In November 1915 there appeared a volume bearing the simple title Mitteleuropa, by Friedrich Naumann, which within a few months sold a hundred-thousand copies in Germany alone, and gave rise to a continent-wide debate. It is ironical that Naumann—Lutheran pastor, economic and social thinker, friend of Weber and Troeltsch—had actually written what remains one of the most incisive, scrupulous, forward-looking, shrewd, and affectionate of all works on the region. Yet in the circumstances of ever more total war, his work was bound in at least equal measure to undermine the credentials of the notion which it sought to promote.

From R.J.W. Evans’ Austria, Hungary, and the Habsburgs: Essays on Central Europe, c. 1683-1867, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 294.