The Turbulent History of a Small Territory

ON AUGUST 17, 1955, VIOLENCE ROCKED the small town of Neunkirchen. The French and West German governments had recently finalized an agreement to make the town part of a European territory, commonly called, “Europe's District of Columbia,” which was to serve as the capital of new European institutions such as the Council of Europe and the European Coal and Steel Community. Passions ran high as nearly two thousand people gathered in the local Protestant community center to hear speeches in favor of creating a European territory. Neunkirchen's pro-Europe rally, however, also attracted intense opposition. As speakers inside the community center praised European unity as a path to peace and prosperity, crowds of German nationalists with a very different view of the matter turned out in force in the streets near the community center. The police, who had anticipated trouble, kept the crowds at bay. Demonstrators then began throwing stones at police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons. When the smoke cleared, the police had arrested scores of youthful protesters, and twenty people had been injured, two seriously. Similar scenes of tense political rallies and disorder played themselves out in the streets of nearby towns such as Saarbrücken, Völklingen, and St. Ingbert during the late summer and early fall of 1955.

All these incidents occurred in the Saar, a small German territory barely three times the size of Berlin. Today the Saar, whose name derives from the Saar River, which begins in the Vosges Mountains and is a tributary of the Moselle, is one of Germany's smallest federal states. Like France's Alsace and Lorraine, the latter of which directly borders the Saar, the region was strategically important border territory for Germany and France during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Furthermore, its vibrant coal and steel industries were not only its largest employers but also key for the armaments industry in this era. Despite its small size, the Saar's production of coal and steel was significant, representing between one-fifth and one-third of France's production during the early 1950s. Consequently, control of the Saar figured prominently in France's quest to weaken Germany and enhance its own security after each world war.