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There is a very influential view that the border of Western culture (at least in the Middle Ages and early modern times) runs along the line of Western and Eastern Christianity (by and large coinciding with the eastern borders of historic Hungary and the historic Polish core territory). 1 Another influential view also exists regarding the historical inner borders of Europe; that the territory lying east of the Elbe and Leitha rivers has been a region with ‘mixed’Western and Eastern (European) characteristics in cultural, social, and political senses. The most important piece of information necessary to define Hungary’s position can be found on the map; Hungary lies between these ‘borders’. In early modern times Hungary was a part of the Habsburg Empire–in some periods as a rebellious and repressed region, in other times as a halfautonomous country, which in the last half of the nineteenth century was a formally …