Mitteleuropa in German Thought and Action, 1815-1945

Meyer, Henry Cord

doi:10.1007/978-94-011-7504-3

Cited by 82 publications

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“…In the past, CE delimited in this way, was, especially in Germany, often described as an area of historical German cultural influence and potentially also of political German hegemony (Schultz 1989(Schultz , 1990Simms 1997). Pre-war German geopolitical projects, including the concept of Mitteleuropa, correlate with this delimitation to a certain extent (NAumANN 1915;meyer 1955;sCheNk 1995). Currently, this delimitation of CE lacks ideological connotations and combines countries that used to have close cultural, political and economic relations (Jordan 2005).…”

Section: Delimitationmentioning

confidence: 98%

How Central Europe is Perceived and Delimited

Bláha¹,

Nováček²

2019

moegg

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Section: Delimitationmentioning

confidence: 98%

How Central Europe is Perceived and Delimited

Bláha¹,

Nováček²

2019

moegg

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“…War played an essential role not only in Kjellen's work, but also in his personal and intellectual life: not only was he a strong supporter of Germany during the First World War, but the war also contributed significantly to his academic success. His work Grossmächte der Gegenwart, published in 1914, ran to 19 editions, with 35 000 to 37 000 copies sold; his Ideen von 1914Ideen von , published in 1915, sold between 10 000 and 12 000 copies, figures comparable with those for Friedrich Nauman's successful book on Mitteleuropa (Kost, 1988;Meyer, 1955). His work became increasingly popular and its reception ever more positive in the space of just a few years: from the early almost skeptical book review by Robert Sieger (1903Sieger ( , 1906 and the refusal to consider his books as anything more than ideological and partial accounts of world politics, to the favourable and even enthusiastic reactions of Grabowski (1914), Merz (1915), Hassinger (1917), Vogel (1926), Maull (1929), Meinecke (1916) and eventually even Sieger (1924) from the beginning of the First World War onward.…”

Section: Kjellen: Destiny and Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

The State as a “form of life” and the space as Leistungsraum: the reception of Ratzel in the First and Second World Wars

Chiantera-Stutte

2023

Geogr. Helv.

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Abstract. My contribution explores the meaning of war and the role of Germany, which was seen as representing a Mittellage, before the First and the Second World Wars, through the eyes of two main authors who radically reinterpreted and appropriated geographical political thinking, particularly the work of Ratzel. I am referring to the Swedish political scholar Rudolf Kjellen and the “crown jurist” of the Third Reich, Carl Schmitt. The consideration of the triple relation between space, Ratzel and war casts light on Kjellen's and Schmitt's use of Ratzel as a lever in order to promote their idea of politics and political science. Ratzel's concepts offered Kjellen and, in a different way, Schmitt, a means of justifying their way of overcoming and stretching the “limits” of their disciplines and, at the same time, of introducing a new idea of political and geographical organization, which de facto legitimized German expansion, in two crucial periods of German political life – the First and the Second World Wars. As a consequence, their Ratzel was oriented toward militant aims. Moreover, their scientific and political ideas were clearly intertwined – they explicitly rejected the idea of separating their roles as political activists and as members of a scientific community.

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“…In such representations, the west is portrayed as a superior site of civilisation, wealth, peace and modernity (Bhambra 2019;Burgess 2002;Sassatelli 2002), and the east as primitive (Korek 2007;Todorova 2003;Verdery 2002) peripheries of 'Europe', filled with inhabitants 'fit only for slavery' (Wolff 1994: 10ff). 7 This view has been propagated throughout the Middle Ages (Delanty 2003) and the Enlightenment (Wolff 1994), through the concept of Mitteleuropa a century ago (Meyer 1955), during the Cold War (Todorova 2003), and as part of the process leading to the EU's Eastern Enlargement in (Böröcz and Kovacs 2001. Similarly, European lawyers and legal academics have traditionally tended to privilege the concerns of north-western EU States (Kukovec 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Not Quite Right: Representations of Eastern Europeans in ECJ Discourse

Myslinska

2020

Int J Polit Cult Soc

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Although the increasing responsiveness of the Court of Justice of the European Union (the 'ECJ') jurisprudence to western Member States' concerns regarding Central and Eastern European ('CEE') nationals' mobility has garnered academic attention, ECJ discourse has not been scrutinised for how it approaches the CEE region or CEE movers. Applying postcolonial theory, this article seeks to fill this gap and to explore whether there are any indications that ECJ discourse is in line with the historical western-centric inferiorisation of the CEE region. A critical discourse analysis of a set of ECJ judgments and corresponding Advocate General opinions pertaining to CEE nationals illustrates not only how the ECJ adopts numerous discursive strategies to maintain its authority, but also how it tends to prioritise values of the western Member States, while overlooking interests of CEE movers. Its one-sided approach is further reinforced by referring to irrelevant facts and negative assumptions to create an image of CEE nationals as socially and economically inferior to westerners, as not belonging to the proper EU polity and as not quite deserving of EU law's protections. By silencing CEE nationals' voices, while disregarding the background of east/ west socioeconomic and political power differentials and precariousness experienced by many CEE workers in the west, such racialising discourse normalises ethnicity-and classbased stereotypes. These findings also help to contextualise both EU and western policies targeting CEE movers and evidence of their unequal outcomes in the west, and are in line with today's nuanced expressions of racisms. By illustrating the ECJ's role in addressing values pertinent to mobile CEE individuals, this study facilitates a fuller appreciation of the ECJ's power in shaping and reflecting western-centric EU identity and policies. Engaging with such issues will not only allow us to better appreciate-and question-the ECJ's legitimacy, but might also facilitate a better understanding of power dynamics within the EU. This study also makes significant theoretical and methodological contributions. It expands (and complicates) the application of postcolonial theory to contemporary intra-EU processes, while illustrating the usefulness of applying critical discourse analysis to exploring differentiation, exclusion, subordination and power within legal language.

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Mitteleuropa in German Thought and Action, 1815-1945

Cited by 82 publications

References 0 publications

How Central Europe is Perceived and Delimited

How Central Europe is Perceived and Delimited

The State as a “form of life” and the space as Leistungsraum: the reception of Ratzel in the First and Second World Wars

Not Quite Right: Representations of Eastern Europeans in ECJ Discourse

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