THE FREE STATE OF BOTTLENECK

... did you know that not long ago, there was a place whose government called itself the Free State of Bottleneck? I'm not kidding. Here are some details:

• The Free State of Bottleneck, nestled between France and Germany, existed for four years and a month, from January 1919 to February 1923, and boasted a population of 17,000.
• Its capital was Lorch, a town on the Rhine River, whose mayor was elected the country's president.
• It issued its own passports, coin, currency, and stamps, all highly prized by collectors to this day.
• Because it wasn't formally recognized by its neighboring countries, Bottleneckers couldn't trade openly with the French or the Germans. So they earned a living by smuggling and by occasionally hijacking a train or a boat.

The country derived its odd name by its geographic shape, the result of circular zones of Allied occupation after Germany's defeat in World War I. The zones were supposed to overlap but didn't, producing a strip of land between them that looked like a bottleneck on the map. Ironic, isn't it, that incompetent government map makers inadvertently created an unclaimed chunk of previously-German land whose very shape resembles both a wine bottle and a common duty of government itself, namely, slowing or halting free movement and progress.

Bottleneck earned its own chapter in Gideon Defoe's fascinating 2020 book, An Atlas of Extinct Countries. Defoe writes of its citizens:

To read the complete article, see:
The Forgotten European Country with an Unforgettable Name (https://fee.org/articles/the-forgotten-european-country-with-an-unforgettable-name/)

 

The Free State Bottleneck was the self-deprecating name of a quasi state in-between the post-WW1 Rhineland occupation zones of France and the United States, which was cut off from the rest of Germany, as all roads and railroads out of the area went through the occupation zones.

Except for a provisional road built through the mountainous terrain that lead to Limburg which was legally assigned the administration of the area of the Free State - most goods though had to be smuggled, as the road wasn't suitable for heavy wagons and couldn't sustain the requirements of the region.

The state remained practically independent until the 1923 French occupation of the Ruhr, which, in February, also ordered the occupation of areas like the Free State Bottleneck, that laid in-between the bridgeheads. This occupation was ended in November 1924. The populace continued resistance until the end of the Rhineland occupation in 1929/30, not in form of an independent state though as the administrational difficulties had been resolved by then.

The shape the circular occupation zones created made the state in-between them look like a bottleneck on a map, thus the name.

To read the complete article, see:
50 Pfennig (https://en.numista.com/catalogue/note227331.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web