Publication Details

Abstract

Following Jóhann Páll Árnason’s occasional distinction between the imaginative Central Europe of novelists and philosophers and the historical region of East-Central Europe, this article uses the example of this region to discuss the relationship between public debates (including essays and novels) about the past and professional historical discourse. It explains the irreducibility of the diverse polycentric perspectives of Central Europe and the risks of its originally Westerncentric construction in the 19th century, as manifested in the present day.