Europe is a land of national, linguistic and ethnic communities. Their members don’t want to dissolve in the enlarging European Union. On contrary, they want to associate with preserving their cultural identities. This is especially true for Central Europe. In this region peace and stability are in close connection with life of the cultural minorities. The ethnic structure of this region is so heterogeneous that there is no frontier which could follow the real ethnic or linguistic boundaries. In the heart of Europe there are and there were no pure unilingual states._x000D_
The genesis of the multiethnicity of Central Europe based on the Great Migration Period. Three steppe-empires ruled the Carpathian Basin. First the Huns (ca. 395–453); then, the Avars (568 – ca. 822); and the Hungarians (ca. 862 – 1000). They broadly represent a type of state seen in the Eurasian steppes from the time of the Scythians to the late medieval Mongols. The Avar Khaganate contained Turkic (Hun, Avar, Proto-Hungarian) and Slavic-speaking groups. Finally, Álmos organized the Hungarian Great Principality in the north region of the Black Sea c. 850. Later he along with his son Árpád occupied the Carpathian Basin integrating the “post-Avar” inhabitants (ca. 862–895). Their descendant King Saint Stephen I. (1000–1038) re-organized the Hungarian state and adopted Christianity and the Roman political tradition. The Hungarian Kingdom received Turkic peoples from East, Germans from West and Slavic and Vlach (Romanian) immigrants from South-East.

Szabados, György PhD
Szent István Király Múzeum (King Saint Stephen Museum); Siklósi Gyula Várostörténeti Kutatóközpont (Gyula Siklósi Research Centre for Urban Studies)

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ID Abstract: 705