Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye
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The 1919 Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye was a treaty between the Allies and the Austrian Empire; it officially ended World War I. Although it did not feature reparations or the physical transfer of materiel to other countries, its territorial terms were quite harsh. Mostly, however, it reflected military and demographic conditions in Central Europe.
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Context
(See main article on World War I; on the Austro-Hungarian Empire)
In 1867, immediately after losing the Seven Weeks War to Prussia, the Hapsburg monarchy agreed to the creation of a separate state structure for the old Hungarian Empire.[1] The Austrian sector included everything not in the Apostolic Kingdom of Hungary: Bohemia and Moravia, the southern part of Poland, the Bukovina, Slovenia, and the occupied territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Emotionally and ideologically, the Austrians of 1867-1919 were less emotionally attached to their empire than were the Hungarians to theirs. A fundamental object of the Six Weeks War had been to exclude the old Austrian Empire from the German Confederation.[2] In fact, there had been little serious hope of a German Confederation with Austria when it had 75% non-German population.[3] Moreover, in urban centers such as Vienna, German national feeling was extremely strong.[4]
The Terms of the Treaty
The treaty opens by acknowledging that the Austro-Hungarian Empire has been replaced by the Republic of Austria, and that the separate Czecho-Slovak state has been recognized internationally. Nevertheless, Austria was obligated under the terms of the treaty to acknowledge the explicit guilt of the Central Powers for the destruction of World War I; it was subject to an inter-allied commission to establish what it was capable of paying in reparations to the Allied powers.
The independence of Austria's Yugoslavian territories (Dalmatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina) were formally recognized, as was the transfer of Trent to Italy, the Bukovina to Romania, Galicia to Poland, and Bohemia-Moravia to Czechoslovakia. In nearly all cases this acknowledged an accomplished fact.
Part III, Section V addressed the protection of minorities and was the most consequential feature of the treaty itself. Austria itself had relatively few minorities, but the minority rights applied to minorities in the newly alienated territories: freedom of religion (§63), rights of citizenship in the country of birth (§64), equal protection of the laws (§66), freedom to use one's desired language for private communications §66), and permission to operate schools in languages other than German (in areas where German was not the most common language (§68).
Part V restricted the armament of Austria; this abolished the navy and air force and restricted the army to 30,000.
Notes
- ↑ For a brief intro to the Austro-Prussian War, or "Seven Weeks War", see "Seven Weeks' War," The 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. More recently, there is an H-net review of Gordon Craig's The Battle of Königgrätz: Prussia's Victory over Austria, 1866, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, (2003).
- ↑ After reorganization at the Congress of Vienna, the Hapsburg domains were a conventional territorial empire under the rule of the Austrian Emperor. These territories included (1814-1867) the territories of Hungary and Croatia as fiefs of the Austrian crown. The "new" Austrian Empire accounted for three-fifths of the total population of Austria-Hungary.
- ↑ As of 1910. Source is the Kinder & Hilgemann, The Anchor Atlas of World History vol. II, Anchor (1976), p.78. Probably the non-German share of the Austrian population was somewhat smaller in 1866 than later.
- ↑ Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, Harvest (1973); p.42ff; or see Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, Penguin (2004), p.26ff. Both Arendt and Evans, using separate methods, confirm the great importance of pan-Germanism in 19th century Austria.
See Also
External Links
- "The Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye," Australian Treaty Series
