nec temere, nec timide

With the above motto meaning “Neither rather nor timidly,” the Free City of Danzig / Wolne Miasto Gdańsk was established on this day in 1920 under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles following the peace of World War I. Created as separate from the post-war German republic (populated with the overwhelming number of residence and sandwiched in between Königsburg, Kaliningrad) and the Republic of Poland as a League of Nations protectorate—with limited self-autonomy and bound with Polish customs, the city council was infiltrated by 1936 with representatives pushing to rejoin Germany, having been granted independence once under Napoleon Bonaparte and recaptured by Prussia after the Battle of Leipzig in 1814—the most recent declaration of self-determination being a compromise between territory was annexed as Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreußen, mirroring status quo ante bellum, to exist as a contested land until the end of conflict.