good going & please keep on it
we need actual evidence of actual agreements before we can comfortably suspend our belief that only the default principle of equidistance is operative here in lieu of any known agreements
Anton Zeilinger <anton_zeilinger@...> wrote:
Hi,
I went to the National Library today; I did not have much time so I
only skimmed through one of the books, a Master's thesis (Klocker,
Gernot : Die Hoheitsrechte am Bodensee unter Ber�cksichtigung des
Fischereirechtes / eingereicht von: Gernot Klocker , 1996 . - 59 Bl.
- Innsbruck, Univ., Dipl.-Arb., 1997).
This work seems to be well researched and the author holds the opinion
that there exist distinct boundaries on the lake. The Austrian
boundary is a straight line between the two spots where ATGE and
ATCHE, respectively, hit the lake.
He bases his claim on these reasons:
a) The Map attached to the Treaty of St-Germain, the Austrian
equivalent to the Versailles treaty: The treaty itself does not talk
about the boundary in Lake Constance, but there is a map attached to
it on which the above mentioned line is
indicated.
b) Official Austrian catastral maps of the lake and its environs have
adopted exactly this line as the Austrian boundary.
c) Only in 1976 did Austria finally settle on the condominium claim,
after making different claims throughout history. Germany and
Switzerland both argue for straight boundaries and against the
condominium solution.
His arguments are good, but from an international law perspective I am
not entirely convinced.
a) Illustrative maps attached to treaties do not hold the same
normative power as the treaty itself.
b) I am not sure whether such catastral maps would convince a tribunal
that this is the official position of the state concerned and whether
this prejudices it from holding other claims.
c) He did not go into details of what the previous Austrian position
was, so this would have to be looked at in more detail.
But hey, in general, his arguments are not bad!
I won't be able to
head to the library again for two weeks but will
try to read up then.
Cheerio,
Anton
--- In BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "Anton Zeilinger"
<anton_zeilinger@h...> wrote:
>
> --- In BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "L. A. Nadybal" <lnadybal@c...>
> wrote:
> >
> > --- In BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "Anton Zeilinger"
> > <anton_zeilinger@h...> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > as far as I know there never was any boundary change in Lake
> > > Constance, the position of any line or even the qualification of
the
> > > whole lake as a condominium has been always disputed.
> >
> > However, during the "Anschlu���" period, the Germans and the Swiss
must
> > have come to an arrangement that regulated at what point people
> > fleeing to Switzerland across the lake were
deemed to have
> > successfully made it to the Swiss part of the lake.
> >
> > That arrangement may have disintigrated after the war, but if it
> > didn't, then there must be some continuing recognition of the "Confine
> > del Stato" at the place.
> >
> > LN
>
>
> That's a good point! Nevertheless I would believe that any such
> arrangements were purely practical in nature. The Swiss were not
> exactly welcoming to people fleeing Nazi Germany, unfortunately; there
> were, e.g., several prosecutions of border guards who had helped
> refugees across the border. So the Swiss may have let German military
> go further than normally warrantable...
>
> I don't think it was a formal agreement and even then it would
> probably not bind Austria after it became independent again, as it was
> restored with the boundaries of 1937. Plus, legal
arrangements entered
> into by the occupying power are not normally binding, see e.g. the
> East Timor case before te ICJ.
>
> In the National Library here in Vienna there are one or two works on
> the legal status of Lake Constance; I'll try to head down and read up
> sometime in the next weeks.
>
> Anton
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