Hotel Arbez Franco-Suisse

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Hotel Arbez Franco-Suisse
city F: 39220 Les Rousses
0CH: 1265 La Cure
address F: La Cure, 601, Rue de la Frontière
0CH: Route de France 61
Website www.arbezie.com
Hotel information
opening 1863
owner Arbez family
management Alexandre Peyron
Furnishing
room 16
Restaurants 2
Bars 1
Photo of the hotel

Coordinates: 46 ° 27 ′ 51.5 "  N , 6 ° 4 ′ 22.8"  E

The Hôtel Arbez , also known as Hôtel Franco-Suisse and Hôtel Arbez Franco-Suisse , is a hotel located on the border between France and Switzerland . It is located in the village of La Cure , which is itself divided by the border: the French La Cure belongs to the municipality of Les Rousses , the Swiss side is a district of Saint-Cergue . The building was constructed by a businessman who wanted to take advantage of an upcoming border correction in the area. The first floor was originally a shop on the Swiss side and a restaurant on the French side. Today the complex, which consists of several parts of the building, is used as a hotel. The border runs through the kitchen, the dining room, the stairwell and some rooms.

background

The special situation of the hotel goes back to a border dispute between France and Switzerland - the dispute over the Vallée des Dappes . France under Napoléon Bonaparte annexed the nearby Dappental in 1805 in order to build a strategic military road between France and Savoy . In 1815 the Congress of Vienna granted the valley back to Switzerland. As a result, France continued to try to acquire the territory, which Switzerland refused for decades. In 1861 Napoléon III had troops march into the area, and France proposed an exchange: The Vallée des Dappes should be exchanged for an area of ​​the same area on the slopes of the Noirmont. The two states signed the agreement in December 1862, and it entered into force on February 20, 1863. The property of today's hotel and its surroundings originally lay entirely on French territory - however, when the contract came into force, several buildings were divided by the new border. The agreement granted the residents of the exchanged areas all of their previous rights to property, and they were also free to choose their citizenship.

Construction of the hotel - a race against time

At the time the State Treaty was signed on December 8, 1862, the vacant property belonged to a French named Ponthus (1837–1895). The then 25-year-old earned part of his living smuggling . With a view to the future course of the border and the promised guarantee of ownership rights to existing buildings, he used the short time until the contract came into force to start building a house and to have it formally in good time before February 20, 1863 with the roofing of the To complete the roof. In order to gain time, he not only made use of all available labor in the area, but also refrained from building another planned floor. The Swiss authorities protested against the construction, but could not order a construction freeze before the border correction came into force.

Ponthus placed about a third of the building area on future Swiss and two thirds on French territory. The intention behind this was to gain advantages in cross-border trade by setting up a shop in the Swiss part, the Magasin R. Ponthus , and a restaurant in the French part. The shop was geared towards the needs of smugglers. Ponthus died in 1895. His sons Raymond and Alphonse took over the business and set up the Hôtel de la Frontière , but increasingly got into conflict with each other. In 1921 they sold the property to Jules-Jean Arbez (* 1874). From then on he called the business Hôtel Franco-Suisse , and his descendants still run it today.

Second World War and Algerian War

During the occupation of France by the Wehrmacht , German troops were allowed to enter the French part of the hotel and the brasserie . They were not allowed to join the Swiss side. They were also not allowed to go on the upper floors of the hotel, as the two stairs end in Switzerland. The demarcation line between occupied (Zone occupée) and free France (Zone libre) ran from 1940 to 1942 along Route nationale 5 (Rue de la Frontière) and thus on the doorstep. The hotel was at the intersection of the two zones and neutral Switzerland.

Max Arbez (1901–1992), son of Jules-Jean Arbez, took advantage of this fact by helping hundreds of Jews and members of the Resistance to cross the border in one direction or the other or by hiding them in hotels. His wife Angèle Arbez supported him in this. For his services, Max Arbez was awarded the Righteous Among the Nations posthumously by Yad Vashem in 2012 . His widow accepted the award in 2013.

On December 9, 1961, the hotel hosted preliminary negotiations between representatives of France and the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale to end the Algerian war . The French diplomats came from France, the Algerian representatives traveled via Switzerland. The Treaties of Évian subsequently ended the war and led to Algeria's independence.

Location of the hotel and the border line

The house is located on the narrow strip of land between the French Route de la Frontière and the Swiss Route de France. The border runs parallel to the two streets and through the building in between. The hotel can be entered from both streets and thus from both countries. On the French side it bears the name Arbez and above the Swiss entrance the name Hôtel Franco-Suisse . Several small official border markings on the facades of the various parts of the building and a large boundary stone indicate the course of the border:

  • In the hotel (the oldest part of the building), the border goes through the dining room, the hallway and the kitchen. The two flights of stairs to the upper floors start in France and end in Switzerland. In the dining room is the smaller, separable part (formerly a shop) in Switzerland. The Swiss part of the building is at Route de France 61.
  • The later built brasserie with the bar is entirely in France. The border runs in the open in front of the entrance on the Swiss side. The border symbols above the bar are only decorative.
  • Rooms 6 and 9 are entirely in France. Occasionally it is claimed that the headboard of the beds is in Switzerland.
  • The mural on the hotel facade is in Switzerland, its left edge forms the border. It is a copy of Paul Cézanne's Les Joueurs de cartes .
  • In room No. 12 (seen from the outside above the mural) the beds are in Switzerland and the bathroom in France. The border runs between the two windows.
  • The hotel annex (Swiss address Route de France 57) is almost entirely in Switzerland. A few centimeters of the back wall belong to France. This building was only built after the border correction and was rented to the gendarmerie in its early days.

Trivia

The special situation of the hotel in relation to the border encouraged Max Arbez and his friend Edgar Faure to proclaim the fictional micronation l'Arbézie in 1958 .

Web links

Commons : Hôtel Arbez Franco-Suisse  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ State treaty between the Swiss Confederation and France on the affiliation of the Dappental from 1862
  2. ↑ Swisstopo, time travel through maps from 1845 to today with the boundary corrections
  3. ↑ a b "l'Arbézie", book by Maryse Obez-Arbez, published 1997 , summary, accessed on June 25, 2018
  4. ↑ Michelin map No. 99 from 1941 , accessed on June 26, 2018
  5. ^ Comité Français pour Yad Vashem, Rescue of the Lande family by Max Arbez , accessed on June 27, 2018
  6. ^ Yad Vashem - Média le Progrès: Pour avoir sauvé des juifs, il va devenir Juste parmi les Nations.Retrieved June 27, 2018
  7. ↑ Angèle Arbez a reçu la médaille des Justes parmi les Nations pour son mari Max. Voix du Jura, October 6, 2013, accessed on June 25, 2018 .
  8. ↑ a b Alexandre Peyron, prince consort franco-suisse in: Le Temps of January 23, 2018, accessed on June 26, 2018
  9. ↑ Jan S. Krogh's Geosite: Hotel Arbez. Retrieved June 28, 2018 .
  10. ↑ a b c d e Jan S. Krogh's Geosite: La Cure. Retrieved June 28, 2018 .