Central Europe Yearbook

“Warriors of God” and Their Perceptions during the Hussite Wars

Chloe Hooker — 2025-12-22

About a century before Martin Luther challenged Catholic church doctrine and catalyzed the Protestant Reformation, Jan Hus was burned at the stake for heresy due to his beliefs that countered traditional church ideas. Hus, a Czech preacher, gained many supporters during and after his death, and his execution sparked a fifteen-year-long military conflict between his followers, the Hussites, and the Catholic Church and Holy Roman Emperor. This paper proposes a distinctive perspective by emphasizing how perceptions can motivate actions and shape impacts. Both sentiments, either as heretical from the Catholic Church and Emperor's perspective, or as "Warriors of God" from the Hussites' perspective, affected the actions of the Hussites, and ultimately the outcome of the wars.

Lessons from Austria-Hungary: Kang Youwei’s Vision for China’s Reform in the Early 20th Century

Nicholas Tsui — 2025-12-22

This paper examines a Chinese Intellectual, Kang Youwei's (1858-1927) perspective on the Austro-Hungarian Empire during his visit in the early 20th century, emphasizing the relevance to Kang's proposal to China's modernization. Kang Youwei, a key reformer in the late Qing dynasty (1644–1911), visited Austria-Hungary during his exile. This paper analyzes articles written by Kang and shows his opinion on Austrian politics, economy, religion, and ethnic diversity, while contrasting them with China's challenges. He was criticle on Austria-Hungary, regarding political chaos, linguistic diversity, and ties between the Catholic Church and governance, which he seen as a reason for Austria-Hungary's weakness. Kang highlighted the Empire's reliance on Emperor Franz Joseph(1830-1916) and expressed the potential collapse of the Empire. Kang argued that China should remain unification, reject excessive political party formation, and maintain cultural traditions.

From Self-Fashioning to State Symbol: Empress Elisabeth's Aesthetic Agency, Posthumous Cult, and National Appropriation in Austria

Sylvia Rutherford — 2025-12-22

This thesis interrogates the life and posthumous transformation of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837-1898), challenging prevailing historiographical constructions that cast her as a passive consort constrained by the rigid formalities of the Habsburg court. Through an analysis of visual culture, gendered self-representation, and the processes of cultural mythologisation that followed her death, Elisabeth emerges as a figure who strategically cultivated a public persona that exercised aesthetic and performative agency in subversion of the symbolic constraints of her imperial role. After her assassination, however, this carefully constructed image was appropriated and reconfigured within Austrian cultural memory, as her acts of self-fashioning were systematically effaced and supplanted by a romanticised iconography that functioned as an ideological projection screen for the reconstruction of national identity in twentieth century Austria.

Acts of Survival: Children’s Writings From the Sajmiste Concentration Camp

Sorcha Deheer — 2025-12-22

This paper aims to understand how children and youth aid in the survival of their social environment amid periods of severe systemic oppression by problematizing children as an ideological concept. Conventional perceptions of childhood consign children to passive roles as victims and symbols. An analysis of children’s writings during the Holocaust in former Yugoslavia reveals that children are active participants in the formation of the social world and retain a sense of agency in spaces that afford them little. Through their diaries, letters, and memoirs young people produce works of radical nonconformity that aided in their individual and social survival. As scholarship on the Holocaust and genocide progresses, this contribution shouldn't be overlooked.

Everything Old is New Again: Border Rituals and the Return of History in 'Green Border'

Rafael Escoto — 2025-12-22

This paper argues that Green Border (2023), directed by Agnieszka Holland, transforms the Polish-Belarusian border into a site of moral ritual, where sacred violence replaces humanitarian law. Using Durkheim’s theories, Eastern European memory studies, and analyses of populism and asylum policy, the paper interprets the film as a historical recurrence rather than a modern crisis. Drawing on scholars like Törnquist-Plewa, Exeler, and Krastev, the analysis reveals how Europe’s border politics ritualize exclusion and revive authoritarian patterns under democratic guise. Methods include close film analysis and engagement with secondary literature on EU identity, populism, and the symbolic politics of migration.

Introduction

Meyer Weinshel — 2025-12-22

This introduction provides an overview of the five scholarly works published in the seventh volume of the Central Europe Yearbook