Le souvenir français
Le Souvenir français is a society founded in 1887 whose mission is to honor the memory of the soldiers who died fighting for France . At the same time, according to its statutes, it is also important for the association to look after the grave sites and monuments that remember these people and thus also to keep the events that led to the victims alive for future generations. This commemoration goes to both French and foreign victims. This society is a counterpart to the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge , the Austrian Black Cross and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission . In addition to these memorial tasks, the association was also a political instrument for coming to terms with the past , especially until the transition to Franco-German friendship .
history
As a result of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine started a movement that mourned the loss of belonging to France, especially remembering its victims in the war. Many French who lived in the annexed countries found it difficult to submit to German authorities. The private lecturer François-Xavier Niessen, born on October 9, 1846 in Sarre-Union and already an orphan at the age of thirteen, was a declared opponent of Germany and was expelled from the country at the age of 51 because of his French patriotic statements, which he referred to in Neuilly-sur-Seine settled north of Paris. But nine years earlier he had emigrated to France, where he founded the association to commemorate the French fighters.
A law of April 4, 1873 supported the establishment of war graves. On this basis, the association took over the local care of the tombs since it was founded in 1887. Just two years later it developed into an international movement with its first branches in Belgium, Waterloo and Taiwan, and today the association is represented in over sixty countries. In total there are over 200,000 active members worldwide, and in France more than 1,500 domestic representations.
Until 1906 the association was not allowed to appear in public in the Reichsland. It was not until January 13, 1907, that a regional association for Alsace-Lorraine was founded in Noisseville near Metz . This establishment is thanks to the first president, Jean-Paul Jean, who was a member of parliament for his Moselle department from 1919 to 1924 . On April 1st of the same year, a memorial in honor of the victims of the 1870/71 war was inaugurated in front of 120,000 people. For the first time after the war surrender, a sea of flags flooded the nationally-minded event in Lorraine. The funds required for the construction were collected in 500 French municipalities.
The association's three-colored plaques are still visible on numerous graves in Alsace and Lorraine.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Au fil des mots et de l'histoire
- ↑ a b Homepage of the Le Souvenir français association
- ↑ World map of the state representations
- ↑ Frederic Plancard: Serge Barcellini à la tête du Souvenir Français , L'Est, April 21, 2015