Program
Online classes will take place at 9:00 CET Monday-Friday for four hours (two-double periods). The classes will be held via the communication platform ZOOM.
Active participation during the online classes is required.
A virtual site visit will be arranged with the Mendel Museum of Masaryk University.
History - 20 hours (10 x 90 min)
Selected topics of History:
- Austria - Hungary 1867 - 1900
- Vienna and Budapest as capital cities
- Vienna´s Golden Age 1890 - 1914
- History of WWI
- Interwar History
- History of WWII
Sociology - 10 hours (5 x 90 min)
Selected topics of Sociology:
- What is central Europe and what is modernity?
- Nations and nationalism
- Nostalgia for modernity
Architecture - 8 hours (4 x 90 min)
The classes will focus on architectural styles:
- Historicism
- Art Nouveau
- Cubism and Rondo-Cubism
- International Style
Music - 2 hours (1 x 90 min)
The lecture will focus on worldwide known Brno composer Leoš Janáček.
Theoretical Framework
The online classes focus on the historical, cultural, and political developments taking place in Central Europe from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The period begins symbolically with 1848, referred to variously as “the year of revolution” and “the springtime of the peoples” – the year that catapulted to the fore the concept of the nation and the power of nationalism, which were to have such a profound effect on the twentieth century in general and on Central Europe in particular. And the period ends, again symbolically, with 1948, the year of the Communist coup d’état in Czechoslovakia, which sealed the fate of most of Central Europe for the next forty years, cutting it off from the mainstream of European development that it had been part of until then and to which it had contributed so much.
In the period from 1848 down to the First World War, we will be looking at the growth of competing nationalisms in the Central European region, the emergence of new social strata and new political forces, the development of pioneering ideas in the sciences and social sciences, and the groundbreaking changes in all areas of culture, in particular literature, art, architecture and music. With the collapse of the previous order at the end of World War I, the focus will shift to the different challenges facing the new constellation of states, challenges reflected in their political life, international relations, social and economic structures and their efforts to create new national cultures. Finally, we will treat the growing trend in the region towards authoritarian regimes in the 1930s, the physical and human devastation of World War II, and the final extinction of democracy in most of Central Europe after the war with its absorption into the Soviet empire.
