RN "showing the flag" in Danzig, März 1920

[Urs Heßling]

moin,

aus einem anderen Forum (leider in Englisch)

Sunday Morning, Danzig 1920

HMS Cleopatra was my father's first ship. She spent most of the year 1919 in the Baltic; was back in Portsmouth for Christmas; and left for the Baltic again on 17 February 1920. My father was then 17. Most of 1920 was spent at Copenhagen, Danzig or Libau (now Liepaja) in Latvia ‒ and sailing between those ports. She arrived at Danzig on 5 March and made four subsequent visits during the year, staying a total of 59 days.
Cleopatra's logbook for Sunday 7 March 1920 contains this entry:
1000 Landed church party – (180, with band)
1230 Church party returned.
On holiday in Danzig this August I imagined the sailors of the Cleopatra marching to the music of Heart of Oak and A Life on the Ocean Wave from the quay past the noble gables of the old city on their way to one of the ancient brick-Gothic churches.

Now I wanted to find out more about the situation in Danzig in 1920. The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 21 October 1919. It prescribed, among other things, that plebiscites should be held to determine whether certain districts of Prussia adjacent to Danzig should become part of Poland or stay with Germany; Danzig itself, whatever the wishes of the mainly German inhabitants might be, was to become a free city separate from Germany. It still took about a year for the plebiscites to be held and for the complicated details of Danzig's new status to be worked out and agreed. Thus 1920 was a time of limbo for Danzig and the plebiscite districts.
The German army left the area at the beginning of February, 1920. A few days later an Allied force under the command of the British General Haking landed at Danzig. The area of the future free city state was occupied by the 1st Battalion, the Royal Fusiliers and a French battalion; the plebiscite districts by the 1st Battalion, the Royal Irish Rifles and an equivalent Italian force. These occupying forces were not there to rule over the local population; their purpose was to ensure that the provisions of the Versailles Treaty were properly carried out. Neither Germany nor Poland was happy with the treaty, but it was thought that the Poles were most likely to give trouble by interfering with the plebiscites or perhaps even trying to take Danzig by force.
The plebiscites were held in July 1920 and in almost all districts the inhabitants chose to stay with Germany. Danzig was formally proclaimed a free city under the protection of the League of Nations on November 15 1920. At that point the British and other foreign troops left.

In a ship's logbook there is an entry most Sunday mornings for 'Divine Service' or, if the ship is in port, sometimes 'landed church party'. But the detail on 7 March about a band and a large body of men is unusual. Perhaps this is because the parade on 7 March was considered to be particularly notable; perhaps it had a special purpose. A few days later General Haking, the British commander in Danzig, sent a message to the Senior Naval Officer Baltic; he called the presence of Cleopatra 'desirable for moral effect present situation' and suggested that a second warship be sent to increase that effect. In fact, the guns and men of a light cruiser tied up at the quay in Danzig had little combat value over and above that of the 3000 infantry already under the General's command. The warship's purpose was more psychological than military: potential troublemakers would be overawed by this reminder of the Royal Navy, strongest instrument of the victorious British Empire – or so Haking hoped. And what better way to achieve this 'moral effect' on the first Sunday after the Cleopatra's arrival, than to march through the streets to Heart of Oak and A Life on the Ocean Wave? Hence the detail of the entry in the logbook.
But now the situation suddenly changed. On 13 March the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch occurred in Berlin. The ministers of the moderate, democratically elected government of Friedrich Ebert fled. It looked as if a new erratic, militaristic government would take power, repudiate the provisions of Versailles and seek to recover Danzig. So now the Cleopatra's 'moral effect' was needed to deter possible German revolutionaries within Danzig rather than Poles interfering from outside. The Senior Naval Officer Baltic in a telegram to the Admiralty asked plaintively to 'be informed of any important news events in Germany'. But as it happened this Putsch collapsed only a few days later and a more sensible government returned to power in Berlin.

There are nine ancient churches within the old part of Danzig. Today, now that all the Protestant Germans have gone, these churches are all Catholic, but in 1920 eight of them were Lutheran and only one, St Nicholas, was Catholic ‒ an unfair division perhaps, since the ratio of Lutherans to Catholics in Danzig at that time was about 60:40.
Since 'moral effect' was so important it seems likely that on that Sunday morning in March 1920 the sailors from the Cleopatra, probably together with soldiers of the Royal Fusiliers, took over one of the most notable Lutheran churches in the city for a private British service conducted by an Anglican chaplain. The logbook shows that the sailors were away for 2½ hours, so there was scope for a good deal of marching around Danzig.
The complement of the Cleopatra was 325 men and 180 of them marched to the church with the band. Since my father was a Catholic he would definitely not have had to attend the Anglican service and so he was probably not among the 180. However, he would almost certainly have been given the chance to go ashore that morning to hear mass with the other Catholics in the ship, perhaps a couple of dozen of men. At St Nicholas's they could have attended one of the regular services, since it would have been in the familiar Latin. Very likely, some of the French soldiers would have been there too. Did the little group of Catholic sailors march through the streets to the church or just stroll along admiring the gables? They must surely have marched ‒ for maximum 'moral effect'

Gruß, Urs

[OWZ]

 Liest sich beinahe so, als wenn ein regionaler Religionskonflikt die Probleme, die aus dem völkerrechtlichen Sonderstatus der Stadt resultierten, überwog (nach Wiki lag das Verhältnis von Protestanten und Katholiken in Danzig übrigens eher bei 70:30); aber dennoch sehr interessant .

Gruß

OWZ