Imagining Mitteleuropa: Conceptualisations of ‘Its’ Space In and Outside German Geography

Abstract

The concept of ‘Mitteleuropa’ developed in Germany around 1800, albeit without its being deployed in a unitary way. The concept's articulation reveals a variety of patterns. First, a Mitteleuropa defined meridionally, which extended from the North Cape to Sicily; second, a Mitteleuropa given shape by lines of latitude reaching from the Atlantic to the Urals or at least the Black Sea; and finally, a Mitteleuropa located in the centre of the continent. The meridional and, above all, the last named, centre–periphery model were developed into major political platforms of German nationalism. Nature ‘itself’, geographers but also non-geographers argued, had predisposed the vast territory stretching from the Rhine to the mouth of the Danube and the Weichsel River, perhaps even as far away as to the swamps of Rokitno, to form a geopolitical unity under German hegemony. In point of fact, neither in the case of Mitteleuropa nor in any other similar ones does nature dictate a particular politics. The upshot of this essay therefore is: ‘Spaces do not simply exist, spaces are produced!’