Carmaux
| Carmaux | ||
|---|---|---|
.svg)
|
|
|
| region | Occitania | |
| Department | Camouflage | |
| Arrondissement | Albi | |
| Canton | Capital of Carmaux-1 Le Ségala Carmaux-2 Vallée du Cérou |
|
| Community association | Carmausine Ségala | |
| Coordinates | 44 ° 3 ' N , 2 ° 9' E | |
| height | 228-340 m | |
| surface | 14.16 km 2 | |
| Residents | 9,500 (January 1, 2017) | |
| Population density | 671 inhabitants / km 2 | |
| Post Code | 81400 | |
| INSEE code | 81060 | |
| Website | http://www.carmaux.fr/ | |
 The center of Carmaux: in the foreground (middle) the church of St. Privat and on the right the town hall |
||
Carmaux is a French commune with 9500 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2017) in the Tarn department in the Occitanie region .
geography
Carmaux is located in the south of France 80 km northeast of Toulouse , 15 km north of Albi and southwest of the Massif Central . The city is located on Route Nationale 88, which runs from Toulouse to Lyon , and is part of the Tarn department. It is located on the banks of the Cérou River .
history
A small village is said to have existed here about 2000 years ago, and the Celts built l'Abcenq in the pits about 300 years BC. Chr. Copper from. Coal is first mentioned in 1295 because you had to pay bridge tolls for it at the bridge in Albi .
The Middle Ages are characterized by changing rulers and frequent wars. Toulouse, for example, becomes the capital of the Visigoths and later conquered by the Arabs .
Coal mining was of little importance until the 18th century, but is operated by a de Solages family with modern means, and a large-scale coal industry develops from around 1752 to 1850. During this time, a glass industry also emerged, and with the beginning of industrialization and the use of the steam engine , the demand for coal and thus the importance of the coal industry increased. The former farm workers became miners and settled in the town of Carmaux. From 1801 to 1901 the city population increased almost tenfold.
In 1892 the miners of Carmaux went on a major strike to support the elected socialist mayor Jean Baptiste Calvignac, one of their number. Calvignac had been dismissed by the Marquis de Solages, owner of the mine and also a member of the National Assembly , because he had been absent from work several times in the fulfillment of his municipal duties. After the French government had already sent 1,500 soldiers from the army to Carmaux, the socialist politician Jean Jaurès intervened. Under the pressure of the strike and the public created by Jaurès, the government appointed as arbitrator decides in favor of Calvignac in the dispute between Calvignac and de Solages. De Solages resigns from his post as MP.
After 1918, many Poles came to Carmaux, whose integration turned out to be difficult, and from 1936 Spaniards also settled here.
With the replacement of coal by other forms of energy, such as crude oil or nuclear energy, the coal industry is becoming increasingly less important, so that on July 1, 1997 the last coal was mined. A change is taking place towards new branches of industry.
Population development
|
|
|
politics
mayor
- 1945–1977: Jean Vareilles
- 1977-1997: Jacques Goulesque
- 2001–2008: René Frayssinet
- 2008 – today: Alain Espie
Twin town
The town twinning between Carmaux and Neckarsulm was one of the first town twinning agreements between a French and a German town after the Second World War. The aim of these town twinning was and is a reconciliation and understanding between the nations at the municipal level. This town twinning was prepared through talks that took place from 1953 within the framework of the International Mayors' Union. It was decided on March 7, 1957 by the Neckarsulm municipal council and on May 22, 1957 by the “Conseil municipal des Carmaux”, and its beginning is dated April 7, 1958, when delegations from both cities met for the first time in Neckarsulm.
For his services to this town twinning, the former mayor Jean Vareilles received the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in March 1978 .
The friendship between the two cities has been constantly renewed and deepened since 1958 through regular contacts between delegations and organizations. For example, through the participation of the Concordia choir at the “Festival de Musique du Tarn” in Carmaux (1976) and the Obereisesheim music association at the annual “St. Private ”(1979), Neckarsulm's help in the reconstruction of the blown up Jean Jaurès monument (1983), the“ Friendship Rally ”(1985, the cyclists drove the 1162 km from Carmaux to Neckarsulm in six days), delegations participated Carmaux at the Ganzhorn Festival in Neckarsulm, almost annual student exchange between Albert-Schweitzer-Gymnasium Neckarsulm and the "Lycée de Carmaux" and the fire brigade camaraderie between the two volunteer fire brigades .
Culture and sights
- The biggest attraction is probably the Cap'Découverte south of Carmaux: the former coal mine called La Grande Découverte (in German: The great discovery or discovery) was converted into a large sports, leisure and history park called Cap ' after its closure in 1997 Découverte , which opened on June 25, 2003. In this leisure center, which is laid out on an area of 650 hectares, you can do sports, for example: skating, mountain biking, rollerblading and mini-karting, or swimming and water skiing and much more. There is a music center with two concert halls with 750 and 350 seats, a recording, a dance and nine rehearsal studios, as well as an art gallery and the Lakeside Theater with 800 seats. Festivals with up to 20,000 participants can take place on a 20 hectare festival site. The mining museum and the "Park of the Titans", in which the huge machines that were used to mine coal are exhibited, are also interesting. Also worth mentioning is the “ carbon garden”, which shows on 13 hectares how coal was formed for around 300 million years.
- The Carmaux town hall
- The church “St. Private"
Sports
The sport of rugby union is very important in Carmaux , as evidenced not least by the championship title of the US Carmaux club and well-known French rugby players.
economy
The coal industry, which dominated the economy of Carmaux in the 19th and in the first half of the 20th century, increasingly lost importance from 1960; the coal mines were gradually closed. In 1975 a new project was started in an attempt to give coal mining a future: “la grande découverte” (in German: the great discovery), a large mine in which the coal was mined in open-cast mining and which went into operation in 1984 . On July 1, 1997, however, this mine also ceased operations because operations were not economical. Until then, coal mining had dug a funnel 1200 m in diameter and 220 m deep into the earth.
The decline of the coal industry caused the population of Carmaux to decline, from 14,755 in 1968 to 10,231 in 1999 due to emigration and an excess of deaths over births. The unemployment rate in 1999 was 17%; compared to 1990 an increase of 27.9%. There has also been a sharp increase in the number of out-commuters (from 1990 to 1999 by 29.7%). The city and the region are trying to convert the Carmaux economy away from the former coal monoculture and onto a new, more diverse basis in which tourism is to play an essential role. The most visible evidence of these efforts is the new Cap'Découverte amusement park , to which the former hard coal opencast mine was converted by the EU, the state and the region with a contribution of 61.4 million euros.
Personalities
Honorary citizen
- 2007: Kurt Bauer (* 1934) from Neckarsulm was honored as the first honorary citizen of the city of Carmaux for his decades of efforts to create friendship between the twin cities of Carmaux and Neckarsulm.
Other personalities associated with the city
- Bernard Lazare (1865-1903), journalist
- Jean Jaurès (1859–1914), politician and historian
literature
- Kurt Bauer, Barbara Löslein, Bernd Müller (Neckarsulm), Jean-Pierre Izard, Anne Vayssière (Carmaux): 40 years of twinning between Carmaux and Neckarsulm 1958–1998 , published by Stadt Neckarsulm, Neckarsulm 1998
Web links
- City of Carmaux (French)
- Leisure Center Cap'Découverte (English, French and Spanish)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Brief overview of the conversion on the website of Cap'Découverte ( Memento from June 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Bernd Müller: Kurt Bauer now also an honorary citizen of the city of Carmaux in France, Neckarsulm's first twin city since 1958 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Press release of the city of Neckarsulm from September 24, 2007
