Misplaced Pages

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye" 1919 – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye

Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Austria
Austrian chancellor Renner addressing the delegates during the signing ceremony
Signed	10 September 1919
Location	Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Île-de-France, France
Effective	16 July 1920
Condition	Ratification by Austria and three Principal Allied Powers
Signatories	Principal Allied and Associated Powers  United States  British Empire  •  United Kingdom  •  Canada  •  Australia  •  South Africa  •  New Zealand  •  India  France  Italy  Japan Other Allied Powers  Belgium China  Cuba  Greece  Nicaragua  Panama  Poland  Portugal  Romania  Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes  Siam  Czechoslovakia Central Power Austria
Depositary	French Government
Languages	French, English, Italian
Full text
Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye at Wikisource

Paris Peace Conference
League of Nations Covenant of the League of Nations Members Organisation Minority Treaties Little Treaty of Versailles Mandates
Treaty of Versailles "War Guilt" clause Reparations Dawes Plan Hague conference on reparations Young Plan Lausanne Conference Locarno Treaties Possible cause of World War II International Opium Convention
Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine
Treaty of Trianon Millerand letter
Treaty of Sèvres Partition of the Ottoman Empire Conference of London (1920) San Remo conference Turkish National Movement Turkish War of Independence Treaty of Lausanne
Others American Commission to Negotiate Peace Commission of Responsibilities The Inquiry
v t e

The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (French: Traité de Saint-Germain-en-Laye) was signed on 10 September 1919 by the victorious Allies of World War I on the one hand and by the Republic of German-Austria on the other. Like the Treaty of Trianon with Hungary and the Treaty of Versailles with the Weimar Republic, it contained the Covenant of the League of Nations and as a result was not ratified by the United States but was followed by the US–Austrian Peace Treaty of 1921.

The treaty signing ceremony took place at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

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 Austrian Constitutional Assembly election was held on 16 February 1919. The Assembly re-elected Karl Renner state chancellor and enacted the Habsburg Law concerning the banishment of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. When Chancellor Renner arrived at Saint-Germain in May 1919, he and the Austrian delegation found themselves excluded from the negotiations led by French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. Upon an Allied ultimatum, Renner signed the treaty on 10 September. The Treaty of Trianon in June 1920 between Hungary and the Allies completed the disposition of the former Dual Monarchy.

Provisions

The treaty declared that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was to be dissolved. According to article 177 Austria, along with the other Central Powers, accepted responsibility for starting the war. The new Republic of Austria, consisting of most of the German-speaking Danubian and Alpine provinces in former Cisleithania, recognized the independence of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The treaty included 'war reparations' of large sums of money, directed towards the Allies (however the exact amount has never been defined and collected from Austria), as well as provisions for the liquidation of the Austro-Hungarian Bank.

Territory

Cisleithanian Austria had to face significant territorial losses, amounting to over 60 percent of the prewar Austrian Empire's territory:

• The Lands of the Bohemian Crown, i.e. the Bohemia and Moravia (modern day Czechia) crownlands (including small adjacent Lower Austrian territories around Feldsberg and Gmünd) formed the core of the newly created state of Czechoslovakia. The Austrian Silesia province which was the subject of the Polish–Czechoslovak War of January 1919, was split between Czech Silesia and Polish Cieszyn Silesia, and incorporated into the Silesian Voivodeship. These cessions concerned a large German-speaking population in 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 Tyrolean crownland up to the Brenner Pass, including predominantly Southern Bavarian-speaking South Tyrol and the present-day Trentino province, together with the Carinthian Canal Valley around Tarvisio fell to Italy, as well as the Austrian Littoral (Gorizia and Gradisca, the Imperial Free City of Trieste, and Istria as recognized by the Treaty of Rapallo in 1920).
• The main part of the former Kingdom of Dalmatia, the Duchy of Carniola and Lower Styria with the Carinthian Mieß (Meža) Valley and Gemeinde Seeland (Jezersko) was ceded to the Yugoslav Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, contrary to what was stipulated by the 1915 London Pact. Also Bosnia and Herzegovina was given to it. The affiliation of the Southern Carinthian territory with its Slovene-speaking share of population was to be decided in a Carinthian Plebiscite.
• Austria-Hungary's only overseas possession, its concession in Tianjin, was turned over to 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 Robert Lansing had effectively ended what slim chance existed for Austria-Hungary to survive the war when he told Vienna that since the Allies were now committed to the Czechs, Slovaks and South Slavs, autonomy for the nationalities–the tenth of the Fourteen Points–was no longer enough. Reflecting this, the Allies not only allowed the minority peoples to help create new states (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia), recreate former states (Poland), or join their ethnic brethren in existing nation-states (Romania, Italy), but allowed the successor states to absorb significant blocks of German-inhabited territory. However, the promise of self-determination ran up against the reality that no convenient line could be drawn to separate intermingled nationalities. In further cases, irredentists would claim that some German or Hungarian-inhabited territories had actually been theirs. This was well rendered by the fact that only a few plebiscites were allowed in the disputed areas to ascertain the wishes of the local populaces.

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 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.

Conscription was abolished and the Austrian Army was limited to a force of 30,000 volunteers. There were numerous provisions dealing with Danubian navigation, the transfer of railways, and other details involved in the breakup of a great empire into several small independent states.

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)

Further reading

• Nina Almond and Ralph Haswell Lutz (eds). 1935. The Treaty of St. Germain: a Documentary History of its Territorial and Political Clauses with a Survey of the Documents of the Supreme Council of the Paris Peace Conference. (Stanford University Press.

Notes

1. The United States ended its state of war with the U.S.–Austrian Peace Treaty (1921).
2. "Austrian treaty signed in amity". The New York Times. 11 September 1919. p. 12.
3. Moos, Carlo (2017), "Südtirol im St. Germain-Kontext", in Georg Grote and Hannes Obermair (ed.), A Land on the Threshold. South Tyrolean Transformations, 1915–2015, Oxford-Berne-New York: Peter Lang, pp. 27–39, ISBN 978-3-0343-2240-9
4. "The Weimar Republic". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 26 October 2023.

External links

• Encyclopedia.ushmm.org

• Animated map of Europe at the end of the First World War
• Text of the Treaty, from the website of the Australasian Legal Information Institute, hosted by UNSW and UTS
• A full text of the treaty, with signatories

v t e Great Union (Marea Unire)
Background	Ideology Romanian nationalism Romanian irredentism Greater Romania Events Unification of Moldavia and Wallachia Independence and annexation of Northern Dobruja Romanian annexation of Silistra Conquest of Southern Dobruja Treaty of Bucharest of 1916
Figures	Ferdinand I of Romania (King) Marie of Romania (Queen) Ion I. C. Brătianu (Prime Minister) Alexandru Averescu Iancu Flondor Pan Halippa Iuliu Maniu
Accomplishment	Romania in World War I First Romanian war plan 1916 Romanian Campaign Battle of Transylvania The Romanian Debacle Battle of Bucharest Central Powers occupation of Romania 1917 Romanian Campaign Battle of Mărăști Battle of Mărășești Third Battle of Oituz Romanian military intervention in Bessarabia Second Romanian campaign Hungarian–Romanian War Romanian occupation of Hungary Romanian occupation of Pokuttia Institutions and documents Sfatul Țării General Congress of Bukovina Great Romanian National Council Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia Declaration of Alba Iulia Directing Council Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye Treaty of Trianon Treaty of Paris (unenforced) Unifications Union with Bessarabia Union with Bukovina Union with Transylvania
Disestablishment	Soviet occupation of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region Second Vienna Award Treaty of Craiova Population exchange between Bulgaria and Romania Recovery attempt of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and Hertsa Transnistria Governorate Paris Peace Treaties, 1947 Moscow Protocol of 1948
Aftermath	Moldavian SSR Republic of Moldova Independence Transnistria Transnistria conflict Transnistria War Gagauz Republic Gagauzia conflict Unification with Romania Commemoration 1 Decembrie 1918 University, Alba Iulia National Museum of the Union Holidays Dobruja Day Day of the Union of Bessarabia with Romania Bukovina Day Great Union Day (Romanian national day) Trianon Treaty Day Centenary Centenary of the Great Union Anniversary Medal Centenary March 2018 unification declarations in Moldova and Romania

• Aftermath of World War I in Austria
• Partition (politics)
• Peace treaties of Austria
• Treaties of the Republic of German-Austria
• World War I treaties
• Treaties concluded in 1919
• Treaties of the United Kingdom (1801–1922)
• Treaties of the French Third Republic
• Treaties of the Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)
• Treaties of the United States
• Treaties of the Empire of Japan
• Treaties of Belgium
• Treaties of the Republic of China (1912–1949)
• Treaties of Cuba
• Treaties of Czechoslovakia
• Treaties of the Kingdom of Greece
• Treaties of Nicaragua
• Treaties of Panama
• Treaties of the Second Polish Republic
• Treaties of the Portuguese First Republic
• Treaties of the Kingdom of Romania
• Great Union (Romania)
• Treaties of Thailand
• Treaties of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
• Greater Romania
• Territorial evolution of Romania
• Dissolution of Austria-Hungary
• September 1919 events
• 1919 in France
• Austria–Czechoslovakia relations