Společná česko-rakouská kniha o dějinách obou zemí
A Joint Czech-Austrian Book on the History of Both Countries

Summary/Abstract: "Sousedé: Česko-rakouské dějiny" [Neighbours: A Czech-Austrian History Book] edited by Václav Šmidrkal, Ota Konrád, Hildegard Schmoller and Niklas Perzi and its parallel Austrian version "Nachbarn: Ein österreichisch-tschechisches Geschichtsbuch" (Weitra, Bibliothek der Provinz 2019) is a remarkable and unique attempt by a collective of twenty-seven Czech and Austrian historians to work together on the history of Austria and the Bohemian/Czech lands (and Czechoslovakia) and their mutual relations from the Middle Ages to the present day. The book is a product of the Permanent Conference of Czech and Austrian Historians on Common Cultural Heritage, which was established in 2009, and it is conceived in a consistently reciprocal manner: all its thirteen chapters (ten chronological and three thematic) were co-authored by a Czech-Austrian duo. In addition to the overall concept, the reviewer appreciates the professional quality and reliability of the volume, its language that encourages reading, and its unusually attractive design, which visualizes the narrated history with several documentary photographs. The authorial teama voided one-dimensional assessments and the book offers a rich story of the mutual coexistence of the two countries through periods when cooperation, estrangement and disinterest alternated. The work is an important contribution to the transnational history of Central Europe and helps us to understand why the relationship between the two successor states of the Habsburg monarchy did not develop in a friendly and straight forward manner.

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