Download or read book Europe Central written by William T. Vollmann and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-11-14 with total page 834 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A daring literary masterpiece and winner of the National Book Award In this magnificent work of fiction, acclaimed author William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye on the authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR in the twentieth century to render a mesmerizing perspective on human experience during wartime. Through interwoven narratives that paint a composite portrait of these two battling leviathans and the monstrous age they defined, Europe Central captures a chorus of voices both real and fictional— a young German who joins the SS to fight its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich and the Stalinist assaults upon his work and life.
Download or read book Transatlantic Central Europe written by Jessie Labov and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-10 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there are still occasional uses of it today, the term "Central Europe" carries little of the charge that it did in the 1980s and early 1990s, and as a political and intellectual project it has receded from the horizon. Proponents of a distinct cultural profile of these countries—all involved now in the process of Transatlantic integration—used "Central European", as a contestation with the geo-political label of Eastern Europe. This book discusses the transnational set of practices connecting journals with other media in the mid-1980s, disseminating the idea of Central Europe simultaneously in East and West. A range of new methodologies, including GIS-mapping visualization, is used, repositing the political-cultural journal as one central node of a much larger cultural system. What has happened to the liberal humanist philosophy that "Central Europe" once evoked? In the early years of the transition era, the liberal humanist perspective shared by Havel, Konrád, Kundera, and Michnik was quickly replaced by an economic liberalism that evolved into neoliberal policies and practices. The author follows the trajectories of the concept into the present day, reading its material and intellectual traces in the postcommunist landscape. She explores how the current use of transnational, web-based media follows the logic and practice of an earlier, 'dissident' generation of writers.
Download or read book Central Europe written by Lonnie Johnson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1996 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the ages, small nations struggled valiantly against a series of imperial powers - Ottoman Turkey, Habsburg Austria, imperial Germany, czarist Russia, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union - and they lost regularly. Johnson's account is present-minded in the best sense: in describing actual historical events, he illustrates the ways they have been remembered, and how they contribute to the national assumptions that still drive European politics today.
Download or read book Central European Pasts written by Ines Peper and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-07-18 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Präsentationsvideo (4. Folge der Reihe 'ÖGE18 Update') Anyone wishing to look beyond the paradigm of Western progress needs to understand how it came into being. In the intellectual culture of the 17th and 18th centuries, the competitive comparison of Ancients and Moderns and their respective relations to civilization and barbarism constituted one of the formative discourses. Yet alternative ideas of time and historicity are encountered not only in cultural contexts outside of Europe but also in the largely forgotten professional knowledge of the Old World: Thomism, Peripatetism, moderate forms of criticism, political theory, and legal practice. This book introduces a broad panorama of such intellectual cultures in Central Europe. It situates theological, historical, and philosophical scholarship in its institutional and epistemological environments: the Church, the Holy Roman Empire, and the emerging Habsburg Monarchy. In doing so, it identifies struggles over competing pasts – Christian, ethnic, legal – as the core of those domains' intellectual development.
Download or read book East Central Europe in the Modern World written by Andrew C. Janos and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of East Central Europe and its place in the modern world. Combining narrative with analysis, it presents the past and present of East Central Europe in the larger context of the political and economic history of the continent.
Download or read book East Central Europe in the Middle Ages 1000 1500 written by Jean W. Sedlar and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the Middle Ages saw brilliant achievements in the diverse nations of East Central Europe, this period has been almost totally neglected in Western historical scholarship. East Central Europe in the Middle Ages provides a much-needed overview of the history of the region from the time when the present nationalities established their state structures and adopted Christianity up to the Ottoman conquest. Jean Sedlar’s excellent synthesis clarifies what was going on in Europe between the Elbe and the Ukraine during the Middle Ages, making available for the first time in a single volume information necessary to a fuller understanding of the early history of present-day Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and the former Yugoslavia. Sedlar writes clearly and fluently, drawing upon publications in numerous languages to craft a masterful study that is accessible and valuable to the general reader and the expert alike. The book is organized thematically; within this framework Sedlar has sought to integrate nationalities and to draw comparisons. Topics covered include early migrations, state formation, monarchies, classes (nobles, landholders, peasants, herders, serfs, and slaves), towns, religion, war, governments, laws and justice, commerce and money, foreign affairs, ethnicity and nationalism, languages and literature, and education and literacy. After the Middle Ages these nations were subsumed by the Ottoman, Habsburg, Russian, and Prussian-German empires. This loss of independence means that their history prior to foreign conquest has acquired exceptional importance in today’s national consciousness, and the medieval period remains a major point of reference and a source of national pride and ethnic identity. This book is a substantial and timely contribution to our knowledge of the history of East Central Europe.
Download or read book Ecology of Central European Forests written by Christoph Leuschner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-09-22 with total page 998 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook in two volumes synthesises our knowledge about the ecology of Central Europe’s plant cover with its 7000-yr history of human impact, covering Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia. Based on a thorough literature review with 5500 cited references and nearly 1000 figures and tables, the two books review in 26 chapters all major natural and man-made vegetation types with their climatic and edaphic influences, the structure and dynamics of their communities, the ecophysiology of important plant species, and key aspects of ecosystem functioning. Volume I deals with the forests and scrub vegetation and analyses the ecology of Central Europe’s tree flora, whilst Volume II is dedicated to the non-forest vegetation covering mires, grasslands, heaths, alpine habitats and urban vegetation. The consequences of over-use, pollution and recent climate change over the last century are explored and conservation issues addressed.
Download or read book The Great Jewish Cities of Central and Eastern Europe written by Eli Valley and published by Jason Aronson. This book was released on 1999 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Jewish Cities of Central and Eastern Europe: A Travel Guide and Resource Book to Prague, Warsaw, Cracow, and Budapest is the most comprehensive guidebook covering all aspects of Jewish history and contemporary life in Prague, Warsaw, Cracow, and Budapest. This remarkable book includes detailed histories of the Jews in these cities, walking tours of Jewish districts past and present, intensive descriptions of Jewish sites, fascinating accounts of local Jewish legend and lore, and practical information for Jewish travelers to the region.
Download or read book Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe written by Pieter M. Judson and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The hundred years between the revolutions of 1848 and the population transfers of the mid-twentieth century saw the nationalization of culturally complex societies in East Central Europe. This fact has variously been explained in terms of modernization, state building, and nation-building theories, each of which treats the process of nationalization as something inexorable, a necessary component of modernity. Although more recently social scientists gesture to the contingencies that may shape these larger developments, this structural approach makes scholars far less attentive to the "hard work" (ideological, political, social) undertaken by individuals and groups at every level of society who tried themselves to build "national" societies." "The essays in this volume make us aware of how complex, multi-dimensional and often contradictory this nationalization process in East Central Europe actually was. The authors document attempts and failures by nationalist politicians, organizations, activists, and regimes from 1848 through 1948 to give East-Central Europeans a strong sense of national self-identification. They remind us that only the use of dictatorial powers in the 20th century could actually transform the fantasy of nationalization into a reality, albeit a brutal one."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Routledge History of East Central Europe since 1700 written by Irina Livezeanu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering territory from Russia in the east to Germany and Austria in the west, The Routledge History of East Central Europe since 1700 explores the origins and evolution of modernity in this turbulent region. This book applies fresh critical approaches to major historical controversies and debates, expanding the study of a region that has experienced persistent and profound change and yet has long been dominated by narrowly nationalist interpretations. Written by an international team of contributors that reflects the increasing globalization and pluralism of East Central European studies, chapters discuss key themes such as economic development, the relationship between religion and ethnicity, the intersection between culture and imperial, national, wartime, and revolutionary political agendas, migration, women’s and gender history, ideologies and political movements, the legacy of communism, and the ways in which various states in East Central Europe deployed and were formed by the politics of memory and commemoration. This book uses new methodologies in order to fundamentally reshape perspectives on the development of East Central Europe over the past three centuries. Transnational and comparative in approach, this volume presents the latest research on the social, cultural, political and economic history of modern East Central Europe, providing an analytical and comprehensive overview for all students of this region.
Download or read book Imagining Bosnian Muslims in Central Europe written by František Šístek and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a Slavic-speaking religious and ethnic “Other” living just a stone’s throw from the symbolic heart of the continent, the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina have long occupied a liminal space in the European imagination. To a significant degree, the wider representations and perceptions of this population can be traced to the reports of Central European—and especially Habsburg—diplomats, scholars, journalists, tourists, and other observers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This volume assembles contributions from historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and literary scholars to examine the political, social, and discursive dimensions of Bosnian Muslims’ encounters with the West since the nineteenth century.
Download or read book The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East Central Europe written by Barbara J. Falk and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In addition to the huge list of written sources from samizdat works to recent essays, Falk's sources include interviews with many personalities of those events as well as videos and films."--Jacket.
Download or read book Central Europe written by Lonnie Johnson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996-10-31 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the Cold War era, the Iron Curtain divided Central Europe into a Communist East and a democratic West, and we grew accustomed to looking at this part of the world in bipolar ideological terms. Yet many people living on both sides of the Iron Curtain considered themselves Central Europeans, and the idea of Central Europe was one of the driving forces behind the revolutionary year of 1989 as well as the deterioration of Yugoslavia and its ensuing wars. Central Europe provides a broad overview and comparative analysis of key events in a historical region that encompasses contemporary Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia. Starting with the initial conversion of the "pagan" peoples of the region to Christianity around 1000 A.D. and concluding with the revolutions of 1989 and the problems of post-Communist states today, it illuminates the distinctive nature and peculiarities of the historical development of this region as a cohesive whole. Lonnie R. Johnson introduces readers to Central Europe's heritage of diversity, the interplay of its cultures, and the origins of its malicious ethnic and national conflicts. History in Central Europe, he shows, has been epic and tragic. Throughout the ages, small nations struggled valiantly against a series of imperial powers--Ottoman Turkey, Habsburg Austria, imperial Germany, czarist Russia, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union--and they lost regularly. Johnson's account is present-minded in the best sense: in describing actual historical events, he illustrates the ways they have been remembered, and how they contribute to the national assumptions that still drive European politics today. Indeed, the constant interplay of reality and myth--the processes of myth-making and remembrance--animates much of this history. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the unanticipated problems of transforming post-Communist states into democracies with market economies, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the challenges of European integration have all made Central Europe the most dynamic and troubled region in Europe. In Central Europe, Johnson combines a vivid and panoramic narrative of events, a nuanced analysis of social, economic, and political developments, and a thoughtful portrait of those myths and memories that have lives of their own--and consequences for all of Europe.
Download or read book Being Jewish in 21st Century Central Europe written by Haim Fireberg and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-09-07 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish life in Europe has undergone dramatic changes and transformations within the 20th century and also the last two decades. The phenomenon of the dual position of the Jewish minority in relation to the majority, not entirely unusual for Jewish Diaspora communities, manifested itself most distinctly on the European continent. This unique Jewish experience of the ambiguous position of insider and outsider may provide valuable views on contemporary European reality and identity crisis. The book focuses inter alia on the main common denominators of contemporary Jewish life in Central Europe, such as an intense confrontation with the heritage of the Holocaust and unrelenting antisemitism on the one hand and on the other hand, huge appreciation of traditional Jewish learning and culture by a considerable part of non-Jewish Europeans. The volume includes contributions on Jewish life in central European countries like Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, and Germany.
Download or read book Central Europe in the High Middle Ages written by Nora Berend and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking comparative history of the formation of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, from their origins in the eleventh century.
Download or read book Making Sense of Dictatorship written by Celia Donert and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did political power function in the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe after 1945? Making Sense of Dictatorship addresses this question with a particular focus on the acquiescent behavior of the majority of the population until, at the end of the 1980s, their rejection of state socialism and its authoritarian world. The authors refer to the concept of Sinnwelt, the way in which groups and individuals made sense of the world around them. The essays focus on the dynamics of everyday life and the extent to which the relationship between citizens and the state was collaborative or antagonistic. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of life in this period, including modernization, consumption and leisure, and the everyday experiences of “ordinary people,” single mothers, or those adopting alternative lifestyles. Empirically rich and conceptually original, the essays in this volume suggest new ways to understand how people make sense of everyday life under dictatorial regimes.
Download or read book Staged Otherness written by Dagnosław Demski and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-22 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cultural phenomenon of exhibiting non-European people in front of the European audiences in the 19th and 20th century was concentrated in the metropolises in the western part of the continent. Nevertheless, traveling ethnic troupes and temporary exhibitions of non-European humans took place also in territories located to the east of the Oder river and Austria. The contributors to this edited volume present practices of ethnographic shows in Russia, Poland, Czechia, Slovenia, Hungary, Germany, Romania, and Austria and discuss the reactions of local audiences. The essays offer critical arguments to rethink narratives of cultural encounters in the context of ethnic shows. By demonstrating the many ways in which the western models and customs were reshaped, developed, and contested in Central and Eastern European contexts, the authors argue that the dominant way of characterizing these performances as “human zoos” is too narrow. The contributors had to tackle the difficult task of finding traces other than faint copies of official press releases by the tour organizers. The original source material was drawn from local archives, museums, and newspapers of the discussed period. A unique feature of the volume is the rich amount of images that complement every single case study of ethnic shows.
