Mur des Fédérés

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Memorial plaque on the Mur des Fédérés in the Père Lachaise cemetery
Socialist rally at the Mur des Fédérés in May 1908, with Édouard Vaillant (center), a survivor of the Paris Commune and politician of the SFIO

The Wall of the Commune (Mur des Fédérés) (Eng .: Wall of the Federated; - the Associated) is a memorial in the Paris Père Lachaise cemetery .

Towards the end of the " Bloody May Week" , the last fighters of the Paris Commune holed up in the cemetery, 147 of them were shot on May 28, 1871 and buried in a mass grave not far from the wall. As a result, thousands of Communards were summarily executed.

For the French left, the “wall of the commune” is a symbol of the people's struggle for freedom and against state repression. Many protagonists of the French Communist Party , especially those who fought in the Resistance , are buried nearby.
The history of the Commune was remembered by the left and the labor movement , which was reconstituted within a few years.

The first demonstration to the wall of the commune took place on May 23, 1880, after a call by Jules Guesde . 25,000 people, many with a symbolic red rose in their buttonhole, had to defend themselves against the police force deployed. Two months later, the surviving Communards were given amnesty.
Since then, the demonstration at this symbolic place has taken place every year in the last week of May. The rally led by Léon Blum and Maurice Thorez on May 23, 1936 (a few weeks after the Popular Front took office ) saw a record turnout of 600,000 people.

“ Tombe sans croix et sans chapelle, sans lys d'or, sans vitraux d'azur, quand le peuple en parle, il l'appelle 'le Mur'. "

“ Grave site without a cross and without a chapel, without golden lilies and without sky-blue church windows, when people talk about them, they say 'the wall'. "

- Jules Jouy

literature

  • Sebastian Haffner : In the shadow of history. Historical-political variations from 20 years. Stuttgart (DVA) 1985
  • Alistair Horne: The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71 (1965; German edition: "The Prussians probably crossed the Rhine", Munich (Scherz Verlag), 1967, 416 pp.)
  • Bernd Kramer (Ed.): Life - Ideas - Struggle. Louise Michel and the Paris Commune from 1871. Karin Kramer Verlag , Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-87956-263-6 .
  • Karl Marx : The civil war in France , in Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels - works, (Karl) Dietz Verlag, Berlin. Volume 17, 5th edition 1973

Web links

Commons : Mur des Fédérés  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 48 ° 51 ′ 34.8 "  N , 2 ° 24 ′ 0"  E