On May 14, 1954, the “Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict” was adopted in the Binnenhof in The Hague: 44 representatives of states signed the final text. This marked the end of a development process lasting over twenty years, which began in 1931 at the International Museums Office of the League of Nations. The draft of an “International Convention for the Protection of Historic Buildings and Works of Art in Time of War” had been ready since 1938, but the Netherlands' invitation to the drafting conference fell victim to the outbreak of the Second World War in the fall of 1939. In 1949, UNESCO, which was founded in November 1945, took on the draft text, which was then significantly revised by Italy. Once again, the Netherlands invited to the diplomatic conference to The Hague. Between 1951 and 1953, three drafts were sent to the states for review; the revised version of 1953 finally served as the basis for negotiations at the diplomatic conference in April/May 1954. (Overview in Toman 1996, pp. 18-24)
Figure 1: Jan Zachwatowicz (1900-1983), architect, art historian and monument conservator, was a member of the Polish delegation. As a university lecturer and general conservator, he initiated - against political resistance - the reconstruction of Warsaw's Old Town. It is widely unknown that he created at the conference in The Hague the blue and white emblem to mark the cultural property. (Image: Władysław Miernicki - Zbiory Narodowego Archiwum Cyfrowego, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=108791814)
Austria's participation in the draft negotiations
Austria was also represented at the negotiations. However, according to the available sources, Austria's contribution to the drafting of the agreement and during the three-week draft conference in the Peace Palace in The Hague (April 21 - May 14, 1954) was probably of “modest” nature. The Austrian “delegation” consisted only of the third secretary at the Austrian legation in The Hague, Dr. Arthur Agstner (1922-1991), for whom this position was his first assignment abroad. Perhaps there was even a small “master plan” behind his assignment to the Netherlands: He had previously served as an attaché in the international law department of the Federal Chancellery in Vienna (there was no Foreign Ministry at the time), where he was entrusted with international treaties and United Nations affairs - so he was well prepared to take part in the negotiations (Amtskalender 1950, p. 49). A small detail in this context should be mentioned: In the Austrian “Amtskalender” (Official diary) for 1954 (p. 17), Dr. Agstner is titled “Legation Secretary 3rd Class”, which corresponds to the rank of an initial assignment at the beginning of a diplomatic career. In the UNESCO records, however , he is listed with the higher rank of “First Secretary” (Records 1961, p. 95). This allows for two possible interpretations: Did Austria arrange a kind of “upgrade” for its diplomat vis-à-vis UNESCO in order to make the delegation appear “in a better light”? However, the other interpretation is also plausible: UNESCO made a mistake when keeping the list of participants (ten of the 169 participants [including the secretariat] were women [Records 1961, pp. 87-97]), as a result of which Austria's representative was given a higher ranking in the records. This view is supported when one considers an inaccuracy that UNESCO made with regard to Austria in the list of participants (name Mr “Voelgruber” instead of the correct “Vollgruber”, Records 1961, p. 83).
Figure 2 : Final version of the agreement. At that time, the text was adopted in four languages: English, French, Russian and Spanish. Arabic and Chinese were added later as official languages of UNESCO. (Archive of the author)
Figure 3: The final document of the agreement of 14 May 1954 with the signatures of the delegates present (and authorized to sign) at the time. Austria's representative, Ambassador Alois Vollgruber, did not sign until the last day of the signing period, December 31, 1954. It is not known why Austria waited until the last day. (Source: Archive of the author)
Figure 4: The Austrian Ambassador in Paris (and probably also Permanent Representative to UNESCO), Alois Vollgruber (2nd from left, looking towards the viewer), was responsible for signing the agreement. (Here at a meeting with Federal Chancellor Julius Raab, Foreign Minister Leopold Figl and the Austrian ambassadors to the occupying powers, a few weeks before the signing of the State Treaty of Vienna on May 15, 1955, from left to right. Foreign Minister DI Leopold Figl, Alois Vollgruber / Ambassador in Paris, Dr. Karl Gruber / Ambassador in Washington, Federal Chancellor Dr. Julius Raab, Norbert Bischof / Ambassador in Moscow, Dr. Johannes Schwarzenberg / Ambassador in London, with their backs to the camera: center: Dr. Bruno Kreisky / State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, to the right: Dr. Adolf Schärf / Vice-Chancellor, Federal Chancellery, 25 March 1955)(Source: ÖNB)
Figure 5: Until well into the 20th century, multilateral conferences of states were the business of “old white men”. Women and representatives of the global South were hardly represented. Today, the picture has changed substantially. In the 1920s, there were a series of diplomatic conferences and multilateral treaties for the restoration of political order and the reconstruction of Europe after the First World War (e.g. the conferences in Genoa in 1922 and Locarno in 1925)(Source: Photo album of Dr. Jaroslav Toman, secretary to Edvard Beneš (1884-1948), in: Donation Prof. Jiří Toman, Jiří Toman Centre, UWK)
Figure 6: Although women were present at international diplomatic meetings and multilateral conferences of states (e.g. the wives of delegates), for whom there was also a separate “ladies' program” (e.g. visits to places of interest), they were not among the official delegation members. Although the peace activist Bertha von Suttner took part in the 1899 Hague Peace Conference, she was not part of the Austro-Hungarian delegation. Was Japan playing a pioneering role in the equality of female participants at the time? According to the list of participants, the Japanese delegation consisted only of men. However, women were also allowed to take part in the group photo. (In: Eyffinger, p. 160)
Regardless of the actual rank of the member of the Austrian delegation, the delegation only had observer status at the negotiations (Records 1961, p. 368, document CBC/9), which limited Austria's rights to participate in the debates anyway (depending on the respective rules of procedure, observer delegations may only take the floor after the debate has ended and may not vote on the draft texts). The Austrian “one-man operation” was faced with large delegations, such as those of France and the Soviet Union (11 members each), the Netherlands (9), the Federal Republic of Germany and the USA (7 each), Italy (6) and Spain (5). Austria was therefore unable to participate in the three committees and two working groups (organized according to the respective sections of the agreement). However, Austria signaled its support for the codification of the protection of cultural property to the UN organization as early as February 1953: The Austrian embassy in Paris (which was presumably also responsible as the Permanent Mission to UNESCO) expressed its benevolence in its letter of 28 February 1953 (no. 4124-A/54) to UNESCO: “[Austria] would warmly welcome the drawing up of an international Convention.” Austria was also in agreement with the draft convention sent out by UNESCO for review in August 1953 (UNESCO, Circular Letter, MUS/400729) and refrained from requesting any amendments: “The Federal Government of Austria does not wish to propose any alteration or amendment to the draft.” (Records 1961, p. 336) This position was repeated by Austria's observer at the General Assembly during the conference in The Hague on April 24, 1954: “Mr Artur* Agstner (Austria) (F) - said that the Austrian Federal Government was prepared to accept the principles laid down by UNESCO in the Draft Convention.” (Records 1961, p. 121, paragraph 145 - “(F)” meant that the statement was made in French) However, the Austrian representative did not sign the document at the signing ceremony on May 14, 1954, because neither the then 32-year-old embassy secretary Dr. Agstner nor his superior, the head of the legation in The Hague, envoy Dr. Erich Filz, had the authority to sign on behalf of the Republic. This task fell to the Austrian Ambassador in Paris (who was probably also accredited as Austria's Permanent Representative to UNESCO), Alois Vollgruber (1890-1976, referred to as “Voelgruber” in the final report, Records 1961, p. 83), who signed the final document on the last day of the open period: December 31, 1954 (in accordance with Art. 30 of the Agreement). With this act, Austria confirmed that the Republic recognized the present version as the binding version of the Agreement.
As a “signatory state”, the path was now clear for Austria, which was not yet fully sovereign at the time, to transpose the agreement into Austrian law. (Almost exactly to the day after the signing in The Hague: May 14, 1954, Austria received its state treaty on the restoration of its sovereignty one year later - on May 15, 1955).
The Austrian accession process
However, it was to take another eight years - until 1962 - before the parliamentary procedure to incorporate the agreement into Austrian law (“ratification”) was initiated. The long period of time was probably due to the “inconspicuous” issue of “cultural property protection”, as there were other matters that took priority in the 1950s, such as the withdrawal of the occupying troops, the attainment of full sovereignty and the reconstruction of Austria’s infrastructure. In any case, there were no legal or political objections to accession from an Austrian perspective. At the beginning of the 1960s, 43 signatory states were already setting a good example and had incorporated the agreement into their legal systems. (Only the Federal Republic of Germany, as a signatory state, only joined the Convention later, in 1967. Today - September 2024 - with 194 UNESCO member states, there are 136 states that have acceded to the Convention and 132 that have acceded to the First Protocol). In Austria, the Convention was interpreted both as amending the federal law and as amending the federal constitution, which meant that the National Council (as legislator) was responsible for approval on the one hand, and that the Convention had to be adopted there with a “constitutional quorum” (two-thirds majority) on the other. In both cases, no parliamentary or political problems arose. From today's perspective, however, it is interesting to note that the legal challenges (and any “legal stumbling blocks”) at the time no longer pose a problem today: the practical handling of the agreement has developed in a different direction: What was interpreted 60 years ago in this convention (including the first protocol) as amending the law and the constitution is now considered obsolete or no longer plays a significant role: in 1962, the “world criminal law system”, according to which foreigners can be held accountable by Austrian courts for crimes committed abroad in accordance with Article 28 of the convention, was considered to be amending the law. The constitutional character of the Hague Convention was seen in the fact that (according to Articles 6 (3) and 17 (3) of the Regulations for the Execution of the Convention) foreign bodies (the so-called “Commissioner General” and the “Inspectors”, who were to be appointed at the outbreak of a conflict) could restrict national sovereignty through their actions and inspections. However, these provisions soon mutated into “dead law” and no longer play a role in the implementation of the agreement. (The selection of inspectors in individual conflicts often dragged on and there were cases where the armed conflict was already settled before a “commissioner” could be found). Finally, however, a German translation of the Convention (and the first Protocol) had to be found, as the Convention was drawn up in four “authentic” languages (English, French, Russian and Spanish) (all of which are equally valid). In this case, UNESCO provided the version of the Federal Republic of Germany. (In the event of difficulties in interpreting the German version, the “authentic” language versions should be consulted; in cases of doubt, the “authentic” versions take precedence over the German auxiliary translation).
The agreement in the parliamentary process
The treatment of the government bill proceeded swiftly: at its meeting on 28 June 1962, the Constitutional Committee of the National Council (Nationalrat) (the agreement was characterized as amending the constitution) recommended that approval be granted for accession to the convention. In the plenary session of the National Council on July 4, 1962 - after the rapporteur, lawyer Dr. Alexander Nemezc (ÖVP, 1905-1981) had presented the agreement - accession was approved without debate by a constitutional majority (two-thirds quorum). The Federal Council (Bundesrat) (in its meeting on July 9, 1962) and previously the offices of the provincial governments also raised no objections to this state treaty. In the provincial chamber, the treaty found a committed supporter in the person of Bundesrat-member Dr. Josef Reichl (grammar school professor, SPÖ, 1913-2003): he outlined the dimensions of this treaty and also emphasized the role of neutral states: “Neutral states in particular should never tire of pointing out that they feel it is their duty to serve the idea of genuine humanitas, genuine humanity.” However, in his summary he failed to recognize that the convention should already be implemented in peacetime, because he narrowed it down too much to the military context (which, however, earned him “general applause”, as the minutes noted): “Let us only hope that we never have to test this convention.”
The spirit of optimism at the time is illustrated by a letter from the Austrian Academy of Sciences to the Foreign Ministry in Vienna dated 11 November 1963, in which it proposed moving the relevant UNESCO department for the ‘control and implementation of the Convention’ from Paris to Vienna. In its reply, the Ministry stated that there were no objections to the transfer ‘if Austria has ratified the Convention in question.’ In the undated reply (letter no. 357.623-Kult./63), the Ministry stated the further planned procedure: ‘As soon as the ratification has been carried out, the Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs will be happy to take up this suggestion.’ No further information is currently available on this matter. The department is still located at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
However, for inexplicable reasons, this decision of the parliament remained “stuck” in the bureaucracy between Parliament and Ballhausplatz (where the Federal Chancellery is located) for almost two years. It was not until March 6, 1964 that the Federal President Dr. Adolf Schärf - with the countersignature of the Federal Chancellor Dr. Alfons Gorbach (and five ministers) - declared this convention ratified. The instrument of ratification was handed over to the Director-General of UNESCO on March 25, 1964 and the Agreement was published in the Federal Law Gazette (No. 58/1964) on April 3, 1964. There was therefore nothing to prevent the Agreement from entering into force on June 25, 1964 - three months after the ratification was submitted to the UNESCO Director-General.
Figure 7: In Austria, it took between one year (2005 Convention on Cultural Diversity) and twenty years (1972 World Heritage Convention) for the conventions adopted by the UNESCO General Assembly to be ratified and incorporated into national law. However, the record holder does not appear in this table: the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage was adopted in Paris in 2001, to which Austria has not yet acceded (23 years ago). (Graphic: Author)
The implementation of the Agreement in Austria - a brief overview
The implementation of the Convention in Austria will only be briefly outlined here: Around two years after acceding to the Convention, Austria proposed to UNESCO that it be allowed to use an instrument that was rare at the time (as it is today): On July 21, 1966, it applied to UNESCO to place the Steinbergstollen in the Altaussee salt mine under “special protection” (in accordance with Chapter 2 of the Convention), after having concluded a contract with the “Österreichische Salinen” for the use of the mine to shelter cultural goods in case of emergency. (UNESCO 1967, p. 13) This shelter, which had this protection category until 2000, was the focus of the 2014 Hollywood film “The Monuments Men” by George Clooney. In 1968, the “Convention Office” (from 1976 “Documentation Center and Convention Office”) was established within the Federal Monuments Office (Bundesdenkmalamt) by a decree of the Ministry of Education (Farka 1977, p. 20); it existed until 1985. Subsequently, extensive efforts were made - albeit repeatedly limited by a shortage of personnel and money - to record Austria's cultural assets, label them with the emblem and document them cartographically , with around 80,000 entries (however, at the expense of clarity). The activities were not limited to the civil administration; the military authorities also built up cultural property protection in the following years:
Although the “Convention Office” was also closed practically “overnight” in 1985, Austria supported a number of official and civil society actors, such as the two ministries for national defense and for culture, education and science, the Federal Monuments Office and the NGO “Austrian Society for the Protection of Cultural Property” (Österreichische Gesellschaft für Kulturgüterschutz, ÖGKS), in anchoring the protection of cultural property in the Austrian administration and raising awareness among the population. (Overview in Prem 1997) Austria showed particular initiative towards UNESCO in the development of the second Protocol to the Hague Convention, which was adopted in 1999. A diplomatic drafting conference was held in Vienna in 1998 at Austria's invitation; in addition, towards the end of the 20th century, the Republic financed the secondment of an expert from Austria to UNESCO for the Hague Convention.
Figure 8: In contrast to the negotiations on the Hague Convention of 1954, Austria appeared self-confident at the diplomatic conferences for the second Protocol from the mid-1990s onwards. The author remembers that during a meeting at UNESCO in Paris in 1997, a then not so high-ranking young representative of the Foreign Office in Vienna spontaneously invited the delegates “from the third row” to a conference in Vienna in 1998, which visibly surprised the then Ambassador to UNESCO and led to a disagreement between the Permanent Mission in Paris and the headquarters in Vienna. The conference was actually held in Vienna in May 1998, at which agreement was reached on key issues. (Source: Archive of the author)
Austria's efforts to protect cultural property were recognized by the international community in 2006 when it elected the current President of the Federal Monuments Office, Dr. Christoph Bazil, as Chairman of the “UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee on the Second Hague Protocol of 1999.” He was the first official to hold this position until 2008.
Peter Strasser
* The spelling of his first name at that time - according to Records 1961 and in the Austrian official calendars of the early 1950s - was without the “h”, later the “h” was added (e.g. in the Arthur Agstner estate register, Austrian State Archives)
Literature and Sources:
- Bundesrat: Stenographisches Protokoll: 191. Sitzung des Bundesrates der Republik Österreich, Montag, 9.07.1962, S. 4589-4592, (TO 14: Beschluss des NR vom 4.07.1962), https://www.parlament.gv.at/dokument/BR/BRSITZ/191/imfname_181055.pdf
- Eyffinger: Arthur Eyffinger: The 1899 Peace Conference : “The Parliament of Man, The Federation of the World.” The Hague / London / Boston [o.J.]
- Farka 1977: Marian Farka: Dokumentation und Information im Dienste des österreichischen Kulturgüterschutzes. (1. Teil). In: Öffentliche Sicherheit, Jg. 42 (1977), H. 7, S. 20-20f
- Final Act: UNESCO: Final Act of the Intergovernmental Conference on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, The Hague, 1954. Paris [o.J.]
- Konvention zum Schutz von Kulturgut bei bewaffneten Konflikten; BGBl Nr. 58/1964 (samt Ausführungsbestimmungen zur Konvention zum Schutz von Kulturgut bei bewaffneten Konflikten; und Protokoll)
- Munzinger Archiv: Biographie Alois Vollgruber, https://www.munzinger.de/register/portrait/biographien/Alois%20Vollgruber/00/5343 (Teile des Beitrages ohne Registrierung einsehbar)
- Nationalrat: Bericht des Verfassungsausschusses über die Regierungsvorlage (701 der Beilagen): Konvention zum Schutz von Kulturgut bei bewaffneten Konflikten, 28.06.1962 (758 der Beilagen zu den stenographischen Protokollen des Nationalrates, IX. GP), https://www.parlament.gv.at/dokument/IX/I/758/imfname_330948.pdf
- Nationalrat: Stenographisches Protokoll, 102. Sitzung des Nationalrates der Republik Österreich (IX. Gesetzgebungsperiode), Mittwoch, 4.07.1962, https://www.parlament.gv.at/dokument/IX/NRSITZ/102/imfname_156926.pdf
- Parlament Österreich: Biographie Dr. Alexander Nemecz; https://www.parlament.gv.at/person/1019
- Parlament Österreich: Biographie Dr. Josef Reichl; https://www.parlament.gv.at/person/1650
- Prem 1997: Hermann J. Prem: Entwicklung und aktueller Stand des Kulturgüterschutzes in Österreich. Phil. Diss., Univ. Graz 1997
- Records 1961: Government of the Netherlands: Records of the Conference convened by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization held at The Hague from 21 April to 14 May 1954. The Hague 1961
- Regierungsvorlage „Konvention zum Schutz von Kulturgut bei bewaffneten Konflikten“ (701 der Beilagen zu den stenographischen Protokollen des Nationalrates, IX. GP; 15.06.1962), https://www.parlament.gv.at/dokument/IX/I/701/imfname_330893.pdf
- Republik Österreich: Amtskalender, verschiedene Jahrgänge, https://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/alex?aid=oam
- Toman 1996: Jiří Toman: The Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict : Commentary on the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its Protocol, signed on 14 May 1954 in The Hague, and on other instruments of international law concerning such protection. Paris 1996
- UNESCO 1967: UNESCO: Information on the Implementation of the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in Case of Armed Conflicts : The Hague 1954. Paris, 19.05.1967 (UNESCO-Dokument-Nr. 67.68 – CLT – 13-000/33.4111)
- Wikipedia: Biografie Arthur Agstner: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Agstner
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