Jean-Baptiste André Godin

Statue of Godin in front of the Familistère in Guise

Jean-Baptiste André Godin (born January 26, 1817 in Esquéhéries , Département Aisne , France ; † January 15, 1888 , in Guise , Aisne) was an early socialist French entrepreneur and founder of the stove factory "Les Cheminées Godin" in Guise and the associated ones Cooperative community housing estate Familistère Godin . He was a member of the Aisne department from 1871 to 1876 under the French Third Republic .

Life

The son of a village blacksmith left school at the age of eleven to work in his father's workshop, completed his apprenticeship with his uncle, and at the age of 17 went on a journey (1835–1837) that took him to Paris, Bordeaux, Toulon, Marseille and Lyon led. After returning home, he opened his own workshop in his home town in 1840 with the help of his father, who provided him with 4,000 francs, in which he began to build stoves with the help of two workers. The management of the Godin furnace factory, which emerged from this workshop in 1846 (see below), occupied Jean-Baptiste André Godin until the end of his life.

Godin, who had been made receptive to the harsh living conditions within the poorly paid working class by the experiences of wandering, supplemented his poor school education by reading the works of Rousseau, Diderot and Voltaire. A newspaper article aroused his interest in the utopian social reformer Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and the " École sociétaire " founded by him and prompted him to subscribe to the magazine La Phalange , which served to spread Fourier's teaching. Finally he joined the “Ecole sociétaire” himself.

In 1853 or 1854, the industrialist who was strongly influenced by Fourier's apprenticeship invested and lost 100,000 francs, about a third of his fortune at the time. He supported Victor Considerant (1808-1893), who after a failed uprising against Napoléon III. lived in exile in the United States. As an enthusiastic supporter of Fourier, Considerant hoped to be able to put his theoretical teaching into practice by founding the Phalanstères " La Réunion " near Dallas , Texas . Due to the recruitment of agriculturally inexperienced colonists, the poor soil quality, unfavorable climatic conditions, a plague of locusts and correspondingly low yields, the colony dissolved again in 1856.

After this failure, the socially committed factory owner had a residential complex built in the immediate vicinity of his factory for the workers employed there, known as the “Familistère Godin” (see below). In 1880 he signed the Familistère to a cooperative association that existed until 1968.

Jean-Baptiste André Godin died in Guise in 1888. He was married to Marie Lemaire.

plant

The stove factory "Les Cheminées Godin"

Godin's economic success came with the patenting of the new process he had developed for manufacturing ovens from cast iron - and no longer from sheet metal. In 1846, he had the stove manufacturer, about 40 km from the Belgian border, buy several properties on the banks of the Oise and on the outskirts of the town of Guise in order to relocate production to an area with better transport connections. More patents followed, the hiring, by 1850, of 180 workers and employees and the establishment of a second factory near Brussels (1853). The factory employed around 1,500 workers in 1880 and over 2,000 in 1908.

The factory was later privatized. After another change of ownership in 1980, it flourishes again and employs 280 people.

The Familistère Godin

→ Main article : Familistère

The construction of the Familistères, which is embedded in a river meander on the bank of the Oise opposite the stove factory, began in 1859 with the construction of the residential pavilions. The planning was based on Fourier's model of the phalansterium and, with a total of 500 apartments, came close to the ideal of a settlement of 1,600 residents. However, Godin, who had become more prudent due to the failure of the Texan phalanstery, adapted the utopian model to his own financial possibilities as well as the specific circumstances of his furnace factory and the needs of the workers employed there.

The complex comprises three residential pavilions , which were referred to as residential or social palaces , a theater, two schools built parallel to the side facades of the theater, other communal buildings such as crèche, bath and wash house and other farm buildings.

The three four-story residential buildings each have four wings that form a rectangular inner courtyard with a glass roof. They were arranged in such a way that a fourth, open-air courtyard was created between the two buildings on the side and the central, set back building. In the two corners at the rear of this courtyard, passages were made between the buildings.

The residential buildings, as well as the factory, were later privatized, while the theater and other community facilities passed into the ownership of the municipality of Guise. As part of the extensive renovation project Project Utopia , the municipality has now bought around a quarter of the Familistere's apartments, some of which were in need of renovation, that were privatized at the time. She endeavors to highlight the importance of the Familistères and to develop the facility for tourism purposes.

Fonts

• Solutions Sociales. 1871 (new edition: Paris 1979).
• Mutualité sociale et association du capital et du travail . Paris 1880.

literature

• Rudolf Stumberger : The Utopia Project. The past and present of the "Familistère Godin" cooperative and residential model . VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-89965-096-4 .
• Franziska Bollerey: Architectural Concepts of the Utopian Socialists. Alternative planning and architecture for the social process. Munich 1977.
• Gabriele Stauner-Linder: The Societe du Familistere de Guise of J.-BA Godin. Frankfurt am Main 1984.
• Marie Fischer: The Familistère Godins. A picture of social reform. Hamburg 1890.
• Franz Heat : Workers Welfare. Cologne 1885, fifth year, fourth quarter.

Web links

• http://www.familistere.com/ (in French and English) Arrival, guided tours etc.

See also

• Workers' settlement , colliery colony

Footnotes

1. ↑ Archives départementales de l'Aisne, inventory 5Mi0560 - 1888, Registre des actes de l'Etat Civil de la commune de Guise , Jg. 1888, entry no.21 from January 16, 1888 on death on January 15, 1888 ( online )
2. ↑ See Stumberger 2004, p. 13.
3. ↑ See Stumberger 2004, p. 18.
4. ↑ See Stauner-Lindner 1984, p. 38.
5. ↑ Considerant later tried to found a phalanstery in Brazil. All of the 40 comparable founding attempts by Fourier's followers failed. (See Stumberger 2004, p. 23 after Bollerey 1977, p. 140)
6. ↑ See Stumberger 2004, p. 13.