The author analyses professional geographical narratives centered upon the borders in East Central and Southeast Europe in the context of the First World War. It is argued that they represent a regional equivalent of nationalistic mobilization of intellectuals’ characteristic for Western Europe and broadly referred to as ‘spiritual war’ (Krieg der Geister). Typically, they tended to employ the newest methodological trends (notably anthropogeography) together with inspirations from the tradition of national characterology (or ethnopsychology). They also participated in
the international discussions on the question of ‘natural’ borders.
The main fronts of ‘the war of maps’ spread mostly around territorial claims in the region: the German expansion to the East, the conflict between Bulgaria and Serbia in Macedonia, the
Polish-Ukrainian border conflict, hostilities between Italy and Serbia etc. The expertise of the East Central and Southeast European geographers was, then, instrumental for the reshaping of the region following the decisions of the Peace Conference. Finally, professional techniques and modes of argumentation used by the
region’s geographers inspired interwar revisionist campaigns in Hungary and Germany. and Článek zahrnuje poznámkový aparát pod čarou
This paper deals with the class A mandate of the League of Nations, which affected a postwar configuration in the Middle East. It pays attention to a way of making of the system and also demonstrates the final form by treaties between Allied Powers and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) and by the Mandate for Palestine. It discovers that this system should have originally assisted the new nations to entrench politically in full. However, it also secondarily offers one of the possible views on the origin of the Arab-Israeli problem, which upsets the relation between the west and the Middle East.
This paper analyses the image of home in memoirs of members of the Czechoslovak Legion. It focuses not only on retrospective memories recorded during the service, but also on introductory, biographical and closing sections that are a part of many memoirs, as well as on the visions of the future free state and home they hoped to return to. The paper utilizes sampling method, picking three memoirs of members of the Legion and submitting to comparison the temporary and situationally diverse ideas of home found in them, as well as their development in time. Upon this sample are then demonstrated the repetitive motives and development tendencies observed in memoirs of members of the Legion and hypotheses are drawn to identify the background and causality of such tendencies. The article concludes with summarizing the results and outlining the possible further research in this yet sparsely researched field.
This study deals with the view of Václav Červinka, son-in-low of František Ladislav Rieger, administrator of Rieger's estate Maleč and a man of many intellectual interests, on radical changes of the Central Europe at the turn of the 20th century, especially destruction of traditional political, economic, social and cultural structures, outbreak of the First World War, collapse of the Austria-Hungary and estabilishment of the independent Czechoslovakia. It is shown, how Červinka, as a man who was closely tied to the traditional conservative policy and politicians of the end of the 19th century, evaluated all these changes and what was his reaction, e. g. in his literary work.