The legal significance of the Treaty of St. Germain

After World War I (19141918), the victorious powers (the United States of America, Great Britain, France, Italy et al.) signed treaties in the Paris suburbs of Versailles, Saint-Germain, Trianon, Neuilly and Sèvres with Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey, to end the war also in legal terms. The treaty with Austria was signed on 10th September 1919 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The Treaty of Saint-Germain consists of 381 articles and several annexes. Its provisions cover not just areas that are typically included in a peace treaty (border lines, war reparations, arms limitations, etc.) but also refer to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which required, for instance, provisions regarding the future citizenship status of its former citizens. The Treaty also contains provisions which are not at all or only marginally related to the war, such as the Covenant of the League of Nations, an international organisation which is regarded as the precursor of the United Nations. Certain parts of the Treaty, including, in particular, the provisions on the Austrian borders (which continue to be valid today), have always received broad interest from the public as well as from academics. Other parts, on the other hand, even if they were of great practical relevance, have not been adequately explored. A comprehensive, legally stringent analysis of the entire treaty has never been attempted. The present project aims to fill in the blank. Its aim is an analysis of the complete Treaty with juridical methods. It will result in a commentary of the Treaty where all the important legal and legal-historical aspects of the Treaty will be explored. The object of the project is thus not the history of the Treaty itself but its legal significance, which is reflected for instance in the decisions of the Austrian courts, but also in the activities of special arbitral tribunals and other organs that were established by or as a consequence of the Treaty. Provisions which continue to be valid and practically relevant (such as those on religious and ethnic minorities, which are part of the constitution) will receive special attention. Whether a given provision is still valid at all needs to be answered in respect of national as well as international law. This systematic appraisal is thus not only targeted at an audience of historians and lawyers with an interest in legal history, but also at students and lecturers of Law as well as the Humanities, and practitioners such as practicing lawyers or teachers. The commentary is scheduled to appear in time for the centenary of the Treaty in autumn 2019, if possible. A conference is envisaged for November 2018.

The Treaty of St. Germain is a decisive founding document in the history of Austria. Whereas individual parts of the treaty, such as the one on Austria's borders, have always been dealt with intensively in the literature, a comprehensive and, in particular, legal commentary on the treaty as a whole has been lacking. The present work aims to overcome this desideratum in legal history: 18 authors from various disciplines have written comprehensive commentaries on every article of the Treaty of St. Germain. The significance of the individual provisions at the time and today is examined in particular. The first comprehensive commentary on the Treaty of St. Germain: - Commentary on all articles by acknowledged experts in the field - Historical analysis of the complex matter - Focus on the significance of the individual provisions then and now