Marina Germane

This project examines the short-lived cooperation between the German and Jewish minorities, who spearheaded the European minority rights movement during the interwar period. It follows the individual paths of six minority politicians that took them from their respective home countries of Poland, Romania and Latvia, where they were actively pursuing minority rights at both municipal and parliamentary levels, to the international arena, where –from 1925 to 1933 – they formed a multi-ethnic transnational alliance with a view of circumventing nation-states and addressing the League of Nations directly. The aim of the project is three-fold: to contemplate the initial preconditions for successful interethnic cooperation, to explore the limits of this cooperation in a world predicated on territorial sovereignty, as well assessing its impact on the ‘rise, fall and revival’ of minority rights in the twentieth century.