Croats and others that they saw themselves not as some far-flung outriders at the edge of European civilization; but rather as the under-appreciated defenders of Europe’s core heritage—just as Czechs and Hungarians understood themselves, reasonably enough, as dwelling at the very heart of the continent. Romanian and Polish intellectuals looked to Paris for fashions in thought and art, much as the German-speaking intelligentsia of the late Habsburg Empire, from Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia to Trieste, had always looked to Vienna.
