Review: Helga Mitterbauer & Carrie Smith-Prei, eds. Crossing Central Europe. Continuities and Transformations, 1900 and 2000. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017. Pp. 290. ISBN: 9781442649149.

Résumé 0

Crossing Central Europe. Continuities and Transformations, 1900 and 2000 gathers texts by twelve scholars from Canada, the United States, and Europe to focus on the complex networks of transcultural interrelations in Central Europe from 1900 to 2000. is ambitious and pioneering volume edited by Helga Mitterbauer and Carrie Smith-Prei proposes to defend the thesis that "the Central European networks of artists, writers, and musicians were shaken by the world wars and then wrecked by the Cold War, but that after the fall of the Iron Curtain, memories of the nineteenth century formed a solid base for re-establishing transnational relations" (viii). e book's theoretical frame is set by the editors in the introduction, which considers "the instability of national borders and the permeability of transcultural identity" (xi) typical of Central Europe. is region is thus decoded as "a uid structure with blurred edges" (xi). is structure is analysed in the following contributions, which intertwine historical and transnational perspectives on the arts. Assembled in two parts, the eleven contributions to this volume examine transcultural phenomena in the long twentieth century in literature and literary circulation, music and its reception, architecture and interior design, and media. us, the book invites us to explore the labyrinth of Central European history in which, in spite of the traumatic history of the last century, cultural exchanges continue to develop across borders. In view of the current socio-political evolution of numerous countries in the region, such a critical examination of the Austro-Hungarian legacy in the long term is the most inspiring, as well as somewhat reassuring, aspect of Mitterbauer and Smith-Prei's volume. Fruitfully elaborating on the processual and communicational perspective on Central Europe initiated by the studies of Moritz Csáky and the Austrian school of Central European history, Helga Mitterbauer