The

Elbe-Trieste Line:

Eastern and Western Europe

Seipel Line• Ignaz Seipel (1876-1932)

– Austrian churchman, political scientist and statesman

– In the 1920s was chancellor of Austria

• Speech to League of Nations in 1928– Europe is divided by a line which separates two entirely

different conceptions of the idea of the “Nation.” On one side of the line are the peoples for whom the state is everything, and who also understand national sentiment as a great enthusiasm for the state to which they, of their own free will, belong. On the other side of that line of demarcation, the sentiment of civilization, of a common tongue and a common origin, preponderates.

Elbe-Trieste Line

Charlemagne (814) and the Treaty of Verdun (843)

Europe (1000)

Medieval Trade and the Plague

Hanseatic League (beginning 13th century)

Europe (1500)

European Exploration (1500s)

Dutch Golden Age (1580s-1670)

European Trade (1770)

Major Universities (by 1650)

Academies (by 1790)

Agricultural/Industrial Revolutions (19th century)

1848 Revolutions

German/Italian Unification (1861-71)

WWI (1914-1918)

Iron Curtain (Post-WWII)/ NATO and Warsaw Pact

Religious Division (2004)

European Languages (2010)

The

Elbe-Trieste Line:

Eastern and Western Europe