AHC: make Alsace-Lorraine either a co-dominion between France and Germany or an independent state

Alsace-Lorraine, for most of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was always a region of conflicting interests between two specific states: France and Germany. Neither state wanted the other to have any semblance of control over the area.
Thus, the challenge here is to make Alsace-Lorraine a compromise area, making it either an independent, neutral buffer state or a jointly administered region between Germany and France.
Time frames don't matter unless the PoD is waaaay back.
 
The main problem would be that it may requires a pre-French revolution PoD. After that, the region would be considered as "sanctuarized" in the french national conception, as part of the general national contract idea (as in, people are French because they formed a political community). Such conception, as the German national conception (which is more volkish and less politial) is based on political/territorial exclusiveness.

As XIXth century nation-states, neither France or Germany will really go for splitting their authority, but rather one of these have to give up.

The problem of an independent AL state is the lack of popular support : it seems that if most would have supported a French authority (if with a more or less large autonomy), a significant other part (especially in the late XIXth/ very early XXth) a German authority; the other alternatives were demographically and politically neglectible.

The best equivalent I could see would be an autonomous Alsace in an early Franco-German confederalism in the XXth century, with the region not being particularily tied up to one center in particular. It's of course insanely hard, and the TL would be barely recognizable, but it's not litteraly ASB.
 
Istr reading somewhere that it was suggested that AL be made a nominally independent state, perhaps in customs union with Germany a Luxemburg was. Butt he idea never got any traction, with one German newspaper advising that the inhabitants could soon be brought round, advocating "The rod first, and love will follow in time". Interesting concept of love some people evidently had.
 
Waaaaay back, but: let Sigismund award. Philipp the Good with the Duchy of Lorraine after bulgneville, then keep the Burgundian Valois from dying out for two more centuries, and you have a Burgundy likely comprising Lorraine and parts of Alsace, along with Luxembourg and most of Netherlands and Belgium, as a buffer Kingdom between France and a forming Germany.
 
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