How Lithuania tortured Klaipėda residents – Open Klaipėda
In the autumn of 1922, the documents sent from the Lithuanian representative office in Klaipėda reveal not only the consequences of the economic pressure that began to be applied to the region, but also the fact that even a very large businessman who later became famous as a patron avoided paying taxes.
About these and other events of that time – in another essay of the cycle “Central archive: code – Klaipėda”.
The people of Mažlithuania successfully waited for the instructions of Kaunas
At the beginning of October 1922, the representative of Lithuania in the Klaipėda Region, Jonas Žilius, informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister, Ernestas Galvanauskas, that the Minor Lithuanians had a political program of their own, as the authorities of the Klaipėda Region had been demanding it for a long time, as other parties had already presented it.
“The Prussian Lithuanians were waiting for a program from Kaunas that would help them. Having not received it, he has now submitted his opinion through Vyr. The Lithuanian authorities are sending the Commissioner to the Conference of Ambassadors,” wrote the representative of Lithuania in the Klaipėda region.
“War, war!
On that day, J. Žilius also wrote a report to the Minister of Foreign Affairs about the economic policy of “strangulation” of the Klaipėda region, which was started on August 22. after the appointment of the Ministers of Finance, Trade and Industry, Vytautas Petrulis, the head of the Klaipėda branch of the Lithuanian Trade and Industry Bank, the temporary representative of this ministry for the Klaipėda region.
“We torture the citizens of Klaipėda region by approving and not approving invoices. I follow the principle discussed with pp. Petrulių and Klimu: in order to support our currency, we do not allow luxury goods and cheap goods that the country can get by with at least in the meantime, we pull necessarily necessary goods from the countries where they are produced, as far as possible. We are trying so hard that after reducing the traffic jam, we will remove the border signs and make it more difficult to issue passports and visas. After some time, when the currency stabilizes, we may start allowing goods to enter more easily again. Asks: When will it be? We answer: “We don’t know.” At the beginning of the transition weeks, I visited the Chief Commissioner, there were several Klaipėda wholesalers. When I entered, the Commissar started shouting: “War, war!”. They say they will telegraph to the Conference of Ambassadors. After clarifying the reasons for the restrictions, it subsided. I was at Handelskamer the other day. I also explained there. The merchants growled. October 2 d. The Staatsrat had a meeting and decided to complain through the Commissioner’s Conference of Ambassadors, offered to write a note to Lithuania and threatened “gegenmassname”. <…> In the confirmation of invoices, I follow a careful policy, so that there is no strictness from time to time, we skip the next invoice so that I can’t get caught. I think that demoralizes the merchant even more. Most of our buyers have returned goods, many have broken contracts, and they no longer buy goods. Klaipėda merchants ordered goods in Germany and elsewhere and had to pay for them. There is no money in the banks. Sometimes you have to wait a few days for the check to be exchanged. The Kratos government has borrowed from private banks once to pay salaries. He also spent about 20,000,000 mrk. own Notgeld, but it is said to be a drop. For Abelni, not approving invoices works fine until now. Klaipėda Krašto shopping is severely demoralized. In the meantime, there is no need for a customs audit in the sense that we were supposed to do it last summer. Maybe it will be good to do it in November or December. Just keep that weapon in reserve. There are many complaints against the first line in the border guard. Already in the spring, there was talk of changing it. Now it is absolutely necessary to do it. The second and third lines are good”, wrote J. Žilius.
The history of the notgelds of local money mentioned by him in Klaipėda started back in 1917, when they were issued by the magistrate. In Klaipėda, the French allowed the Chamber of Commerce to issue a series from 1 to 100 marks as local money.
At the same time, in the mentioned letter, Mr. Žiliaus also informed about the possible retaliatory measures of the Klaipėda region towards the Lithuanian authorities – the civil chief commissioner Gabriel Jean Petisné was appointed in writing to Mr. Žiliaus and the office representative, but he did not want to move and did not respond to the letters.
The next day, he already informed the Minister of Foreign Affairs after receiving news that the businessmen of Klaipėda region are starting to split due to the difficult economic situation. According to the representative, among the merchants of the region, the idea of going to Kaunas “to consult” expressed at a meeting a couple of years ago was increasingly being considered.
“The idea of going to Kaunas for the second time was raised in the Staatsrat, in the sense of “free staters”. Later, a third thought occurred. A few days ago, Mr. Raišys, chairman of the Wirtschafts-party, stated that Klaipėda’s merchants are already breaking up. The delegation that wants to go to Kaunas to experience whether Lithuania will keep the promise of the Seimas and whether equal rights will be guaranteed to the Germans of Klaipėda region? Today I am informed that the agitation in that direction is moving forward. Mr. Raižys and some German merchants think to arrive in Kaunas maybe on Sunday or maybe a little later. Please welcome them nicely so that Kaunas and the Kaunas authorities make a good impression on them. After they return, it is supposed to call merchants’ rallies and then the German barrier will be broken,” wrote J. Žilius.
And a week later, he already informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that due to the actions of the commandant of the Kretinga station “all our strict measures are in vain”.
“The commandant’s office still allows passengers, especially in transit to Latvia, without visas from our embassies. They say that they were ordered to charge only fines from the passengers without visas, and not to return them back. That matter should be sorted out, unified”, wrote J. Žilius, he also shared the insight that the introduction of a single procedure was also complicated by the fact that passport control at that time was “scattered around to be handled by several ministries” (customs, belonging to the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Kretinga commandant’s office under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the border regiment under the responsibility of the Ministry of National Defense and the representative office under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
The machinations of a large businessman from Šiauliai
At that time, in October 1922, a letter written by Antanas Endziulaitis, the general secretary of the Lithuanian representative office in Klaipėda region, addressed to the director of the Department of the European Center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bronių Dailide, revealed that Jokūbas Frenkelis, a big businessman from Šiauliai, who later became famous as a patron, was not trying to hide taxes.
Lukas Aluzas writes in an article published on the portal lrt.lt that J. Frenkel returned to Šiauliai after the First World War to restore his father Chaim’s factory, which was the largest leather factory in the entire Russian Empire at the time, but during World War I, by order of the Western Front military command, part of his machines Russia was evacuated, another part was destroyed on the spot, huge warehouses of manufactured leather and raw materials were looted.
“Due to the changed market conditions, Jakūbs Frenkel was unable to restore the pre-war capacities of the leather factory. However, in 1925, he founded another factory – “Bata”, – wrote L. Aluz.
It is possible that the factory could not be restored due to not very successful attempts to “optimize” taxes.
“S.m. September. at the end, the Otto Grossman firm in Klaipėda sent a bundle of invoices for approval, a large part of which was pil. on behalf of FRENKEL in Šiauliai. After checking the accounts, it turns out that the prices of the poisoned account were far from matching the market prices, they were at least 10-20 times lower. He further explained that pil. Grossman indicates those prices in the invoices, please indicate the add. Frenkel from Šiauliai. It is assumed that pil. Frenkel, not wanting to pay the State from the turnover, deliberately set lower prices all the time, because some of his goods were allowed duty-free, so the customs officials did not pay attention to the stated prices at all. We refused to approve these accounts and to jointly approve at least any of Grossman’s accounts,” the general secretary of the Klaipėda region of the Lithuanian representative office wrote in the aforementioned letter.
At the same time, he sent information about this to the Ministry of Finance to check at the customs office whether the declared prices of the goods imported by Mr. Frenkel correspond to market realities.
“Tuli Lithuanian leather merchants reported buk pil. Frenkel always transported in this way, avoiding to pay dependent income to the State”, wrote A. Endziulaitis.
As proof of such machinations he wrote attaching two bills. One of them listed the price of the goods at 15 marks per kilogram, when the market price of that day was 160 marks. Another one had 8 marks instead of 200.