ABSTRACT
In January 1987, a symposium in West Berlin confirmed that although there was little agreement on what Central Europe was or should be, the subject was by no means dead and would remain alive as long as there was dissatisfaction with the postwar division of Europe. Despite critics who insisted that Central Europe was buried for good in the ashes of World War II, the creature continued to surface in the East and West. The East European version of Central Europe in the West, perhaps best articulated by Milan Kundera, was largely a spiritual claim to Western identity and a protest against Sovietization, often not without a hint of wistfulness about lost Kakania. Only one East European, a Pole, sat on the dais at the Reichstag gathering sponsored by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung at the beginning of January. Kundera and Gyorgy Konrad had perhaps the greatest influence on the Central European debate in the West.
