Neutral Moresnet

A mine nobody would give up

After Napoleon’s defeat, the Congress of Vienna redrew the line between the new Kingdom of the Netherlands and Prussia. Both wanted the profitable Vieille Montagne zinc mine at the village of Moresnet, today Kelmis, so in 1816 they made the mine and the village a neutral territory instead.^[1]

Neutral Moresnet was a small triangle, about twice the size of Monaco. It began as a village of about 50 houses, a church, the mine and 256 people, and was governed jointly by royal commissioners from Prussia and the Netherlands.^[1] When Belgium became independent in 1830 it took over the Dutch side of the arrangement, and the northern tip of the triangle became a point where four territories met.^[1][2]

Life in the neutral zone

The mine ran schools, housing, shops, a hospital and a bank. Taxes were low and there were no customs checks, so the territory drew smugglers, and because the “Neutrals” had no vote and were treated as stateless, they were exempt from conscription.^[1] It used the Code Napoléon and the French franc, alongside Prussian, Belgian and Dutch money. By the end about 4,500 people lived there.^[1]

The mine ran out and closed in 1885, and residents looked for new ideas. A casino opened in 1903, until Kaiser Wilhelm II threatened to partition the territory. The mine’s former doctor, Wilhelm Molly, tried to launch Moresnet’s own stamps and proposed making it the world’s first Esperanto state, Amikejo, “place of friendship”; in 1908 the World Congress of Esperanto named it the capital of Esperanto.^[1][2]

The end

The First World War ended it. Articles 31–35 of the Treaty of Versailles gave Moresnet, with Eupen-Malmedy, to Belgium, and on 10 January 1920 it became the Belgian municipality of Kelmis.^[3][1] Germany annexed the area again by decree in May 1940; the decree lapsed with the war’s end, and it returned to Belgium.^[3]