The ‘Mitteleuropa’ Debate in the Mid-1980s

Abstract

The Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) ‘Ostpolitik’ not only opened the doors politically to the Warsaw Pact states in Central Europe, but also opened intellectual doors in the minds of European thinkers. This evolution culminated in the Mitteleuropa debate of the second half of the 1980s.¹ In the 1970s and during the Era of Ostpolitik, politicians and intellectuals refrained from using the term ‘Mitteleuropa’ in a political context other than security concepts, in order to avoid being misunderstood as fascist or imperialist. However, in the 1980s Mitteleuropa returned to the political stage.