Upon the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the end of the World War I, a soldiers' council seized power and rejected the demands of separatists from Eger for annexation to the Bavarian lands of the German Weimar Republic, preferring to remain with the Republic of German-Austria, which was however soon denied by the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. During the negotiations of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye the Americans, like Allen Welsh Dulles, had failed to persuade other powers to make at least the Bohemian peninsulas within Germany, like Aš Land or Rumburk in the Šluknov Hook, legal parts of Weimar Germany. Thus the area became part of newly established state of Czechoslovakia, and received its current Czech name On 18 November 1920, Czech militia toppled the monument of Emperor Joseph II against local protest, whereby three citizens were shot: 27yo Ferdinand Künzel, 45yo baker Eduard Schindler, 22yo Robert Käßmann A 1921 Czechoslovak census counted 183 ethnic Czechs, in a population of 40,000 in the district, a 1930 census 520 Czechs, in a population of 45,000 in the district.