A royal summit in 1335 still names a Central European alliance today
In 1335 the kings of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary-Croatia met at Visegrád castle and agreed to cooperate on politics and trade. Six centuries later, the post-Cold War Visegrád Group borrowed the name. Central Europe is like that: a region without fixed borders, stitched together by shared memories of empires, faiths and crossroads.
Definitions vary, but most lists take in Germany, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, along with Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Lithuania and tiny Liechtenstein. After Roman rule collapsed in the fifth century, Germanic peoples such as the Franks, Alemanni and Bavarians took parts of the west while Slavic tribes settled the east. The Avar Khaganate held the Carpathian Basin from the late sixth to the early ninth century, and Baltic tribes including Samogitians and Curonians inhabited Lithuania.
Charlemagne's coronation by Pope Leo III around 800 launched the Holy Roman Empire. Great Moravia, among the first West Slavic states, peaked in the late ninth century, just as Hungarian tribes arrived from the steppe to settle the Carpathian Basin. A Kingdom of Croatia emerged in 925, and the first Polish duchy in 966. Christianisation brought Catholicism and Latin as common threads, contrasting with the Orthodox, Cyrillic east after the schism of 1054. Historian Jenő Szűcs argued that Western social models took root between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, with Magdeburg town rights spreading from the mid-thirteenth century and giving towns self-government.
Dynastic unions reshaped the map. In 1386 Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania became Catholic and married Queen Jadwiga to become king of Poland, a partnership that led to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of 1569. Croatia, joined to Hungary, served as the region's sea gateway, with Ragusa a cultural hub. Later the Ottomans occupied much of Hungary and Croatia, and in the eighteenth century the Habsburgs ruled a vast swathe from Austria to Slovenia. Between the early 1700s and early 1900s the region was home to a substantial Jewish population.
The idea of Central Europe itself grew politically charged. At the Frankfurt Parliament after 1848, Austria pushed a Central European Solution merging German states with its multi-ethnic monarchy, opposed by Prussia. After 1945 the Iron Curtain split the region, with Austria, Switzerland and Yugoslavia declaring neutrality.
Source: Central Europe
