Lazare Ponticelli

Lazare Ponticelli between two members of a re-enactment association from Lorraine

Commemorative plaque in Avranches who Franz artists and Lazare Ponticelli is dedicated.

Lazare Ponticelli (* as Lazzaro Ponticelli on December 7, 1897 in Groppo Ducale, today: Bettola in Italy ; † March 12, 2008 in Le Kremlin-Bicêtre ) was the last surviving veteran of the First World War with French citizenship.

Life

Ponticelli came to France in 1907 at the age of nine. He joined the Foreign Legion at the age of 16, but was retired after being wounded. After Italy entered the First World War in 1915, he joined the Italian army. After returning to France in 1921, he and his two brothers founded a furnace setter (Ponticelli Frères) , which developed into a large international company and is now active in the fields of construction and industrial maintenance.

In 1939, with the start of World War II , Ponticelli took French citizenship . During the war he went to the unoccupied part of France. After its occupation in 1942, he went to Paris and fought in the Resistance .

He was the only veteran who could still rise at the November 11, 2006 celebrations. After the death of 52 days older Louis de Cazenave on January 20, 2008, he was the only remaining French combatant of the First World War. Lazare Ponticelli survived Cazenave by exactly 52 days and died in March 2008 at the age of 110 in Le Kremlin-Bicêtre in the Val-de-Marne department , where he had lived for most of his life, in his daughter's apartment.

The ceremony took place on March 17, 2008 at a state funeral. The funeral mass in the soldiers' church of St. Louis des Invalides was followed by the military honor in the courtyard of the Hôtel des Invalides in the presence of the French President. The address was given by the historian Max Gallo . From there the coffin was transferred to the cemetery in Ivry-sur-Seine and buried there in the closest circle in the family grave. Against the decision taken in 2005 by the Haut Conseil de la mémoire combattante, then presided over by President Jacques Chirac , to honor the last surviving soldier of the First World War with a state funeral and burial in the Panthéon or next to the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe the humble Lazare Ponticelli resisted until shortly before his death, as he saw this as an injustice to his anonymous comrades. Most recently, he agreed, exclusively with regard to the ceremony, but not with regard to the place of burial, on the express condition that it took place in the form of a funeral mass and that all former participants of the First World War were to be included in the ceremony.

See also

The last World War I veterans in other countries included:

• Florence Green (1901–2012), last British veteran of the First World War
• Frank Buckles (1901–2011), last American veteran of the First World War
• Claude Stanley Choules (1901–2011), British veteran of the First and Second World Wars (Australian citizen from 1926)
• Henry Allingham (1896–2009), last veteran of the Royal Navy of the First World War
• Harry Patch (1898–2009), last British Army veteran of the First World War
• Louis de Cazenave (1897–2008), last World War I veteran who took part in the fighting as a French citizen
• Franz Künstler (1900–2008), last surviving veteran of Austria-Hungary during World War I (German citizen from 1946)
• Erich Kästner (1900–2008), last surviving German soldier of the First World War
• Charles Kuentz (1897–2005), last surviving German soldier from Alsace during the First World War (French citizen from 1919)

Web links

• Lazare Ponticelli, biography (French)
• Lazare Ponticelli. Biography with photos (French)
• Website of the company he co-founded
• Lazare Ponticelli, France's Last Veteran of World War I, Is Dead at 110 . In: New York Times , March 13, 2008
• Francis Gouge, Benoit Hopquin: Le vieux monsieur aurait-il aimé voir ça? Website of the Ligue des droits de l'homme , Section de Toulon

Individual evidence

1. ↑ L'hommage à Ponticelli honore tous les poilus . lefigaro.fr; Retrieved April 17, 2008
2. ↑ France wants state funeral - last veteran agrees . n-tv .de, January 24, 2008
3. ↑ ldh-toulon.net ( Memento of the original from May 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.