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France & America

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Marquis de La Fayette
(1757 – 1834)

Gilbert du Motier de la Fayette was born a nobleman and never stopped fighting for his progressive ideas; defending the abolition of slavery, religious freedom or the abolition of the death penalty, his life was guided by independence. His wealth and his marriage to a family close to Louis XVI gave him important responsibilities at the Court. But his spirit of independence pushed him to refuse, leading him to a military career. Major General of the American army at only 20 years old, he contributed to the military success of the insurgents.

Before becoming a “hero of the two worlds”, La Fayette was trained in Metz, where he learned to be an officer under the rank of captain of grenadiers from 1775. On August 8 of that same year, a meal was held in the Saint-Marcel pavilion, located on the Place de la Comédie. The Marquis shared a meal with the Duke of Gloucester, younger brother of the King of England George III. In America, the War of Independence has been raging for four months already, the Duke paints a vivid picture of the struggle of the thirteen American colonies and the young La Fayette decides that evening to join the New World to fight alongside the insurgents. Not only eager for revolution, the Marquis’ choice was also motivated by a deep hatred of the English, responsible for the death of his father at the battle of Hastenbeck in 1759 (Seven Years War).

The Place de la Comédie and the oldest theater in France still in operation.
On the left is the Saint-Marcel Pavilion, where Lafayette decided to leave for America.
Photo credit: Saint-Marcel Pavilion, Theater, Customs House, Jacques Mossot

Now a war hero, friend with Washington and conquered by the ideas of freedom, La Fayette returned to France triumphant. Still close to Louis XVI, he became a member of the National Assembly (1789) and drafted the first Declaration of the Rights of Man. After having distinguished himself as Commander of the National Guard during the French Revolution, he became Lieutenant General. In 1791, when war threatened the northern and eastern borders, La Fayette set up his headquarters in Metz, where he remained until July 1792.
Until his death in 1834, the Marquis de La Fayette remained attached to America, returning there several times and continuing to maintain a correspondence with Washington. Even today, La Fayette remains very present in the American collective memory, as evidenced by the many cities, streets, statues and other names after the famous Marquis.

A statue in Metz

It is in the Jardin Boufflers located behind the Palais de Justice that the statues have been erected over the centuries, before the Marquis de La Fayette’s statue, designed by Claude Goutin, was erected in 2004.
On March 20, 1898, during the annexation and in order to Germanize the public space, a monument in honor of Prince Frederick Charles was erected on this site. Representing the prince in hussar uniform, it was made by the profession von Miller of Munich. Metz only became French again after the First World War and the Prussian statue was removed.

After the departure of the last German soldiers (November 17, 1918), civilians armed themselves with ropes and toppled all the Prussian effigies in the city. The base of the statue of Frederick Charles remained and was replaced by a new statue. After 47 years of annexation, it was a matter of reintegrating Metz into the French community. The choice of the future statue became important and symbolic.

After a vacation, the Knights of Columbus, a powerful American Catholic association, proposes the installation of a statue of La Fayette. A subscription was voted in the United States to offer the “noble city of Metz” a statue to the “generous and immortal General La Fayette, champion of our independence”. “The statue should evoke the young hero leaving his garrison in Metz in 1775 and recall that it was in this city that he made the generous decision to commit his heart and his sword to serve the cause of independence of the English colonies in North America.
The monument is to replace the toppled “Prussian Autocratic Statues” and is to salute Fort Saint Quentin. The statue made by Wayland Bartlett will nevertheless be a replica of the statue of the Cours La Reine in Paris, they were both cast in the same mold. The original can still be seen in Paris. Nevertheless, the statue was received with all the honors. At the inauguration, the city was beautifully decorated with French and American flags and was attended by U.S. Ambassador Hugh C. Wallace, Minister of Justice, Garde des Sceaux, M. Lhopiteau, Marshal Foch and Supreme Knight James Flaherty.

Lithography representing the dinner of La Fayette in Metz, realized for the inauguration of his statue.

The statue of the Marquis de Lafayette by Wayland Bartlett during its inauguration with the Knights of Columbus.
The Lafayette monument by P.W. Bartlett, starting from rue de Ransfort in Brussels, 1921
 (Reprod. By Christophe Chapel, Charles de Coene coll.)

This statue was unfortunately melted down by the Nazis in 1940 and a very long vacancy followed until 2004 when it was replaced by an equestrian work of General La Fayette by the artist Claude Goutin in 2004. It was inaugurated in the presence of the granddaughter of General Patton, the general who liberated the city of Metz during the Second World War.

Statue of General Lafayette debunked as part of the Germanization in Metz, now gone.

Alexis de Tocqueville
(1805 – 1859)

Alexis de Tocqueville was born in Paris in 1805. A philosopher, writer and politician, he became a reference when it came to democracy, since his most significant work was Democracy in America (1835).
Coming from a bourgeois background and very much in favor of a return of the Bourbons to the throne, he joined his father (Prefect of Moselle) in Metz at the age of fifteen. He lived there for three years, the breaks with the Parisian world in which he grew up will make him the political philosopher that we now know. In 1821, he enrolled in history classes at the Collège Royal (today the Lycée Fabert), and frequently visited the library where he discovered Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau – which he was not allowed to read in his Paris -. It was at this time that he learned that Malesherbes, his great-grandfather, had contributed to the development of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia by protecting their manuscripts when he was in charge of the royal censorship (middle of the 18th century).
In 1831, Tocqueville left for the United States to study the American prison system, a pretext for studying the country’s political and social system. Back in the spring of 1832, he stayed in England where he completed his information on democratic systems. He compiles his travel notes into the first volume of Democracy in America (1835).

Democracy in America
Main ideas

Digital version of Democracy in America:

https://www.loc.gov/item/09021576/

Tocqueville seeks to understand the transition from aristocratic societies (unequal relations between individuals) to democratic societies. American society being young and democratic, it has never known aristocracy and makes it a perfect object of study.

Four major ideas:

  1. Equality of conditions as the engine of the democratization process.
  2. Democracy is a social state in addition to being a political regime. Individualism, i.e. the withdrawal from public (political) life, is a danger of democracy.
  3. The withdrawal of individuals from public life allows the power to take care of everything with benevolence, it is the soft despotism.
  4. Decisions being taken according to the majority, this one becomes tyrannical and imposes its choices on minorities (tyranny of the majority).

Auguste Bartholdi
(1834 – 1904)

Born in Colmar in August 1834, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi came from a bourgeois family, which led him to grow up among the city’s notables. In 1836 his father died and in 1843 the family moved to Paris, where the sculptor attended the prestigious Lycée Louis le Grand. Having difficulty adjusting to life in the capital, Bartholdi and his brother spent their summers in the quiet countryside of Colmar.
Very attached to his native town, he inaugurated his first masterpiece there in 1856: a statue of General Rapp (hero of the Napoleonic armies). Afterwards, Bartholdi traveled to the Orient and brought back drawings and photographs that inspired him to create other sculptures. He then participated in numerous competitions and took orders, until 1870, the war against Prussia in which he invested to defend his native Alsace. At the end of that terrible year, he left for the United States and embarked on the greatest project of his life: Liberty Enlightening the World, or Statue of Liberty.

The Statue of Liberty’s epic story

The creation, assembly and transportation of the Statue until its arrival in New York took 16 years (1870 – 1886). In 1884 the manufacturing process was completed, the statue was dismantled, crated and loaded onto a ship in Rouen in May 1885. It was received in New York on June 17, 1885, reassembled on site and inaugurated on October 28, 1886.

The Statue of Liberty in its workshop in Paris
Bartholdi Museum-Colmar. Repro Chr. Kempf

You can see on the two photographs the construction of Paris: on the left image, the building in the background has no windows yet, while on the second, they are installed.

On its way, the torch of Liberty lighting the world stopped in Philadelphia. Open to visitors who could ride it, the proceeds helped finance the construction of the Statue of Liberty.

The Statue of Liberty in Colmar

A replica of the Statue of Liberty was made in Colmar for the death of Bartholdi’s centenary. It measures more than 12 meters at the torch and was made of composite material tinted in the mass to give it the appearance of patinated copper.
This statue is also a link with the United States since in 1986, a twinning between Colmar and the university town of Princeton, near New York was signed.
The statue still represents a symbol of freedom as shown in the photographs below.

“In Colmar, the Statue of Liberty puts on a “yellow vest” ” Sébastien BOZON / AFP / 2019
“The Statue of Liberty in Colmar, draped in the colors of Ukraine, in February 2022.” Maxppp – Hervé KIELWASSER
“A stork on the replica of the Statue of Liberty in Colmar, quite a symbol. Thierry Gachon, Max PPP