Time: Monday, 08/Sept/2025: 4:00pm - 5:30pm Session Chair: Dr. Péter Reményi Session Chair: Prof. Norbert Pap |
The armed conflicts on the eastern and southern peripheries of Europe have had a fundamental impact on European collaboration, joint efforts and, through it, on local, national and European identity. There are several well known battles that have a nation-building effect and play a crucial role in the formation of these identities, such as the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389 (Serbia), the Battle of Mohács in 1526 (Hungary), the Battle of Udbina in 1493 (Croatia), the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 (Poland) or the Battle of White Mountain in 1620 (Czechia), as well as the sieges of Vienna in 1683 (Austria) or Constantinople in 1453 (Türkiye) among others. From the 19th century onwards, these battlefields and sites have become an important feature of the commemorative landscape through (often competing) memorialization of different nation-states, ethnic groups, religious or other communities etc. It is particularly interesting to examine the way in which the different political groups relate to these battles and the physical imprint they left on the commemorative landscape.
The organizers are waiting for papers on battles, battlefields and memorial landscapes with significant identity-shaping effect on a local, national or European scale from a theoretical approach as well as case studies of individual sites.
Czechoslovak identity in contemporary Czechia
University of Ostrava, Czech Republic
Czechoslovakia no longer exists, but it is interesting to ask whether any elements of Czechoslovak identity persist among the population of the successor states. This presentation focuses on today's Czechia. National identity means here, as in most countries of Central and Eastern Europe, declaring ethnicity, which does not have to be the sane as citizenship. This was the case in the multi-ethnic Habsburg Monarchy before 1918 and in Czechoslovakia until 1992, and it is also the case in the present-day Czechia, even though it has been optional in census since 2001, and more and more people avoid it. In the years 1920-1939, Czechoslovak nationality (not citizenship) was understood as the sum of Czech and Slovak nationality. After the Second World War, the two nationalities were already distinguished. The state was transformed into a federation in 1968, which eventually split into two states in 1992: Czechia and Slovakia. Nevertheless, a very small number of inhabitants continue to state Czechoslovak nationality (in the sense of ethnicity). In the last censuses, there were 6-7 000 people (i.e. less than 1‰). The paper describes their spatial differentiation and tries to explain their motivation.
NATO and the Transformation of Regional Identities in the Western Balkans in the First Half of the 21st Century
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Science, Croatia
This paper examines NATO’s influence on shaping regional identities and narratives in the Western Balkans during the first half of the 21st century. The study focuses on the interplay between NATO's interventions, nation-building processes, and the reinterpretation of war memories in six states: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia. In this paper, Croatia is treated as an example country that abandoned the concept of the Western Balkans and achieved all its Euro-Atlantic integration goals.
The central research question explores how NATO’s presence and policies have influenced the construction and adaptation of national identities in a region marked by conflict and post-conflict transitions. The study adopts a multidisciplinary approach, drawing on political geography, historical memory studies, and international relations theories. Methodologically, it combines content analysis of NATO and local government documents, media narratives, and war memorials with qualitative interviews and surveys.
Findings reveal that NATO’s actions have contributed to redefining war memory and identity politics, often aligning them with Euro-Atlantic values. However, these processes vary significantly between NATO member and non-member states in the region, reflecting differing levels of integration and public perception. Case studies illustrate how war memorials and commemorative practices are reinterpreted under changing political regimes, with NATO playing a role in fostering collective memory narratives that emphasize reconciliation and shared security.
This research contributes to understanding the role of military alliances in the adaptation of historical memory to support modern nation-building and geopolitical alignment. It offers insights into the challenges of navigating divergent historical narratives while promoting regional stability and integration.
"This fight will be the last, or if not, we were wrong". The war and revolution memorials of the 20th century and their contexts in Budapest.
Budapest Business University, Hungary
Monuments of wars and revolutions that defined the 20th century are in a constant state of flux as parts of national identity. They are erected, dismantled, relocated, transformed, depending on the canonical narrative they are ment to promote, thus musealising or even relativising the messages they are supposed to convey. In a capital city, such public works are typically only partly topographically linked to the battlefield, they are much more national symbols of a country. The aim of this study is to examine the history, message and spatial impact of war and revolution monuments of the last century, using Budapest as an example. The main research question is: What kind of social space-shaping effects do the monuments under study reflect in a historical approach? The methodology is based on Lefebvre's (1974/1991) and Soja's (1996) theory of spatial trialectics as a conceptual framework to define spatial layers - the firstspace, the secondspace and the thirdspace - in relation to the past and present monuments and their sites. The sample area consists of the inner districts of Budapest and mainly the core tourist areas. The results can contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between memory politics and urban space in the Hungarian capital.
Building a memory without a place to remember. The process of developing the memory of Rákóczi in the 20th-21st centuries
University of Pécs, Hungary
Ferenc II. Rákóczi (1676-1735) played a major role in the formation of Hungarian identity. As a descendant of noble families, his life was known to the representatives of the Hungarian nation. The War of Independence (1703-1711) led by Rákóczi contributed to the shaping of Hungarian history. Rákóczi and his companions fled abroad after the fighting, first to Poland, then to France and finally to Turkey, where he died in exile. After long political debates, the ashes of Rákóczi and his companions were finally brought to Hungarian territory (Kassa or Kosice) in 1906, in a ceremonial ceremony. However, this area was transferred to the successor states in 1918, as were other places of Rákóczi's memory. Apart from a brief period, they were never returned to the Hungarian state.
Even in the absence of his own memorial sites, Rákóczi's memory has traversed the history of Hungary throughout the 20th century. His character was one of the historical figures who survived the regime changes of the 20th century and survived into the 21st century. This memory has a tangible spatial pattern, as the Hungarian state has tried to address the lack of memorial sites (lieux de mémoire) traditionally associated with Rákóczí.
In my presentation, I would like to show the evolution of the spatiality of Rákóczi memory in the 20th-21st centuries, with a particular focus on the example of Rákóczi memory after the regime changes (1920, 1945, 1990). In the course of this study, I want to examine two major segments. The first is the spread of monuments - especially statues and monuments. The second is the spatiality of social organisations in different political periods.
One of my hypothesis is that during times of major political change, governments sought to turn the sites of Rákóczi memorials to their advantage by placing their organisations there. The direction of this has varied over the historical periods: in the first half of the 20th century, it was directed inland, in the second half of the century it was directed within and beyond the country's borders, and in the 20th and 21st centuries it was mostly directed beyond the borders. To this end, I intend to use heat map analysis to illustrate the location of the commemorative sites, in addition to traditional spatial data visualisation.