Politics and Culture in the Age of Joseph II [antikvár]

Preface Th is volume follows the series of the so-called "Matrafured colloquia" held since 1970 in Hungary on diverse topics of 18th century history and especially on the Enlightenment in Central Europe. The proceedings of these colloquia were regularly published in the 1970s and 1980s and had an important impact on historical research in these fields. The colloquia also played a key role in upholding the international dialogue between scholars by breaking the isolation often felt by the academic community in communist countries. Similar initiatives included the French-Hungarian and the Italian-Hungarian historical colloquia organized in the same decades. Hungary clearly provided a congenial place where scholars form East and West as well as from South and North could meet, and it was these regular encounters that led the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies to organize the 7th International Congress of the Enlightenment in 1987 in Budapest. After the collapse of communism, several attempts were made to continue this tradition of international scholarly dialogue. Robert Damton's East-West-Seminars had a similar function in the 1990s, and in the same decade it was decided to organize two further "Matrafured colloquia", though this time not in Matrafured itself but in Budapest. Sponsored by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Academy's Institute for History and the Europa Institute of Budapest, these colloquia were moimted in 1992 and 1996 respectively. The colloquia of the 1990s included a broader range of international participants than ever before, enhanced by the participation of a number of scholars from the then newly-founded Central European University. Partly as a result of this, papers were increasingly presented in English, and encompassed an expanded range of perspectives. However, in large measure due to the institutional dislocations and financial exigencies experienced by the transition economies of Central Europe in the wake of the collapse of communism, publication of the proceedings became increasingly difficult. The manuscript of the papers presented at the "Matrafured '96" conference, held at the Europa Institute Budapest on 19-21 September 1996, seemed fated to remain unpublished. This state of affairs was changed by developments a continent away. In the course of 1996-1997 the Federal Government of Austria initiated discus-