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| Treaty of Peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Austria | |
|---|---|
 Austrian chancellor Renner addressing the delegates during the signing ceremony | |
| Signed | 10 September 1919 |
| Location | Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye,Île-de-France, France |
| Effective | 16 July 1920 |
| Condition | Ratification by Austria and three Principal Allied Powers |
| Signatories | Principal Allied and Associated Powers Other Allied Powers
|
| Depositary | French Government |
| Languages | French,English,Italian |
| Full text | |
 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye atWikisource | |
| Paris Peace Conference |
|---|
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Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye |
Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine |
TheTreaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (French:Traité de Saint-Germain-en-Laye) was signed on 10 September 1919 by the victoriousAllies of World War I on the one hand and by theRepublic of German-Austria on the other. Like theTreaty of Trianon withHungary and theTreaty of Versailles with theWeimar Republic, it contained theCovenant of theLeague of Nations and as a result was not ratified by theUnited States but was followed by theUS–Austrian Peace Treaty of 1921.
The treaty signing ceremony took place at theChâteau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye.[2]
As a preamble, on 21 October 1918, 208 German-speaking delegates of the AustrianImperial Council had convened in a "provisional national assembly of German-Austria" at theLower Austrian Landtag. When the collapse of theAustro-Hungarian Army culminated at theBattle of Vittorio Veneto, the Social DemocratKarl Renner was elected German-Austrian State Chancellor on 30 October. In the course of theAster Revolution on 31 October, the newly establishedHungarian People's Republic under Minister PresidentMihály Károlyi declared thereal union with Austria terminated.
With theArmistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November 1918, the fate of theAustro-Hungarian Monarchy was sealed. On 11 November 1918 EmperorCharles I of Austria officially declared to "relinquish every participation in the administration", one day later the provisional assembly declared German-Austria a democratic republic and part of the Weimar Republic. However, on the territory of theCisleithanian ("Austrian") half of the former empire, the newly established states ofCzechoslovakia,Poland, and theKingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later named Yugoslavia) had been proclaimed. Moreover,South Tyrol andTrentino were occupied byItalian forces and Yugoslav troops entered the formerDuchy of Carinthia, leading to violent fights.
AnAustrian Constitutional Assembly election was held on 16 February 1919. The Assembly re-elected Karl Renner state chancellor and enacted theHabsburg Law concerning the banishment of theHouse of Habsburg-Lorraine. When Chancellor Renner arrived at Saint-Germain in May 1919, he and the Austrian delegation found themselves excluded from the negotiations led by French Prime MinisterGeorges Clemenceau. Upon an Allied ultimatum, Renner signed the treaty on 10 September. The Treaty of Trianon in June 1920 between Hungary and the Allies completed the disposition of the former Dual Monarchy.
The treaty declared that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was to be dissolved. According to article 177 Austria, along with the otherCentral Powers, accepted responsibility for starting the war. The newRepublic of Austria, consisting of most of the German-speaking Danubian and Alpine provinces in formerCisleithania, recognized the independence of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The treaty included 'war reparations' of large sums of money, directed towards the Allies (however the exact amount has never been defined and collected from Austria), as well as provisions for the liquidation of theAustro-Hungarian Bank.
Cisleithanian Austria had to face significant territorial losses, amounting to over 60 percent of the prewar Austrian Empire's territory:
The Allies had explicitly committed themselves to the cause of the minority peoples of Austria-Hungary late in the war. Indeed, US Secretary of StateRobert Lansing had effectively ended what slim chance existed for Austria-Hungary to survive the war when he told Vienna that since the Allies were now committed to the Czechs, Slovaks and South Slavs, autonomy for the nationalities–the tenth of theFourteen Points–was no longer enough. Reflecting this, the Allies not only allowed the minority peoples to help create new states (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia), recreate former states (Poland), or join their ethnic brethren in existing nation-states (Romania, Italy), but allowed the successor states to absorb significant blocks of German-inhabited territory. However, the promise of self-determination ran up against the reality that no convenient line could be drawn to separate intermingled nationalities. In further cases,irredentists would claim that some German or Hungarian-inhabited territories had actually been theirs. This was well rendered by the fact that only a few plebiscites were allowed in the disputed areas to ascertain the wishes of the local populaces.
Article 88 of the treaty required Austria to refrain from directly or indirectly compromising its independence, which meant that Austria could not enter into political or economic union with theWeimar Republic[4] without the agreement of the council of theLeague of Nations. Accordingly, the new republic's initial self-chosen name of German-Austria (German:Deutschösterreich) had to be changed to Austria. Many Austrians would come to find this term harsh (especially among the Austrian Germans being a vast majority who would support asingle German nation state), due to Austria's later economic weakness, which was caused by loss of land. Because of this, support for the idea ofAnschluss (political union) withNazi Germany later proved popular.
Conscription was abolished and theAustrian Army was limited to a force of 30,000 volunteers. There were numerous provisions dealing withDanubian navigation, the transfer of railways, and other details involved in the breakup of a great empire into several small independent states.
The vast reduction of population, territory and resources of the new Austria relative to the old empire wreaked havoc on the economy of the old nation, most notably inVienna, an imperial capital now without an empire to support it. For a time, the country's very existence was called into question.
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