In a similar to my other post about the Balkans I have taken the outline of what 16 unique maps describe as 'Central Europe' and superimposed them on one another to create a heatmap of Central Europe.
Note: this map is not an authoritative truth claim and it doesn't claim to be.
There is quite clearly a close-to-consensus region consistent of Czechia and its neighbours (though only Slovakia and Moravia clinched the 100% score). Other areas, such as Slovenia and Switzerland are usually included. Beyond them lies a wide periphery of 'sometimes Central European, sometimes not'.
Where do you draw the line?
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Maps I included:
- World Factbook (2008)
- StAGN State Boundaries (2005)
- StAGN Cultural Proximity (2005)
- E. Schenk (1950)
- Alice F. A. Mutton in Central Europe (1961)
- Czesław_Miłosz (1983)
- Katzenstein (Visegrad) (1997)
- Encarta Encyclopedia (2009)
- Encyclopédie Larousse.PNG) (2015)
- Meyers Grosses Taschenlexikon (1999)
- EU Interreg Central Europe Program (2026)
- Columbia University (1998)
- Emmanuel de Martonne .svg)(1927)
- Sourcebook of Central European Avant-Gardes (1930)
- Europe Then and Now (2013)
- Danube River Basin (2021)
Posted by Timely-Macaron268
34 Comments
Lmao Romania
this is just a map of the Greater German Reich.
Accidental Mitteleuropa.
It makes *some* sense to include Estonia and Latvia, considering the amount of German influence in their cultures due to the former Baltic German nobility. However, both are still more culturally Northern European than Central European.
Wow, they could be unstoppable if they’d be united. Wonder what would be happen in that situation
interesting how prague is a central europe anchor point with 94% inclusion
Unfortunately Prague isn’t 100%
Vilnius being higher than Grodno and Lithuania is so odd
Why is the percentage so low for the northern part of East Prussia?
Nice to see something like this that isn’t just the American South or Midwest for once!
Which one(s) have Moravia as part of Central Europe but not Bohemia?
That looks like a map of the HRE (holy roman empire german nation).
Oh Istenem, oh baszás, akármerre megyek, kurvára fáj Trianon.
I can always see Hungary’s borders
It’s very weird that Slovakia is 100%. Most people here in Italy would tell you that anything past the Iron curtain is eastern Europe and I thought that that was a common cold war era sentiment in all of the Western Bloc. I expected at least one map to reflect that. I expected Germany and Czechia to be the areas with the highest percentages.
I like how you can see the outlines of the former austria hungary
Interesting that Slovakia is included in 100% of maps but somehow not Czechia? I always group them together in my mind
There is no such thing as central europe.
Central Europe is Eastern Europe what dont want all call them Eastern 😅🤣
My town is located in northern Croatia, looks very central european, and is even called “the little Vienna”. Croatia probably isn’t 100% central european, but when I hear that my region is labeled as part of the Balkans, it would be an understatement to say that I’m pissed about that… I hated that post about the Balkans from 3 days ago😂😂
Central Europe is a false concept made by Czech Republic desperately trying to not be called eastern. I know this from personal experience
All drawn up in Slovakia I imagine? 🙂
“central Europe” is cope.
Eastern Lithuania being more Central European than most of the country, especially Klaipėda, is slightly bizarre.
Basically German majority countries, west Slavic countys aaand Slovenia and Hungary
I’ve never seen Belgium being included in Central Europe, not even once. I wonder which sources claim that because 19% is a lot.
That’s so cool. Now do one for Mediterranean
I always considered the Czech Republic and Austria to be the definition of Central Europe – simply because the specific Central European culture there mixes with influences from both the West and the East. Other Central European countries mix culture with influence from only one side.
Generaly, east border of the central europe is border between catholic and orthodox christianity. With some deviations. In this cultural sphere, is protestant and catholic the same.
This might suggest that there is a fairly well established consensus about countries like Germany, Czechia, Austria, Hungary and Poland being Central European, but this could be highly misleading since the sample of maps in the sources only includes maps which include Central Europe as a region in the first place (and not even that, since many of those maps just cover concepts that are at best adjacent to an idea of Central-Europeanness, like the Danubian basin).
It would be interesting to take a wider sample of maps with Europe divided into regions, including those where Central Europe is not included as a category, and see the distribution for each country (maybe with a pie chart for each country).
My only problem with some of these definitions is: what is eastern europe then??? Russia only?
Blue zone only. Germany, Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary.
Central Europe is a cultural descriptor of an area with highly intertwined, yet complicated culture as the zone between eastern and western empires of Europe. Just far enough from the direct power of both to stay itself, but close enough to be influenced by all, and directly between to often become the battlefield.
It doesnt
This is a meta-map, (map of other maps), so it simpl includes whatever any map labeled “Central Europe” includes. It’s geographic.
But semantically (i.e. “culturally”) “Central Europe” is a label, and all labels are organized around archetypical members of that category. Cognitive linguistics has done quite a bit of research on that.
In the English-speaking world “Central Europe” means primarily Vienna, Prague and Budapest, and anything else will belong to that label based on how similar it’s perceived to these three archetypical category members.
If you had a poll asking people to identify where “Central Europe” is you would end up with a much more granular and precise map of the concept.
And concepts themselves have a time and place when they entered the consciousness. So they reflect their own time, and they often overlap.
“Central Europe” is basically tied to Austria-Hungary in the English-speaking world (and kind of the general area around it), while” Eastern Europe” and “Western Europe” only became a thing in the Cold War.
It’s interesting that the 100% area borders a 31% area, and that Switzerland is less often included than Slovenia or the Rhineland and Saarland.
Curious that there are maps that include the Netherlands, Albania and Estonia at all. And why is there a 31% sliver in the Baltics surrounded by much lower percentages?