Between Appropriation and Rivalry: Some Remarks on the Concept of East Central Europe in Recent Anglo-American and German Historiography

The present article follows some arguments that define East Central Europe on the fundament of a carefully selected choice of synthetically relevant literature, which shaped, profiled, and modified the discussion on the spatial-historical concept of East Central Europe in the last twenty-five years in English and German language.The article’s structure has the following three sections: European Patterns and Differentiated Functions (Wandycz), Expanding Concepts and Decentralized Perspectives: The Turn of theMillennia (Longworth, Johnson, Bideleux/ Jeffries, Niederhauser, Roth), Common Patterns and Linking Memory: Two Recent Examples (Puttkamer, Bahlcke/Rhodewald/Wunsch). With the intention to correspond to the present volume’s fundamental concept and main task, the article and its summary discuss whether there happened a shift from appropriation to rivalry in historiographical operationalization of the term “East Central Europe” in the last decades.