This volume addresses the question of 'identity' in East-Central Europe. It engages with a specific definition of 'sub-cultures' over the period from c. 1900 to the present and proposes novel ways in which the term can be used with the purpose of understanding identities that do not conform to the fixed, standard categories imposed from the top down, such as 'ethnic group', 'majority' or 'minority'. Instead, a 'sub-culture' is an identity that sits between these categories. It may blend languages, e.g. dialect forms, cultural practices, ethnic and social identifications, or religious affiliations as well as concepts of race and biology that, similarly, sit outside national projects.

This book focuses on the developments in research, national-historical narratives, and geographies of East Central Europe. It explores the emergence of specific discursive practices, architectures of ethnic identity, and the eventual juxtaposition during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This volume addresses the question of 'identity' in East-Central Europe. It engages with a specific definition of 'sub-cultures' over the period from c. 1900 to the present and proposes novel ways in which the term can be used with the purpose of understanding identities that do not conform to the fixed, standard categories imposed from the top down, such as 'ethnic group', 'majority' or 'minority'. Instead, a 'sub-culture' is an identity that sits between these categories. It may blend languages, e.g. dialect forms, cultural practices, ethnic and social identifications, or religious affiliations as well as concepts of race and biology that, similarly, sit outside national projects.

This book focuses on the Burgtheater, which was known as the 'first German stage' in the nineteenth century but, by 1934, had clearly assumed the mantle of a 'national theatre for Austria'.

In the 20th century, both Lviv and Wroclaw went through cataclysmic changes. Assertively Polish pre-war Lwow became Soviet Lvov, and then, after 1991, it became assertively Ukrainian Lviv. Breslau, the third largest city in Germany before 1945, was in turn 'recovered' by communist Poland as Wroclaw. Practically the entire population of Breslau was replaced, and Lwow's demography too was dramatically restructured: many Polish inhabitants migrated to Wroclaw and most Jews perished or went into exile. Migration entailed new myths and the construction of official memory projects. The chapters in this edited book compare the two cities by focusing on lived experiences and 'bottom-up' historical processes. Their sources and methods are those of micro-history and include oral testimonies, memoirs, direct observation and questionnaires, examples of popular culture and media pieces. The essays explore many manifestations of the two sides of the same coin, loss on the one hand, gain on the other, in two cities that are complementary.

20 years after the fall of communism, scholarship on East-Central Europe has adopted mainstream Western methodologies, but has remained preoccupied with a narrow range of themes. This volume addresses a conspectus of original themes, including the Galician Alphabet War and Saxon eugenics in Transylvania.