Concept

Mitteleuropa

Summary
Mitteleuropa (ˈmɪtl̩ʔɔʏˌroːpa), meaning Middle Europe, is one of the German terms for Central Europe. The term has acquired diverse cultural, political and historical connotations. The Prussian vision of Mitteleuropa was a pan-Germanist state-centric imperium, an idea that was later adopted in a modified form by Nazi geopoliticians. The German term "Mitteleuropa" is not used or understood in the same way in all areas of Europe. The term has also been used differently over time. In Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and northern Italy, especially in Friuli and Trieste, the common definition is somewhat different from that in Germany: Mitteleuropa is equated with the successor states of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Regions such as the Baltic States and the North German-Polish plains are perceived as "Northern European", other parts of Germany as "Western European". The Central European Order of St. George has its centers mainly in the area of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. By the mid-14th century, when the Black Death brought an end to the 500-year-long Ostsiedlung process, populations from Western Europe had moved into the "Wendish" Central European areas of Germania Slavica far beyond the Elbe and Saale rivers. They had moved along the Baltic coast from Holstein to Farther Pomerania, up the Oder river to the Moravian Gate, down the Danube into the Kingdom of Hungary and into the Slovene lands of Carniola. From the mouth of the Vistula river and the Prussian region, the Teutonic Knights by force continued the migration up to Estonian Reval (Tallinn). They had also settled the mountainous border regions of Bohemia and Moravia and formed a distinct social class of citizens in towns like Prague, Havlíčkův Brod (German Brod), Olomouc (Olmütz) and Brno (Brünn). They had moved into the Polish Kraków Voivodeship, the Western Carpathians and Transylvania (Siebenbürgen), introducing the practice of crop rotation and German town law.
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.