Latest news with #Trianon
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
The butchering of Ukraine's borders will haunt Europe for generations
Other borders were redrawn, too. Hungary has never forgotten that the 1920 Treaty of Trianon resulted in it losing two-thirds of its pre-war territory. This 'Trianon trauma' remains a potent political issue today. The two newly independent states of Poland and Czechoslovakia immediately went to war over their border in 1919, one of many violent border conflicts that followed the well-intentioned redrawing of national boundaries. Under Hitler, Germany pursued aggressive territorial revisionism, beginning with the annexation of Austria and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia through the 1938 Munich Agreement, forcing the smaller state to cede territory to appease a larger aggressor. That agreement emboldened Nazi expansionism, culminating in the Second World War. After the war, Europe's borders were redrawn again, notably by reducing Germany's size and shifting the Polish state westward. Millions of Germans were expelled from lands in the east that were handed over to Poland and the Soviet Union. The new border remained a point of intense political controversy in both East and West Germany. This has never led to a reopening of armed conflict because, unlike Ukraine, Germany was the aggressor in the conflict that lost it so much territory. Nonetheless, in West Germany, powerful groups of expellees, known as Vertriebene, were able to lobby politicians to a degree. It was only with Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik in the 1970s and the eventual reunification in 1990 that Germany fully accepted the permanence of these post-war borders. In the East, where I was born, a quarter of the population consisted of displaced Germans from the former eastern territories in the 1950s. My family was a typical example: three of my four grandparents were from East Prussia, Pomerania and the Sudetenland, respectively. The reason they were never resentful about having lost their homes was a powerful mixture of guilt and repression. Given their nation's crimes in Eastern Europe, they felt they didn't have much of a point to complain, and the regime, keen to keep good relations with its direct neighbours and especially the Soviet Union, enforced this narrative. Few expellees in East Germany spoke about their loss for three generations, repressing resentment until it petered out. This is not a model that would work for Ukraine, nor one that it should be subjected to. Regardless of Russian propaganda, it didn't start this war. By suggesting that Ukraine could cede land to Russia to end it, Trump is proposing the dismantling of a fundamental principle of the European order: that borders cannot be changed by force. What guarantee do smaller nations, such as the Baltic states, have that their sovereignty will be protected? Unlike Ukraine, they are part of Nato, but with US backing not as rock-solid as it once was, Russia feels emboldened. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived for Friday's summit with a t-shirt imprinted with the letters CCCP, the Russian acronym for the USSR – hardly a subtle hint of Moscow's ambitions. Borders matter – not just as lines on a map that divvy up resources and land, but as symbols of sovereignty, identity, and peace. Changing them by force is a path Europe has walked before. History tells us we should tread lightly.
Time of India
11-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Insolvency sale of Frankfurt office tower to test fragile German market
LONDON | FRANKFURT : Administrators are seeking buyers for a skyscraper in Germany 's financial capital of Frankfurt after its owner filed for insolvency last year, in a significant test for whether the country's punishing office property downturn has found a bottom. The 186 m (610.24 ft) Trianon building - which currently houses part of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank after its main tenant left last year - is now on the market with advisers mandated to handle the sale, Pluta, the law firm appointed to oversee the insolvency case, told Reuters. The tower, described on its website as an "essential part of the Frankfurt skyline", last sold for 670 million euros ($784 million) in 2018. Pluta declined to comment on an asking price but the tower is likely to fetch considerably less than in 2018, following the biggest downturn in the German office market for a generation. The building also comes with around 370 million euros in debt, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Investors have speculated on how much the debt will be discounted, and how much would be needed to redevelop the tower to appeal to tenants, multiple people in the sector told Reuters. ING is one of the creditor banks, a source said. ING declined to comment. The sale is being closely watched by Germany's property sector, which as a whole has shown signs of recovery but remains in the grips of a deep office downturn, with buyers and sellers often still far apart in their price expectations. "We have started the sales process to find an investor for the Trianon office tower. There is a lot of interest, which makes me confident about the investor process," said Stephan Laubereau, a lawyer with Pluta. German asset manager Deka was a tenant for decades but vacated the building last year, while the Bundesbank has occupied it since 2015 as its 50-year old campus is renovated. Germany's property boom, fuelled for years by low interest rates, cheap energy and a strong economy, ended when a post-pandemic inflation surge forced the European Central Bank to hike borrowing costs and the rise of work-from-home hammered office occupancy rates. Real-estate financing dried up, projects stalled, major developers went bust, and some banks teetered. The court-appointed insolvency manager Pluta last year blamed "liquidity difficulties" for the building owners'insolvency and said it was in talks with banks. Pluta said it has mandated Mellum Capital to oversee a sales process. Mellum declined to comment.
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Border-free EU travel brings 'thrilled' ethnic Hungarians closer
Visiting Hungary as a teenager, opera singer Katalin Benedekffy used to have to wait up to a whole day at the border with her childhood home, Romania. Now, to her delight, she can cross straightaway. In the early hours of New Year's Day, she made the crossing unhindered for the first time, after Romania joined Europe's border-free travel zone. "It's a miracle," said Benedekffy. "I asked my husband to back up because I wanted to record it," she told AFP. "It's an incredible feeling." Benedekffy, 47, now lives in Budapest and often travels back and forth to visit relatives in her hometown of Szeklerland in Romania's Transylvania region. She made her first control-free crossing on her return trip to Hungary. "It's like being in the same country as my loved ones, as there are practically no borders anymore," she said. For centuries, the region was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire in so-called "Greater Hungary" -- a notion referred to with nostalgia by the current nationalist government in Budapest. Almost a fifth of Hungary's population has relatives in neighbouring countries, within the historical boundaries of what was Hungary before it was partitioned in the aftermath of World War I, a 2020 survey showed. Romania and Bulgaria became full members of Europe's so-called Schengen zone from January 1, when land border checks ceased. That ended years of waiting for the countries after they qualified to join Schengen, with political resistance from certain other EU states having delayed the move. - 'Trianon trauma' - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who took credit for the final negotiations on joining Schengen, hailed the expansion as an "important step for national unity" that dismantled barriers "between families". About one million ethnic Hungarians -- Magyars -- live in Romania, the largest such community outside of Hungary, with other significant ones in Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine. Under the Treaty of Trianon, signed in Versailles in 1920 after the dissolution of the defeated Austro-Hungarian empire, Hungary had to surrender two-thirds of its territory to neighbouring states. Many Hungarians still resent the territorial and population losses, sometimes described as "Trianon trauma". Since Orban's return to power in 2010, the nationalist leader has regularly irked neighbouring countries by focusing on pre-World War I Hungary's territory. Orban has continued to woo Magyar communities by opening up an easy path to Hungarian citizenship -- and thus voting rights -- and financing projects such as schools for them. - 'Imaginary wall' - Following the fall of communism in 1989 -- years before Orban's rise to power -- one of Hungary's main foreign policy goals was to "make surrounding borders irrelevant, without revising them", Nandor Bardi, an expert on minority research at the Hungarian HUN-REN research centre, told AFP. Magyars are "relieved it finally happened", he said. Benedekffy well remembers the "humiliating waits" of up to 24 hours at the border that she had endured since she was a girl. Although waiting times significantly decreased after Hungary and Romania joined the European Union -- in 2004 and 2007 respectively -- lorry drivers and travellers still had to queue for at least an hour at border crossings, police told AFP. "We used to do calculations, how to avoid delays at the border," said Zoltan Nagy, 39, a manager at a car manufacturer in Budapest. He once celebrated Easter with his family in Transylvania two weeks in advance to avoid the crowds. But now "the journey has become a lot more predictable -- we no longer have to stress about how much time we spend at the border". In neighbouring countries with Magyar populations, Orban's policies have stirred up fears that he is trying to exert influence on their territory. Criticising Brussels and courting US President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin, the nationalist leader is nowadays "more concerned about geopolitics", however, said analyst Bardi. The disappearance of border checks holds symbolic value for many Transylvanian Magyars, such as Mihaly Fazakas, a 77-year-old retired textile engineer. "We are thrilled because we no longer have that imaginary wall dividing us," he told AFP. "It feels almost as if Transylvania got returned." ros/anb-kym/rlp
