Small Treaty of Versailles

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The Small Treaty of Versailles or the Polish Minority Treaty , formally referred to as the minority protection treaty between the Main Allied and Associated Powers and Poland , was a post- World War I between the powers of the Triple Entente (excluding Soviet Russia ), the United States of America ( USA) and the Japanese Empire signed a bilateral minority agreement with the Republic of Poland . It was signed on June 28, 1919, the same day as the main Versailles Treaty , which is the reason for the slang term. The contract is considered to be the first minority contract with specifically developed protective rights provisions and is regarded as a template for the further minority contracts that were concluded in the following period. Furthermore, the Polish Minority Treaty, together with Articles 87 to 93 of the Treaty of Versailles, is seen as the formal recognition of Poland as a sovereign and independent state at the international level.

background

In the period after World War I, after 123 years of division , Poland achieved state independence (as the Second Polish Republic ). The victorious powers decided that because of the considerable non-Polish, not least German, minorities in areas claimed by Poland, as well as because of the ongoing armed conflicts (in particular the Polish-Ukrainian war from 1918 to 1919 and the Polish-Soviet war from 1919 to 1920) Poland had to sign an agreement for the protection of minorities and their rights in return for the granted state independence.

The negotiations at the Versailles Peace Conference were guided by the principle of the self-determination of nations. The victorious powers had recognized, however, that in the newly created states in Central and East Central Europe, this principle, which arose from the idea of ​​self-determination as self-government, could not be implemented in the cultural-geographic and political continental contexts of Central and East-Central Europe, which is why the idea of ​​an international treaty Protection of minorities as a corrective to this emerged. Hannah Arendt also pointed out the internal connection between the principle of the right of nations to self-determination and the rules on citizenship and citizenship practices of nation states when she described the minorities as "the cousins ​​of the stateless" after the First World War and in 1951 in her work Elements and Origins of Total Rule The phenomenon described the fact that the guarantee of general human rights was incorporated into modern constitutions at the very moment when general human rights were defined as national law in east-central and south-eastern Europe as well, with the implementation of the nation-state principle.

In the course of the Paris Peace Conference, however, the ideas of the American delegation in particular with regard to the post-war European order shifted away from demands for self-determination as democratization, towards the acceptance of the nation state as a framework for this process, which is why the protection of minorities was devised and should be the practical means To reduce the difference between democratic-domestic and ethnic-national self-determination.

The obligation to conclude the Polish minority protection treaty was also recorded for confirmation in Article 93 of the main treaty of Versailles:

"Poland agrees that the main Allied and Associated Powers include in a treaty to be concluded with it the provisions that they consider necessary to protect the interests of the national, linguistic and religious minorities in Poland, and thereby approves these provisions."

Content of the contract

In particular, the treaty was intended to protect previous German, Austrian, Hungarian and Russian citizens in Poland with regard to their “comprehensive protection of the life and freedom of all people regardless of their place of birth, nationality, language, race or religion” (Article 2) and made it mandatory to prohibit discrimination (Article 7). In return, according to Article 3, all previous German, Austrian, Hungarian and Russian citizens residing on the territory of the Republic of Poland at the time of the conclusion of the contract were ipso facto declared Polish citizens , whereby they were entitled to choose their original nationality; if necessary, they had to leave the territory of the Republic of Poland within 12 months. All persons born on the newly created Polish territory were ipso facto Polish citizens according to Article 4, but could give up their Polish citizenship within two years of the conclusion of the contract.

Article 7 of the treaty, which provided for a far-reaching ban on discrimination, is of central importance:

“All Polish citizens are equal before the law and enjoy the same civil and civil rights regardless of ethnicity, language or religion. (...) No Polish citizen may in any way be restricted in the free use of any language, neither in his personal or economic relations, nor in the field of religion, the press or publications of any kind, or finally in public meetings. "

The treaty also stipulated that Poland had to assume part of the debt of the Russian state and grant the “allied and associated states” a most-favored-nation clause in merchanting (Articles 14-18).

In fact, the protective provisions of the contract were not complied with or only complied with pro forma . The period after the First World War was strongly influenced by the nationalistic tendencies of the European powers and the League of Nations also did not have the appropriate sanctions to enforce compliance with the treaty provisions.

Protection of Jewish minorities

A special feature was the protection of Jewish minorities, which was explicitly regulated in some clauses of the treaty. The general provisions of the treaty on religious freedom (Article 2) and equality before the law (Article 7) also applied. a. Article 8, which provided for the right to freedom of worship for all Polish citizens, combined with the right to practice one's own language, which was particularly relevant for the Yiddish and Hebrew languages. Article 10 also provided for state funding for Jewish schools and Article 11 for the protection of Shabbess . There was no legal disadvantage for Jews if they had to attend business or official appointments on Saturdays, and it was agreed not to hold elections on Saturdays in Poland (Article 11, second paragraph).

The background to the inclusion of these regulations was that the Western European and American delegations were confronted not only with an understanding of nations that deviated from their political traditions on the part of the politicians of the new states, but also on the part of the lobby organizations of various minorities, especially those of Eastern European Jewry. The Jews were recognized in Paris as the “minority par excellence” and viewed as the source of ideas for the minority rights to be codified. The fact that the minority question was made the subject of interstate agreements and contractual obligations is largely attributed to the Jewish delegation.

Signing and termination of the contract by Poland

The treaty was signed by the Polish representatives in Versailles, Roman Dmowski and Ignacy Jan Paderewski, on June 28, 1919, the same day as the main Versailles treaty. It was ratified by the Polish parliament, the Sejm , on July 31, 1919. The treaty came into force on January 10, 1920. The termination of the treaty by Poland took place at the assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva on September 13, 1934.

Minority protection

The contract is regarded as the first minority contract with specifically elaborated protective rights provisions and is viewed as a template for the other minority contracts that were subsequently concluded by the Paris suburb contracts. In most cases, the agreements on the protection of minorities were only incorporated as individual provisions into the respective main agreements of the Paris suburb agreements.

On the initiative of the German Foreign Minister Julius Curtius , Poland was condemned by the League of Nations in January 1931 for acts of discrimination and acts of violence against members of the German minority during the local elections .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Margaret MacMillan , The Peace Makers. How the Treaty of Versailles changed the world (English original title: Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War), Propylaeen Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-549-07459-X . Part V.17 Poland Reborn
  2. ↑ Dan Diner, Understanding the Century: A Universal Historical Interpretation , Luchterhand Literaturverlag, 1999, ISBN 3-630-87996-9 .
  3. ↑ a b Dietmar Müller: Citizenship and protection of minorities. “Managing diversity” in Eastern and Western Europe , in: European History Topic Portal , 2006
  4. ↑ Text of the Versailles Treaty, Part III, see Art. 93 there . Note: Czecho-Slovakia was acc. Article 86 equally obliged.
  5. ↑ Minority Protection Treaty between the Allies and Associated Main Powers and Poland , Versailles, June 28, 1919 (German)
  6. ↑ Philipp Heyde: The end of the reparations. Germany, France and the Young Plan 1929–1932. Schöningh, Paderborn 1998, p. 118.