Goodbye, Eastern Europe
An Intimate History of a Divided Land
(Sprache: Englisch)
"In light of Russia's aggressive 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Goodbye, Eastern Europe is a crucial, elucidative read, a sweeping epic chronicling a thousand years of strife, war, and bloodshed--from pre-Christianity to the fall of Communism--illuminating the...
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"In light of Russia's aggressive 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Goodbye, Eastern Europe is a crucial, elucidative read, a sweeping epic chronicling a thousand years of strife, war, and bloodshed--from pre-Christianity to the fall of Communism--illuminating the remarkable cultural significance and richness of a place perpetually lost to the margins of history. Eastern Europe, the moniker, has gone out of fashion since the fall of the Soviet Union. Ask someone now, and they might tell you that Estonia is in the Baltics, or Scandinavia, that Slovakia is in Central Europe and Croatia is in the Eastern Adriatic or the Balkans. In fact, Eastern Europe is a place that barely exists at all, except in cultural memory. Yet it remains a powerful marker of identity for many, with a fragmented and wide history, defined by texts, myths, and memories of centuries of hardship and suffering. Goodbye, Eastern Europe is a masterful narrative about a place that has survived the brink of being forgotten. Beginning with long-lost accounts of early pagan life, Mikanowski offers a kaleidoscopic tour recounting the rise and fall of the great empires--Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Russian--the dawn of the modern era, the ravages of Fascism and Communism, as well as Capitalism, the birth of the modern nation-state, and more. A student of literature, history, and the ghosts of his own family's past, Mikanowski paints a magisterial portrait of a place united by diversity, and eclecticism, and a people with the shared story of being the dominated rather than the dominating. The result is a loving and ebullient celebration of the distinctive and vibrant cultures that stubbornly persisted at the margins of Western Europe, and a powerful corrective that re-centers our understanding of how the modern Western world took shape"--
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Part IFaiths
1
Pagans and Christians
A great forest, bristling with dangers and the occasional gleam of treasure: that is how the territories of Eastern Europe must have appeared to the average Roman in the time of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. To them, the lands north of the imperial frontiers were largely a mystery. Marcus himself traveled north of the Danube in A.D. 170, to fight a war against a confederation of barbarian tribes. He began writing his Meditations there, camped out with his solders by the banks of the River Hron, in what is now Slovakia. This work, a classic of Stoic philosophy, might be the first piece of literature written in Eastern Europe. Marcus did not mention his surroundings even once, but that should not strike us as too surprising. The territories north of the Roman Empire were empty of cities, writing, temples, or any of the other markers that would have indicated the presence of civilized life to someone arriving there from the shores of the Mediterranean. As far as the Romans were concerned, these cold and rather frightening lands were sources of two things and two things alone: inexhaustible hordes of enemies, and a lightweight precious stone called electrum, or amber.
I used to have a cigar box that belonged to my grandfather. It was full of the rough orange pebbles of raw amber that he had gathered with my father on Polish beaches. All along the shores of the southern Baltic, from Denmark to Estonia, amber is just that easy to find: you just have to go to the beach after a storm, or know where to dig in the sand. The routes that brought this precious stone, so mysteriously radiant and light, to the shores of the Mediterranean were already old by the time Marcus Aurelius arrived. A century earlier, during the reign of the emperor Nero, a Roman knight had set out north from a frontier post in what is now Austria. He had orders to bring back as much amber as he could buy; the emperor needed it to decorate his new
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Colosseum. The knight traveled north hundreds of miles, to the shores of the Baltic. To everyone s amazement, he returned with wagonloads of the stuff, pieces the size of pumpkins, enough to decorate the whole amphitheater, down to the knobs on the nets that protected spectators from the wild animals raging within.
The trade in amber between the Baltic and the Mediterranean dates back at least to the Bronze Age. But in this case, commerce did not foster connection. These voyages left only the faintest mark in Eastern Europe at most, a few fragile traces: buttons from an equestrian s uniform found next to a Polish lake, a cavalry helmet in a Lithuanian tomb. And Roman coins a profusion of coins. These were not used as money in the countries in which they were received. They were treasure in a truer, purer sense tokens from another world. In the Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania (an area that s especially rich in amber), there are ancient cemeteries in which every grave contains at least one shiny brass sestertius. These coins were placed next to the head of the deceased, in vessels made from the bark of the sacred birch tree, intended as payment for a Baltic ferryman to the underworld whose name has been lost to time.
A flash of silver unearthed by a plow: that is how the ancient world appears in most of the countries of Eastern Europe. Otherwise, silence. History arrives only with the advent of Christianity and, with it, the written word. Before then, we know hardly anything for certain. Here, the Dark Ages were truly dark: north of the old Roman frontier, almost impenetrably so. But even to the south, the gloom is difficult to penetrate. When the Slavs arrived, in the desperate decades of war, famine, and plague that followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, they seemed to come from nowhere, and then, all of a sudden, to be everywhere at once.
Today Sl
The trade in amber between the Baltic and the Mediterranean dates back at least to the Bronze Age. But in this case, commerce did not foster connection. These voyages left only the faintest mark in Eastern Europe at most, a few fragile traces: buttons from an equestrian s uniform found next to a Polish lake, a cavalry helmet in a Lithuanian tomb. And Roman coins a profusion of coins. These were not used as money in the countries in which they were received. They were treasure in a truer, purer sense tokens from another world. In the Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania (an area that s especially rich in amber), there are ancient cemeteries in which every grave contains at least one shiny brass sestertius. These coins were placed next to the head of the deceased, in vessels made from the bark of the sacred birch tree, intended as payment for a Baltic ferryman to the underworld whose name has been lost to time.
A flash of silver unearthed by a plow: that is how the ancient world appears in most of the countries of Eastern Europe. Otherwise, silence. History arrives only with the advent of Christianity and, with it, the written word. Before then, we know hardly anything for certain. Here, the Dark Ages were truly dark: north of the old Roman frontier, almost impenetrably so. But even to the south, the gloom is difficult to penetrate. When the Slavs arrived, in the desperate decades of war, famine, and plague that followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, they seemed to come from nowhere, and then, all of a sudden, to be everywhere at once.
Today Sl
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Autoren-Porträt von Jacob Mikanowski
JACOB MIKANOWSKI is a historian, a freelance journalist and a critic. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Aeon, Cabinet, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Guardian, The New York Times, newyorker.com, The Point, The Awl, Atlas Obscura, Slate, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. He lives in Berkeley, CA.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Jacob Mikanowski
- 2023, 400 Seiten, Maße: 16,4 x 24,3 cm, Gebunden, Englisch
- Verlag: Pantheon
- ISBN-10: 1524748501
- ISBN-13: 9781524748500
- Erscheinungsdatum: 05.09.2023
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
A Best Nonfiction Book of 2023 from BookPageA Best Book of the Summer from Bloomberg
Stunningly elegant. . . . Absolutely incredible.
Julia Ioffe, Puck
Mikanowski manages to pull off the nearly impossible an accessible and detailed history of Eastern Europe that spans 2,000 years in under 400 pages.
BookPage, The Best Nonfiction of 2023
Goodbye, Eastern Europe traces the stories of the various peoples who have called the region home for the past thousand years, chronicling every period of war and peace, myth and truth, and glory and defeat. . . . Captivating.
Princeton Alumni Weekly
[A] kaleidoscopic guide to Eastern Europe s past. . . . As democracy retreats and a new war rages. . . . One must wonder if its future will resemble the vanished world that Jacob Mikanowski vividly brings to life.
The Washington Times
A major new work. . . . Mikanowski weaves a rich and amusing tapestry of historical anecdote and personal family history. . . . [and] aims to push back against simplistic, atavistic nationalisms which have defined the post-Communist era.
Balkan Insight
The enormous contradiction of a single, vast geopolitical region that evinces a stereotype-defeating multiplicity is captured brilliantly . . . in Goodbye, Eastern Europe. . . . Taut and lucid. . . . An elegiac history.
The Wall Street Journal
Mikanowski s undertaking is a massive one. . . . Moving . . . Powerful . . . Impressive . . . [There is] something special about the place that was once called Eastern Europe. Try to name that special quality and it turns to ash in your mouth. But try, this book seems to say, to hold onto it anyway, even if it s both in your grasp and slipping away.
The Washington Post
Mikanowski manages to pull off the nearly impossible: An accessible and detailed history of Eastern Europe that spans 2,000 years. . . . This very personal perspective
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gives depth and humanity . . . along with urgency.
BookPage
Mikanowski is highly adept at capturing the milieu of each period. . . . This articulate overview conveys an important, broader description of the societies with which millions of Jews once coexisted. . . . A well-written and enlightening read.
The Jewish Chronicle
Impressive. . . . Educational and timely . . . For anyone wanting to more fully understand the stakes for the region, and world.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
The last millennium hasn t been kind to people living in the area we call Eastern Europe. . . . [Mikanowski] has timed his book all too well: After a post-Soviet period of relative calm, Russia s invasion of Ukraine has brought the unlucky region into the spotlight once again.
Bloomberg
This phenomenal debut from journalist and historian Mikanowski is partly a nostalgic attempt to preserve the culture of a disappearing region and partly a boisterous defense of its legacy. . . . Gripping . . . Informative, deeply engaging. . . . This timely book will appeal to readers seeking a fresh take on European history.
Library Journal, starred review
Ambitious. . . . Stunning. . . . Shot through with lyrical reflections and astute analysis, this is a rewarding portrait of a diverse and complex part of the world.
Publishers Weekly, starred review
An epic history. . . . of a part of the world too often ignored, told with vigor, color, and authority.
Kirkus Reviews
Do not rush to bid farewell to Eastern Europe until reading this book. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this very personal story of the place that one can t find on the map pays tribute to the origins of the experiences, cultures and ideas that continue to shape political and ideological battles of the modern world.
Serhii Plokhy, author of The Last Empire
With the war in Ukraine, Eastern Europe is once again helping determine the world s future, as it did at several key moments in the 20th century. Yet for all its historical importance and cultural richness, the region remains a blank on many outsiders mental maps. In this dramatic and wide-ranging book, Jacob Mikanowski makes Eastern Europe come to life by rooting its history in individual human stories, showing how diverse peoples lived together from the Middle Ages to the Holocaust and beyond.
Adam Kirsch, author of The Blessing and the Curse: The Jewish People and Their Books in the Twentieth Century
This wonderful book is a firework display: an unforgettable flash of forgotten past, black humour, wild messianic cult or genocidal horror bursts out of almost every page. Mikanowski, whose own dangerously hybrid family emerged from what he calls this landscape of rapturous diversity, has written a chronicle rather than a history, a narrative of Eastern Europe which is about personal experiences rather than the crimes and glories of its leaders. He is a master raconteur whose anecdotes show that grotesque events are serious as well as comic. It matters that Hucul people thought God made the world out of cream. It is not just laughable that Baron von Chaos was put in charge of the Habsburg royal mint (which he promptly embezzled). Mikanowski shows that the vast regions between Germany and Russia are not just a zone of blood and tragedy, but of marvellous human vigour and resilience.
Neal Ascherson, author of The Black Sea
Jacob Mikanowski has taken on the seemingly impossible task of writing a comprehensive history of that "Other" Europe, hoping to catch a myriad of vanishing worlds. My initial scepticism was quickly dispelled. Goodbye Eastern Europe succeeds in delighting even a jaded follower of matters East European like me. It is a richly informative and readable book which starts with the Dark Ages and ends with our own even darker era, ranging from the Baltics to the Balkans and covering an enormous swathe of land, describing the ever shifting frontiers and changing nationalities in the course of a historical narrative as vibrant as the area it describes.
Vesna Goldsworthy, author of The Iron Curtain
A rich, counterintuitive history told with flair, Goodbye Eastern Europe is both a tour of an often-misunderstood part of the world and an examination of political fault lines that continue to shape our lives today.
Daniel Trilling, author of Light in the Distance
Goodbye Eastern Europe is a collective portrait of people, places, states and ideas, most of which no longer exist. Beautifully written and witty, it presents the region as a place full of magic, vibrancy, diversity, conflict and coexistence. Mikanowski blends together reality and myth, poetry and historical research, personal experience and ideologies to revive and bring us back the civilization that was lost during the calamitous twentieth century but that is still crucial to Eurasian history.
Eugene Finkel, Kenneth H. Keller Associate Professor of International Affairs
A highly captivating book that delights on every page and dispels the damaging stereotypes and dour connotations traditionally associated with Eastern Europe. Far more than a simple history, Goodbye, Eastern Europe is a magical swan song for an astonishingly diverse but disappearing world of peasants and poets, resilience and romance, calamity and fantasy, where a shared affinity for the absurd has long been essential for survival.
Rebecca Lowe, author of The Slow Road to Tehran
[Mikanowski] takes an appealingly wide-ranging and eclectic approach to this region of shifting borders and multi-layered identities. . . . A captivating and revealing book.
Geographical Magazine (UK)
An eloquent and absorbing new plea for the retention of the idea of Eastern Europe. . . . Emphasising how there is far more to the region than post-Sovietness, this is a wonderful exploration forged by a deep love of Europe.
New European (UK)
[Mikanowski] challenges the simplifying and often false narratives written by those in power. . . . part history, part sentimental journey. . . . Goodbye, Eastern Europe reads more like a western (but in the east) than a traditional history. . . . Mikanowski continues the process that began with the 1989 revolutions of unearthing the alternative stories that exist on the margins of history, in the soil, in literature, in the landscape.
Irish Independent (UK)
An intriguing attempt to trace the residual power of those who are no longer there . . . [an] intimate history.
Financial Times (UK)
A light, panoramic portrait of a region that has left a lasting mark on the literary and cultural history of Europe, [Goodbye, Eastern Europe] may well be the most readable overview of Eastern European history yet written. . . . Complexity that usually appears impenetrable unravels seamlessly through unique threads of history.
History Today Magazine (UK)
BookPage
Mikanowski is highly adept at capturing the milieu of each period. . . . This articulate overview conveys an important, broader description of the societies with which millions of Jews once coexisted. . . . A well-written and enlightening read.
The Jewish Chronicle
Impressive. . . . Educational and timely . . . For anyone wanting to more fully understand the stakes for the region, and world.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
The last millennium hasn t been kind to people living in the area we call Eastern Europe. . . . [Mikanowski] has timed his book all too well: After a post-Soviet period of relative calm, Russia s invasion of Ukraine has brought the unlucky region into the spotlight once again.
Bloomberg
This phenomenal debut from journalist and historian Mikanowski is partly a nostalgic attempt to preserve the culture of a disappearing region and partly a boisterous defense of its legacy. . . . Gripping . . . Informative, deeply engaging. . . . This timely book will appeal to readers seeking a fresh take on European history.
Library Journal, starred review
Ambitious. . . . Stunning. . . . Shot through with lyrical reflections and astute analysis, this is a rewarding portrait of a diverse and complex part of the world.
Publishers Weekly, starred review
An epic history. . . . of a part of the world too often ignored, told with vigor, color, and authority.
Kirkus Reviews
Do not rush to bid farewell to Eastern Europe until reading this book. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this very personal story of the place that one can t find on the map pays tribute to the origins of the experiences, cultures and ideas that continue to shape political and ideological battles of the modern world.
Serhii Plokhy, author of The Last Empire
With the war in Ukraine, Eastern Europe is once again helping determine the world s future, as it did at several key moments in the 20th century. Yet for all its historical importance and cultural richness, the region remains a blank on many outsiders mental maps. In this dramatic and wide-ranging book, Jacob Mikanowski makes Eastern Europe come to life by rooting its history in individual human stories, showing how diverse peoples lived together from the Middle Ages to the Holocaust and beyond.
Adam Kirsch, author of The Blessing and the Curse: The Jewish People and Their Books in the Twentieth Century
This wonderful book is a firework display: an unforgettable flash of forgotten past, black humour, wild messianic cult or genocidal horror bursts out of almost every page. Mikanowski, whose own dangerously hybrid family emerged from what he calls this landscape of rapturous diversity, has written a chronicle rather than a history, a narrative of Eastern Europe which is about personal experiences rather than the crimes and glories of its leaders. He is a master raconteur whose anecdotes show that grotesque events are serious as well as comic. It matters that Hucul people thought God made the world out of cream. It is not just laughable that Baron von Chaos was put in charge of the Habsburg royal mint (which he promptly embezzled). Mikanowski shows that the vast regions between Germany and Russia are not just a zone of blood and tragedy, but of marvellous human vigour and resilience.
Neal Ascherson, author of The Black Sea
Jacob Mikanowski has taken on the seemingly impossible task of writing a comprehensive history of that "Other" Europe, hoping to catch a myriad of vanishing worlds. My initial scepticism was quickly dispelled. Goodbye Eastern Europe succeeds in delighting even a jaded follower of matters East European like me. It is a richly informative and readable book which starts with the Dark Ages and ends with our own even darker era, ranging from the Baltics to the Balkans and covering an enormous swathe of land, describing the ever shifting frontiers and changing nationalities in the course of a historical narrative as vibrant as the area it describes.
Vesna Goldsworthy, author of The Iron Curtain
A rich, counterintuitive history told with flair, Goodbye Eastern Europe is both a tour of an often-misunderstood part of the world and an examination of political fault lines that continue to shape our lives today.
Daniel Trilling, author of Light in the Distance
Goodbye Eastern Europe is a collective portrait of people, places, states and ideas, most of which no longer exist. Beautifully written and witty, it presents the region as a place full of magic, vibrancy, diversity, conflict and coexistence. Mikanowski blends together reality and myth, poetry and historical research, personal experience and ideologies to revive and bring us back the civilization that was lost during the calamitous twentieth century but that is still crucial to Eurasian history.
Eugene Finkel, Kenneth H. Keller Associate Professor of International Affairs
A highly captivating book that delights on every page and dispels the damaging stereotypes and dour connotations traditionally associated with Eastern Europe. Far more than a simple history, Goodbye, Eastern Europe is a magical swan song for an astonishingly diverse but disappearing world of peasants and poets, resilience and romance, calamity and fantasy, where a shared affinity for the absurd has long been essential for survival.
Rebecca Lowe, author of The Slow Road to Tehran
[Mikanowski] takes an appealingly wide-ranging and eclectic approach to this region of shifting borders and multi-layered identities. . . . A captivating and revealing book.
Geographical Magazine (UK)
An eloquent and absorbing new plea for the retention of the idea of Eastern Europe. . . . Emphasising how there is far more to the region than post-Sovietness, this is a wonderful exploration forged by a deep love of Europe.
New European (UK)
[Mikanowski] challenges the simplifying and often false narratives written by those in power. . . . part history, part sentimental journey. . . . Goodbye, Eastern Europe reads more like a western (but in the east) than a traditional history. . . . Mikanowski continues the process that began with the 1989 revolutions of unearthing the alternative stories that exist on the margins of history, in the soil, in literature, in the landscape.
Irish Independent (UK)
An intriguing attempt to trace the residual power of those who are no longer there . . . [an] intimate history.
Financial Times (UK)
A light, panoramic portrait of a region that has left a lasting mark on the literary and cultural history of Europe, [Goodbye, Eastern Europe] may well be the most readable overview of Eastern European history yet written. . . . Complexity that usually appears impenetrable unravels seamlessly through unique threads of history.
History Today Magazine (UK)
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