Château de Versailles

Château de Versailles

The declaration of the new German Empire at a ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors, the château of Versailles’s ornate central gallery, at the end of the Franco-Prussian war in January 1871 was a national humiliation for France. Almost half a century later, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau insisted that the Hall of Mirrors should be used for the signing of the punitive peace treaty with Germany at the end of World War One. On 28th June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Treaty of Versailles was signed by national leaders, overseen by crowd of around 1,000 diplomats, military observers and advisers. Germany was represented by just two individuals, Foreign Minister Hermann Müller and Colonial Minster Johannes Bell, whose ‘isolated and pitiable’ status was memorably described by British diplomat Harold Nicolson. The entrance ticket shown is that of Alan Ogilvie, a young intelligence officer at the time and later Professor of Geography at the University of Edinburgh, who witnessed these momentous events.

US National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives Identifier: 531150. Local Identifier: 111-SC-159296