Wiesbaden Agreement (1921)
The Wiesbaden Agreement of 1921 was a Franco - German agreement in the context of negotiations on Germany's reparations payments. The agreement was negotiated between the two reconstruction ministers Walther Rathenau and Louis Loucheur in Wiesbaden in the summer of 1921 and signed on October 6th and 8th, 1921.
Preparation of the agreement
In the spring of 1921, the Allies had put reparation payments for the German Reich at 132 billion gold marks. Despite protests from the German side, under the new government of Chancellor Joseph Wirth, as part of the so-called " fulfillment policy ", the amount of compensation was accepted. Rathenau became Minister of Reconstruction in the government under Chancellor Joseph Wirth and planned to make part of the reparations in the form of deliveries in kind. He worked on the Reparations Committee in Paris to get the Allies to give in. The French government endeavored to reach an agreement quickly and promised negotiations.
Meeting in Wiesbaden
The French reconstruction minister Loucheur met for the first time on June 12 and 13, 1921 with Rathenau in Wiesbaden . Further meetings followed, at the center of which was the question of reparations. The German delegation, numerous leading economic politicians, including Emil Guggenheimer , Carl Bergmann , August Müller and Julius Hirsch , took part in the meeting in the city in the occupied Rhineland . On October 6th and 8th, Rathenau and Loucheur signed the agreement, which provided for deliveries in kind worth around seven billion gold marks for a period of four years. This result was a concession to France, but it allowed the German Reich to suspend foreign currency payments to France for these four years.
Criticism and ratification
The Wiesbaden Agreement was rejected above all from conservative circles and on the part of industry. On the one hand, the “compliance policy” as such was sharply criticized, on the other hand, it was seen that the economy and industry were facing too high a burden. As a result, the ratification of the Wiesbaden Agreement failed on November 17, 1921 in the German Reichstag . It was not until June 29, 1922, that the agreement with supplementary agreements became law, and was adopted by the French on July 6, 1922.
literature
- Walther Rathenau : The Wiesbaden Agreement. Speech on November 9, 1921 . With an introductory comment by Ursula Mader. AVA Akademische Verlags-Anstalt, Leipzig 2003, ISBN 3-931982-30-0 , ( Freienwalder Hefte 6).
- Peter Krüger : The foreign policy of the republic of Weimar . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1985, ISBN 3-534-07250-2 .
- Herbert Müller-Werth : History and local politics of the city of Wiesbaden with special consideration of the last 150 years . Steiner, Wiesbaden 1963.