Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919)
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Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Austria | |
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Signed | 10 September 1919 |
Location | Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Île-de-France, France |
Effective | 16 July 1920 |
Condition | Ratification by Austria and four Principal Allied Powers |
Signatories | Principal Allied and Associated Powers Other Allied Powers
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Depositary | French Government |
Languages | French, English, Italian |
Full text | |
Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye at Wikisource |
Paris Peace Conference |
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The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (
The treaty signing ceremony took place at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.[1]
Background
As a preamble, on 21 October 1918, 208 German-speaking delegates of the Austrian Imperial Council had convened in a "provisional national assembly of German-Austria" at the Lower Austrian Landtag. When the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Army culminated at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, the Social Democrat Karl Renner was elected German-Austrian State Chancellor on 30 October. In the course of the Aster Revolution on 31 October, the newly established Hungarian People's Republic under Minister President Mihály Károlyi declared the real union with Austria terminated.
With the Armistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November 1918, the fate of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was sealed. On 11 November 1918 Emperor Charles I of Austria officially declared to "relinquish every participation in the administration", one day later the provisional assembly declared German-Austria a democratic republic and part of the Weimar Republic. However, on the territory of the Cisleithanian ("Austrian") half of the former empire, the newly established states of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Yugoslav Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later named Yugoslavia) had been proclaimed. Moreover, South Tyrol and Trentino were occupied by Italian forces and Yugoslav troops entered the former Duchy of Carinthia, leading to violent fights.
An
Provisions
The treaty declared that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was to be dissolved. According to article 177 Austria, along with the other
Territory
Cisleithanian Austria had to face significant territorial losses, amounting to over 60 percent of the prewar Austrian Empire's territory:
- The German Bohemia and Sudetenland.
- The former Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, made up of the territory the Habsburg monarchy had annexed in the 1772 First Partition of Poland, fell back to the re-established Polish Republic.
- The adjacent Bukovina in the east passed to the Kingdom of Romania.
- The southern half of the former Treaty of Rapallo in 1920).[2]
- The main part of the former Carinthian Plebiscite.
- Austria-Hungary's only overseas possession, its China.
- The predominantly German- and Croatian-speaking western parts of the Hungarian counties of Moson, Sopron and Vas were awarded to Austria. The Uprising in West Hungary led to a plebiscite which resulted in the transition of Sopron and its surrounding 8 villages back to Hungary. Subsequently, other villages were returned or exchanged between Austria and Hungary up to 1923. In the end, the territories finally gained from Hungary were organised as a state of Austria named Burgenland.
The Allies had explicitly committed themselves to the cause of the minority peoples of Austria-Hungary late in the war. Indeed, U. S. Secretary of State
Politics and military
Article 88 of the treaty required Austria to refrain from directly or indirectly compromising its independence, which meant that Austria could not enter into political or economic union with the Weimar Republic[3] without the agreement of the council of the League of Nations. Accordingly, the new republic's initial self-chosen name of German-Austria (German: Deutschösterreich) had to be changed to Austria. Many Austrians would come to find this term harsh (especially among the Austrian Germans being a vast majority who would support a single German nation state), due to Austria's later economic weakness, which was caused by loss of land. Because of this, support for the idea of Anschluss (political union) with Nazi Germany later proved popular.
The vast reduction of population, territory and resources of the new Austria relative to the old empire wreaked havoc on the economy of the old nation, most notably in Vienna, an imperial capital now without an empire to support it. For a time, the country's very existence was called into question.
See also
- Aftermath of World War I
- Minority Treaties
- Paris Peace Conference, 1919
- Treaty of Trianon
- US–Austrian Peace Treaty (1921)
Notes
- ^ "Austrian treaty signed in amity". The New York Times. 11 September 1919. p. 12.
- ISBN 978-3-0343-2240-9
- ^ "The Weimar Republic". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
External links
- Animated map of Europe at the end of the First World War
- Text of the Treaty, from the website of the UTS
- A full text of the treaty, with signatories