German Reorganization Proposals - 1871 to Present Day

[Iserlohn]

Hey y'all! Since my posts on the reorganization of Germany in the "Proposals and War Aims That Didn't Happen Map Thread" are quite popular and it's very fun to research, I decided to spin it off into its own thread.

This allows me to do the following:

1) Make multiple posts in a row without it feeling to me like I'm hogging a general thread.
2) Effectively use the threadmark system to catalogue proposals based on specific areas and timeframes.
3) Have an easier time searching my own entries in a way that allows me to add new findings that directly tie to older posts.
4) Not feel bad that in many cases I won't attach images because often there are no maps available.

In the next few weeks I'll repost stuff I put in the other thread here with some improvements (separate sources sections, threadmark titles, etc).

But to inaugurate this thread, I'm sharing two maps I found at the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum that relate to this thread's mission.

US Maps of Occupation Zones, Proposed Länder, and Territorial Claims After WW2

The first map is from March 1946 and made by the State Department! [Link to the Truman Library]

As you can see, it shows the four occupaton zones as they had been formalized in July 1945. It also marks three American proposals for the future eastern border of Germany. There the Americans are suggesting that Poland should only annex Upper Silesia, a relatively small part of Pommerania, and West Prussia with certainty, while offering two more options that would grant more territory to Poland as an alternative. The last of these is the Oder up to Upper Silesia. This is the same proposal the US State Department has been suggesting since at least January 1945, as is evident by this map [linked here to Wikimedia Foundation].

However the map also showcases hand-drawn claims by the Netherlands (after the failure of the Bakker-Schut-Plan), as well as minor annexations by Luxembourg and Belgium. It also shows, again hand-drawn, the recent expansion of the Saar Basin by France.

A similar map by the state department was made in 1947, and it shows the contemporary claims by the Benelux countries, as well as Czechoslovakia in a more polished format. [Link here to Wikimedia Foundation]

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The second map is this beauty by the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services, first made in July 1944 and then subsequently amended and edited in 1945, reaching its final state in February 1947. [Link to the Truman Library]

It shows Germany both with the now-settled Oder-Neisse border and the former Großdeutsches Reich borders, along with the current occupation zones and fifteen proposed German states (or Länder).

The thing that makes this map a particularly interesting one is that last part, actually! In the east especially you have very familiar states with borders that are quite similar to the ones that the Federal Republic of Germany would implement after reunification, but, more precisely, these look nearly identical to the short-lived Länder of the German Democratic Republic.

In the west, you have a separate Rhineland, a Greater Hesse, a separate Westphalia, and a Lower Saxony that includes both Schaumburg-Lippe and Lippe-Detmold (the latter went to North Rhine-Westphalia IOTL). In the south, Bavaria is essentially unchanged, but Baden-Württemberg exists as Württemberg-Baden and includes the former Bavarian Rhine Province/Rhenish Palatinate.

It's very noteworthy that these proposed states don't follow occupation zone borders. The Rhine Province is reunified, the Amt Neuheus (part of the Soviet zone and in the Cold War part of the GDR) is (still) part of Lower Saxony, Hesse includes the portions of Nassau and Rheinhessen that are IOTL part of Rhineland-Palatinate, and Lindau was to be reattached to Bavaria (which IOTL only happend in 1956).

The fact that this map also includes a statistical breakdown of these states. As you can see, four territorial states of this post-war Germany would have had a population of less than three million but more than one million (in decreasing order Thuringia, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein), and five states would have had a population of more than five million but less than eight million (in decreasing order Rhineland, Bavaria, Württemberg-Baden, Saxony). This would have been a fairly equal population distribution. Also interesting is the economic breakdown. Lower Saxony, Mitteldeutschland, Bavaria, and Württemberg-Baden would have been the agricultural powerhouses, while Westphalia, the Rhine Province, Württemberg-Baden, Saxony, and Mitteldeutschland would have been the industrial motors of this new Germany.

Looking past the urban states, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg would have been the economically weakest states, since neither offer a large agricultural sector nor a significant amount of industry. Mecklenburg especially might just prove itself to not be viable, which might have resulted in proposals to maybe partition it between Brandenburg and Schleswig-Holstein in the future.

 

[Iserlohn]

Hesse - Part One: The Personal Accounts of Ludwig Bergsträsser of the Post-Nazi Order

I stumbled across two sources created by Ludwig Bergsträsser, a Social Democratic politician who worked closely with the American military administration, even serving as the “President of the German Government in Hesse”, which was formally responsible for the former Free State of Hesse (but effectively excluding Rheinhessen, which was under French administration from June 1945 onwards), from April 14th 1945 to October 12th 1945, about a month after the state of Groß-Hessen was created. He continued to serve as the president of the district of Darmstadt within Groß-Hessen until 1948. He continued to be active in German politics until 1953.

Bergsträsser's counterparts in Hesse were German radio pioner Hans Bedrow was given the old Prussian adminstrative title of Oberpräsident in Nassau, while Social Democrat Fritz Hoch (whose father and older brother were both murdered by the Nazis) was given that same title but for Kurhessen/Regierungsbezirk Kassel.

Here are four proposals related to Hesse I wanna highlight based on Bergsträsser’s account.

The first is one made by Bergsträsser himself, along with others, in a statement directed at Major W. Williver, head of the Civil Administration division, published on July 26th 1945. In it Bergsträsser describes his ideal state in the region, potentially called Rhein-Main, that would consist of the following territories:​

• the former Free State of Hesse, ideally including Rheinhessen but potentially excluding Worms​
• the Prussian province of Nassau/Wiesbaden, but excluding the Kreis Biedenkopf and the northern sections of the Kreis Dillenburg within the Westerwald (whose industries were too closely connected to the Rhine-Ruhr area)​
• the Mainviereck around Aschaffenburg, because that city and the surrounding towns were generally trading westwards rather than southeastwards towards Bavaria​

This proposal failed to materialize and additionally the fate of Kurhessen in this scenario was left uncertain.

Also, after it became clear that Rhenish Hesse and the western bits of Nassau would likely remain part of the French occupation zone and thus would probably be excluded from more eastern state formations, Bergsträsser switched towards supporting a Greater Hessian state.

Bergsträsser mentions a different proposal, corroborated by General Lucius D. Clay in his book "Decision in Germany" (1950) , to divide Hesse into two states: Hesse-Nassau (consisting out of the Free State of Hesse minus Rheinhessen as well as former province of Nassau excluding the region around Montabaur) with its capital at Darmstadt and Hesse (basically consisting out of the province of Kurhessen) with its capital at Marburg. This proposal would have, according to Bergsträsser, connected most of the Rhein-Main metropolitan area and allowed for Oberhessen to be connected to Starkenburg, but it would have created a possibly non-viable state with the other Hesse. This new Hesse-Nassau would have been a smaller version of the Gau Hessen-Nassau that existed under Nazi rule in 1944.

A similar proposal to divide Hesse into two is listed by Mühlhausen, where he instead states that the Americans considered turning the former province of Hesse-Nassau into a state and the Free State of Hesse(-Darmstadt) into another, basically a continuation of the Weimar-era borders (if one were to dismember Prussia and turn its provinces into states). These two divided Hesse proposals were however very short-lived, apparently due to the American administrators listening to local Germans' concerns. Furthermore, when the Americans were preparing to create the Land Groß-Hessen, they apparently briefly considered excluding the districts of Frankfurt and Hanau from it to ensure greater control over the US command center in the region, but that was also quickly dropped.

When Groß-Hessen was founded, and later when it became modern Hessen in 1946, the question of the capital of the state was hotly debated. Kassel and Darmstadt were too much in ruins to house all the administrative centers necessary, while Frankfurt, being the main seat of the US military in Germany, was deemed as too crowded. Hence why Wiesbaden, relatively unscathed, was chosen. Fulda and Marburg were also cities that, at times, were in contention for political centers of power in case of smaller subdivisions, but apparently weren't in genuine consideration for a united Hesse.

I also want to mention that Bergsträsser apparently worked out a proposal at a meeting in Berlin in December 1946, where he suggested that Hesse could expand westwards and take over the former district of Koblenz of the Rhine Province (as well as Aschaffenburg, again, to the east), while “Westfalen-Rheinland” would receive the district of Trier (excluding the Saar area) and “Württemberg-Baden” would receive the former Bavarian Palatinate. This was to be part of a project to divide Germany into eight or nine states, probably including the Soviet occupation zone, Bergsträsser was unclear on whether it was just for the occupation zones of the Western Allies or not. Also note that this proposal was made after the French formed the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, so this would have involved the partition of that state.

While other proposals to reform Hesse have certainly existed, they will be covered in future posts, as many of these involve other regions or are part of wholesale reform proposals.​

Sources:

• “Die Gründung des Landes Hessen 1945” by Walter Mühlhausen in “Blickpunkt Hessen” (4/2005)
• "Demokratischer Neubeginn in Hessen 1945-1949" by Walter Mühlhausen
• “Befreiung, Besatzung, Neubeginn - Tagebuch des Darmstädter Regierungspräsidenten 1945-1948” by Ludwig Bergsträsser
• “Zeugnisse zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Landes Hessen: Mitgeteilt und kommentiert von Ludwig Bergsträsser” in “Vierteljahresheft für Zeitgeschichte” (4/1957)
• "Die Konstituierung des Landes "Groß-Hessen" vor 50 Jahren" by Klaus-Peter Möller, in "Hessischen Schriften zum Föderalismus und Landesparlamentarismus" Vol. 6

Sidenote: This is a slightly reworked version of a post I made in the Proposals and War Aims thread recently [linked here]. I also ordered an excellent book on Hessian history, "Hessen im 20. Jahrhundert: Eine politische Geschichte" by Wakter Mühlhausen, which is an almost 700 pages long tome, today. It might provide some new insights, since it's pretty much an aggregation of decades of research, since he is the eminent historian on Hessian history since the formation of the German Empire (and he is an excellent historian on the history of Social Democracy in Germany, too, for the record). Thanks to the Landeszentralen für politische Bildung für providing me with great resources on the cheap or even for free, at times!

 

[Iserlohn]

Germany 1949 - A Chance For Immediate Reorganization? Walter Christaller & Werner Münchheimer

As should be evident by earlier posts in this little collection of mine, the time between 1945 and 1956 was an especially productive time for German state reorganization proposals due to the non-existance of an official German state and the very young age of the Bundesrepublik, which after its founding even founded and maintained a "Sachverständigen-Ausschuss für die Neugliederung des Bundesgebietes" (expert panel for the restructuring of the federal territory), headed by Hans Luther from 1952 to 1955.

However today I want to focus on two proposals made in 1949. My "only" source for these is in fact the author of one of these two proposals.
First, let's look at a proposal made by Walter Christaller. He was a prolific German geographer, responsible for the Central Place Theory. It states, oversimplified, that settlements that are within a reasonable distance to many other settlements will grow and be able to provide specific services to the surrounding settlements, thus becoming the central place for the grouping, and that this system can scale upwards, to a limited extent. Christaller and a close associate of his, Emil Meynen, were central in the formation of the field of central planning and were very productive after 1945, working intensely first with the American military administration and later with the West German state. After both of their deaths however it came to light that both were actively working with the Nazis to first incorporate Austria into Germany and later, especially in the case of Christaller, to plan the colonization of the "Ostgebiete" within former Poland and the Soviet Union. As a result both of their reputation has been significantly tarnished.

But, after this little bit of a bummer, let's look at Christaller's actual proposal!

This proposal is heavily inspired by Christaller's ideal of the central place. It seeks to divide Germany into eight regions, which are then to be subdivided into states (or Länder). as well as smaller units such as provinces, as well as Gaue and Kreise (both can translate to districts, also Gau as a term for administrations is basically non-existant now due to Nazi connotations, with it only having informal usage in the Austrian state of Salzburg today). This map however only shows the Länder, but it marks Provinz and Gau capitals.

The goal of this proposal was to create regions and Länder based on "geographic-scientific" criteria, aiming to provide administrative units that are economically cohesive. Christaller however was vague on the level of administrative powers each unit should have, which could very well mean that the Länder in his proposal would be more akin to administrative regions, or maybe the regions would function as plenar bodies for the more important Länder.

The proposed regions (with their incredibly bland names) and states are, with their estimated 1939 population in millions:

- Nordwestdeutschland [8.35] with the states of Hamburg-Unterelbe [2.35], Schleswig-Holstein [1.35], Bremen-Friesland [2.05], and Hannover [2.6]
- Westdeutschland [13.1], with the states of Köln-Aachen [2.85], Niederrhein-Berg [3.2], Ruhrstädte [3.5}, Westfalen [2.7], and Trier-Koblenz [0.7]
- West-Mitteldeutschland [5.3], with the states Rhein-Main [3.3], Hessen-Kassel [1.25], and Würzburg or Unterfranken [0.75]
- Saarland, consisting out of only one state [1.0]
- Südwestdeutschland [6.8], with the states of Pfalz [2.3], Baden [0.95], Württemberg or Neckarschwaben [2.45], and Bodensee or Oberschwaben [1.1]
- Süddeutschland or Bayern [5.8], with the states of Oberbayern [2.5], Niederbayern [1.45], and Nordbayern or Ostfranken [1.85]
- Ost-Mitteldeutschland [11.4], with the states of Sachsen-Leipzig [2.45], Sachsen-Dresden [2.45], Erzgebirge-Vogtland [2.45], Thüringen [2.0], and Sachsen-Anhalt [2.05]
- Norddeutschland [8.0] with the states of Berlin Stadt [4.9], Mark Brandenburg [1.65], and Mecklenburg-Pommern [1.45] with the option of splitting it into Mecklenburg [1.05] and Vorpommern [0.4]

Due to the unlikely immediate reunification of Germany, a West German state according to Christaller would only have six regions and twenty states. The disparity between the various Länder specifically is obvious. In his own comments on Christaller's proposal, Werner Münchheimer in particular compares Rhein-Main and Würzburg with each other, since the latter is less than half as big as the former and has less than a quarter of its population, but they share the same administrative designation of a Land. I also find the fact that only two city states would exist very interesting. An enlarged Berlin and the connected urban areas of the Ruhr from Duisburg to Dortmund (and from the looks of things Kamen, Bergkamen, and Lünen, but not Unna and Hamm) are definitely choices.

I also wanna point out, because that's my neck of the woods, that apparently the city of Hagen and the southern bits of the modern Märkischer Kreis centered around the towns of Altena and Lüdenscheid were to be part of Niederrhein-Berg, while the district of Iserlohn (hometown mentioned!) would be part of Westfalen. Which, to be fair, isn't the strangest, because if you look at Catholic dioceses in Germany, you'll find that the Kreis Altena fell under the bishopric of Essen (part of the archbishopric of Cologne), while the Kreis Iserlohn fell under Paderborn. But, you know, all three of these cities were Westphalian according to the Prussians. In general these proposals don't take the historic state borders as gospel. Examples for that are the partition of Bavarian Swabia

The special status granted to the Saarland is an odd concession to the geopolitics of the era when the proposal doesn't make the same concession with the soon-to-be GDR. Though from the looks of things besides maybe some parts of southern Thuringia the borders between Ost-Mitteldeutschland and Norddeutschland and the "West German" regions seems to follow the line separating the Trizone from the Soviet zone.

The second proposal is one by one Werner Münchheimer. Now he is a bit more of an enigma, with me only being able to find scattered bits of info about the man. Apparently later in life he would become Oberregierungsrat within the Federal Ministry of All-German Affairs (from 1969 onwards Federal Ministry of Intra-German Relations, and abolished in 1991), which allowed him to sometimes be part of West German UN delegations, but besides that and a collection of essays from the 40s to early 60s, I can't find anything else on him.

In this 1949 proposal of his, created for his work "Die Neugliederung des Bundesgebiets. Grundlagen - Kritik - Ziele und die Pläne zur "Reichsreform" von 1919-1945" as part of the Frankfurter Geographische Hefte No. 23 (the only source for this post by the way), we see his suggestions on how to restructure the nascent German Republic, which are explicitly in dialogue with the Christaller proposal above.

As you can see, he proposes to divide Germany, in the borders of 1937, into seven states, subdivided into thirty-nine governmental districts. He also includes an intermediary judicial-only subdivision system of eighteen Oberlandesgerichtsbezirke (Higher Court Districts). The district borders aren't shown (in favor of historic district lines), but the capitals are marked and the booklet contains names for these divisions, giving a better clue at where the borders would lie.

Münchheimer, when creating this proposal, followed the principle that each German state should be administratively cohesive and roughly equal.

The western states and their districts are, with their capital listed in brackets:
- Bayern (München) with the districts of Oberbayern (München), Niederbayern (Regensburg), Lechschwaben (Augsburg), Mittelfranken (Nürnberg), Mainfranken (Würzburg), and Oberpfalz (Weiden)
- Hessen (Frankfurt), with the districts of Kurhessen (Kassel), Nassau-Frankfurt (Darmstadt), Rheinhessen (Mainz), the Free City of Frankfurt, and Saarpfalz (Saarbrücken)
- Niederrhein (Köln), with the districts of Berg (Düsseldorf), Jülich (Aachen), Köln (Köln), Moselland (Koblenz), Ruhrland (Essen), Sauerland (Wuppertal), and Münsterland (Münster)
- Niedersachsen (Hannover), with the districts Hannover-Braunschweig (Braunschweig), Oldenburg-Bremen (Oldenburg), the Free City of Bremen, Emsfriesland (Emden), Engern (Bielefeld), Niederelbe-Hamburg (Lüneburg), the Free City of Hamburg, and Schleswig-Holstein (Kiel)
- Schwaben (Stuttgart), with the districts of Baden (Freiburg), Kurpfalz (Mannheim), Alt-Württemberg (Stuttgart), Oberschwaben (Ulm), and Bodenseeland (Konstanz)

Meanwhile the eastern states are (with presumed district capitals):
- Obersachsen (Leipzig) with district capitals in Erfurt, Magdeburg, Plauen, Leipzig, Dresden, and Görlitz
- Brandenburg (Berlin) with district capitals in Berlin, Wittenberge, Frankfurt a. d. Oder, Rostock, Stettin/Szczecin, Schneidemühl/Piła, and Köslin/Koszalin
- Schlesien (Breslau, now WrocławI) with district capitals in Breslau/Wrocław, Schweidnitz/Świdnica, Oppeln/Opole, and Gleiwitz/Gliwice
- Ostpreussen (Königsberg) with district capitals in Königsberg/Kaliningrad, Elbing/Elbląg, Insterburg/Chernyakhovsk, and Allenstein/Olsztyn

The borders drawn here are much more precise, which would allow for an easy reconstruction of at least the state borders. It also shows that Münchheimer, when drawing the state borders, didn't follow the occupation zone lines in several places. Münchheimer also chose to include the territories that were ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union, based on earlier declarations about the occupation applying to all of Germany in the borders of January 1st 1937. Still he concedes that most likely this proposal would only be applied to the Trizone/the future Federal Republic of Germany, and the changes required to these state borders as a result would be minor.

Some noteworthy decisions, to me, include: the cession of Engern (including cities like Minden and Bielefeld) to Niedersachsen, the partition of the Bavarian Palatinate between Schwaben and Hessen, the partition of Bavarian Swabia between Bayern and Schwaben (similar to Christaller), and the district-less status being "restored" to Frankfurt.

I also find the Sauerland district to be weird. If it includes Wuppertal as its capital, that implies that the Bergisches Land is part of it, too, or at least for the most part. It would at least include the Bergisches Städtedreieck (which besides Wuppertal also includes Solingen and Remscheid). And then it'd cover Ennepetal and Hagen, before reaching the Sauerland with Iserlohn and Altena marking the first two districts that are actually part of that region. Also with Wuppertal and Essen removed from it, the district Berg seems very truncated and excludes several areas that are part of the historic Duchy of Berg.

Addendum: My scanner ain't great, so the quality of these two images is sadly bad. I hope that I can find someone with a better scanner, ideally one that also allows for DIN A3-sized paper, so that I can eventually produce better scans, especially of the Münchheimer map, since it is part of a large poster covering nine different proposals. However, without cutting it up, I can't easily scan it right now, so this will have to do. The Christaller proposal is printed on the interior of the booklet's paperback cover, hence why it looks so drastically different in terms of quality.

Also I'm still working on a follow-up for Hesse and a post on Lower Saxony's formation (with a secondary focus on small versus larger divisions). They're coming. Probably in May. Then I'll have to see when I can resume this project due to personal stuff.

 

[Iserlohn]

Upper Silesia 1918-1922 - Struggling Between Autonomy, Independence & Partition
​

In late 1918 Poland and Czechoslovakia listed these as their claims to Silesia:

• Czechoslovakia desired most of Kreis Waldenburg (to gain control over the significant black coal deposists there), the Silesian portion of the Kłodzko Valley/Glatzer Kessel (basically the Kreise Glatz, Habelschwerdt, and Neurode), and Upper Silesia west of the Oder but at least containing most of the Kreise Leobschütz and Ratibor.
• Poland meanwhile requested all of Upper Silesia except the Kreise Neiße and Grottkau and parts of the Kreise Neustadt and Falkenberg, as well as the Central Silesian Kreise Groß Wartenberg and Namslau. They also were “open” to border corrections in Czechoslovakia’s favor in the Kreise Leobschütz and Ratibor.

This is important because, in the wake of these “foreign” claims and the chaos in Berlin, politicians in Silesia were thinking about the region’s future. The newspaper “Breslauer Neueste Nachrichten”, which had close connections to the Social Democratic (USPD)-run Volksrat that governed Silesia at the time, suggested on November 25th that Silesia could temporarily separate itself from the Reich “until order is restored in Germany and in Berlin specifically”, marking a clear distinction to Rhenish and Bavarian separatism. While that idea died as early as December, for the Regierungsbezirk Oppeln (Upper Silesia) they suggested autonomy in regards to language and religious policy, as well as preferential treatment for local (read: Polish-speaking, Catholic) government functionaries. The Zentrumspartei in Silesia shared this suggestion.

These proposals went counter to the policy pursued by Adolph Hoffmann (USPD), who served as Germany’s Minister for Science, Culture, and Education at the time. He argued for a strict separation of church and state, including the banning of religion from public education, both in the form of church-operated schools and religious instruction.

Meanwhile Upper SIlesia also had its own, genuine separatist movement. Apparently some local industrialists were in favor of it because they feared that any non-leftist government in Berlin would fail to keep Upper Silesia in the Reich and that a leftist regime in Berlin would expropriate their businesses. They also thought that, potentially, a “sovereign, neutral Upper Silesian Republic” would be exempt from war indemnity claims, which would also be good for their businesses.

Three important people in the Upper Silesian autonomist movement were Ewald Latacz, a lawyer based in Loslau/Wodzisław, and the brothers Jan and Thomak Reginek. In December 1918 they formed a committee for the “Freistaat Oberschlesien”, with a political system modeled on Switzerland’s.

Ultimately the separatist movement quickly fizzled out due the failure of the Spartacist Uprising in January 1919 ending fears of a Communist takeover of Germany, which largely ended the interest of the local industrialists in the project, and the fact that even the pro-independence movement that remained was divided between an explicitly pro-German “independence as a stopgap” faction and an idealistic, neutrality-favoring faction headed by the Reginek brothers. Instead Upper Silesia would be plagued by ethnic-based violence in the coming years until the partition of Upper Silesia in late 1921.
Still, the whole ordeal resulted in the creation of the separate Prussian province of Oberschlesien thanks to a September 30th 1919 compromise between Zentrum, who as previously mentioned had sympathies to their fellow Catholic Poles, and the USPD government of the Free State of Prussia.

On July 15th 1920 the Polish government released their proposal on the administrative future of Upper Silesia. The Silesian Voivodeship was to have significant autonomy, including the right to keep most of the collected taxes and to run their own police, maintain their own agricultural policies, and to have linguistic and religious autonomy. This proposal greatly inspired pro-autonomy (Upper) Silesians, who were vocal in stating that these laws would provide more autonomy than the still nascent Provinz Oberschlesien would. German officials were torn, fearing that more autonomy for the region might allow for Polish agents to eventually carve it away from Germany later.

Thus November 25th 1920 saw a law passed that stated, in effect, that Upper Silesia would be granted the right to a referendum on the creation of its own state within Germany after the Entente occupation ended. After the subsequent referendum and partition in 1921, this referendum was supposed to take place on September 3rd 1922.

Still, in the lead-up to this referendum the debate was intense. Pro-autonomy activists from Zentrum and smaller groups run by the Polish minority were keen on maintaining rights in matters of education, language use, and religion. Anti-autonomy factions feared that losing access to Prussia’s funding would lead to a decline of German-speaking cultural institutions, as well as economic decline. On July 11th 1922, less than two months before the referendum was to take place, the Prussian Landtag passed a law that allowed for Upper Silesian privileges regarding education and the languages used in government facilities serving ethnically mixed municipalities. This law effectively satisfied the demands of most autonomists, leading to Zentrum backing off their support for the creation of a separate Land Oberschlesien.

As a result the September referendum, which saw a turnout of 79.4 percent, was a clear victory for the “unionists”. Of the votes cast, 91.1 percent were against the establishment of Upper Silesia as a separate state. The only portions that featured significant pro-separation votes were Groß Strehlitz and Gleiwitz, which the year prior had voted to join Poland but weren’t ceded to it.

If you want a clue on what alternate international borders in Silesia might have looked like, here’s an overview map. Of special note here are the Korfanty Line, Poland’s claim that would’ve put 59 percent of the plebiscite area and 70 percent of its population under Polish control, and the Percival-de-Marinis Line, which would’ve given Poland 25 percent of the territory and 21 percent of the population, and would’ve kept the Beuthen-Gleiwitz-Kattowitz-Königshütte-Tarnowitz industrial area fully in Germany.

Sources Used:

• “Autonomie- und Separatismusbestrebungen in Oberschlesien 1918-1922” by Andrea Schmidt-Rösler in Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropaforschung 48
• “Das Reichsthalerländchen”, part of the Namslauer Heimatfreunde e.V.’s website (source of map)
• “Die Provinz Oberschlesien. Volksabstimmungen 1920 und 1922”, part of Andreas Gonschior’s website Wahlen in der Weimarer Republik
• "Ideas for the Division of Upper Silesia" by Renata Skoczek for the Institute of National Remembrance
• “Von der Provinz zum Freistaat?” Der oberschlesische Separatismus im Jahr 1918/19” by Przemysław Hauser in Regionale Bewegungen und Regionalismen in europäischen Zwischenräumen seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (ed. P. Ther & H. Sundhaussen)

Addendum: This was originally part of what I wanted to call "Weimar Miscellany", but then I just stumbled deeper and deeper... Hence this genuinely big post. On the plus side, I'm really glad I found that particular map! It covers the most proposals made by the commission in a decent quality.