Der Europäische Nationalitätenkongress 1925 bis 1938. Nationale Minderheiten zwischen Lobbyisten und Grossmachtinteressen by Sabine Bamberger-Stemman (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS I55 Andropov, somewhat airbrushedout of the picture, was not long in office but he firstused a phrasecelebratedby hisprotege Gorbachev,gotovykh retseptov net 'thereare no ready recipes', admittingthe limitationsof the ideology to guide the party. By and large, though, such lacunae do not detractfroma fine study,which in my view shouldbe of greatvalue forteachingpurposes. Department ofPoliticalScience RONALDJ. HILL Trinity College, Dublin Bamberger-Stemman, Sabine. Der Europdische Nationalitdtenkongress 1925 bis i938. NJationale Minderheiten zwischenLobbyisten und Grossmachtinteressen. Materialien und Studien zur Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung, 7. HerderInstitut , Marburg, 2000. viii + 6I9 pp. Tables. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography. ?57.50. MOST histories of interwar Europe fail even to mention the European Nationalities Congress, formed in I925 largely but not exclusively at the initiative of German minority leaders from the Baltic states. The congress claimed to speak for some 40 million members of European minorities and published what was purveyed as its own journal from I927, JN/ation undStaat.In fact the publication costs fell on the Reich government. So too did much of the organizational burden of the congress after I927, including its permanent secretariat, managed by the Estonian German Ewald Ammende. German interests inevitably came to predominate in the Congress as it was increasingly kept afloat from I929 by Reich subsidies. By the time the Nationalities Congress ceased its annual meetings just before war broke out, it was virtually a plaything of National Socialist foreign policy. This was not how it all started. The congress expressed among other things profound disquiet with the League of Nations, which embraced the principle of minority protection but had little power to compel most European states to implement it. Too much depended on the whims of individual governments; minorities themselves had no status at international law. With the Nationalities Congress minorities took matters into their own hands and set out to lobby intensively for European-wide legislation enshrining minority rights, specifically in the form of cultural autonomy. Cultural autonomy envisaged minorities having complete control of their own culture and education, with state resources allocated for this purpose in proportion to the size of a minority. Proponents of the doctrine in the Nationalities Congress included the 'thinker of the minorities movement', Paul Schiemann, also the leading German Balt politician of the interwar years and editor of the highly influential German language paper, the liberal Rigasche Rundschau. A keyfigurein both the Verband derdeutschen Minderheiten Europas and the Nationalities Congress, Schiemann articulated the doctrine of cultural autonomy in its most radical form. He envisaged an 'anational' state where the separation of culture from the political sphere would lead towards a future Europe as a collection of peoples or 'co-nationals' rather than sovereign nation states. I56 SEER, 8i, I, 2003 Such attackson the 'selfish'nation statenaturallyoffendedthe nationalist/ volkisch elements who came to dominate the Verband derdeutschen Volksgruppen and, thanksto Reich funds flowing into it through the Verband'soffices, the Nationalities Congresstoo. Because culturalautonomy sought to prevent the assimilation of national minorities (although not, as far as Schiemann was concerned, political inclusion) the doctrine could be misused by the extreme right. For this sector, preserving the distinctive identity of German 'conationals ' in Central Eastern Europe might prevent the detested territorial settlement of Versaillesfrom cohering, leading to a reorderingof the region on the basis of a Greater Germany. What began for Schiemann and other committed democrats as an attempt to build a cultural Volksgemeinschaftwas ultimatelyhijackedby national socialistsin the cause of a racialVolksgemeinschaft .The nation state, insteadof being discredited,was elevated. The intellectualAchilles heel of thisbook is that for all its immense detail it views the I920S almost exclusively through the prism of the I930s, when Schiemann and his ilkhad been thrustfromthe centre of the Europeanstage. As a result Bamberger-Stemmanndoes not really engage seriouslywith the doctrine of cultural autonomy as such, or recognize it clearly enough as an idea ahead of its era. This partlyexplainsthe relativelyslightimpact made by the congress on the British and French governments. More seriously, the authorunderestimatesthe doctrine'sultimateappealto Stresemann -shown among others by Bastian Schot's study (NationoderStaat?Deutschland undder Minderheitenschutz, Marburg an der Lahn, I988). In this respect the book fails to escape the earlier tyranny of explanations centering on 'continuity' in Germanforeignpolicy. Hitler certainlyprofitedfromthe supportmechanisms set up for...