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The Lusatian Question at the Paris Peace Conference

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Lawrence P. Ralston
Lawrence P. Ralston*
Affiliation:
New Canaan, Conn.
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Extract

On January 21, 1920, a man named Ernst Barth stood up in Germany's Supreme Court at Leipzig to hear sentence passed upon him. The charge was “Attempted Treason”; the verdict, guilty; his punishment to be three years’ detention in a fortress. A tragic and now all but forgotten episode, the effort made to secure national rights for the Lusatian Sorbs at the Paris Peace Conference, had ended, in a German courtroom.

Tragic this episode surely was. In postwar years a small Slavic community in Germany found itself the object of bitter suspicion which had not existed before. “Die wendische Gefahr“—“The Wendish Danger“—found a place among the less felicitous journalistic cliches employed in the Weimar Republic. For more than a few Germans after 1918 the word “Wend” summoned up an image of treacherous men conspiring to tear yet another province from the prostrate Reich.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 1960 , pp. 248 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1960

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References

1 The court was the Reichsgericht, apparently with original jurisdiction in treason cases; the remainder of Barth's sentence was suspended after he had been imprisoned for a few months at Gollnow, near Stettin.

2 A rather complex terminological problem is involved in writing about this people. The more recent English-language encyclopedias designate them as “Sorbs” corresponding to the German “Sorben.” The latter has replaced “Wenden,” of which the English equivalent is “Wends,” in German usage since World War II. Actually “Wends” is too comprehensive; the Germans so designated historically, many other tribes in addition to the Sorbs. These people call themselves “Serbja” in their own language. The French follow this closely in their usage, calling them “Serbes de Lusace” to avoid confusion with the better-known Balkan nationality. When “Serbs of Lusatia” appears in English a literal translation of an original French text is clearly evident. Other Slavic peoples usually call them “Lusatians.” Everything considered, the best designation for them in English is probably “Lusatian Sorbs.“

3 Pata, Josef, Aus dem kulturellen Leben der Lausitzer Serben nach dem Weltkriege (Bautzen, 1930)Google Scholar. Translation of original Czech article published in 1929.

4 Lower Lusatia was entirely Prussian, being a part of the province of Brandenburg; Upper Lusatia was partly in the Prussian province of Silesia, but most of this region fas in Saxony.

5 Masaryk, Thomas, New Europe (New York, 1918), p. 47 Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 53.

7 Ibid., p. 70. Aware of the stunning impact such a proposal would have in Germany, Masaryk, with obvious relish but perhaps not entirely unqualified determination, added these words: “I have no doubt that the Pangermans will reject with the greatest indignation such a solution of the Prussian question—To free the Lusatians? To have within cannon shot of Berlin a free Slav territory? Yes—that would be a victory of justice and Nemesis. If the Allies win, a solution of the Prussian question in a truly national sense is possible and necessary.

8 “Luzice a Mirovy Kongres” (Lusatia and the Peace Conference).

9 Luzicka Otazka (Pilsen, 1918)Google Scholar.

10 Arnost Bart in Sorbian. Registry offices insisted on Germanizing names; Sorbs could only express their own preference privately.

11 There were two Sorbs in the Saxon Landtag; none in either the Prussian Landtag or the Reichstag.

12 In Prussia the situation was far less favorable where such legal rights were concerned. Sorbian cultural life was not as well developed there as in Saxony; the threat of complete Germanization, consequently, far greater.

13 Schmidt, Otto Eduard, Die Wenden (Dresden, 1926), p. 114 Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., p. 113.

15 On November 16, 1918.

16 Pata, op. cit. A note inserted by Jan Skala, responsible for the German translation of this article, indicates thai this Sorbian national activity did not find support in Lower Lusatia. Skala states that the leading Sorbian personality there, the writer B. Schwela, opposed it, anonymously publishing a brochure in which he predicted that the “freedom movement” would be a failure.

17 Schmidt, , op. cit., p. 116 Google Scholar.

18 Raschhofer, Hermann, Die tschechoslowakischen Denkschriften fuer die Friedenskonferenz von Paris 1919/20 (Berlin, 1937)Google Scholar. This contains both the original French text of the memoranda submitted to the Conference and Raschhofer's translation. “Serbes de Lusace” in the French text is translated as “Lausitzer Wenden.“

19 Ibid., p. 79. The “assurance of special minority rights” was asked for the Czechoslovak minority in Vienna, which, it was claimed, composed more than 400,000 persons.

20 The historical argument was rather dubious. Lusatia had been a fief of the Bohemian Crown until 1635, and, allegedly, it had been stipulated that sovereignty should return to it in the event the succession dynasties in these later German territories died out. Had not the “Crown of Bohemia” disappeared as well? As regards demographic considerations, the Sorbian-speaking territory as established in the census of 1880 was claimed.

21 Raschhofer, , op. cit., pp. 225–27 Google Scholar.

22 Miller, David Hunter, My Diary at the Conference of Paris (New York, 1924), XIII, 224 Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., p. 225.

24 Nicholson, Harold, Peace Making, 1919, p. 257 Google Scholar.

25 Ibid., p. 252.

26 Ibid.

27 Schmidt, , op. cit., p. 119 Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., p. 120.

29 Schmidt, op. cit., pp. 121–22, states that at about the same time, Pata caused an article to appear in the Prague paper Narodni Politika calling for Allied military occupation of Lusatia. This German writer also attributes to Barth an article in the Paris Matin. The latter, entitled “Germany Remobilizes Secretly,” called for immediate Allied counteraction.