Bohemia by the sea: establishing a Czechoslovak port in Hamburg in the interwar period

Abstract

After the First World War, the newly founded Czechoslovak Republic received the right to lease property at the German ports of Hamburg and Stettin, as guaranteed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. However, the form, location and legal provisions of these properties were left to be negotiated at a later date. It took 10 years of legal and strategic deliberations before areas at the Hamburg free port were finally leased to the Czechoslovak Republic in 1929 for a period of 99 years. By focusing on the negotiation process for a Czechoslovak port zone in Hamburg, this article traces issues of territoriality, most especially the debates on the cession of sovereign rights in the context of the dominant geopolitical order of nation-states in the interwar period.