Danube Federation

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As a Danube Federation political alliance concepts are between Danube countries designated. Originally, the multi-ethnic state of the imperial-royal monarchy Austria-Hungary , which was dissolved at the end of the First World War in 1918, under the rule of the Austrian Habsburgs, formed a rough, at least geographical basis for later ideas and plans of various kinds to revive such or a similar alliance of states.

As early as 1855, the possibility of breaking the dominance of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and the subsequent establishment of a federal buffer state as a counterweight to the Russian Empire was discussed in the British and American media . At that time v. a. the recently gained independence of Serbia and Montenegro give rise to such thought games. For example, the corresponding draft envisaged Belgrade as the capital of the new “Danube State”.

The best-known draft of a Danube Federation was a political concept that had been developed during the Second World War (1939–1945) by Otto von Habsburg and the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill for the redistribution of central Central and Southeastern Europe after the war. In particular, it took into account the interests of the Austrian Habsburgs, overthrown in 1918, in partially restoring their influence by the First World War.

Plan to restore the monarchy in Central Europe

Austria-Hungary dissolved after the First World War

The concept envisaged the division of Germany into small-state monarchies and the restoration of the Austrian Empire on the territory of Austria , Hungary and Czechoslovakia . Incorporation of Croatia , South Tyrol , Friuli , Istria and Slovenia was also considered, but this would have been unlikely due to the need to annex these areas. The planned state should therefore not be a restoration of Austria-Hungary, which existed until 1918, in the direct sense, but should be founded as a federation based on the Manifesto of Charles I and Aurel Popovici's reform proposals . The basically erroneous term “ Danube Federation” was formed from the mixing of the terms Danube region and federation .

Furthermore, the concept was related to the never carried out plans of a Balkan invasion of the Western Allies in World War II.

The southern German states of Bavaria , Baden and Württemberg as well as Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen - also restored as monarchies - were to be united in the southern German Confederation , which was simply intended to represent a variant of the historical German Confederation limited to southern Germany . The resulting new Empire of Austria was to become a member of the federation as it was before (until 1866/1867), following the historical model of the protective power of the southern German states. A customs and currency union between the federal government and with Austria should protect the small states from economic decline.

However, this concept failed because it was rejected by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin at the Tehran Conference from November 28 to December 1, 1943, because it could not do justice to their interests.

The envisaged role of the state in the post-war order

The primary reason for the restoration of the Austrian Empire lies in the theory of the balance of power on the European continent. Winston Churchill believed in the need for a great power in Central Europe to limit the influence of the Soviet Union in the Balkans and in the German Empire . Due to the previous annexations of Austria and Czechoslovakia by the National Socialist German Reich , the new state was to be granted victim status and, like France, recognized as a victorious power .

Northern Germany and Central Europe

While the southern German states were to be integrated into the southern German federation, the concept did not contain any detailed information about the whereabouts of northern Germany. It is assumed, however, that - with the possible exception of Prussia and Hanover - the other small states would have been allowed to join the South German Confederation. In particular, the status of Prussia would have been questionable, since the state was dissolved in real history in 1947.

However, there were ideas to restore Prussia - limited to its eastern provinces - and Schleswig-Holstein , to forbid it from joining a union with the other German states and to integrate Poland into the Soviet Union without Danzig and the Wartheland . In this case, the procedure is similar to a revision of the political situation in Central Europe before 1866, which can also be explained by the theorem of the balance of power .

With the transition of the areas east of the Oder-Neisse border into the People's Republic of Poland , the division of Germany into four zones of occupation and the declaration of Austria's independence under Allied control in the summer of 1945, the plan for a Danube federation finally became history.

Further concepts of a Danube federation in a different historical context

In the first months after the November Revolution of 1918/19, the first Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of the Free State of Bavaria , Kurt Eisner ( USPD ), sought a Danube federation between Bavaria, the newly founded Czechoslovakia and other states after the overthrow of the Wittelsbach monarchy . His goal was to assert an independence of Bavaria, which at that time stood between a parliamentary democracy and a socialist council democracy , vis-à-vis the German Reich. There, at the latest after the suppression of the Spartacus uprising in January 1919, the development towards the parliamentary Weimar Republic emerged .

In order to sound out the possibilities of a corresponding federation, Eisner contacted the government of the Czechoslovak Republic. However, Eisner was unable to enforce his plan against the initially provisional SPD Reich government or, after the elections for the first National Assembly from February 11, 1919, against the Weimar coalition of the SPD , the center and the DDP , especially in the Bavarian provisional government of the USPD and SPD inconsistent positions were represented.

After Kurt Eisner was murdered by a right-wing nationalist assassin on February 21, 1919, developments in Bavaria culminated a few weeks later in the short-lived Munich Soviet Republic . In it new plans for a revolutionary Danube federation, including with the then communist Soviet republic of Hungary under Béla Kun , were taken up again. At the same time, unlike under Eisner's ministerial presidency, a radical separation of Bavaria in the sense of state independence from the German Reich was considered. But even these plans were quickly dashed - at the latest after the Munich Soviet Republic was bloodily suppressed on May 2, 1919 by right-wing national Freikorps and Reichswehr associations.

literature

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A New State on the Danube. New York Times , June 27, 1855 ( digitized ).