The development of mediaeval diplomatic in Central Europe, and particularly in Bohemia (now Czechia and Slovakia), Poland and Hungary, falls into three main periods, determined by the troubled and often dramatic history of the region and by changes in academic and university structures. The first period, that of the establishment of diplomatic as a branch of learning, covers the 18th century and (more important still) the whole 19th century up to World War I. The second period, between the two wars, was a time of consolidation, under the persistent influence of the Monumenta Germaniae historica and the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, with some inspiration also being drawn from the example of the Ecole des chartes. The beginning of the third period witnessed the attempted elimination of diplomatic in order to make way for Marxist methodology ; this was followed by a remarkable flowering of studies in the 1960s in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and later on in Hungary. At present, a number of different approaches co-exist, such as traditional monographs of individual chancelleries, studies on parts of diplomatic discourse relevant to ideological and cultural history, and research on the significance of written documents in mediaeval communication systems.