Treaty of Trianon
The Treaty of Trianon , also known as the Trianon Peace Treaty or the Trianon Peace Dictate , was one of the suburban Paris treaties that formally ended the First World War . Signed on June 4, 1920, it sealed the secessions from the Kingdom of Hungary that took place in 1918/19 - linked to Austria in Realunion until 1918 - after the war lost for the dual monarchy . Under international law, Hungary had to take note of the fact that two thirds of the territory of the historic kingdom fell to various neighboring and successor states. The Hungarian delegation signed the contract on June 4, 1920, with objection.
Secessions
The Paris negotiations were preceded by several splits of individual parts of the country:
- Czechs and Slovaks, whose National Council in Paris had already been recognized by the USA on July 2, 1918, proclaimed the Czechoslovak Republic on October 28, 1918 .
- Croatia and Slavonia founded the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in Zagreb on October 5th , no longer accepted instructions from Budapest and declared themselves part of the new SHS state on October 30th, 1918 .
- The Romanians of Transylvania voted on December 1, 1918 in the Karlsburger Resolutions (taken in today's Alba Iulia , in Hungarian Gyulafehérvár ) for unification with the Kingdom of Romania . The people's assemblies of the Transylvanian Saxons and the Banat Swabians also decided in 1919 to unite their territories with Romania.
(In the Karlsburger decisions the Romanians guaranteed the Magyars and the Germans as minorities extensive equality, but later did not comply.)
Negotiations and contract signing
For the most part, the facts had long been created when Hungary was invited to Paris at the end of 1919, after negotiations with Austria . The treaty was signed so late because defeated Hungary was going through political turmoil in 1918 that worried the Allies. After Hungary's exit from the Danube Monarchy on March 21, 1919, the Hungarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed and after failed negotiations with the Entente about the future borders of Hungary broke on March 15-16. April 1919 the Hungarian-Romanian War ended . The Treaty of St. Germain (signed by Austria on September 10, 1919) had also already made the decision that German West Hungary would fall to Austria and that Austria would border on Czechoslovakia (and no longer on Upper Hungary ). Hungary unsuccessfully demanded a revision and a referendum on the areas to be ceded. Like Austria, Hungary was viewed by the Entente as a loser from the war and not an equal negotiating partner.
Finally, on June 4, 1920, Hungary signed the peace treaty in the Versailles Palais Grand Trianon . Ágost Benárd, Minister for Welfare, and Alfréd Drasche-Lázár, Ambassador signed for Hungary. The contract mostly only confirmed the factual existing situation.
The signatory powers included Great Britain , France and Italy , Japan , Belgium , Siam , Greece , Nicaragua , Panama , Poland , Portugal , Romania , which was resurrected in autumn 1918 , and the newly formed Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom (with Serbia as the first of Austria -Hungary attacked in August 1914) and the new Czecho-Slovakia (the Czechs in exile in the USA had already argued there during the war for their common state with the Slovaks). The United States did not sign the treaty. Hungary and the United States concluded peace in Washington, DC with a separate treaty based on the Trianon Treaty , but without the articles of the League of Nations , in which the United States only had observer status.
German West Hungary, called Burgenland by the Austrians since 1919 , was to be attached to Austria; one of the few provisions of the Trianon Treaty that had not yet been implemented when it was signed. Hungarian irregulars, however, shot at the Austrian gendarmerie and initially prevented Austria from administering Burgenland. Ödenburg ( Sopron ) was planned as the state capital. The referendum held in December 1921 in the city and the surrounding villages on the mediation of Italy was in favor of Hungary; Most of Burgenland was annexed to Austria in autumn 1921 without a referendum.
Contract terms
- War Guilt Paragraph (Art. 161)
- Article on reparation that did not contain an exact amount of reparation
- Article on armaments restrictions: Limitation of the armed forces to a long-serving professional army of 35,000 men without heavy artillery, armored troops and air forces: exclusively intended for the defense of the borders and for internal security ; an inter-allied control commission should monitor compliance with the disarmament requirements and the rearmament restrictions
- Assignments of territory affecting more than two thirds (from 325,411 km² to 93,073 km²) of the Reich territory.
- today's Slovakia and Carpathian Ukraine to Czechoslovakia ,
- today's Burgenland to Austria ,
- Croatia , Slavonia , Međimurje , Prekmurje , the regions of Batschka and South Baranya (Drávaköz) and parts of the Banat to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes ,
- Transylvania with the rest of the Banat and with Partium with Romania (Art. 45–47),
- a small area with 14 villages in the far north was awarded to Poland ,
- the Free City of Fiume (St. Veit am Flaum or Fiume or Rijeka) became its own Free State after Hungary waived all rights and claims. (Art. 53). In 1924 the area was divided between Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (SHS state), with the city of Fiume falling to Italy.
consequences
Because the borders were often drawn according to strategic aspects, around three million Magyars came under foreign suzerainty. Most of the Magyars outside Hungary lived in border areas - in southern Slovakia , in Carpathian Ukraine (1,072,000), in Vojvodina (northern Serbia), in Partium and Prekmurje ( Slovenia , 571,000) and in Romania (1,664,000; data on Based on the 1910 census). In Romania and in today's Slovakia there were islands with a predominantly Hungarian population, today the Hungarians are partly the minority there.
Trianon, however, largely solved the nationality problem in Hungary, which had become smaller. According to the census of 1920, only 10.4% of the total population (833,475) had a mother tongue other than Hungarian, including 551,211 Germans (6.9%) and 141,882 Slovaks (1.8%), 473,000 people professed the Mosaic faith. In addition, there were 23,760 Romanians , 59,875 Croats , 17,131 Serbs , plus 60,748 others (including Slovenes , Bunjewatzen and Šokci ). At the same time, 399,176 people stated that they could speak Slovak, 179,928 Serbian or Croatian and 88,828 Romanian.
The Magyars were indignant and shocked after the Treaty of Trianon, as the areas that had fallen away or were to be ceded had gradually come under the Kingdom of Hungary since the 11th century . The slogan of the resistance fighters at the time was “No! No! Never !! ” (Hungarian: Nem! Nem! Soha !!) . The flags throughout Hungary were lowered to half mast by the First Vienna Arbitration Award in 1938. Only then were they raised again by a third.
In the 1930s, at the start of the school day, students had to say a prayer in which the revision, i.e. H. the restoration of Greater Hungary was called for (I believe in a God, I believe in a homeland, I believe in the infinite divine truth, I believe in the resurrection of Hungary! - Hungarian: Hiszek egy Istenben, Hiszek egy hazában, Hiszek egy Isteni örök igazságban, Hiszek Magyarország feltámadásában.) .
The Vienna arbitration awards of 1938 and 1940 under the direction of National Socialist Germany corrected Trianon in the spirit of Hungary, but were declared invalid from the start in 1945/47 ("ex tunc"). Thus the Treaty of Trianon (like that of St. Germain with Austria) is still valid and part of the legal system of all successor states. After the end of the Second World War, the results of the Paris Peace Conference brought Czechoslovakia small territorial gains south of Bratislava / Pozsony / Pressburg . No major power has challenged the Trianon Treaty since 1945.
On June 4, 2010 - 90 years after the signing of the treaty - the Hungarian parliament celebrated the so-called National Unity Day for the first time . Slovakia felt provoked by this.
Small area changes
- On January 29, 1919, citizens of Balassagyarmat joined the soldiers of Captain Zsigmond Vizy and drove out the invading Czechoslovak troops who were trying to move the borders of Czechoslovakia south. This left the affected 18 villages south of the Ipoly River near Hungary.
- On August 1, 1920, border police from Kerca ( Prekmurje ), with the support of insurgents from Kerca and Szomoróc, chased away the Serbian-Croatian-Slovenian troops from Szomoróc. After long negotiations, Szomoróc was incorporated into Hungary on February 9, 1922. In 1943 the two villages were united under the name Kercaszomor .
- Riots broke out in ten villages assigned to Austria in accordance with the Treaty. Thereupon there were referendums in these villages, which led to their return to Hungary between January 10, 1923 and March 9, 1923. These were the villages Felsőcsatár (then Alsócsatár and Felsőcsatár), Horvátlövő , Narda (then Kisnarda and Nagynarda), Ólmod , Pornóapáti , Szentpéterfa and Vaskeresztes (then Németkeresztes and Magyarkeresztes). Originally the villages Liebling / Rendek and Rattersdorf / Rőtfalva would have returned to Hungary instead of Ólmod and Szentpéterfa (see also referendum in 1921 in Burgenland ).
- In 1924 Somoskőújfalu and Somoskő were ceded from Czechoslovakia to Hungary by the Czechoslovak-Hungarian border commission.
- In 1947 the bridgehead near Bratislava was awarded to Czechoslovakia, today the area belongs to Slovakia .
Reception in Hungary

- In Budapest there has been a Trianon Research Institute since 2008, which publishes a quarterly magazine called Trianoni Szemle with the subtitle Historical Magazine of Greater Hungary .
- There is a “Trianon Museum” in Várpalota .
- On May 31, 2010, the National Assembly declared June 4 a national day of remembrance, the day of national togetherness (Nemzeti összetartozás napja) .
- Every afternoon at 5 p.m. since 2008, a tune has been played on the Tárogató by all loudspeakers in Esztergom to commemorate the signing of the Trianon Treaty . The music on this national Hungarian instrument is intended to underline the grief over the loss of two thirds of the country to the Trianon Treaty.
See also
- Czech corridor
- Jovan Cvijić (regarding Serbian-Yugoslav territorial gains)
literature
- Marián Hronský: The struggle for Slovakia and the Treaty of Trianon 1918–1920. Veda, Bratislava 2001, ISBN 80-224-0677-5 .
- Jörn Leonhard : The overwhelmed peace. Versailles and the world 1918-1923. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3406725067 .
- Ignác Romsics: The Trianon Peace Treaty. Schäfer, Herne 2005, ISBN 3-933337-36-4 .
Web links
- Wording of the contract in English
- Wording of the contract in German
- Map of the population of Austria-Hungary in 1910 (in Hungarian)
- Map of the population of East Central and Southeast Europe (1989–1992)
Individual evidence
- ^ Pim den Boer, Heinz Duchhardt, Georg Kreis , Wolfgang Schmale: European Places of Remembrance 2: Das Haus Europa, Oldenbourg Verlag, 2011, ISBN 9783486704198 , p. 510.
- ↑ Restriction of the armed forces to a long-serving professional army (Art. 103) of 35,000 men (Art. 104) without air forces (Art. 128); see also part XI. Aviation (Articles 260 to 267)
- ^ Herbert Küpper: The new minority law in Hungary . Oldenbourg, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-486-56378-5 , p. 77.
- ^ Paul Lendvai: The Hungarians. A thousand years of history . Goldmann 2001, ISBN 3-442-15122-8 , p. 418.
- ^ Anikó Kovács-Bertrand: The Hungarian revisionism after the First World War. The journalistic struggle against the Trianon Peace Treaty (1918–1931) . Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-486-56289-4 , pp. 91 and 213.
- ^ Jörg K. Hoensch : History of Hungary 1867-1983. Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-17-008578-6 , p. 103.
- ↑ Georg Brunner, Günther H. Tontsch (ed.): The protection of minorities in Hungary and in Romania. Cultural Foundation of German Expellees , Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-88557-133-1 , p. 20.
- ↑ The Czech Republic's solidarity with Slovakia: Hungary endangers stability published June 7, 2010, accessed December 25, 2010.
- ^ "Peace Dictate of Trianon": Slovakia feels provoked. In: Wiener Zeitung , June 3, 2010, accessed on November 7, 2013.
- ↑ Egyéves a Trianoni Szemle (Hungarian) published on December 29th 2009, last accessed on 29 December of 2010.
- ^ Information page ( Memento from August 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (Hungarian) last accessed on December 29, 2010.
- ↑ Ursula Rütten / Kai Kimmich: A pilgrimage on the trail of Magyar Christianity | NZZ. Retrieved June 3, 2020 .