Geographically, depending on who did the calculation, the center of Europe is somewhere between Southwestern Lithuania and the Northwestern edge of the Carpathian Basin [today in Slovakia and the Westernmost tip of Ukraine].
Historically, "Central Europe" used to be the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Prussia, and the Habsburg Empire (was earlier Austria and Kingdom of Hungary, became later Austria-Hungary). Culturally, this made some sense for the following reasons: Eastern border roughly the Eastern extent of Western Christianity (which meant very real political alliance systems and exchange beyond religion), these continental countries were off East of the dominant maritime nations making up Western (and Northern) Europe, and there was the Ottoman Empire to the Southeast. With German unification in the 19th century, all of Germany shited into "Central Europe".
To give some evidence, Central European Time (CET, the timezone today extending from Spain to Hungary, but originally only from Germany and on to Transsylvania and Galicia, areas then in Austria-Hungary but today in Romania resp. Ukraine) was established at the request of the Hungarian State Railways (see here).
In all the descendant countries, the region is called thus to this day. In the West, however, after the Iron Curtain descended across the continent, "Eastern Europe" became what was beyond.
After the fall of 'communism', there was confusion. Finding that the locals are confused and aren't that enthralled by their "Eastern Europe" terminology, some Westerners (especially those immigrating fro here...) had no trouble with the old terminology (see the Soros-funded Central European University). Then there are the new 'compromise terms', used on international fora to please us but apparently unknown to most Westerners: Central-Eastern Europe, Eastern-Central Europe (CEE/ECE), the same with "and".
But Western usage is confused also for reasons entirely unrelated to our sensitivities. What complicates the picture is
Quite a bit in the genesis of the modern use of the term if you look at the debates in the seventies and eighties. Quite prominent a theme in fact in the contributions of your co-national, Gyorgy Konrad. To be fair this part of the argument was at least as much intended to counter anti-East European prejudices among Westerners as an expression of anti-Russian prejudice. But the latter is a real factor.
I must admit I had no clue. Intrigued, I started off for a search; and so far I find there was apparently a so-called "Central Europe Debate", in which Konrád participated; kicked off by Milan Kundera's 1984 essay "The Tragedy of Central Europe", positing that in Central Europe is a part of the West kidnapped by the East, where intellectuals fight for European values against Soviet-Russian "de-Europeanisation", and that Central European intellectualism was the real center of European civilisation. That's strong tobacco indeed. Apparently, his strongest critic in the ensuing debate was emigrant Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. I am still reading.
(At any rate, while I may have absorbed Cewntral Europe myths created by the eighties dissident movement, I doubt my geography class curriculum was influenced by Konrád & co.) *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
On the Central Europe Debate, this article both connects and separates it from a debate among historians about Central Europe as separate cultural region, which started in the seventies.. E.g. the intellectuals were really for the re-joining of the two sides of the Iron Curtain, not an identity separate also from the West (but a purer essence of it if we look at Kundera).
Hm, maybe I should write a diary.
Or maybe you are already better-read for that :-)
At any rate, thanks for sending me on this search. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
That must have been muddled up with the German factor at least since the rise of Prussia in the Seven Years' War. If my source is right, the Central Europe idea got traction in the West in the form of the German Threat (and in Prussia/Germany Mitteleuropa became popular in the form of natural hegemonic area for regional dominance). Then again, it also claims that the East-West division idea finally supplanted the North-South idea (in which Russia was the Giant of the North) only with the Crimean War. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
Apparently, a central theme in the historians' debate on Central Europe from the seventies was the development of feudalism as something separating out such a region, in particular the second serfdom. Which brings me to thing about an earlier era. Catholics contend that what connects Europe historically above all is its common Christian past. But the spread of Christianity was just as much the spread of the then modern society model of feudalism. *Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
