Central Europe

Meanwhile, the Archduchy of Austria, the Kingdom of Bohemia (Czech Republic), 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.

[30][31] Various Slavic tribes that inhabited eastern Central Europe established settlements during this period, primarily in present-day Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

[38] 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 the Carolingian Renaissance, limited to the territories that practised Western Christianity at the time.

Szűcs argued that between 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.

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.

[52] The German term denoting Central Europe 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.

[citation needed][dubious – discuss] 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.

[58] The events preceding World War II in Europe—including the so-called Western betrayal/ Munich Agreement were very much enabled by the rising nationalism and ethnocentrism that typified that period.

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 the first discussions of a Mitteleuropa in the mid-nineteenth century, as espoused by Friedrich List and Karl Ludwig Bruck.

[62] 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 the Low Countries through the steppes of Russia to the Caucasus.

[63] 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.

[71][72] 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.

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 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.

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 the border, tens of thousands of media-informed East Germans set off for Hungary.

[90] 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.

On the other side, the non-German areas of Central Europe were almost universally regarded as "Eastern European" primarily associated with the Soviet sphere of influence in the late 1940s–1980s.

This reinvented concept of "Central Europe" excluded Germany, Austria and Switzerland, reducing its coverage chiefly to Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania and Yugoslavia.

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.

[2] The French Encyclopédie Larousse defines Central Europe as a region comprising Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Liechtenstein, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland.

[107] The terminology EU11 countries refer 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.

Central Europe contains the continent's earliest railway systems, whose greatest expansion was recorded in Austrian, Czech, German, Hungarian and Swiss territories between 1860-1870s.

[173] By the mid-19th century Berlin, Vienna, Zurich, Pest and Prague were focal points for network lines connecting industrial areas of Saxony, Silesia, Bohemia, Moravia and Lower Austria with the Baltic (Kiel, Szczecin) and Adriatic (Rijeka, Trieste).

Railway density as of 2022, with total length of lines operated (km) per 1,000 km2, from highest to lowest is Switzerland (129.2), the Czech Republic (120.7), Germany (108.8), Hungary (85.0), Slovakia (74.0), Austria (66.5), Poland (61.9), Slovenia (59.6), Serbia (49.2), Croatia (46.3) and Lithuania (29.4).

The economies of Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland tend to demonstrate high complexity.

[195] In 2019, Central European University leadership announced their preparatory work on moving CEU to Vienna due to legal constraints against academic freedom in Hungary.

Sausages, salamis and cheeses are popular in most of Central Europe, with the earliest evidence of cheesemaking in the archaeological record dates back to 5,500 BCE (Kuyavia region, Poland).

Generally, the countries in the region have been progressive on the issue of human rights: death penalty is illegal in all of them, corporal punishment is outlawed in most of them and people of both genders can vote in elections.

Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Poland also have a history of participation in the CIA's extraordinary rendition and detention program, according to the Open Society Foundations.