The term ‘Central Europe’ has been used in geography and political journalism since the 19th century and gained prominence in the debate on the war aims during the First World War, notably through the politician Friedrich Naumann (1860–1919; *Mitteleuropa*, 1915) and academics such as the economist Max Sering (1857–1939; *Western Russia and its Significance for the Development of Central Europe*, 1917). The distinct term ‘Eastern Central Europe’ began to appear after 1918. The starting point for this new terminology was the concept of ‘Inter-Europe’ coined by the geographer Albrecht Penck (1858–1945) in 1915. He used this term to describe the area stretching from the White Sea to the Bosporus as a potential German sphere of influence, the scope of which was significantly broader and more dynamic than that of ‘Central Europe’.^[1] After the end of the war, the term ‘Zwischeneuropa’ became established to denote ‘the long strip between Central and Eastern Europe’ stretching from Finland to Greece.^[2] Max Sering also used the term ‘eastern Central Europe’ to refer to this region. From the 1930s onwards, the term was used, for example, by the geographer Werner Giere (d. 1939; *The Role and Mission of the Germans in Eastern Central Europe*, 1934) and the historians Kleophas Pleyer (1898–1942; *The Forces of the Border Struggle in Eastern Central Europe*, 1937) and the historian Herbert Ludat (1910–1993; *Poland’s Position in Eastern Central Europe in History and the Present*, 1939) used the term ‘Eastern Central Europe’. In all cases, the political and ideological links to ‘German Eastern Studies’and to National Socialism are unmistakable. This connection makes it clear that ‘Eastern Central Europe’ emerged primarily from a political conceptualisation underpinned by arguments drawn from history, the social sciences and cultural studies. The term ‘Eastern Central Europe’ subsequently became established and, at the same time, acquired an academic character in the Federal Republic of Germany, initially in the publications of the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council in Marburg and the Herder Institute run by it, and, from 1996 onwards, also at the Centre for the Humanities: History and Culture of East-Central Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig (see‘East-Central European Studies’). A conceptually complementary ‘Western Central Europe’, which was initially applied by Oskar Halecki (1891–1973)^[3] to refer to Germany and Austria, and subsequently by Ferdinand Seibt (1927–2003) to the region between the North Sea and the Riviera, has not, however, gained widespread acceptance in either of these contexts.

Since 1989, the term ‘Central Eastern Europe’ has also become more common; this presumably derives from a conceptually incorrect abbreviation of ‘Central and Eastern Europe’, analogous to the English term ‘Central and East Europe’, which has been in use since the 1930s.

The main equivalents are ‘East Central Europe’ in English, ‘Europa środkowo-wschodnia’ in Polish, and ‘Kelet-Közép-Európa’ in Hungarian.

The Anglo-Saxon term ‘East Central Europe’ has been in use since the Second World War and was coined not least by Oskar Halecki. At the same time, there are clear overlaps with the terms ‘Central Europe’ and ‘Eastern Europe’. Geographically, the Polish term roughly corresponds to the German understanding, but focuses on the area of Jagiellonian rule and the Polish–Lithuanian noble republic. In French, Czech and Slovak, on the other hand, equivalents of ‘Central Europe’ (Europe centrale or médiane, or Střední Evropa, Stredná Európa) predominate (see also ‘Discourses/Controversies’).

The semantics of the term ‘Eastern Central Europe’ cannot be derived solely from the literal meaning of the words; it does not merely refer to the eastern part of Central Europe in a geomorphological sense. Rather, in both German and international discourse, there is a prevailing tendency to emphasise the distinct character of the macro-region of Eastern Central Europe, situated between Central and Eastern Europe. This is not merely a result of the term’s historical development (‘Zwischeneuropa’), but is justified by historical and structural specificities (see ‘Discourses/Controversies’). This position is particularly pronounced in the work of Jenő Szűcs (1928–1988), but is also shared by other authors.

In this respect, Eastern Central Europe cannot be defined solely in geographical terms, but rather in historical, political and cultural terms. This applies equally to the demarcation of Eastern Central Europe from neighbouring regions. It is not only from a historical perspective that the problem arises that these boundaries cannot be drawn with absolute clarity, resulting in what are, in places, quite complex overlaps with Central Europe, North-Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe and Eastern Europe.

Compared with ‘Central Europe’, the term ‘Eastern Central Europe’ emphasises, on the one hand, the distinctive characteristics of the regions east of the Elbe and Saale rivers. However, whilst the understanding of ‘Central Europe’ has, on the other hand, shifted ‘eastwards’ as a whole since the Second World War and then, above all, with the revival of the term in the 1980s (Karl Schlögel) (see ‘Discourses/Controversies’), ‘Eastern Central Europe’ denotes a greater degree of definitional precision.

In Austrian usage, the term ‘Central Europe’ is employed with a semantics that differs from that of ‘Central Europe’.^[4] This term ultimately goes back to Tomáš G. Masaryk’s (1850–1937) conception of a ‘New Europe’ (The New Europe. The Slavic Point of View, 1922) as a counter-concept to Naumann’s ‘Central Europe’. At its core lay not imperial notions of territory, but the self-assertion of small nations between the great powers of Germany and Russia.

On the one hand, there are overlaps withtheterms‘EasternEurope’or‘Eastern Europe’due to the Slavic-speaking world as a subject of academic study and the Soviet-dominated ‘Eastern Bloc’ during the Cold War. On the other hand, reference is made to the boundary between Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity as a striking dividing line between Central and Eastern Europe (Krzysztof Pomian). In German discourse,‘Eastern Europe’is used, on the one hand, as an umbrella term for the regions east of Germany, but on the other hand is also equated with the territory of Russia or the Soviet Union.

Whilst the relationship between Eastern Central Europe and Central or Eastern Europe is, at least in part, a matter of conceptual taxonomies, the boundaries of Eastern Central Europe to the north and south, by contrast, result in geographical overlaps: This concerns, on the one hand, the Baltic region (here: the states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), which is also classified as part of Northern Europe or North-Eastern Europe, and, on the other hand, in particular Hungary and Transylvania in relation to the demarcation with South-Eastern Europe. In view of these definitional difficulties, historians have repeatedly proposed adopting a pragmatic definition of the region (Rudolf Jaworski, Alexei Miller) or an era-dependent definition (‘tidal Europe’, Norman Davies)^[5].

Overall, the term ‘Eastern Central Europe’ in the broadest sense thus encompasses the regions between the Baltic Sea, the Adriatic and the Black Sea, that is, the belt of countries stretching from Finland and Estonia in the north to Hungary, Croatia and Romania in the south on the one hand, and from Germania Slavica in the west to the ‘Kresy’ of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the east on the other. In the narrower sense, Eastern Central Europe comprises the following historical regions: Poland–Lithuania, the Bohemian lands and Hungary, as well as Transylvania. In contemporary academic disciplines, Eastern Central Europe is therefore generally understood to refer to the states of the Visegrád Group (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary), and occasionally also the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovenia and Croatia.

A historical overview must take account of the various interpretations of Eastern Central Europe and its geographical extent as outlined above.

Eastern Central Europe was initially characterised by the expansion of Slavic groups as far as the Elbe and Saale rivers and the Danube. From the mid-9th century onwards, these regions came under the sphere of influence of the East Frankish Empire, which hoped to gain both religious and political advantages from the Christianisation of these areas. Against this backdrop, political and economic contacts increased. At the same time, states began to form in Bohemia and Moravia (the Great Moravian Empire) and in Pannonia (the ‘conquest’ by the Hungarians in 896). These contacts intensified as a result of the Christianisation of Bohemia, the conflicts with the Magyars and, finally, by the expansion of the Ottonian kings’ sphere of influence into the territories of the Elbe and Baltic Slavs in the 10th century, with the establishment of bishoprics and the creation of border marches.

This led to the emergence of Roman Catholic nations in Bohemia, Poland and Hungary. In contrast to earlier ecclesiastical influences from the Frankish-Saxon Empire, the archbishoprics of Gniezno and Esztergom were founded in the year 1000, becoming the focal points around which the medieval nations of the Poles and Magyars coalesced. In Prague/Praha, the establishment of the diocese in 977, in connection with the emerging cult of St Wenceslas, held similar significance. These Christian nations of the Poles, Czechs and Magyars were thus integrated into Latin Europe, whilst the Christianisation of Rus’ from Byzantium led to the formation of a confessional boundary. However, these processes of Christianisation and nation-building did not affect all regions of Eastern Central Europe equally: In the Baltic regions – with the exception of Gdańsk – Christianisation continued into the 12th and 13th centuries and, in Prussia and Livonia, was based on the ‘mission by the sword’ carried out by orders of knights. The Lithuanian Grand Dukes did not permanently adopt Christianity until the end of the 14th century. Among the Elbe and Baltic Slavs, and along the Baltic coast, no medieval nation-building took place.

Around the middle of the 12th century, the era of high medieval land expansion – known as the (German) ‘Ostsiedlung’ or ‘Ostkolonisation’ – began. This led to the intensification and modernisation of agriculture, as well as to urbanisation accompanied by legal reforms. The new settlers initially came from northern and western Germany, as well as the Netherlands and Flanders; later, internal colonisation gained in importance. The geographical extent of this colonisation can be seen in the linguistic shift in the term used for ‘town’: just as in German ‘Stadt’ replaced the older ‘Burg’ in town names, so in West Slavic ‘miasto’ / ‘město’ took the place of ‘gród’ / ‘hrad’, whilst in East Slavic ‘gorod’ remained the term for a town.^[6]

The impact of these processes is evident in a comprehensive structural transformation, which, alongside economic development, encompasses social processes of acculturation and ethnic change (so-called ‘new lineage formation’), Jewish immigration since the 14th century, and the formation of national consciousness.

With the demise of the medieval ruling dynasties, the influence of the regionally based nobility grew in Hungary, Bohemia and Poland. Over the course of the 15th century, constitutions based on the estates system thus emerged, featuring extensive mechanisms for participation and oversight, which in Poland and Hungary were supported by a broad stratum of nobles enjoying equal rights. The ‘Crown’ no longer denoted the king’s rule, but rather the country as represented by the estates. The personal union of Krewo with Lithuania in 1385 led to Poland’s territorial expansion into Belarusian and Ukrainian territories, which was accompanied by a social and cultural convergence of the noble elites. Whilst the political scope of the estates in Bohemia and Hungary was curtailed under Habsburg rule, the ‘noble Republic of Both Nations’ was established in Poland–Lithuania following the Real Union of Lublin in 1569, with a joint Diet (Sejm) and free election of the king, in which every nobleman could participate by right of birth. This freedom of the estates was accompanied by religious tolerance, as a result of which Polish Jews were able to establish their own Sejm.

From the 16th to the 18th century, the region was the scene of power struggles and religious conflicts: In Bohemia, the defeat of the estates by the Habsburgs at the start of the Thirty Years’ War in the Battle of White Mountain (1620) led to the imposition of the Counter-Reformation. From the Livonian War (1558–1583), the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had been embroiled in a protracted conflict with the Tsardom of Moscow over the eastern territories of the Livonian Republic, stretching as far as Ukraine, as well as with Sweden due to the competing claims to the throne by the Vasa rulers in Poland and Sweden. During this period, Catholicism became firmly established as the state religion in Poland. Following the Great Northern War (1700–1721), Poland–Lithuania was plunged into a crisis of sovereignty by pressure from Russia, Brandenburg–Prussia and Austria, and was finally partitioned in 1772, 1793 and 1795.

The Congress of Vienna in 1815 confirmed the partition of Poland. The emerging national movements clashed not only with the reactionary policies of the respective states, but also with the anti-revolutionary policies of the Holy Alliance. In Poland, there were several revolutionary uprisings between 1830 and 1863; in Bohemia and Hungary, the aspirations for national freedom found expression in the revolutions of 1848, which, however, failed in Prague and Budapest just as they did in Vienna, Frankfurt and Berlin. The introduction of the Compromise in the Habsburg Monarchy in 1867, on the one hand, expanded the scope for national self-determination for the Hungarians and for the Poles in Galicia, but also led to the oppression of non-Hungarian minorities in Transleithania. InPrussian Germany, by contrast, the scope for political development for Poles was severely restricted; the same applied to the Poles and the emerging Baltic nations within the Tsarist Empire. Nevertheless, on the one hand, the social base of the former aristocratic nations of Poland and Hungary broadened to include the peasantry and the urban middle classes, whilst on the other hand, young nations emerged from the peasant classes, ranging from the Finns to the Slovaks. At the same time, however, there were also numerous transnational interconnections within the empires, with the result that ethnic and linguistic boundaries were often difficult to discern clearly.

Following the collapse of the major Eastern powers in the First World War, nation states emerged in Eastern Central Europe; however, with the exception of Hungary – whose territory had been reduced by the Treaty of Trianon (1920) – national minorities constituted a significant proportion of the citizenry in each of these states. Consequently, minority issues played a significant role in the new states and in international debates. With the exception of Czechoslovakia, authoritarian forms of government emerged in all the states of the region from the mid-1920s onwards, albeit in quite different forms. At the start of the Second World War, Eastern Central Europe was occupied by Nazi Germany, whose policies of forced resettlement, persecution and imprisonment in concentration camps, the recruitment of forced labourers and genocide claimed the lives of large sections of the population. As a result of the Hitler–Stalin Pact, the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland and the Baltic states, and re-established its control over these territories after the German Wehrmacht had been driven back. The end of the Second World War led to the flight and, to a large extent, the forced resettlement of the German population from Czechoslovakia and the German eastern territories occupied by Poland and the Soviet Union. Consolidating this post-war situation also became a key basis for the legitimacy of the people’s democracies under Soviet hegemony after 1945.

In all the countries of Eastern Central Europe, there were numerous protests against the state-socialist regimes, but also strategies of adaptation. The emergence of the Solidarność trade union in Poland in 1980 heralded the decline of the socialist regimes. Following the peaceful upheavals of 1988–1989, the region underwent a renewed process of democratisation, far-reaching economic reforms and, ultimately, accession to the Western defence alliance and the European Union. However, these processes were not without profound political and social conflicts concerning structural social change, integration into European structures and the interpretation of the past, particularly the periods from the Second World War to the end of the Cold War.

A debate has arisen, particularly within German historical scholarship, regarding the specific structural characteristics of East-Central Europe. In particular, polyethnicity since the emergence of Germania Slavica is cited as such a feature; other factors worth mentioning include the presence of foreigners since the early Middle Ages and Ashkenazi Jewish immigration since the 14th century. Other defining characteristics include religious diversity and tolerance in the early modern period, as well as traditions of estates-based liberty and, finally, transnational interconnections throughout the ‘long’ 19th century.

However, these structures were largely – though not entirely – dismantled by nationalist policies, Soviet hegemony and, above all, the Nazi policy of extermination, as well as expulsions and forced assimilation between 1938 and 1949. As remembered history, polyethnicity, tolerance and the pursuit of freedom continue to this day to play a defining role in the region.

Economically, the region is characterised above all by the rise of manorial agriculture and the curtailment of peasant freedom in the early modern period. This has given rise to an extensive debate on the thesis of Eastern Central Europe’s backwardness and inability to reform, which has become the subject of numerous critical analyses. The ‘structural crisis of East-Central Europe’, as identified by Werner Conze (1910–1986) and, in a similar vein, earlier by István Bibó (1911–1979) (1953) thus appears to be a consequence of the dominance of great-power politics in the region. Jenő Szűcs (The Three Historical Regions of Europe, 1990) also attributes the incomplete alignment of Eastern Central Europe with Western Europe to this factor.

There has recently been a heated debate as to whether there is a direct link between the historical development of East-Central Europe and the nationalism and‘ethnic cleansing’(Norman Naimark) or the policies of extermination pursued by Stalin (1878–1953) and Hitler (1889–1945). Timothy Snyder refers to the Baltic states, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia as the ‘Bloodlands’ – an area that largely coincides with the greatest extent of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.^[7]

Controversies surrounding the term ‘Eastern Central Europe’ can also be observed with regard to its eastern boundaries and its relationship to ‘Central Europe’: Whilst the German debate focuses primarily on the broader historical contexts east of the Elbe and Saale rivers, or the current eastern border of Germany (Klaus Zernack), the function of the terms ‘Central’ or ‘Eastern Central Europe’ in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary is rather the reverse: there, it emphasises the historical and current connections with the neighbouring regions to the west.

In the Anglo-Saxon debate, Hugh Seton Watson (1916–1984) had already argued as early as 1970 in favour of abandoning the term ‘Eastern Central Europe’ in favour of ‘Central Europe’ and argued that, with the expansion of the ‘West’ in a political sense after 1945, Halecki’s division into Western Central and Eastern Central Europe had become obsolete, and that ‘Central Europe’ thus referred to the nations east of the Iron Curtain and west of the Soviet Union.^[8] This shift is also evident in the increasing dominance – in line with political usage – of ‘Central Europe’ in place of ‘East Central’ or ‘Eastern Europe’, a trend keenly observed by Timothy Garton Ash.^[9]

Finally, Wolfgang Schmale has raised the question of whether it is still possible to speak of East-Central Europe following EU enlargement. Michael G. Müller has most recently discussed the issue in more fundamental terms and critically asked whether there is an East-Central European regional identity beyond the scope of national experiences. A historical concept of East-Central Europe could be usefully applied if it were not linked to the claim of temporal continuity and spatial unity.

The current rise in the significance of discourses on Eastern Central Europe is due, on the one hand, to the upheaval of 1989, through which the political and cultural structures that existed prior to 1938 have regained importance. On the other hand, the historical and cultural reconstruction of the region had already begun in the 1980s. In (West) Germany and Austria, Karl Schlögel, Martin Pollack and other authors shifted the focus of the previously Germany-centred Central European debate towards the East. In Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, intellectuals such as György Konrád, Milan Kundera and Czesław Miłosz emphasised the historical and cultural connections across the Iron Curtain under the banner of ‘Central Europe’. This discussion went hand in hand with the ‘invocation’ (Charles Taylor) of civil society as a strategy for overcoming the socialist regimes. Whilst in Poland, since the 1990s, Eastern Central Europe has been identified primarily with the territory of the early modern noble republic and is thus situated within the context of national history, the Czech debate distinguishes between national (Czech) history and Central European history – the latter of which also encompasses the history of the Germans in Bohemia.

Against this backdrop, ‘Eastern Central Europe’ remains a multifaceted, tension-laden concept: on the one hand, it is a conceptual construct derived from academic or political frameworks; on the other hand, however, it is also part of a conceptual field of identity-forming self-attributions – in other words, a ‘mental map’ that reflects social value systems rather than geographical realities.

• Iván T. Berend: ‘What is Central and Eastern Europe?’ In: European Journal of Social Theory 8 (2005), pp. 401–416.
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• István Bibó: The Misery of Eastern European Fragmentation. Frankfurt am Main 1992 (Hungarian 1946).
• Werner Conze: The Structural Crisis of Eastern Central Europe before and after 1919. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 1 (1953), pp. 319–338.
• Werner Conze: Eastern Central Europe. From Late Antiquity to the 18th Century. Munich 1992.
• Michel Foucher: Fragments of Europe. Atlas of Central and Eastern Europe. Paris 1993.
• Oskar Halecki: The Limits and Divisions of European History. London, New York 1950; German edition: Europe – The Limits and Structure of its History. Darmstadt 1957.
• Oskar Halecki: Borderlands of Western Civilisation. A History of East Central Europe. New York, NY 1952; German edition: The Borderlands of the West. A History of East Central Europe. Salzburg 1956.
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• Paul Robert Magocsi: Historical Atlas of Central Europe. 2nd expanded edition. Seattle, WA 2002.
• Michael G. Müller: ‘Where and when was (East) Central Europe?’ In: Johánn P. Árnason, Natalie J. Doyle (eds.): *Domains and Divisions of European History*. Liverpool 2010, pp. 112–125.
• Emil Niederhauser: A History of Eastern Europe since the Middle Ages. Boulder, CO 2003 (East European Monographs 634).
• Joachim von Puttkamer: East-Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Munich 2010 (Oldenbourg Outline of History 38).
• Harald Roth (ed.): Study Guide to Eastern Europe. Vol. 1: History of East-Central and South-Eastern Europe. Cologne 1999 (Böhlau Study Books: Foundations of Study).
• Wolfgang Schmale: The ‘European-ness’ of East-Central Europe. In: Yearbook for European History 4 (2003), pp. 189–214.
• Hans-Dietrich Schultz, Wolfgang Natter: ‘Imagining Mitteleuropa: Conceptualisations of “its” Space in and outside German Geography’. In: European Review of History 10 (2003), No. 2, pp. 273–292.
• Peter F. Sugar, Donald W. Treadgold (eds.): A History of East Central Europe. 8 vols. Seattle, WA 1974–2001.
• Jenő Szűcs: The Three Historical Regions of Europe. Frankfurt am Main 1990 (Hungarian 1981).
• Stefan Troebst: ‘Introduction: What’s in a Historical Region? A Teutonic Perspective’. In: European Review of History 10 (2003), No. 2, pp. 173–188.
• Stefan Troebst: Region and Epoch Rather Than Space and Time – ‘East-Central Europe’ as a Prototypical Concept of a Historical Region. In: European History Thematic Portal (2006). URL: www.europa.clio-online.de/2006/Article=161.
• Piotr S. Wandycz: The Price of Freedom. A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present. 2nd ed. London 2001.
• Klaus Zernack: Eastern Europe. An Introduction to its History. Munich 1977 (Beck’sche Elementarbücher).

• Central Europe (2003–)
• Central & Eastern European Review (2007–)
• Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe (1993–)
• East Central Europe (1974–)
• Yearbooks of Eastern European History (1936–)
• Journal of Central European Affairs (1941–1964)
• New Eastern Europe (2011–)
• Eastern Europe (1953–)
• Slavic and East European Journal (1957–)
• Slavonic and East European Review (1922 onwards)
• Transit (1990–present)
• Journal of Eastern European Research, from 1995: Journal of East Central European Research (1952–)

• www.ceeol.com/ (Central and Eastern European Online Library. A platform providing access to numerous journals from and about East Central Europe)
• www.herder-institut.de/startseite.html (Website of the Herder Institute, Marburg, featuring a literature database and numerous digital resources)
• ostdok.de (platform for electronic full-text resources on German-language research into Eastern Europe)
• www.vifaost.de/ (Virtual Specialised Library on Eastern Europe, an interdisciplinary regional portal for research on Eastern Europe)

[1] Albrecht Penck: ‘Political-geographical Lessons of War’. In: *Meereskunde* 9 (1915), no. 10, pp. 1–40, here p. 26.

[2] Max Sering: The Agricultural Revolution and Agricultural Reform in Eastern and Central Europe. Berlin 1929, p. 1.

[3] Halecki: Europe, pp. 117–121.

[4] Philipp Ther: From East-Central Europe to Central Europe – Cultural History as Area Studies. In: European History Thematic Portal (2006). URL: www.europa.clio-online.de/2006/Article=170; Rudolf Jaworski: Central Europe – Mitteleuropa – East-Central Europe. On the Problem of Defining a Large Region. In: Kakanien revisited (25 April 2002). URL: www.kakanien.ac.at/beitr/fallstudie/RJaworski1.pdf.

[5] Stefan Troebst: ‘Historical region’. Historical-mesoregional concepts in the cultural sciences. In: European History Online (EGO) (3 December 2010). URL: ieg-ego.eu/de/threads/theorien-und-methoden/geschichtsregion/stefan-troebst-geschichtsregion, paragraph 14.

[6] See the map in Christian Lübke: The Germans and the European Middle Ages. Eastern Europe. Munich 2004, p. 523.

[7] Timothy Snyder: *Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin*. Munich 2011 (Publication Series/Federal Agency for Civic Education 1213). See also the debate in: Journal of Modern European History 10 (2012), nos. 3–4, and 11 (2013), no. 1.

[8] Hugh Seton-Watson: ‘Is there an East Central Europe?’ In: Sylva Sinanian, Istvan Deak, Peter Ludz (eds.): Eastern Europe in the 1970s. New York, NY 1972, pp. 3–12.

[9] Timothy Garton Ash: ‘The Puzzle of Central Europe’. In: New York Review of Books 46 (1999), no. 5, pp. 18–23. This conceptual shift is also evident in Paul Robert Magocsi: Historical Atlas of East Central Europe. Seattle, WA 1995; the second edition was published in 2002 under the title: Historical Atlas of Central Europe.

Jörg Hackmann: Eastern Central Europe. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2015. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32790 (accessed 29 May 2015).