ABSTRACT
Writing about Europe poses the central question whether and, if so, to what extent there was a European awareness among the ‘Europeans’? Was there a common culture which bound together regions and countries, states and nationalities across all sorts of natural and artificial borders? On an even more fundamental level one must ask how those who inhabited the continent in the past did actually live, and whether, from their cultural condition, they knew about the different regions and, on the basis of this knowledge, understood and valued each other’s ideas and lifestyles?
