A közép-európai modernség kritériumai
The criteria of modernity in Central Europe

Summary/Abstract: It is a mistaken attempt to thematize modernity on the basis of a national/state system of concepts and thus talk about „Austrian,” „French,” or „Croatian” models. Modernity is not a unified school of style, nor a unified cultural conception, but a network of manifold phenomena and sometimes controversial tendencies, and calling these by the unifying name of modernity is a cultural historical construction. At the same time, modernity must be interpreted in a European context since cultural circulation was pan-European. Nor should one, in addition, forget about the knowledge-sociological environment of modernity, its being embedded in a specific socio-economic life. Differentiatedness, fragmentedness, individual and collective uncertainty, and the crisis of identities are experiences that were reflected upon by the representatives of modernity from Charles Baudelaire to Robert Musil. For a background to all this, industrial modes of production suddenly multiplied, and, as a result, whole social groups were linked in a differentiated way to individual work processes. This process resulted, on an aesthetic level, in the disintegration of old models of interpretation and the pluralization of modes of expression. The differentiation of life in connection with modernization was also felt in Vienna around 1900, and this, to an increasing extent, defined individual and collective consciousness. There were, however, specific regional factors, since the whole as well as the parts and sub-regions of the Central European region had been characterized by a dense ethnic, cultural, and linguistic differentiatedness for centuries. Thus, in addition to the continuously stregthening inner pluralization and vertical differentiation (the results of modernization), the ethno-cultural heterogeneity of the region, that is, traditional horizontal differntiatedness also strengthened it. Multiethnicity and multiculturality, as well as multilingualism have always been the sources of cultural innovation in this region. The central role of historical traditions was a peculiar feature, which can be traced back to the multinational character. This, in turn, resulted in the ambivalence of traditional and modern elements. This led to uncertainty on the one hand, and a mood of hopelessness, on the other. The aesthetization of politics and public life was but an escape from reality into the world of possibilities. Knowledge of Central European modernity can have a significance that reaches across regions, contributing to the general analysis of modernity. At the same time, this knowledge describes a Zeitgeist that characterises both the post-modern and cultural globalization.

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