Luxembourg annexation plans after the Second World War
The Luxembourg annexation plans after the Second World War were plans by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg to annex parts of Germany from 1945 onwards . This was considered as a way of war reparation alongside cash payments and the hiring out of labor.
The territorial demands
In the late summer of 1945, various parties voiced territorial claims against Germany in Luxembourg. In particular, the nationalist movement Lëtzebuerger Nationalunioun demanded that parts of the German territory that had been split off from the former Duchy of Luxembourg by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 should be reconnected to Luxembourg. However, only parts of the Luxembourg population approved of these ideas of a “Greater Luxembourg”.
After the Second World War, the Luxembourg army stationed as a kind of sub-occupation in the Bitburg and Saarburg districts under the control of the French occupation . Luxembourg complied with international obligations, but there was also a desire to prepare a possible annexation.
In a memorandum of November 27, 1946, the Luxembourg government demanded that the border be moved five to ten kilometers into German territory. This affected an area of 544 square kilometers in the German border districts of Bitburg , Saarburg and Prüm as well as areas on the Our . The population of this area was 31,188 people. The area covers around 20% of the area that had come to Prussia from the former Duchy of Luxembourg in 1815 .
The territorial claims were politically and historically, but above all economically justified. Since the agricultural areas in the north of Luxembourg were devastated during the Ardennes offensive , the desire arose to improve the supply of agricultural products. But also the realization of a hydroelectric power plant planned since 1920 on the Our and improvements of the transport infrastructure were in the foreground.
However, similar to the Belgian , Dutch and French territorial claims, these plans were made by the three main victorious powers of the Second World War - the USA , Great Britain and the Soviet Union - with reference to the considerable supply problems caused by 14 million refugees from the annexed eastern areas of the Eastern Territories already in their occupation zones German Reich rejected. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg insisted on its territorial claims until 1949.
The London Six Power Conference
As a result of the London Six Power Conference of June 7, 1948, the following was stated under point 4 "Provisional territorial agreements": "The delegations have agreed to submit proposals to their governments for review regarding certain minor provisional territorial straightening in connection with Germany's western borders."
The French government implemented this result of the London conference as follows: By enacting the French Military Government Ordinance No. 212 of April 23, 1949, the incorporation of the Kammerwald with the village of Roth and Gut Neuscheuerhof into the Luxembourg territory was established. The area covered an area of 547 hectares near the Luxembourg town of Vianden .
Shortly thereafter, however, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg renounced the area of the village of Roth and the Neuscheuerhof estate, so that only the uninhabited area of the Kammerwald was separated from Germany.
The return
In the treaty of July 11, 1959 between the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Federal Republic of Germany, Luxembourg finally renounced the area of the Kammerwald and returned the territory to the Federal Republic of Germany . The Federal Republic of Germany paid 58.3 million DM in return to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
See also
literature
- Bartz, G .: Problems and aspects of the German-Luxembourg border survey 1984 . Trier 2001.
- Grosbusch, A .: La question des réparations dans l'opinion luxembourgeoise 1945–1949 . In: Journal of Luxembourg History, Issue 4 . Hémecht, Luxembourg, p. 569-591 .
- Khan, D.-E .: The German State Borders. Legal history basics and open legal questions . Tuebingen 2004.
- Lengerau, M .: Les frontières allemandes (1919–1989), Frontières d'Allemagne et en Allemagne: Aspects territoriaux de la question allemande . Bern 1990, p. 70 .
- Summa, C .: How today's German-Luxembourg border in the area of the Sauer and Our came into being . In: Regional history quarterly papers . Issue 2. Trier 1980, p. 62-81 .
- GR-Atlas: Chamber forest placed under Luxembourg administration ( Memento of December 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Université du Luxembourg.
- Regulation No. 212 of the French High Command on border adjustments . In: Journal officiel du Commandment en Chef Française en Allemagne . ( Original French and German text [accessed January 5, 2015]).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Emile Krier: Luxembourg at the end of the occupation and the new beginning. (No longer available online.) In: Geschichtliche Landeskunde - Volume 46. Institute for Historical Regional Studies at the University of Mainz e. V., 1997, archived from the original on November 10, 2016 ; Retrieved January 5, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
