The Fate of Western Hungary 1918-1921 - Corvinus Library ...

September 2 commenting on the final Austrian peace terms, wrote: the borders
drawn for Austria we cannot change; in any case, the line follows very closely
the ethnic boundaries. That is why they did not consider a plebiscite necessary.
After an insignificant debate in the Austrian National Assembly, Chancellor
Karl Renner signed the peace treaty for Austria on September 10, 1919 in the
Paris suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. It was ratified by the Austrian
parliament on October 17. The peace – which prohibited Anschluss – trimmed
Austria back to the core provinces. It lost the South Tyrol, Trieste, Istria,
Dalmatia, Krajina, and a part of Carinthia. It did, however, manage to gain a
strip of Western Hungary that was part of Hungary for a thousand years, which
later, from January 1, 1922, was called Burgenland.
With the result of the subsequent plebiscite in Sopron, and later minor
border adjustments, the peace treaty of Saint-Germain ordered 4,364 km 2 of
Western Hungary, with 345 settlements, to be transferred to Austria. Among
them, three cities (Sopron, Kismarton and Ruszt) were carved from the country.
According to the data of the 1910 census, it represented 345,082 people, of
whom 44,191 (12.5%) were of Hungarian mother tongue, 245,714 (77.2%)
German and 49,374 (14.3%) Croatian. [Nota bene: German mother-tongue is
not the same as Austrian ethnicity-ed.] Of the total population, almost twice as
many as those recorded as having Hungarian as the mother tongue – another
80,632 (23.4%) – spoke Hungarian. 138
The Austrian government did not want to accept some of the terms of the
treaty it felt were unjust, either. Shortly, at the end of 1919, it requested
plebiscites in all the German speaking areas along the Austrian border, to have
the population decide to which country they want to belong. The Peace
Conference only ordered one referendum – in Carinthia. In the meantime,
Austria continued to push for plebiscites in western Hungary. In fact, it
suggested that it be expanded to the eastern portion of Moson County, as well
as in Kőszeg and Szentgotthárd. As a result of the January 1920 Austria-
Czechoslovakia friendship agreement, Austria dropped the idea of plebiscites in
Western Hungary. 139 (The referendum in Carinthia was held on October 10,
1920, as a result of which Austria was able to keep Klagenfurt and its
surrounding area.)
138 Lőkkös, op. cit., pp. 143, 288–289, 292. Regarding the size and population of the
annexed territory, numerous imprecise numbers appear in historical literature. The
reason is that Hungarian authorities ordered a census on December 30, 1920 on the
Western Hungary region ceded to Austria. As a result, the data from the 1910 and 1920
census appear intermingled or erroneously attributed.
139 Fogarassy, László: Nyugat-Magyarországi bandaharcok. (1921. augusztus–
november 4.) [Western Hungary gang wars (August – November 4, 1921)] In: Soproni
Szemle, 1961, vol. I, p. 40. Fogarassy’s treatise appeared on the 40 th anniversary of the
creation of Burgenland. The sole Hungarian language treatment of its time. According
to the expectations of the era, the title ‘gang wars’ gives away its orientation. It reflects
a servile acceptance of the period’s Austrian media’s and technical literature’s
direction, which brands the Western Hungarian revolutionaries, to this day, as ‘bandits.’
60