European Solution) propagated by Austria, which sought to merge the smaller German-speaking states with the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire, but was opposed by Prussia and others. An imperialistic idea of Mitteleuropa also became popular in

2184-598: The German Empire established in 1871, which experienced intensive economic growth. The term was used when the Union of German Railway Administrations established the Mitteleuropäische Eisenbahn-Zeit (Central European Railway Time) time zone , which was applied by the railways from 1 June 1891 and was later widely adopted in civilian life, thus the time zone name shortened to the present-day Central European Time . The German term denoting Central Europe

2262-764: The High Middle Ages , the gord usually evolved into a castle , citadel or kremlin , and the suburbium into a town . Some gords did not stand the test of time and were abandoned or destroyed, gradually turning into more or less discernible mounds or rings of earth ( Russian gorodishche, Polish gród or grodzisko, Ukrainian horodyshche, Slovak hradisko, Czech hradiště, German Hradisch , Hungarian hradis and Serbian gradiška / градишка ). Notable archeological sites include Groß Raden in Germany and Biskupin in Poland. Central Europe Central Europe

2340-608: The Netherlands ) as its main aim. Another time, the term Central Europe became connected to the German plans of political, economic, and cultural domination. The "bible" of the concept was Friedrich Naumann 's book Mitteleuropa in which he called for an economic federation to be established after World War I. Naumann's proposed a federation with Germany and the Habsburg empire as its centre, eventually uniting all external European nations through economic prosperity. The concept failed after

2418-640: The Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 then set in motion a peaceful chain reaction, at the end of which there was no longer an East Germany and the Eastern Bloc had disintegrated. It was the largest escape movement from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. After the picnic, which was based on an idea by Otto von Habsburg to test the reaction of the USSR and Mikhail Gorbachev to an opening of

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2496-500: The Samogitians , Aukštaitians and Curonians . The Holy Roman Empire was founded at the turn of the 9th century, following the coronation of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III . At its inception, it incorporated present-day Germany and nearby regions, including parts of what is now Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Switzerland. Three decades later, Great Moravia , centred in present-day Czech Republic and Slovakia, became one of

2574-564: The Swedish invasion of Poland , when both Swedish and Transilvanian armies of George II Rakoczi burned and ransacked it. In the 18th century, Wielopole declined further, and following the Partitions of Poland , it found itself in Austrian Galicia . By the early 19th century, half of Wielopole’s residents were Jewish. In 1806, an epidemic of cholera killed 92, and in 1833, Wielopole burned in

2652-463: The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire around 1800, there was a consolidation of power among the Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns as the two major states in the area. They had much in common and occasionally cooperated in various channels, but more often competed. One approach in the various attempts at cooperation, was the conception of a set of supposed common features and interests, and this idea led to

2730-402: The 11th and 15th centuries, not only did Christianization influence the cultures within Central Europe, but well-defined social features were also implemented in the region based on Western characteristics. The keyword of Western social development after the turn of the millennium was the spread of Magdeburg rights in some cities and towns of Western Europe. These began to spread in the middle of

2808-632: The 13th century in Central European countries, bringing about self-governments of towns and counties. In 1335, the Kings of Poland , Bohemia and Hungary and Croatia met in the castle of Visegrád and agreed to cooperate closely in the field of politics and commerce, inspiring the post- Cold War Visegrád Group . In 1386, Jogaila , the Grand Duke of Lithuania , converted to Christianity (specifically Catholicism) and subsequently became King of Poland through marriage to Queen Jadwiga of Poland . This initiated

2886-614: The Adriatic had not been approved by the Western Allied chiefs of staff. As a result of the military situation at the end of the war, Stalin's plans prevailed and much of Central Europe came under Russian control. Following World War II , parts of Central Europe became part of the Eastern Bloc . The boundary between the two blocks was called the Iron Curtain . Austria, Switzerland and Yugoslavia remained neutral. The post-World War II period brought blocking of research on Central Europe in

2964-503: The Central European area is subject to debates. Very often, the definition depends on the nationality and historical perspective of its author. The concept of "Central Europe" appeared in the 19th century. It was understood as a contact zone between the Southern and Northern areas, and later the Eastern and Western areas of Europe. Thinkers portrayed "Central Europe" either as a separate region, or

3042-507: The Central, Eastern and Baltic European member states which accessed in 2004 and after: in 2004 Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, and Slovakia; in 2007 Bulgaria, Romania; and in 2013 Croatia. The choice of states that make up Central Europe is an ongoing source of controversy. Although views on which countries belong to Central Europe are vastly varied, according to many sources (see section Definitions )

3120-632: The Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland. The German Encyclopaedia Meyers Grosses Taschenlexikon ( Meyers Big Pocket Encyclopedia ), 1999, defines Central Europe as the central part of Europe with no precise borders to the East and West. The term is mostly used to denominate the territory between the Schelde to Vistula and from the Danube to the Moravian Gate . According to Meyers Enzyklopädisches Lexikon , Central Europe

3198-453: The Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland. The Columbia Encyclopedia includes: Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Switzerland. While it does not have a single article defining Central Europe, Encyclopædia Britannica includes the following countries in Central Europe in one or more of its articles: Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,

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3276-402: The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania and Yugoslavia. The main proposed regional definitions, gathered by Polish historian Jerzy Kłoczowski , include: Former University of Vienna professor Lonnie R. Johnson points out criteria to distinguish Central Europe from Western, Northern, Eastern and Southern Europe: He also thinks that Central Europe is a dynamic historical concept, not

3354-562: The Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the French began to exclude France from this area, and later the Germans also adopted this perspective by the end of World War I. The concept of "Central" or "Middle Europe", understood as a region with German influence, lost a significant part of its popularity after WWI and was completely dismissed after WWII. Two defeats of Germany in the world wars, combined with

3432-540: The German defeat in World War I . The revival of the idea may be observed during the Hitler era . The interwar period (1918–1938) brought a new geopolitical system, as well as economic and political problems, and the concept of Central Europe took on a different character. The centre of interest was moved to its eastern part – particularly to the countries that had (re)appeared on the map of Europe. Central Europe ceased to be

3510-515: The German municipalities Puttgarden , Wagria and Putgarten , Rügen . From this same Proto-Indo-European root come the Germanic word elements * gard and * gart (as in Stuttgart ), and likely also the names of Graz , Austria and Gartz , Germany . Cognate to these are English words such as garden , yard , garth , girdle and court. Also cognate but less closely related are Latin hortus ,

3588-465: The Germans have not played an exclusively negative role in the region. Most Central European Jews embraced the enlightened German humanistic culture of the 19th century. Jews of turn of the 20th century Central Europe became representatives of what many consider to be Central European culture at its best, though the Nazi conceptualisation of "Mitteleuropa" sought to destroy this culture. The term "Mitteleuropa"

3666-646: The Jews depopulated many of their centuries-old settlement areas or settled other people there and their culture was wiped out. Both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin diametrically opposed the centuries-old Habsburg principles of "live and let live" with regard to ethnic groups, peoples, minorities, religions, cultures and languages and tried to assert their own ideologies and power interests in Central Europe. There were various Allied plans for state order in Central Europe for post-war. While Stalin tried to get as many states under his control as possible, Winston Churchill preferred

3744-714: The Low Countries through the steppes of Russia to the Caucasus. Later on, professor Fritz Epstein argued the threat of a Slavic "Drang nach Westen" (Western expansion) had been a major factor in the emergence of a Mitteleuropa ideology before the Reich of 1871 ever came into being. In Germany the connotation was also sometimes linked to the pre-war German provinces east of the Oder-Neisse line . The term "Mitteleuropa" conjures up negative historical associations among some people, although

3822-600: The Soviet sphere of influence in the late 1940s–1980s. For the most part, this geographical framework lost its attraction after the end of the Cold War. A number of Post-Communist countries rather re-branded themselves in the 1990s as "Central European.", while avoiding the stained wording of "Middle Europe," which they associated with German influence in the region. This reinvented concept of "Central Europe" excluded Germany, Austria and Switzerland, reducing its coverage chiefly to Poland,

3900-412: The USA. Otto von Habsburg tried to relieve Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and northern Yugoslavia (particularly the territories of present-day Croatia and Slovenia) from Nazi German, and Soviet, influence and control. There were various considerations to prevent German and Soviet power in Europe after the war. Churchill's idea of reaching the area around Vienna before the Russians via an operation from

3978-478: The area of German aspiration to lead or dominate and became a territory of various integration movements aiming at resolving political, economic, and national problems of "new" states, being a way to face German and Soviet pressures. However, the conflict of interests was too big and neither Little Entente nor Intermarium ( Międzymorze ) ideas succeeded. Hungarian historian Ádám Magda wrote in her study Versailles System and Central Europe (2006): "Today we know that

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4056-471: The bane of Central Europe was the Little Entente , military alliance of Czechoslovakia , Romania and Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), created in 1921 not for Central Europe's cooperation nor to fight German expansion, but in a wrong perceived notion that a completely powerless Hungary must be kept down". The events preceding World War II in Europe —including the so-called Western betrayal / Munich Agreement were very much enabled by

4134-432: The border, tens of thousands of media-informed East Germans set off for Hungary. The leadership of the GDR in East Berlin did not dare to completely block the borders of their own country and the USSR did not respond at all. This broke the bracket of the Eastern Bloc and Central Europe subsequently became free from communism. According to American professor Ronald Tiersky , the 1991 summit held in Visegrád attended by

4212-431: The division of Germany, an almost complete disappearance of German-speaking communities in these countries, and the Communist-led isolation of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Yugoslavia from the Western world, turned the concept of "Central/Middle Europe" into an anachronism. On the other side, the non-German areas of Central Europe were almost universally regarded as "Eastern European" primarily associated with

4290-420: The early 16th century until the early 18th century, parts of present-day Croatia and Hungary were under Ottoman rule. During the 17th century, the empire also occupied southern parts of present-day Slovakia. During the Early Modern period, the territories of Poland and Lithuania were part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . Meanwhile, the Archduchy of Austria , the Kingdom of Bohemia (Czech Republic),

4368-424: The east. However, the region encompassed a wide spectrum of additional tribes and communities. From the late 6th century to the early 9th century, the area roughly corresponding to the Carpathian Basin was part of the Avar Khaganate, the realm of the Pannonian Avars . While the Avars dominated the east of what is now Austria, its north and south were under Germanic and Slavic influence, respectively. Meanwhile,

4446-413: The first West Slavic states to be founded in Central Europe. In the late 9th Century, the Hungarian tribes , originating in the Ural Mountains and Western Siberia , settled in the Carpathian Basin and established the Principality of Hungary . The earliest recorded concept of Europe as a cultural sphere (instead of simply a geographic term) was formed by Alcuin of York in the late 8th century during

4524-412: The first discussions of a Mitteleuropa in the mid-nineteenth century, as espoused by Friedrich List and Karl Ludwig Bruck . These were mostly based on economic issues. Mitteleuropa may refer to a historical concept or a contemporary German definition of Central Europe. As a historical concept, the German term Mitteleuropa (or alternatively its literal translation into English, Middle Europe )

4602-407: The gord, or below it in elevation, there formed small communities of servants, merchants, artisans, and others who served the higher-ranked inhabitants of the gord. Each such community was known as a suburbium (literally "undercity") ( Polish : podgrodzie ). Its residents could shelter within the walls of the gord in the event of danger. Eventually the suburbium acquired its own fence or wall. In

4680-405: The ground. The village received Magdeburg rights in c. 1348, and at that time it was called Fuerstenberg , due to the fact that most of its inhabitants were the Walddeutsche . The town was located on a merchant route from Sandomierz , through Ropczyce , towards the Kingdom of Hungary , and until the late 14th century, it was property of the Bishopric of Lebus . In 1325, Wielopole already had

4758-513: The legal development or the social, cultural, economic, and infrastructural developments in these countries. The avant-garde movements of Central Europe contributed to the evolution of modernism, reaching its peak throughout the continent during the 1920s. The Sourcebook of Central European avantgards (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) contains primary documents of the avant-gardes in the territories of Austria, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia from 1910 to 1930. With

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4836-403: The peasants in serfdom. The concept of Central Europe was already known at the beginning of the 19th century, but it developed further and became an object of intensive interest towards the 20th century. However, the first concept mixed science, politics, and economy – it was strictly connected with the aspirations of German states to dominate a part of European continent called Mitteleuropa . At

4914-448: The region includes some or all of the states listed in the sections below: Depending on the context, Central European countries are sometimes not seen as a specific group, but sorted as either Eastern or Western European countries. In this case Austria, Germany and Switzerland are often placed in Western Europe, while Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia are placed in Eastern Europe. Croatia

4992-424: The rising nationalism and ethnocentrism that typified that period. The interwar period brought new elements to the concept of Central Europe. Before World War I, it embraced mainly German-speaking states, with non-German speaking territories being an area of intended German penetration and domination – German leadership was to be the 'natural' result of economic dominance. Post-war, the Eastern part of Central Europe

5070-408: The root of various words in modern Slavic languages pertaining to fences and fenced-in areas (Belarusian гарадз іць, Ukrainian horod yty, Slovak o hrad iť, Czech o hrad it, Russian o grad it, Serbo-Croatian o grad iti, and Polish o grad zać, grod zić, to fence off). It also has evolved into words for a garden in certain languages. Additionally, it has furnished numerous modern Slavic words for

5148-413: The territories now comprising Germany and Switzerland were under the influence of the Merovingian dynasty , and later the Carolingian dynasty . Various Slavic tribes that inhabited eastern Central Europe established settlements during this period, primarily in present-day Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. The territory of Lithuania was inhabited by Baltic tribes. Amongst them were

5226-446: The transformation process of the Visegrád Group countries in different, though comparable ways. According to him, in Germany's contemporary public discourse "Central European identity" refers to the civilizational divide between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. He argued that there is no precise way to define Central Europe and that the region may even include Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Serbia. The issue of how to name and define

5304-411: The uniform use of geographical names, proposes two sets of boundaries. The first follows international borders of current countries. The second subdivides and includes some countries based on cultural criteria. In comparison to some other definitions, it is broader, including Luxembourg, Estonia, Latvia, and in the second sense, parts of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Italy, and France. There

5382-401: The war and Holocaust . In August 1944, the village was partially destroyed. Among points of interest there are: Baroque parish church (1683), with a bell tower, early 19th century roadside chapel in the market square, 19th century wooden houses, ruins of defensive wall, and cemeteries. On 11 May 1955, in a wooden shack fire during cinema projection, 58 people (including 36 children) perished,

5460-420: The worst one-day death toll in Polish post-war history. This tragedy was commemorated by a monument, which stands in Wielopole’s market square. Gord (archaeology) A gord is a medieval Slavonic fortified settlement, usually built on strategic sites such as hilltops, riverbanks, lake islets or peninsulas between the 6th and 12th centuries in Central and Eastern Europe . A typical gord consisted of

5538-450: Was accelerated by writers and other intellectuals, who recognized the societal paralysis of decaying dictatorships and felt compelled to speak up against Soviet oppression. In the early Middle Ages, Central Europe had a diverse landscape, with various ethnic groups inhabiting the region. Germanic tribes , among them the Franks , Alemans and Bavarians , were predominantly situated in the west, while Slavic tribes were predominantly in

5616-567: Was at the time in personal union with the Kingdom of Hungary, served as a significant maritime gateway of Central Europe, with its ports facilitating key trade routes between Central Europe and the Mediterranean. The Republic of Ragusa emerged as a prominent hub for cultural exchange during this time. Following the Ottoman and Habsburg wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Kingdom of Croatia, under Habsburg rule , began to regain its position as

5694-708: Was captured by the Russian Imperial Army . The Russians retreated after two weeks, to return in October 1915. In May 1915, during the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive , Wielopole was seized by the Austrians. World War I resulted in widespread destruction and poverty of local population. Wielopole did not recover in the Second Polish Republic , and in 1933, its town charter was taken away. Since then, it has been

5772-656: Was dominated by Byzantine cultural influence. After the East–West Schism in 1054, significant parts of Eastern Europe developed cultural unity and resistance to Catholic Western and Central Europe within the framework of the Eastern Orthodox Church , Church Slavonic language and the Cyrillic alphabet . According to historian Jenő Szűcs , at the end of the first millennium Central Europe became influenced by Western European developments. Szűcs argued that between

5850-473: Was frequently built at the top of a hill, and the podgrodzie / podhradie at its foot. (The Slavic prefix pod- , meaning "under/below" and descending from the Proto-Indo-European root pṓds , meaning foot, being equivalent to Latin sub- ). The word survives in the names of several villages ( Podgrodzie, Subcarpathian Voivodeship ) and town districts (e.g., that of Olsztyn ), as well as in the names of

5928-645: Was one of the most visible symbols of this division. Respectively, countries in Central Europe have historical, cultural and geopolitical ties with these wider regions of Europe. Central Europe began a "strategic awakening" in the late 20th and early 21st century, with initiatives such as the Central European Defence Cooperation , the Central European Initiative , Centrope , and the Visegrád Four Group . This awakening

6006-679: Was placed at the centre of the concept. At that time the scientists took an interest in the idea: the International Historical Congress in Brussels in 1923 was committed to Central Europe, and the 1933 Congress continued the discussions. According to Emmanuel de Martonne , in 1927, Central Europe encompassed Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Switzerland, northern Italy and northern Yugoslavia. The author uses both Human and Physical Geographical features to define Central Europe, but he doesn't take into account

6084-713: Was so fashionable that other languages started referring to it when indicating territories from Rhine to Vistula , or even Dnieper , and from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans . An example of this vision of Central Europe may be seen in Joseph Partsch 's book of 1903. On 21 January 1904, Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftsverein (Central European Economic Association) was established in Berlin with economic integration of Germany and Austria (with eventual extension to Switzerland, Belgium and

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