Wiesbaden Agreement (1950)

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The Wiesbaden Agreement is a declaration of intent signed on August 4, 1950 by the Czech National Committee and the working group for the protection of Sudeten German interests .

prehistory

After the Munich Agreement in 1938, the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939 and the German defeat in World War II , almost all of the approx. 3 million Sudeten Germans living in Czechoslovakia until then were expelled from their homeland in 1945/46 . A large number of them began to organize themselves in associations which eventually led to the formation of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft . At the same time, the working group for the protection of Sudeten German interests was founded in 1947 , which consisted mainly of prominent politicians and was renamed the Sudeten German Council in 1950 . She tried to influence the foreign policy of the emerging Federal Republic of Germany.

At the same time in 1948 the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia under Klement Gottwald and Rudolf Slánský succeeded in usurping all power in the country in the February coup and in establishing a totalitarian regime based on the Stalinist model, completely dependent on the Soviet Union . Some Czech opponents of this development who had emigrated abroad then sought contact with Sudeten German politicians in order to establish the broadest possible base in the fight against the common enemy - the communist government of Czechoslovakia. The best-known representative of these politicians in exile was General Lev Prchala , who was in opposition to the exiled President Edvard Beneš during the Second World War and who chaired the Czech National Committee - a kind of government in exile.

Content of the agreement

The agreement expresses the desire of both sides to restore democratic conditions in Czechoslovakia and to enable the Sudeten Germans to return to their homeland. Similar to the charter of the German expellees , collective guilt for the mutually inflicted injustice is rejected, but at the same time the punishment of those primarily responsible is called for.

Signatory

Rudolf Lodgman von Auen , Hans Schütz and Richard Reitzner signed on the part of the working group for the protection of Sudeten German interests , for the Czech National Committee alongside Lev Prchala Vladimír Pekelský .

consequences

Due to the circumstances, the Wiesbaden Agreement was perceived much more strongly in the Federal Republic of Germany than in Czechoslovakia.

However, since the Wiesbaden Agreement was signed by two parties who were and remained without any noticeable influence on the events in Czechoslovakia, it practically never came into force.

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