Bewältigte Vergangenheit?

The volume pursues the issue as to what significance the demise of the Habsburg Monarchy, which had up to then been an organizing factor in Central Europe and a crucial element in the European power system, had for the constitution of its successor states and the policies of the European Powers in both the short and long terms and what contribution historiography made. Hence, the book will focus not on the frequently treated subject of the disintegration or destruction of the Habsburg Monarchy and its importance for the realignment of Central Europe, but on the brief or prolonged final curtain the ‘successor states’ and the ‘victor states’ staged in 1918 and on how this assessment changed over the subsequent decades. Here, it is not just a question of the memory of the oft-quoted ‘Seminal Catastrophe’, but also of part of the process of coming to terms with the national and European past and, beyond that, of a portion of the identity history of the ‘New Europe’ in the vicissitudes from 1918 up to the present. Since, as a constitutive part of history policy, historiography itself served not only to provide a look back at the past, but was also most closely associated with structural policies for the new era after 1918, a presentation of this historiography will offer an answer to the question as to what came after the Habsburg Monarchy, what was written off as being over and what comparable problems remained.