ABSTRACT
Central, Eastern, or East-Central Europe, as this multiplicity of possible denomi-nations already shows, has long been searching for its identity. Leopold von Ranke, Friedrich Naumann, István Bibó, Oscar Halecki, and historians and politicians after them have invented, discussed, rejected and analysed names, geographical limits and their meaning. Zwischeneuropa, Mitteleuropa and a number of variations on the seemingly (and in this case misleadingly) straightforward geographical notions of ‘eastern’ and ‘central’ have been proposed (Schöpflin and Wood 1989; Wandycz 1992; Eberhard et al. 1992; Le Rider 1994). At stake is the political, economic and cultural relationship of the ‘East-Central European’ countries to Western Europe, indeed, to Europe. Coming to grips with the region’s medieval past is part of this search. Here the example of Hungary, one of the countries of modern East-Central Europe, is used to explore this issue.
