Story Post
With Beer`s blessings:
[FONT="]From the book "Plebiscites or How to surprise politicians every time", O'Quinn Publishing 2004[/FONT][FONT="][/FONT]
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[FONT="]After the results of the Alsace-Lorraine plebiscite were in, Berlin and Paris began to convene about how to sell this to the populations. Neither side wanted more negative publicity than needed.[/FONT]
[FONT="]In the end, the borders had to be redrawn again. The governments agreed to put the spin on the good results in Lorraine and Alsace/Belfort/Montbeliard respectively. Since the districts were sometimes tiny, just little villages, where a handful of votes could turn the situation, in some areas the results were counted "anew".[/FONT]
[FONT="]In Lothringen/Lorraine, after the new counting, Spangen/Pange, Falkenberg and Duß/Dieuze were now connected with Deutsch-Lothringen, while regions like Avricourt were now in French-Lorraine.[/FONT]
[FONT="]That Lothringen/Lorraine was a success for the French propaganda can be seen not only in the land falling to France again, but the number of people. In the voting region roughly half a million people lived in 1888. Among them, a majority of 360,000 were native German speakers. In 1868 Germany had taken land with 300,000 German and 31,000 French speakers. After the plebiscite and the negotiated "green table border", Germany kept 261,000 German and 28,000 French native speakers.[/FONT]
[FONT="]In northern Elsaß/Alsace the border stayed the same, but further south, in the Belfort/ Montbeliard voting districts, most of the old County of Mömpelgard returned to Germany. Only the southernmost parts of the Arrondisement Montbeliard remained with France, mainly because of the presence of the Peugeot factories there.[/FONT]
[FONT="]In this part of the plebiscite, France had lost. While France got roughly 11,000 French and 3000 German native speakers in the Vogesen and Levencourt enclave back, Beffert/Mömpelgard (Belfort/Montbeliard) accounted for over 50,000 people added to Germany. Unsurprisingly, both Paris and Berlin decided to stress their respective victorious region in the reports and newspaper articles. [/FONT]