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| Introduction |
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The Institute for the Central European Cultural Encounters was founded in Gorizia in 1966 on the initiative of a group of friends, intellectuals, public administrators and local entrepreneurs who later on turned into a legally recognized association in order to rearrange, on a level higher than the merely political or economical one, a texture of relations, values and traditions that had been scattered by the First and the Second World War events.
The Mitteleurope concept, the idea of middle Europe, or that of Europe as a means, was not chosen out of a nostalgic feeling over the past and the Habsburg world or because of vague Pangermanistic aspirations. It was considered a symbolic means to express the feeling of belonging to a common fate shared by Central Europe peoples; to express the need of brotherhood, of the spreading of ideas and knowledge, the calling for a raising of the democratic standards, the determination of shared plans for the future.
So Mitteleurope as synthesis and commitment to be fulfilled in the concrete practice of the everyday dialogue between East and West, North and South, Latin world, Slavic and German ones, minorities and majorities.
That's why Gorizia, which is almost a paradigm and a concrete example of such dimensions, has proved to be the perfect place for this institute.
Even after 1989, with the falling of walls and barriers and on the way to the European Community enlargement, such a commitment has never ran out; on the contrary, it has become more and more urgent because of the need to offer a cultural framework capable of mediating between scientific and academic contexts, memory, political and institutional planning and civil society; a framework able to translate and develop all the cultural potential of the Central Europe basin.
Through its activities in the last thirty years the Institute has turned out to be an highly qualified forum of studies and research, debates, meetings, book publications, exhibitions, seminars and talks on Central and Eastern Europe. It has developed a wide web of contacts and collaborations with Italian and foreign universities, consulates and cultural institutes, offering a new, dynamic and active image of the importance of culture as means of dialogue and understanding. The Institute has recently opened up to the young generations by organizing a film contest addressed to European under-twenty students and by starting up some seminars cycles calling on young researchers whose purpose is to thoroughly investigate topics about Central Europe area by means of an intercultural and multidisciplinary approach.
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Istituto per gli Incontri Culturali Mitteleuropei
via Mazzini 20, 34170 Gorizia - Italy
tel. +39 0481 535085 fax: +39 0481 536600
e-mail:
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