German-Polish Agreement on Upper Silesia

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The German-Polish Agreement on Upper Silesia (also known as the Geneva Agreement ) was a bilateral minority treaty concluded between the Republic of Poland and the German Reich on the regulation of the protection of minorities and economic conditions in the one ceded by the German Reich to Poland after the First World War Areas in Upper Silesia . It was signed in Geneva on May 15, 1922 as a result of the Treaty of Versailles .

background

The Versailles Treaty already provided for the possibility of dividing Upper Silesia between Germany and Poland after previous referendums. After the referendum in Upper Silesia on March 20, 1921, the Inter-Allied Commission had drawn up various partition plans. While those of the English and Italian representatives envisaged only relatively small assignments of territories outside the industrial area, French plans wanted to weaken the German economy by assigning the economically important areas to Poland. On October 20, 1921, an ambassadors conference in Paris decided that the area should be divided up, with the German Reich and Poland each receiving a share according to the election result. Accordingly, the larger, predominantly agricultural western part of Upper Silesia remained with Germany, while the east around Kattowitz ( Polish : Katowice ) with its valuable coal, iron ore and zinc mines and the majority of processing plants came to Poland. In Germany, the division led to the resignation of the government of Joseph Wirth .

Content of the contract

In the agreement, transitional provisions were made to regulate the problems resulting from the division of Upper Silesia. In questions of citizenship, the so-called optanten regulation was introduced, according to which Germans who did not want to become Polish citizens could live for 15 years in the now Polish part of Upper Silesia, even if they retained their German citizenship. Other provisions concerned the recognition of the previous employers 'and workers' organizations. A large part of the agreement contained detailed regulations in the economic field, in particular on joint railway management and cross-border energy distribution. A “traffic card” or “border card” should enable those who lived or worked on the other side to cross the border without any problems.

It was contractually regulated that a "Mixed Commission for Upper Silesia" should be formed to settle disputes. This met under the chairmanship of the Swiss Felix Calonder .

Signing and expiry of the agreement

The contract was signed on May 15, 1922 by Kazimierz Olszowski (1865-1933) for Poland and by Eugen Schiffer for the German Empire. It was ratified by the Reichstag on June 11, 1922.

The agreement expired on July 15, 1937.

Jewish minorities

Also protected were West and East Upper Silesian Jews who had opted for the German Reich and for whom this treaty protection ceased to exist only after the agreement expired in 1937. Even after the National Socialists came to power on January 30, 1933, the agreement was effective in favor of the Jewish minority in the western part of Upper Silesia. In the agreement guaranteed by the League of Nations , each contracting party guaranteed equal rights for all residents of its part of Upper Silesia. After anti-Semitic discrimination against Jewish Germans began in Germany, the Jewish West Upper Silesian Franz Bernheim turned to the League of Nations in May 1933 with a petition ( Bernheim Petition ) asking for the agreement on East Silesia to be effectively enforced ("East Silesia" here as the name West Upper Silesia) which at that time was the east of the German part of Silesia). The League of Nations complied with the request, asked Germany to comply with the agreement and in September 1933 the Nazi government withdrew the anti-Semitic laws in western Upper Silesia and exempted it from new forms of discrimination. Even after Germany left the League of Nations (1935), it kept the agreement in order not to provide Poland with a pretext for considering the agreement as invalid. As a result, in western Upper Silesia - in contrast to the rest of Germany - the otherwise valid anti-Semitic discrimination, such as the Aryan paragraph , the Nuremberg Laws, etc., did not come into effect for the remaining period up to July 15, 1937 .

reception

From the Polish point of view, the predominant feeling was that no real state border had been created in Upper Silesia, especially since the Silesian Voivodeship ( Polish : województwo śląskie ), in contrast to all other Polish voivodships , had received a special autonomous status due to the founding statute of the Silesian Voivodeship of July 15, 1920 . In contrast, until the German-Polish understanding of January 26, 1934, the German Reich saw the Upper Silesia Agreement rather positively, as evidence that eastern Upper Silesia was not a natural part of Poland.

Minority protection

The contract is considered to be one of the first minority contracts to be concluded after the Paris suburb contracts. The agreements on the protection of minorities were incorporated into the agreement as individual provisions.

literature

  • Dan Diner, Understanding the Century: A Universal Historical Interpretation , Luchterhand Literaturverlag, 1999, ISBN 3-630-87996-9 .
  • Thomas Ditt, “ Shock Troop Faculty Breslau”: Law in the “Grenzland Schlesien” 1933–1945 (contributions to the legal history of the 20th century) , Mohr Siebeck, 2011, ISBN 3-161-50374-0 .
  • Jörg Menzel, Tobias Pierlings, Jeannine Hoffmann (Editor), International Jurisprudence : Selected Decisions on International Law in Retrospective , Mohr Siebeck, 2005, ISBN 3-161-48515-7 .
  • Carole Fink, Minority Rights as an International Question , Contemporary European History, Volume 2 (November 2000), pp. 385-400 (English).
  • Carole Fink: Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004 ISBN 978-0-521-83837-5 .
  • Volker Dahm, The Jewish Book in the Third Reich , CH Beck Verlag, 1993, ISBN 3-406-37641-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ § 5. After the end of the voting, the committee informs the main Allied and Associated Powers of the number of votes indicated in each municipality and at the same time submits a detailed report on the election process and a proposal on the line to be used in Upper Silesia, taking into account both the expression of will the inhabitants as well as the geographical and economic location of the localities should be taken as the border of Germany. Annex VIII to the Versailles Treaty, concerning § 88
  2. ^ German-Polish Agreement on Upper Silesia (Upper Silesia Agreement, OSA) of May 15, 1922, RGBl. 1922 II, p. 238 ff.
  3. ^ Philipp Graf: The Bernheim Petition 1933: Jewish Policy in the Interwar Period. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008, (Writings of the Simon Dubnow Institute; 10), 342 pages, ISBN 978-3-525-36988-3 .
  4. ↑ Thomas Ditt, “Shock Troop Faculty Breslau”: Jurisprudence in the “Grenzland Schlesien” 1933–1945 (contributions to the legal history of the 20th century) , p. 162 ff., Second chapter “Law in Grenzland”, section b) The German-Polish conflict issues