Nationalities in congress

In a letter to the editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung on 25 February 1925, Ewald Ammende hailed the adoption of Estonia’s cultural autonomy law as ‘an important achievement for all minorities and a decisive step towards national rapprochement’. ¹ Understandably, there was much satisfaction on the part of Ammende, Schiemann, Kurchinskii and other minority activists with the way in which fears of cultural autonomy as a harbinger of states within states had been greatly reduced, at least within their own Baltic homelands. Taking this message beyond the borders of their respective countries, however, presented a more formidable challenge.