Grenzziehungen nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg als Problem von Periodisierung und Territorialisierung in einer transnationalen Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas

Abstract

The years 1914/18 constitute a well-established caesura in European history. In a number of narratives 1918 marks either the end of empire or the beginning of a new era in Central and Eastern Europe defined by the establishment of nation-states. By analyzing the territorial changes and the redrawing of state-borders following the First World War in a transnational perspective, the notion of 98 as a rupture is questioned. The transnational perspective seeks to write the history of spaces and spatial transformations other than the nation-state. In consequence it has to ask for alternative periodisations. Through the lens of “jeux d’échelle” (J. Revel) and the change of scale between the national, the local and the global, it is argued that 1918 must not exclusively be interpreted as a rupture. Instead the territorial changes in East Central Europe post-1918 can be seen as a consequence of a long-term global transformation of territorial regimes between c. 1860 and 1950.