Protectorate over Courland

On 15 March 1918 the Reich Chancellor Georg von Hertling received a delegation of the Courland Land Council (Kurländischer Landesrat), headed by Baron Rahden, and announced to it the decision of Kaiser Wilhelm II. In the name of the Reich the Kaiser recognised the Duchy of Courland as a “free and independent state” and declared his readiness to conclude treaties with it “which will ensure a close economic and military union of the two countries”. Formally this was a recognition of independence. The British chronology of the war recorded the event as the proclamation of a German protectorate over an “independent” Courland.

Courland, the western part of present-day Latvia, had been occupied by the Germans in 1915 and placed in the territory administered by the army, Ober Ost. Before the war about 800,000 people had lived there, most of them Latvians, but on the orders of the Russian command more than half a million fled or were evacuated into the interior of Russia. According to a German census of the autumn of 1915, about 245,000 inhabitants remained in the country. The occupiers hoped for German settlement and saw the country’s political representation in the Baltic Germans, who for centuries had formed the landowning and urban elite there. In September 1917 a provincial assembly convened at the castle in Mitau (Jelgava) adopted a draft constitution for the country, and the Land Council emerged from its ranks; in December a conference of the Courland nobility came out in favour of a personal union with Germany or Prussia. At Brest the Germans argued to the Russians that Courland had seceded from Russia of its own accord.

After the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in which Russia renounced sovereignty over Courland and Germany announced that it would determine its fate “in agreement with the population”, events moved quickly. On 8 March the Land Council, dominated by Baltic Germans, proclaimed in Mitau the revival of the old Duchy of Courland and Semigallia and asked the Kaiser to accept the ducal crown for himself and his descendants. This passed over the descendants of the Biron dynasty, which had ruled the duchy until 1795. According to the Latvian public broadcaster LSM, the request was submitted by nine Germans, several of them barons, and only one Latvian. On 10–11 March the chancellor’s special plenipotentiary for eastern affairs, Count Keyserlingk, urged Erich Ludendorff to recognise Courland’s statehood. On 12 March the leaders of the Reichstag majority raised objections with the chancellor, as parliament supported the right of the Baltic peoples to self-determination. The view of the Supreme Army Command prevailed: it wanted to bind the Baltic lands to the Reich through the local German landed gentry. The act of 15 March, however, made no mention of the Kaiser accepting the crown.

Latvian national activists, who in January had declared for an independent Latvia uniting Courland, Livonia and Latgale, condemned the creation of puppet institutions under German supervision. The duchy never really began to function. In April the Baltic Germans of Courland, Livonia and Estonia began planning a single common state, and on 5 November 1918 they proclaimed the United Baltic Duchy in Riga. After Germany’s defeat, Latvian independence was proclaimed on 18 November 1918, and on 7 December the German military authorities handed power over to the government of Kārlis Ulmanis.