Transformations of statehood in 20th-21st century Central Europe

This workshop looks at the effect of transformations of sovereignty, power and territory on Central European societies in terms of self-understanding, politicisation, political mobilisation, organisation, and international positioning. 

Discussions focus  on Germany and Austria in the 20th century until today, but also include neighbouring regions that underwent similar reconfigurations or were directly affected by the transformations of the Central European states (e.g. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy, etc.). Contributions will take the form of position papers on topics such as narratives of loss as consequences of territorial changes after the First World War; the significance of imperial legacies of Austria-Hungary for the rise of Italian Fascism; discourses about migration, citizenship and national belonging in post-1945 West Germany; and crises of memory in post-Cold War Central Europe.

The aim of the workshop is to establish the basis for an expanding international network of research universities to work on the history of state transformation – a topic with high relevance not only for contemporary Europe but also the wider world.

Participants are Marcus Funck (Technical University Berlin), Ota Konrád (Charles University Prague), Marco Bresciani (University of Zagreb), as well as Nicholas Martin, Sara Jones (both Institute for German Studies at the University of Birmingham),  Jonathan Gumz and Klaus Richter (both History Department of the University of Birmingham).

Due to its conceptual nature, the afternoon sessions of the workshop will take the form of closed discussions, but members of staff are warmly invited to attend the morning sessions from 9:00 to 13:00, which will link results of individual and institutional research projects to a common framework aimed at a future collaboration.

Organiser: Klaus Richter

The workshop is funded as part of the British-Academy Small Grant awarded for Klaus Richter’s research project on “Land and property redistribution in Poland and the Baltic States, 1917-1939”, running from 2015 to 2017.