Which cities are Central European?

[Docere]

Vote for all that apply.

[pj3000]

I've never heard of any of these cities besides Berlin.

But I think Berlin is Central Europe.

[JManc]

Any city that is in Germany, Austria, Poland, Romania, Czech Rep., Slovakia, Hungary, etc....countries in central Europe.

[pawelra]

Seriously this is not that hard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe

[Docere]

Do Germans use the term or identify much with Central Europe themselves?

To me, it's most closely associated with the non-Balkan parts of the old Austro-Hungarian empire.

[ThePhun1]

Originally Posted by pj3000

I've never heard of any of these cities besides Berlin.

But I think Berlin is Central Europe.

You've never heard of Prague, Belgrade, Warsaw (!), Geneva (!), Cologne, Vienna (!), Hamburg (!) or Budapest?

There really is a slant on this board.

[10023]

Originally Posted by JManc

Any city that is in Germany, Austria, Poland, Romania, Czech Rep., Slovakia, Hungary, etc....countries in central Europe.

I know that this is the traditional definition, but I just don’t agree with it.

Most of Germany is not really Central Europe (although the German concept of Mitteleuropa includes Germany). Bavaria is, and Thuringia, and perhaps Saxony, but I certainly wouldn’t include Cologne, and maybe not Berlin.

If the western part of Germany is included, then why not Switzerland? And Cologne is like 50 miles from Aachen, which was Charlemagne’s capital... how could it possibly be anything but Western Europe?

Poland is also split, IMO. What was Silesia, now mostly in Poland, is Central Europe. So is Kraków, perhaps. But I would consider Warsaw and eastern Poland part of the East, along with the Baltic States, Belarus and Ukraine.

A more meaningful historical and cultural definition, not so dependent upon shifting and somewhat arbitrary political boundaries, and cognisant of the fact that most of Europe was long made up of smaller, distinct kingdoms (Bavaria, Bohemia, Silesia, Saxony, etc), would look to other geographical features.

I would propose great rivers, and I’d start with the Danube River and its tributaries. If you’re in that drainage basin, upriver from about Novi Sad (the southern end of the Pannonian Plain), then you’re probably in Central Europe. East of that you hit the southern Carpathian Mountains and some deep, dark forests (Europe’s largest), so quite a natural frontier.



And then add to that the uplands of the Elbe River, through at least Saxony (look for Dresden on this map).



Beyond that you reach the North German Plain, and toward the Baltic cultural zone (Hanseatic League and all that) that I would call Northern Europe. Where exactly you draw that line is subjective.

And lastly one has the other great middle European river, the Oder. Same general idea here. The Oder is why Silesia was a kingdom:




Kraków is actually on the Vistula River, which subsequently flows through Warsaw and later Gdańsk, but is contained almost entirely within Poland, with tributaries that rise in Ukraine and Belarus. So that’s an Eastern European river, and perhaps it’s more correct to think of Kraków as an Eastern European city. I’ve never been. But then again, Kraków was part of the Slavic kingdom of Great Moravia (this is c.9th century), so there’s a historical/cultural Central European identity there.


In any event, it’s defintely hard to spend time in Munich, Salzburg, Prague and Vienna, and not understand that all of these have more in common with each other than any of them do with Cologne. National borders are sometimes surprisingly irrelevant in Europe, and the longer the EU and Schengen exist, the more that will be the case.

[Docere]

Anything that was in the Russian Empire is out, in my opinion (i.e. Warsaw). And the Balkans. Or parts of Austria-Hungary that became part of Ukraine or Romania (eastern Galicia, Carpathian Ruthenia, Bukovina etc.)

[Docere]

Apologies for using the Mr. Burns era spelling for Krakow.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by ThePhun1

You've never heard of Prague, Belgrade, Warsaw (!), Geneva (!), Cologne, Vienna (!), Hamburg (!) or Budapest?

There really is a slant on this board.

I've heard of Hamburg in New York, near Buffalo.

But I didn't realize that there was one in Europe too.

There's this water tower off of interstate 90


It's where the hamburger originated. Funny how two really delicious foods came from the Buffalo area... hamburgers from Hamburg and buffalo wings from Buffalo.

[ThePhun1]

No offense but most of those places are very famous, even if not considered world class.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by 10023

National borders are sometimes surprisingly irrelevant in Europe, and the longer the EU and Schengen exist, the more that will be the case.

I did cities rather than countries for two reasons:

1. I'll admit it. I don't want to post where people don't read. The Europe regional forum is pretty dead.

2. There are some differences within countries. The Rhine River region is very different from eastern Germany. There are differences between the historic Prussian, Austrian and Russian parts of Poland etc. In some cases multiple cities within a country are included in the poll.

[10023]

Originally Posted by Docere

I did cities rather than countries for two reasons:

1. I'll admit it. I don't want to post where people don't read. The Europe regional forum is pretty dead.

2. There are some differences within countries. The Rhine River region is very different from eastern Germany. There are differences between the historic Prussian, Austrian and Russian parts of Poland etc. In some cases multiple cities within a country are included in the poll.

Yep. Totally agree.

Lorraine in France is practically German. The Basque region on either side of the French/Spanish border is more alike than either is to distant regions of their own countries. Don’t even start with Northern vs. Southern Italy. And so on.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by ThePhun1

No offense but most of those places are very famous, even if not considered world class.

What????

[Docere]

There's kind of a running joke that "Eastern Europe" begins in the next country to the east.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

There's kind of a running joke that "Eastern Europe" begins in the next country to the east.

What do Russians think is Eastern Europe?

[ThePhun1]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

What????

Yes, most of those places are very famous, they're not a Vladivostok, Monrovia or even Belomopan.

Many are major cities in Germany/Austria for goodness sake. Others played a role in well known wars, including World War II, if you studied anything in school.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by ThePhun1

Yes, most of those places are very famous, they're not a Vladivostok, Monrovia or even Belomopan.

Many are major cities in Germany/Austria for goodness sake. Others played a role in well known wars, including World War II, if you studied anything in school.

Ah crap, I read your post wrong. Of course they are famous. I unfortunately thought you said the opposite. My bad.

[Shawn]

I think my model is too simplistic, but it's how I've mentally mapped Europe for a long time:

- Celtic? Gallic? Anglo-Norman? Dutch? Western Europe.
- Iberian? Greco-Italian? Southern Europe.
- Germanic? Bohemian? Magyar? Central Europe.
- Scandinavian? Northern Europe.
- Slavic? Eastern Europe.

Lots of overlap there, I know. Bohemians are Western Slavs, the Dutch are Germanic, etc. There's a bit of a cultural and linguistic gap between Western Slavs and the larger Eastern Slavs group, so maybe Western Slavs are Central Europeans by and large (Western Slavs tend to be Catholic; Eastern tend to be Orthodox).

I guess the easiest definition would be "Former Austro-Hungarian Empire" lands.

[10023]

Originally Posted by Shawn

I think my model is too simplistic, but it's how I've mentally mapped Europe for a long time:

- Celtic? Gallic? Anglo-Norman? Dutch? Western Europe.
- Iberian? Greco-Italian? Southern Europe.
- Germanic? Bohemian? Magyar? Central Europe.
- Scandinavian? Northern Europe.
- Slavic? Eastern Europe.

Lots of overlap there, I know. Bohemians are Western Slavs, the Dutch are Germanic, etc. There's a bit of a cultural and linguistic gap between Western Slavs and the larger Eastern Slavs group, so maybe Western Slavs are Central Europeans by and large (Western Slavs tend to be Catholic; Eastern tend to be Orthodox).

I guess the easiest definition would be "Former Austro-Hungarian Empire" lands.

I think... actually no, I feel quite strongly... that Germany is where Western, Central and also Northern Europe meet. You cannot place all of it in any of them. And that probably actually explains quite a lot of its history.

It would be absurd to say that the Rhine Valley is not Western Europe. And again, if Aachen, capital of the Carolingian Empire, is not Western Europe, then I don’t know what is. The Franks were a Germanic tribe from the Rhineland, who became rulers of France (and gave their name to it), after all.

I would actually place most of Germany in Western Europe, until you reach its quite culturally distinct (to Germans) fringes (the Alpine foothills, the Baltic coast). And then you’re also probably right with the former Austrian Emprire as a guide.

But I also still like using the upper reaches of the Danube, Elbe and Oder (limited by the Carpathians in the case of the first, and the wide Baltic coastal Plain for the latter, either of which formed frontiers with other economic/cultural regions). Civilisations and cultures do form along rivers, so it’s a historical/cultural definition as well as geographic.

What’s absolutely indisputable is that using modern, post-war national borders as a basis of a definition is pretty stupid. These are really just as arbitrary as any borders imposed upon Africa or the Middle East. At least your mental map is reflective of that (I assume, for instance, that you would consider the Adriatic coast of Croatia to be “Greco-Italian”).