Zurück zum Vaterland! 1935 Volksabstimmung Saarbrücken (Bernt Zander, 1935).
The Saarland is one of Germany's sixteen federal states. The capital is Saarbrücken and it has a population of 1 million inhabitants.
Saarland is located at the German-France border .
After WWI, under the Treaty of Versailles, the 'Territory of the Saar Basin' (with a wealth of coal deposits and large-scale industrial exploitation) was occupied and governed by the United Kingdom and France for a period of fifteen years. Prior to its creation as a territory the Saarland did not exist as a unified entity. The inhabitants voted to rejoin Germany in a plebiscite held in 1935.
After WWII the Saarland was a French-occupied territory (the Saar Protectorate). In 1955, in another plebiscite, 68% of the voters rejected the independence offered by France, despite the public support of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer for this plan. The rejection was interpreted as support to join Germany, and so Saarland did on January 1, 1957.
next episode: Ani
I've heard of the Saarland, but I wasn't aware of all the history, thanks.
ReplyDeleteI have some 'Saar' stamps.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about a "subliminal stimuli" on the nationalist map. Around the Saarland there is written "FRANKREICH" (blue) and "RHEINLAND", "PFALZ" and "LOTHRINGER" in the same style (black). Perhaps the author was also thinking about Alsace and Lorraine ("Lothringen", in German), conquered by France after a previous German parenthesis between 1871 and 1918.
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