CYIL vol. 9 (2018)

CYIL 9 ȍ2018Ȏ CITIZENSHIP IN THE FIRST CZECHOSLOVAK REPUBLIC … Czechoslovakia in 1918, the right of domicile was preserved and this concept institute was abolished only in 1948 by Act No. 174/1948 Coll., on the abolition of the right of domicile. During the significant period of Czechoslovakia between 1918 and 1939, the Republic developed from being established, through the prosperity of the 1920s, to the economic crisis until the end of the republic in 1939. As already mentioned, the legal regulation of legislation from Austria-Hungary was accepted for the new republic in 1918, but subsequently the Constitutional Act No. 236/1920 Coll. on Acquisition and Loss of Citizenship and Home Right in the Czechoslovak Republic was accepted in 1920. It is very interesting that the issue of citizenship was regulated retroactively by the Act from 1918. During this two-year period of the adopted legislation this important question was solved only preliminarily and was based on the memorandum of the Ministry of Interior No. 21419. 30 It should be emphasized that when creating the concept of Act No. 236/1920 Coll., on the Acquisition and Loss of Citizenship and the Right of Home in the Czechoslovak Republic, the legislators had to rely on international legal obligations binding the Czechoslovak Republic. One of the obligations was the issue of citizenship, which was adopted by Czechoslovakia on 9 September 1919 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Treaty of Saint Germain) was a treaty between the allied powers and Austria after World War I. It was incorporated into the Czechoslovak legal order as Act No. 508/1921 Coll. as the so-called treaty on minorities, or a small Saint- Germain treaty. Regarding the issue of citizenship, in this respect Articles 3-6 are especially interesting, by which Czechoslovakia committed to grant citizenship to every person who had a factual link to the territory of Czechoslovakia, but also not to prevent persons with parallel connection to another successor state of Austria-Hungary to change citizenship on the basis of free will. 31 The first general and definitive constitution of the Czechoslovak Republic was adopted on 29 February 1920, and was published in the Collection of Laws No. 121/1920 Coll. and came into force on 6 March 1920. This constitutional charter stipulated in its § 4: “Citizenship in the Czechoslovak Republic is the only one and unified. Conditions of acquisition, effects and termination of citizenship of the Czechoslovak Republic are determined by law.” 32 This law (and therefore the basic norm on citizenship and the right of domicile) had already become the above-mentioned Constitutional Act No. 236/1920 on Acquisition and Loss of Citizenship and Home Law in the Czechoslovak Republic, which supplemented and changed the existing provisions on acquiring and losing citizenship in the Czechoslovak Republic. In § 1 and § 4–12 of this Constitutional Act, the conditions under which former citizens of Austria-Hungary and the German Empire became Czechoslovak citizens were defined, and the conditions of the option for Czechoslovak citizenship as well as the conditions for proclamation of renouncing Czechoslovak citizenship were defined. The most numerous group of natural persons, the citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became Czechoslovak citizens on the basis of uninterrupted law of domicile as of 1 January 1910 in a municipality that became part of Czechoslovakia. The right of domicile may not have been necessarily in the same community, but the condition for the acquisition of Czechoslovak citizenship was fulfilled if the right of domicile was continuously in the municipalities that had become part of Czechoslovakia. The citizens of the German Empire did not have the possibility 30 Memorandum of the Ministry of the Interior No. 21419, from 1919, year I., p. 118. 31 EMMERT, F.: Citizenship in the Czech Republic in the past and present. First issue. Prague: Leges, 2016. p. 26. 32 Act No. 121/1920, Coll.

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