A vacuum to be filled. Central and Eastern Europe in the times of ‘geography without the Germans’

Abstract

This article analyses strategies used by geographers of Central and Eastern Europe, foremost Poland, to improve their international position, in the interwar. The boycott of Germany and its former allies almost until mid-1930s was a challenge to this group and it gradually hindered its development. The most original attempt at overcoming the threat of marginalization were congresses of Slavic geographers organized from 1924. The greatest success, however, came with the 1934 Warsaw congress of the Geographical Union, which was also the occasion for German geographers to fully return to international scholarly exchange.