On the afternoon of 23 September 1920, representatives from the Inter-Allied Commission for the Borders of Austria and Czechoslovakia prepared to leave Gmünd Castle after a day of meetings with Austrian and Czechoslovak state boundary commission members.Footnote 1 In the small town of Gmünd (Cmunt), located on the border between Lower Austria and South Bohemia, a crowd of hundreds had gathered outside the castle over the course of the afternoon. For hours, these pro-Austrian demonstrators demanded that the Inter-Allied commission meet with them to discuss the border changes set out in the Treaty of Saint-Germain.Footnote 2 As the commission tried to leave the castle park, demonstrators closed the gates, preventing the car carrying the delegates from exiting until they agreed to hear the demonstrators’ concerns. An Austrian official promised the crowd that regardless of whether the Inter-Allied commission consulted the demonstrators, the border placement would not be decided that day.Footnote 3 Local gendarmes soon arrived and helped force the park gate open to let the car with the commission through. The crowd dispersed through the gate, moving to the Lainsitz Bridge and crossing the river that was set to become the border just down the hill from the castle. The demonstrators blocked the bridge, forcing the car with the commission to stop. One demonstrator punched through the window of the car and grabbed the Italian representative, Lieutenant Colonel Giulio Pellicelli, by the shoulders, violently shaking him. The assailant, who would later be identified as a nineteen-year-old resident of Gmünd, caused minor injuries to the delegate.Footnote 4 Pellicelli then ordered the chauffeur to drive over the barricade and away from the demonstrators. As the car sped away, local gendarmes managed to gain control of the crowd, who dispersed once they learned the commission would not return that day.
It was common for demonstrations to occur along Czechoslovakia’s new borders, particularly when the border had not existed in any form before World War I (WWI). Instances of violence, including protests and even short-lived wars, broke out along Czechoslovakia’s borders with Poland and Hungary, for example.Footnote 5 Yet even Czechoslovakia’s postwar borders with Austria and Germany, which mainly followed previous administrative or international boundaries (defined in the postwar treaties as boundaries existing in August 1914), threatened stability in the region and created tensions between international, state, and local actors.Footnote 6 In Gmünd, where the border moved a few kilometers east in favor of Czechoslovakia, both state and local actors mobilized to attempt to influence the border changes after the Allied powers gave the railway station and junction to Czechoslovakia. In the town of approximately 5000 people, where a majority of its working population were railway employees, moving the border to place the railway station in Czechoslovakia instead of Austria caused an uproar as people worried about how the border change would impact their livelihoods.Footnote 7
For both state and local actors, one of the main avenues for claim making and boundary making was the boundary commission. Indeed, historians examining European boundary commissions generally argue that members of these commissions acted as unique intermediaries between state and local interests.Footnote 8 J. W. Donaldson, for example, argues that boundary commissions in Europe had a staked interest in “addressing the perceived political will of local populations.”Footnote 9 In addition to demarcating new borders, boundary commissions have functioned as negotiators between imperial/state and local interests, acting as expert diplomats able to communicate local issues about the boundaries in “ways that would be comprehensible and acceptable” to state and imperial powers for centuries.Footnote 10 Yet during the demarcation of the border at Gmünd, in a moment where the Allied Powers and smaller states in central and eastern Europe supposedly championed the ideal of self-determination, both the Inter-Allied commission and the Czechoslovak boundary commission refused to consult locals about the border.Footnote 11
While it was not uncommon for people living along Europe’s new borders to submit petitions and written protests after the war, the Inter-Allied commission refusing to grant any form of consultation with the local population in Gmünd was a more unusual case. The refusal for consultation caused an escalation of protests from residents of the town and had a direct impact on the actions of the Allied Powers during the demarcation of the rest of Czechoslovakia’s borders. Local actors in Gmünd, who unlike other contested areas in Europe were not given either a plebiscite or consultation, strategically pursued multiple avenues for claim making and protest, thereby quickly recognizing and adapting to the failure of state actors to uphold the ideals of self-determination. People such as mayors and district administrators adopted the language of boundary commissions and other state actors that had power to influence the border by using rhetoric about economic and security concerns to demand changes to the boundaries in the treaties. When this strategy failed, however, people living along the border organized a large demonstration in an attempt to force consultation with the Inter-Allied commission during a planned border inspection.
Both Peter Haslinger and Michael Burri have detailed how the Inter-Allied commission worked with state commission representatives to undergo public consultation (with varying degrees of effort and success) along the Czechoslovak-Hungarian and Austrian-Hungarian borders in 1921 and 1922, respectively.Footnote 12 While Burri argues that in 1922 the Inter-Allied commission members for the borders of Austria and Hungary fulfilled their role as intermediaries between local and state interests—even challenging the postwar treaties in some cases—Haslinger has explored how the Inter-Allied commission for the borders of Czechoslovakia and Hungary conducted much more limited consultation along the border in September and October 1921. This included strict rules about how many people could participate in this consultation—a direct consequence of fears the commission developed after the Gmünd demonstration.Footnote 13 Haslinger shows how state concerns over the boundaries often differed from local ones, with people living along the border more worried about practical concerns (e.g., guaranteed use of waterways) rather than expressing patriotism or national loyalty.Footnote 14 Indeed, as Haslinger argues, even when the boundary commission did advocate for local concerns, they abandoned them as soon as the situation “threatened to escalate and become visible on the international level.”Footnote 15
As events in Gmünd demonstrate, however, Austrian state and regional actors actually aligned their interests by prioritizing practical (e.g., economic) concerns over national sentiments and patriotism in their arguments against the boundary change. Unlike the Inter-Allied commissions’ activities on the Czechoslovak–Hungarian and Austrian-Hungarian borders, where they granted at least limited consultation, the local population in Gmünd had to pursue more creative claim making strategies due to the lack of official consultation with the boundary commission members. While Gmünd was the center of a region where the German-speaking population was almost five times as large as the Czech-speaking population—even according to data shared by Czechoslovak officials—Austrian state actors still prioritized the potential economic impact of the border over national reasoning and self-determination.Footnote 16 The case of Gmünd demonstrates how Austrian officials used the Inter-Allied commission and its planned inspection of the town as a way to assert legitimacy and power with the local population along the border by aligning their arguments about the border with practical concerns of the town’s residents. Austrian officials positioned themselves as champions of the local population in direct contrast to the Allied Powers and Czechoslovak officials, who chose not to discuss border changes with locals.
Examining the (in)actions of the postwar Inter-Allied and state boundary commission representatives alongside the concerns of the local population in Gmünd reflects how international, state, and local actors all perceived the boundaries as malleable and negotiable over a year after the signing of the postwar treaties. The lead-up to and demonstration in Gmünd in September 1920 further nuances the relationships between the Allied Powers, postwar states, and local populations during the boundary-making process in the wake of WWI, illuminating both successful and unsuccessful claim making strategies pursued by state and local actors.
Negotiating Power: The Establishment of the Boundary Commissions
The end of WWI resulted in Europe’s most significant boundary changes of the twentieth century. The Paris Peace Conference that began in January 1919 acted as the site for new, old, and reconstituted states to make claims on their borders. The decision-makers at the conference decided borders based on several criteria: self-determination (ethnographic and national) reasoning; historical borders; economic reasoning; and state security. The majority of the South Bohemian-Lower Austrian border would follow historical (administrative) borders, but with the Austrian delegation initially arguing for changes based on self-determination, and the Czechoslovak delegation arguing the border should change based on economic and security concerns, the small section of the border at Gmünd ended up moving slightly east from its existing location.Footnote 17
At the Paris Peace Conference, the Czechoslovak delegation considered the Lower Austrian-Bohemian border—specifically the region around Gmünd (Vitorazsko/Weitraer Gebiet)—one of the areas where the border of the Bohemian Lands needed “correcting.” The Czechoslovak delegation argued that the railway junction in Gmünd was important for the security of the state, since its rail lines led from Vienna to Prague and Plzeň, and it should therefore fall under Czechoslovak control.Footnote 18 This concern was partially based on the possibility that Austria would use the railway to transport troops into Bohemia—a claim that Austrian representatives vehemently denied. In a circular note from March 1919, for instance, Austria’s foreign minister, Otto Bauer, wrote that the Austrian government had not put any funding or planning toward a military invasion of Czechoslovakia and had also given no funding or incentive for German speakers across the border to engage in unrest, strikes, or riots. He also rejected the accusation that the government was sending or stationing any troops along the Austrian-Czechoslovak border.Footnote 19
Indeed, months later, the Zentralgrenzkommission (ZGK) argued that Austria was so economically destitute that it was “far from even the most modern expansionist tendency, especially since it is not in a position … to set up a military force that would have any significance in Europe.”Footnote 20 However, the Czechoslovak delegation was effective in arguing for their boundaries based on security concerns, as they also did with other borders claimed in Paris.Footnote 21 As Peter Haslinger has argued, this strategy even continued after the Paris Peace Conference and was adopted by the Czechoslovak boundary commission with Hungary, which continued to use security discourse as the main avenue for claiming borders.Footnote 22
By the time the Austrian and Czechoslovak delegations were negotiating the boundary with the decision-makers at the peace conference, the Allied Powers had settled the peace terms with Germany and decided its border with Czechoslovakia largely based on boundaries existing in August 1914. With the Treaty of Versailles setting this precedent, the Austrian delegation faced a large disadvantage in using self-determination as an avenue for claiming or protesting borders. In fact, the delegation had initially requested a large redrawing of the borders based on the self-determination of German speakers in Bohemia. The delegation supported and endorsed German speakers in both northern and western Bohemia presenting their cause to the decision-makers in Paris, specifically requesting that they stay outside of Czechoslovakia’s borders. The Austrian delegation also requested areas of south Bohemia and Moravia fall within Austria’s new borders. With Czechoslovakia already occupying and laying claim to these territories, the peace terms with Germany already negotiated, and given the resources it would take to undergo these significant border changes or conduct plebiscites, the Allied Powers largely ignored the concerns of the Austrian delegation at the conference. In the end, each of the smaller border changes that occurred along the Czechoslovak-Austrian border were favorable to Czechoslovakia, following either economic or security concerns.Footnote 23
With the decision-makers favoring the Czechoslovak delegation’s arguments at the conference, Czechoslovakia gained the railway station in Gmünd, and the Treaty of Saint-Germain, signed by both Czechoslovak and Austrian officials on 10 September 1919, confirmed this small border change. This treaty, along with the Treaty of Versailles signed in June, defined many of Czechoslovakia’s borders to be mapped by state boundary commissions over the following years and was “a complete Czechoslovak victory” with the delegation receiving virtually all of their territorial demands along the border with Austria.Footnote 24 A full draft of the instructions for the boundary commissions was then circulated to both Czechoslovak and Austrian representatives in October 1919, just weeks after the signing of the treaty.Footnote 25 In these instructions, the Allied Powers gave the boundary commissions two main tasks: first, to mark the borders as described in the Peace Treaty, and second, to demarcate the frontiers after the execution of various plebiscites. The state commissions had the power to mark the borders with the exception of the international borders that existed in August 1914, where they would need to follow the existing posts and boundary markers. These instructions also established a central body, which would soon become the Inter-Allied commission, created by the peace conference to monitor the work of state (i.e., Austrian and Czechoslovak) boundary commission members. The costs of the boundary commissions would be split equally between the two states concerned, while transportation for the members of the delegations would be free of charge on all rivers and railways.Footnote 26
Soon after receiving the instructions, Czechoslovakia began assembling its boundary commission. The Czechoslovak commission confirmed its commissioner and deputy commissioner with officials in Paris. General Jaromír Špaček would serve as commissioner and geography professor Viktor Dvorský as deputy commissioner, with other technical staff employed as well, ranging from academics to military personnel. As Špaček was occupied with other work in Silesia, Dvorský attended the meetings in Paris and Špaček joined him once the commission arrived in Prague.Footnote 27 Austria’s central boundary commission mainly consisted of military personnel and government officials. The ZGK was made up of permanent government representatives from various departments, including the State Offices of Foreign Affairs, the Army, Finance, and Transportation. Its headquarters was in Vienna, with additional offices in Graz (border with Yugoslavia), Innsbruck (border with Italy), and a second Vienna office (border with Czechoslovakia, where Colonel Hugo Metzger served as the head of the commission). In addition to their time in Vienna, the commission for the border with Czechoslovakia would spend much of their time in Budějovice (Budweis).Footnote 28 Unlike Czechoslovakia, which was set to begin demarcating the border at Hlučínsko in Upper Silesia in late February and early March 1920 in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles, Austria, would not begin activities demarcating their borders until the summer of 1920 when the Treaty of Saint-Germain came into force. Government officials and the ZGK acted as the main negotiators until June 1920, when the members of the sub-commissions for Yugoslavia, Italy, and Czechoslovakia would begin their work.Footnote 29
On 10 January 1920, representatives from the Austrian and Czechoslovak governments convened to discuss the borders set out in the Treaty of Saint-Germain. During this meeting, the Czechoslovak government representatives were pleased that the Austrians were willing to interpret the wording of the Treaty of Saint-Germain “in the most liberal way.” This meeting did not contain any heated debates over the border—or anything very consequential to the Czechoslovak delegation—as the meeting primarily focused on translation issues between French and German, where some of the phrases in the treaty could be interpreted differently depending on the translation. For instance, there was an issue with the French “sans prejudice” being translated as “ohne Nachteil” in German, when some officials believed “ohne schwerwiegende Beschädigung” would be a more apt translation; another example included “hievon Mitteilung zu machen” being a poor translation for “à en donner communication,” with officials instead suggesting “zugänglich zu machen” or “freien Zutritt zu ermöglichen” be used instead. The commission members were mostly cooperative during the meeting, waiting to address more controversial issues until the follow-up meeting the next day.Footnote 30
During the next meeting, the representatives moved from discussing the text of the treaty to discussing the physical act of demarcating the border. They agreed on how to draw the border at Gmünd, choosing the church steps as a starting point for their measurements.Footnote 31 The Lainsitz (Lužnice) River would act as a “natural” boundary between the two states, while areas of the border that fell on dry land would be demarcated by granite boundary stones.Footnote 32 Since the Lainsitz River ran through Gmünd, the town would then be divided between the two states, with the majority of it going to Austria and the railway ending up in Czechoslovakia.Footnote 33 Even with the treaty granting the Czechoslovak delegation a majority of their requests from the Paris Peace Conference regarding the border, both the Czechoslovak and Austrian delegates requested changes to the wording of the treaty.Footnote 34 At the conclusion of the meeting, the delegates decided that the commissions would do a local inspection of the territory before making a final decision on the exact location of the border.Footnote 35 Activities on the Austrian-Czechoslovak boundary paused after January, as Czechoslovak officials prepared to mark the boundary in Hlučínsko in Upper Silesia with Polish and Inter-Allied commission members from February to May 1920.
Based on a decision made by the Conference of Ambassadors after months of protests from commission members for more power in demarcating boundaries, the council added a note to its instructions for the boundary commissions on 1 May 1920, and subsequently circulated it to the concerned states. While the council still frowned upon changes to the wording of the treaties, they did agree that changes to the borders set out in the treaty could be made based on the following conditions:
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1. Agreement of the powers concerned
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2. Unanimous consent of the Commission
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3. Purely economic reasons, to the exclusion of any national, cultural or religious reason.Footnote 36
Based on these criteria, the commissions now gained more power to change the borders defined in the treaty, to the displeasure of Czechoslovak boundary commission members, who often preferred sticking to the wording of the treaties. Dvorský expressed some of his concerns in this regard for the upcoming border demarcation with Austria, which was set to begin in the summer:
[O]n the Austrian border one can safely expect that Austria will send a socially polished representative who will do everything to be liked and who will be in an easy position, because Austria enjoys considerable sympathy among all persons who will almost certainly be the representatives of the Great Powers ….Footnote 37
Indeed, Czechoslovak officials ended up replacing their commissioner after demarcating the border at Hlučínsko, as he lacked any diplomatic skill and had mismanaged funds during the boundary demarcation.Footnote 38 They replaced him with Dr. Václav Roubík, who worked for the Department of Public Works, for the remainder of Czechoslovakia’s borders.Footnote 39 With Austrian officials preparing to negotiate changes to the borders set in the Treaty of Saint-Germain, Czechoslovak officials ensured they sent their strongest diplomats and negotiators to the border.
On 22 July 1920, the Conference of Ambassadors circulated another set of instructions for the boundary commissions, with slight amendments from the earlier ones. These directives were targeted at the commissions set to work on the borders set out in the Treaty of Saint-Germain and the Treaty of Trianon. The main points in the instructions, however, remained the same as the iterations from October 1919 and May 1920. While they strongly encouraged following the boundaries set out in the treaties, the instructions now stated that wording in the treaties was negotiable under certain conditions. This was an amendment both Austrian state officials and local actors embraced as they prepared for the annexation of Vitorazsko and part of Gmünd into Czechoslovakia.
The Annexation, or “Liberation,” of Vitorazsko/Weitraer Gebiet
With the physical work of demarcating the border between Austria and Czechoslovakia set to begin in July and August, the local population in part of Vitorazsko—the region that included Gmünd—prepared for its official annexation into Czechoslovakia. The annexation would occur in two stages: the first on 31 July 1920 (including Gmünd), with the rest of the region’s annexation occurring on 1 October of the same year. The atmosphere was tense leading up to the arrival of government officials. Representatives from Czech nationalist organizations in Vitorazsko began to send out “liberation” invites to Prague in preparation for the first stage of the region’s official annexation into Czechoslovakia. They requested the playing of music, the anthem, and the raising of the Czechoslovak flag when the troops arrived. They also requested a meeting take place at the Gmünd railway station, which would soon be officially under Czechoslovak control, to celebrate.Footnote 40 Meanwhile, Austrian officials requested no air traffic on that day, and that all official government buildings hang black flags.Footnote 41
As early as March 1919, the idea of Czechoslovak control of Vitorazsko, and thus Gmünd, had become an idea of a “return” to Czech control for both Czech nationalists in the region and the Czechoslovak delegation in Paris.Footnote 42 Before the annexation, Czech nationalists living in and near Gmünd argued that Czechs had a right to the region based on self-determination as, according to them, the region had been “Germanized” over the centuries. While security discourse was still their main avenue to argue for control over part of the region, the Czechoslovak delegation collected memoranda from these nationalists, and even made maps of the alleged Germanization of the region to back up these claims.Footnote 43 In these memoranda, nationalists cited instances of German speakers discriminating against and oppressing Czech speakers, including declarations circulated in the area stating that German speakers must remove any Czech speakers from their households.Footnote 44 These nationalists sent letters and petitions to the Czechoslovak delegation for an immediate “liberation” of the region by Czechoslovakia, cautioning that Czech speakers in the region would continue to face German oppression if it did not soon fall under Czechoslovak control.Footnote 45 In addition to the Germanization of the region being a concern for Czech nationalists, the historical boundaries of the region were an important element of their activism.
Meanwhile, the ZGK had been protesting the terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain for months, lamenting the borders set out in the treaty and the potential economic impact it would have on the state: “Austria in its current form is the creation of the Great Powers, and it is impossible that they intended that this creation be a stillbirth.”Footnote 46 Specifically referencing the situation between Lower Austria and Bohemia, officials argued that the boundary change would be detrimental to the survival of the people in the region: “Nevertheless Austria, if it doesn’t want to forget its starving population, must urgently plead that such a painful intervention in the territory of Lower Austria be kept to the minimum required to accomplish its intended aim.”Footnote 47 The ZGK continued these pleas with the Allied Powers to follow the previous administrative boundaries wherever possible to avoid sending the region into despair.
Shortly before the work on the border began, the ZGK circulated instructions for demarcating the Austrian-Czechoslovak boundary. The ZGK told the members of the subcommission that they had two main tasks: first, to demarcate the border “as effectively as possible within the narrow framework” of the Treaty of Saint-Germain, and second:
to assert our further claims—which aren’t enforceable within the framework of the commission but are vital for Austria, and, for national reasons, not time-constrained—so that either the ground is paved for the immediate resumption of negotiations with the Czechoslovak government, or at very least the interest of the international public is aroused and the foundation is laid for later success at a time that’s more favorable to our cause.Footnote 48
Specifically, the commission highlighted the potential negative economic consequences of having an international border “block” Austria from “the German regions of South Moravia and South Bohemia,” stating that “Austria must attach particular importance to ensuring that the commission ascertains … the actual conditions and the wishes of the population” along the proposed border. During this proposed consultation, the ZGK requested that the boundary commissioner ensure the local population “be guaranteed absolute freedom from punishment and reprisals for expressing their opinions before the commission.”Footnote 49 Indeed, the ZGK had already prepared pamphlets to send to the border area announcing the possibility for consultation, as it prepared to have the local population share its displeasure with the border moving east.
In a meeting two days before the scheduled date of the annexation, the Inter-Allied commission informed the Austrian and Czechoslovak boundary commission representatives that they would not consult the local population on any matters relating to the demarcation of the border. Furthermore, a plebiscite would not occur in the region, and the Inter-Allied commission ordered the boundary commissions to draw the border according to the text of the Treaty of Saint-Germain.Footnote 50
Even though plebiscites were set to occur in Upper Silesia, East Prussia, Carinthia, and Sopron, and there were planned plebiscites in Teschen and the Saar, for instance, all of these areas were larger (and arguably more contentious) than the area along the Lower Austrian-Bohemian border. At the same time, the commissions also agreed that the population in the region would be guaranteed freedom of movement across the border during its demarcation.Footnote 51 Another meeting took place the next day, where the Austrian delegation continued to propose an amended border, while the Czechoslovak delegation wished to stick to the border decided on in the treaty. The issue was not resolved during the meeting, and the commissions would not meet again until 11 August in Budějovice, after the annexation of the region had already taken place.Footnote 52
After Czechoslovakia officially annexed parts of the region into the country, newspapers reported on the reaction of locals. One report claimed that one person watching the arrival of the Czechoslovak delegation at the Gmünd railway station sighed, stating “who would have thought of this six years ago!”Footnote 53 The report also claimed that the owner of the restaurant at the station was allowed to remain in his position only if he made his entire staff speak Czech. There were also rumors of an elderly man grabbing his baptismal record and residence permit and fleeing across the border, as others believed they would be drafted into the Czechoslovak army if they stayed.Footnote 54 Like the locals, Austrian government officials were also worried about the train station. Since it now fell under Czechoslovak control, Austrian officials were concerned about access to the station and use of the rail lines, as well as access to pipes and water lines, since they had yet to build a new station at their own expense.Footnote 55
The official demarcation work by the Czechoslovak and Austrian boundary commissions began in August 1920 after the meetings and annexation took place. Their job was to demarcate the boundary set out in the Treaty of Saint-Germain with no major changes permitted. Both commissions had agreed to divide the border into subsections that would be mapped at different times over the next few years. The section of the border that included Gmünd was the first part of the border that the commissions would map.Footnote 56 Making matters easier for the physical demarcation of the border, the commissions chose Gmünd as the main site for the construction of granite boundary stones that would mark the border on land. Due to its central location and existing transportation infrastructure, Gmünd was understood to be the best site for the construction of these granite stones, as the stones could efficiently be sent to the other border sections using the railway that was now under Czechoslovak control.Footnote 57 By 1 September the boundary stones for the section of the border including Gmünd had already been prepared and were ready to be positioned.Footnote 58
The municipalities in Vitorazsko, including Gmünd, that were annexed to Czechoslovakia mainly contained families of railway operators, totaling approximately 60 percent of the working population in the area according to both Czechoslovak and Austrian officials. After the opening of the Emperor Franz Joseph Railway in 1869, Gmünd had become the center of its operations, housing the railway junction connecting Vienna to Prague, and was home to several major workshops and factories. In the Gmünd workshops alone, there were 1040 employees, estimated to increase to 1200 once the railway workshops were operational again. The ZGK stated that the Austrian government would guarantee the town’s large number of railway workers housing in Austria and movement across the border, “without any inconvenience,” even if they were employed by the Czechoslovak state railway.Footnote 59 Meanwhile Czechoslovak officials claimed that a large part of this population was also “nationally conscious” Czech minorities and that the railway station and associated workplaces were cleanly separated from the rest of Gmünd by the Lainsitz River, thereby following the text and “spirit” of the treaty.
With the river serving as the boundary, Czechoslovak officials requested that the customs officers be placed on the southeastern point of the bridge over the river and that Czechoslovakia have unlimited rights to that section of the river since the waterworks of state railways was drawn from there. Furthermore, the two states would need to negotiate Austria’s use of the station until the state could build its own, since freight and supplies needed to be transported into the Austrian part of Gmünd. While Czechoslovak officials cited the presence of Czech minorities in some of the municipalities of the area, their main concerns were state security and the continuation of factory and railway operations, which they argued could be uninterrupted only under Czechoslovak control.Footnote 60
The period from the annexation of Gmünd in July 1920 to the arrival of the boundary commissions to the region in late August and early September 1920 filled the community in Gmünd with anxiety and uncertainty. With the confirmation that no plebiscite would occur in the region, locals were rightfully concerned about their ability to ensure their social and economic survival after the border moved east when the boundary commission arrived. As it became increasingly clear the Allied Powers would ignore their concerns over self-determination in the region, the local pro-Austrian community in Gmünd soon changed their strategy to force the Inter-Allied commission to hear and acknowledge them.
Out of the Meeting Room: The September Demonstration in Gmünd
The commission has absolutely refused to come into direct contact with the population that hoped to be heard by it. The work of asserting local interests within the commission has thus fallen entirely on our delegate, Lieutenant Colonel Metzger, who deserves the recognition for having tirelessly tried everything to save the threatened area as much as possible.Footnote 61
In the year between the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain in September 1919 and the beginning of the physical work on the border demarcation in August 1920, local politicians from Gmünd and its surrounding area flooded the Inter-Allied commission with letters stating their opinions on the border changes.Footnote 62 One of the most vocal protestors was Dr. Hans Günther, a representative from the Gmünd district administration, described as a “young, rather tall, slim, blonde gentleman.”Footnote 63 In his letters, Günther wrote in support of Austrian representatives from other municipalities along the proposed border who disagreed with the border changes and raised concerns about where the border fell in relation to waterways and farmland. He was vocal in his dislike of Czechoslovak control of the region, referencing Czechoslovakia’s “centers of exploitation” and stating that Austrian workers would be economically disadvantaged under Czechoslovak rule.Footnote 64 In late August, Günther sent a petition with ninety-six signatories requesting that the Inter-Allied commission change the border at Weissenbach, arguing that it needed to be changed for economic reasons:
From hill 681 running north along the border of the cadastral municipalities of Naglitz and Weissenbach to the “Krebsgraben” (tributary of the “Waschelteich”); from there along the Krebsgraben in an easterly direction to the point of intersection of the road from Weissenbach to Erdweis; then from the limit of the cadastral municipalities of Weissenbach and Hohenberg to the southeastern point of the territory of the municipality of Hohenberg. Thanks to this line the possibility of remaining in Austria would be given to the municipality of Weissenbach which for the economic reasons expressed above seems necessary.Footnote 65
He wrote that many people within his municipality worked in Gmünd and would lose their jobs without his requested change to the border, with part of the town now in Czechoslovakia. Out of the thirty-five families in his village, he added, while many were peasants, the remaining families were employed as carpenters, masons, and day laborers in Gmünd. Furthermore, many received their medical care in the town.Footnote 66 As the third point in the amendments for the instructions for the boundary commissions stated in May, the state commission representatives could alter the text of the treaty if it was for “purely economic reasons,” which had strategically become the main argument for Austrian state and regional actors when advocating for Austrian control of the entirety of Gmünd and its surrounding region.
While Günther was the most vocal petitioner in the documents collected by the Austrian boundary commission, other local politicians submitted petitions as well. Representatives from the political administration of Třeboň, other representatives of the Gmünd district administration, commissioners, representatives from the Customs Guard administration, municipal councilors, and mayors all submitted petitions to the Inter-Allied, Czechoslovak, and Austrian boundary commissions requesting border changes from the text of the treaties between September 1919 and August 1920.Footnote 67 Austrian newspapers also covered the border changes closely, highlighting how the border changes had impacted the town and surrounding region. For instance, with the border changes, the Rottenschachen (Rapšach) fire brigade had to be separated from the Schrems (Skřemelice) Fire Brigade Association.Footnote 68 Newspapers also highlighted the Inter-Allied commission’s refusal to consult residents of Gmünd, citing their bias toward Czechoslovakia and its desire to control the railway.Footnote 69
As Jacobo García-Alvarez and Paloma Puente-Lozano have argued, it is not unusual for local communities to resort to violent means when their attempts at other petitioning efforts with boundary commissions have been exhausted, particularly when they feel their “economic and social survival” is at stake.Footnote 70 Regardless of whether pro-Austrian advocates expressing fear about economic survival was strategic, genuine, or both, the Inter-Allied commission and the Czechoslovak state boundary commission had indeed ignored their concerns, forcing the local community to resort to other means to have their concerns heard. With the Inter-Allied commission announcing that they would not meet with Günther or other pro-Austrian advocates regarding the border changes, he and some of the local population soon took more aggressive action to ensure the commission addressed his concerns when they came to Gmünd for a planned border inspection in late September.
The Austrian and Czechoslovak boundary commissions provided different perspectives on the 23 September 1920 demonstration in Gmünd. In the documents collected by the Austrian boundary commission, the officials and representatives interviewed describe the incident as a large demonstration where the local population wished to exercise their perceived right to consult the Inter-Allied commission representatives. In fact, one of the main concerns of the Austrian representatives—in particular Hugo Metzger, the head of the Austrian Boundary Commission—was consultation with the local population, which is brought up almost immediately in each of the interviews conducted after the incident.Footnote 71 The documents focus on Günther as one of the leaders of this demonstration, stating that he communicated the crowd’s concerns to the delegates. In fact, he was the main representative from the demonstration that requested a meeting with the Inter-Allied commission.Footnote 72 In response, representatives from the meeting told him that he should consult the crowd himself, as the commission would not meet with any demonstrators.Footnote 73
The Czechoslovak boundary commission’s story differed. Their interviews and reports on the incident were primarily concerned with the violence that occurred that day, rather than with requests for public consultation. According to the Czechoslovak commission documents, Günther led a crowd of 1000 people from across the region, who violently forced the car carrying Italian representative Pellicelli to stop at the bridge over the Lainsitz River. While the meeting still occurred despite the crowd’s best efforts to stop the representatives, the crowd gathered outside the office to protest the decisions reached in Paris and made it difficult for the commission members to complete their work. Once the commission members had finished for the day, the car halted at the barricade at the bridge, and the crowd descended into violence before the car carrying Pellicelli drove over the barricade, across the bridge, and away from the demonstrators.Footnote 74
The Austrian commission did not characterize the incident as violent, and neither did Austrian newspapers reporting on the incident, but it still acknowledged the same basic events as the Czechoslovak commission.Footnote 75 In the Austrian account of events, when the crowd became more physical with the Inter-Allied commission at the bridge after the meeting, their anger was targeted at the gendarmes who had helped disassemble the barricade that allowed the car carrying Pellicelli to cross the bridge and drive away from the crowd.Footnote 76 The Austrian commission acknowledged the anger of the crowd, but its description of the violence never reached the same level of sensation as it did in the Czechoslovak commission’s documents. For instance, when Pellicelli was hit by a member of the crowd, the Austrian officials wrote that this may have been an accident, as the person who hit him claimed the crowd shoved him through the delegate’s car window.Footnote 77
While the Czechoslovak boundary commission was troubled with the violence of the demonstration, the Austrian commission was more concerned with the narrative the Czechoslovak commission pushed forward after the fact. The Austrian commission raised concerns that the Czechoslovak commission was taking advantage of the incident in Gmünd to seize new areas along the border that had not been previously agreed upon. In a report on a meeting that took place the day after the demonstration, the Austrian commission accused Dr. Václav Roubík, the Commissioner of the Czechoslovak boundary commission for the border with Austria, of carving out a bridgehead along the Lainsitz River that had not been previously agreed upon, thereby encouraging Czechoslovakia to occupy a region that they had not been given control of in the treaty.Footnote 78
Even with the differences in their documents, the commissions did agree on some basic facts. On 23 September 1920 there was a meeting of the Austrian and Czechoslovak boundary commission members with representatives from the Inter-Allied commission in Gmünd. Upon the arrival of the representatives from the Inter-Allied commission, a large crowd gathered at both the bridge across the Lainsitz River and the district office where the meeting took place. Hans Günther was again a leading figure in this demonstration. The representatives were able to avoid the first crowd at the bridge and conduct their meeting on the border at the castle by detouring around the bridge and heading straight to the office. Those who participated in the demonstration were concerned with the arrival of the commission, and believed they could influence the border changes, whether by negotiation (according to the Austrian commission) or violence (according to the Czechoslovak commission). A member of the crowd, who was a resident of Gmünd, injured Pellicelli, the Italian delegate, causing Pellicelli to order the car through the barricade on the bridge. Finally, the crowd became angry once the representatives had left but ultimately dispersed.Footnote 79
Regardless of which documents more accurately describe what happened in Gmünd that day, the events that both commissions agreed on demonstrate several important points. First, the local population in Gmünd believed that they would be able to consult the Inter-Allied commission. While Günther was aware that the commission had refused public consultation, he, along with the crowd, still believed they could nominate a representative from the demonstration to meet with the representatives of the commissions to consult on the border changes. While this effort was ultimately unsuccessful, the attempt of Günther and the demonstrators indicates that locals felt as though they should participate in the delimitation of the border once the boundary commissions arrived for inspections, even after their opportunity for self-determination was largely ignored in Paris and in the meetings confirming there would be no plebiscite. The border was not simply an abstraction for people living along it, but a physical presence that they worried would negatively impact their life if their homes, their farms, or their workplaces were placed in a certain state. After a year of reading through reports from meetings held behind closed doors—such as the results of the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Saint-Germain—locals wished to bring these debates into public space, to be negotiated among the appointed delegates and those who would experience the direct consequences of the border changes.
Second, the reactions to the demonstration reveal the perceived instability of the border between Lower Austria and Bohemia even after the signing of the treaty, despite the majority of the border following the previous administrative boundary. 23 September marked only a little over a month after the annexation and the in-person demarcation of the border between Czechoslovakia and Austria had begun, and there was much work to do on not only the Lower Austrian and Bohemian border, but other borders between Czechoslovakia and Austria, as well as those states’ other international borders. The Czechoslovak boundary commission painted not only the protestors in Gmünd as violent but also included local representatives and politicians as part of the unruly mass who had attempted to disrupt the previously agreed upon border. The Austrian boundary commission, however, presented these inhabitants as simply wishing to consult and negotiate the border, as they should have a say in where they lived, like other populations who had been granted plebiscites and consultation with boundary commissions.
Finally, the demonstration highlighted the difference in the border-making and claim making strategies between Austrian and Czechoslovak officials. Accusations from the Austrian commission members to the Czechoslovak commission members that they were altering the border without prior agreement highlighted this level of mistrust between the commissions. Importantly, both commissions believed that despite the signing of the treaty over a year earlier, borders were still malleable and up for negotiation, even once the physical work of its demarcation had begun. The Czechoslovak commission took a defensive approach to this fact, strategically highlighting that the instructions for the boundary commissions ordered the commissions to follow the wording of the treaty and promised a quick and efficient demarcation of the border if the treaty was followed. Furthermore, as Haslinger has demonstrated for the Czechoslovak-Hungarian border, Czechoslovak officials constructed a potential security threat for the state if the border was altered and the local population given any input. The Austrian commission, on the other hand, attempted to emphasize the economic impact the border would have to convince the Allied Powers that Austrian control would provide a more stable region after the war. In the end, the Czechoslovak strategy proved more successful for claim making.
In reaction to the demonstration in Gmünd, the Czechoslovak and Austrian boundary commissions remained loyal to their previous discourse. The Austrian commission had focused on the local community’s attempt to exercise self-determination, temporarily prioritizing this rhetoric over that of economic concerns, as they had done during the Paris Peace Conference. The Czechoslovak commission, however, emphasized the role of violence during the demonstration to back their security threat discourse. Despite the Austrian foreign minister promising that the Austrian government was not funding any “unrest, strikes, or riots” along the border during the negotiations at the peace conference, the Czechoslovak commission now had ammunition for their narrative that they faced threats from Austria based on where the border fell. While the Austrian commission had attempted to fulfill their role as an intermediary between the local community and the Allied Powers, the Czechoslovak commission and the Inter-Allied commission avoided consultation with the community during all stages of their appeals: first, during the peace conference, then the petition writing, and finally the border inspection. In fact, the demonstration would have lasting negative consequences for local communities beyond Austria; a year later in September 1921, Pellicelli and the Inter-Allied commission threatened to avoid border inspections and public consultation along the Czechoslovak-Hungarian boundary if there were any murmurings of large demonstrations like the one in Gmünd.Footnote 80
Settling the Border? Gmünd after the Demonstration
While the first part of the annexation of Vitorazsko had occurred on 31 July, the second part was scheduled for 1 October 1920, only a week after the demonstration in Gmünd.Footnote 81 Even with the aftermath of the demonstration and the investigation still ongoing, the annexation took place, and in mid-October, the boundary commissions continued their work on the border without another demonstration the size of the one on 23 September. Smaller protests about the border nonetheless continued from advocates of Austrian control, while stories of Germanization and Austrian oppression persisted from advocates of Czechoslovak control. The border remained an important discussion among locals for the next decade as they experienced the consequences of the demarcation, but having exhausted all their options for claim making and negotiating the boundary changes, the protests decreased significantly.
The work on the demarcation of the border continued in October and November 1920, and from mid-December 1920 to at least February 1921, there was a planned suspension of border marking in anticipation of harsh winter weather. While the boundary commissions were suspending their work, they requested that the residents near the border excavate the land on the border by the end of February.Footnote 82 According to the agreement between the commissions, there was to be a one-meter strip of land cleared on either side to clearly mark the border. The Austrian commission requested that those who owned the land along the border “voluntarily” carry out this work, as it would save the commission money.Footnote 83 While the commissions retired to their homes for the winter break, then, residents in the town were expected to continue to work on the border demarcation.
In early 1921, the commissions focused on getting reimbursements for their work along the border, including travel and accommodation expenses.Footnote 84 But while the state boundary commissions worked to ensure they remained in control of their finances, the economic situation in Gmünd was more precarious. Boundary stones used to mark the border continued to be constructed and delivered in 1921, although the factory in Gmünd experienced some issues. Despite constructing boundary stones and preparing them for delivery based on requests from the boundary commissions, approximately 1000 still remained in the factory storage that the commissions were not purchasing. Since the factory in Gmünd had created boundary stones out of granite (of which the region had a rich natural supply), rather than artificial materials, their stones were more expensive than those of some competitors. In June the factory urgently requested that the Austrian boundary commission purchase some of their remaining stock, as many residents of the town relied on this factory work as their source of income.Footnote 85 By December, the boundary stone shipments continued from Gmünd, and over one hundred stones were delivered to neighboring regions along the border.Footnote 86 Yet even with these deliveries, the economic situation in the region began to deteriorate, and workers and factory owners in the region became increasingly concerned as high unemployment plagued the region on both sides of the border.Footnote 87
The Austrian commission requested that the technical staff working to demarcate the border along the Lainsitz River complete their work by October 1922 and that this working group submit the final documentation by spring 1923. The technical staff, however, faced issues marking the border, as using the river for a “natural” boundary proved to have problems. Since rivers flood, expand, and move with the seasons, the technical officers found that some of the line that had been used to temporarily mark the border on dry land found itself in the Lainsitz River in July, and the boundary stones would need to be placed once the river had moved again.Footnote 88 In the end, the border was slightly altered from the Treaty of Saint-Germain, such as along the Lainsitz River in flooded areas, but largely matched the text of the treaty and the negotiations, despite the various protests and concerns from the commissions—and hope from locals—that it might be altered.Footnote 89
After the border settlement, there was still free movement across the border as both states had promised. The boundary commissions had warned that the borders between the states did not always have great visibility for officials, and this indeed resulted in some smuggling between the two states.Footnote 90 Some municipalities in the larger region had requested free movement of certain goods, such as potatoes, to avoid paying duties on them.Footnote 91 There was also some movement of professionals (e.g., teachers) to the other state, but many other times cross-border movement was limited to temporary visits.Footnote 92 However, one Austrian official argued that movement between the two states was still too lax in late 1920, as rail passengers were able to move freely, sometimes even avoiding customs checks and inspections. He warned that “[b]y showing the control stamp and the control slip, you can board the Vienna train with your luggage without hindrance,” stating that this introduced opportunities for more smuggling into Austria.Footnote 93
Not all the results of the border changes were negative for the local community, however. Some inhabitants also held annual celebrations to mark the anniversary of Czechoslovakia’s annexation of the region.Footnote 94 But even with the Czechoslovak annexation of a large portion of the area, stories of German oppression in the region continued to be published in Czech-language newspapers, specifically regarding schooling.Footnote 95 Protests against the border’s location also continued, although not to the same extent as they had in the years prior. Locals, particularly advocates of Austrian control of the region, were primarily concerned with the economic situation, believing the border changes had negatively impacted their livelihoods. One Austrian priest organized a petition to have several municipalities returned to his parish, which became a prominent news story in both German- and Czech-language newspapers. While the priest did not protest the international border, he did protest the changes in religious jurisdiction in the region. Even if his parishes were in Czechoslovakia, he argued, he believed they should fall under his jurisdiction in Austria rather than the parish based in Budějovice in Bohemia. Although the priest did not request a legal change of the international border, Czech-language newspapers still painted him as an “irredentist.”Footnote 96
Meanwhile, the same Inter-Allied commission members continued to work with the Czechoslovak commission along the borders of the state with Hungary in 1921, and the Austrian commission worked with another Inter-Allied commission along the Hungarian border in 1922. While the Inter-Allied commission allowed limited consultation along the border of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, as Haslinger has shown, Czechoslovak officials protested the decision, discouraging the commission from accepting memoranda that encouraged border changes from the Treaty of Trianon.Footnote 97 Meanwhile, Hungarian officials were pleased with the high volume of memoranda encouraging border changes that would favor Hungary.Footnote 98 Along the Austrian-Hungarian border, Burri has written about how the Inter-Allied commission put serious effort into public consultation, including over forty stops along the border for thirty-minute consultation meetings with local elites.Footnote 99 This was a stark contrast to the Inter-Allied commission in Czechoslovakia, who had granted no public consultation in Gmünd and along the Hungarian border limited their visits to only five days, meeting a maximum of six delegates at each of their stops.Footnote 100
In the end, the results of the border change and the physical demarcation of the border did not have a significant negative impact on the community as many had feared, even with the unemployment issues the region faced. Smaller protests did continue after the border demarcation, but as demonstrators had discovered in September 1920, their avenues for consultation and claim making had largely been exhausted as they had to adjust to their new reality with the failure of self-determination in the region and prioritization of other factors for deciding the border. The delimitation and demarcation work on the border between Austria and Czechoslovakia officially ended in 1925 when the boundary commissions for the Austrian-Czechoslovak border were dissolved six years after the Treaty of Saint-Germain had been signed. Pellicelli remained involved in the final stages of the border drawing process, overseeing the creation of the maps that marked the border between Austria and Czechoslovakia.Footnote 101 In 1925, he sent letters about the plan to dissolve the commissions for the border, confirming that the official demarcation work on the border was complete.Footnote 102 Even with the end of the demarcation work in 1925, however, the perceived mutability of these borders remained in the minds of the region’s inhabitants for the next decade, until Austria and Germany annexed the region in 1938.
Conclusion
In 1923, Czech geographer and former Deputy Commissioner of the Czechoslovak boundary commission, Viktor Dvorský, shared reflections on the demarcation of the border in Gmünd and the larger region of Vitorazsko. He wrote that when the Treaty of Saint-Germain had come into force in the summer of 1920, Austria still wished for Czechoslovakia to wait to occupy Vitorazsko until the boundary commissions finished their work. According to Dvorský, officials in Prague considered this request, but ultimately decided not to disappoint those who advocated for Czechoslovak control in the region and had already prepared music and celebrations for the occupation. He also wrote that Austria wished not only to delay the annexation of the region but also the actual demarcation work, and if the annexation had not occurred in 1920, the border would not have been settled as quickly as it was.Footnote 103 Even after the demarcation work near Gmünd had been completed, then, distrust and accusations persisted among the commission members.Footnote 104
The case of Gmünd is an important lens into how local communities and boundary commissions interacted after WWI when demarcating Europe’s new borders. Both state actors and the local population in Gmünd perceived borders and the terms of the peace treaties as negotiable even a year after the signing of the treaties. Following a year of reading about meetings behind closed doors, the demonstrators wished to have their concerns heard as the border entered public space. In doing so they attempted to exercise their perceived right to consultation with the commission, while also aligning their claim making strategies with Austrian state officials by emphasizing the economic consequences of the border changes. Only when these avenues for claim making failed did the population in Gmünd turn to more physical (and potentially violent) protest. The Czechoslovak commission members strategically used this demonstration to support their security-threat discourse, which aided them in ensuring the border largely matched the text of the treaty as the Allied Powers hoped to maintain stability in the region. The demarcation of the Lower Austrian-Bohemian border at Gmünd thus reveals both failed and successful claim making and border-making strategies from state and local actors after the war as they negotiated the most dramatic remapping of Europe in the twentieth century.
