As we watched the flames rise and the spire fall on Notre-Dame Cathedral on April 15, 2019, those who lived in or had visited Paris before felt a nearly personal sense of loss. Notre-Dame was truly “our” Lady, whether beheld with the eyes of a Catholic or not. Even among the hundreds of millions who saw images of the conflagration but hadn’t yet had the pleasure of visiting the French capital, many spoke of the event as a calamity or a tragedy. Many would wallow in those feelings for days.

But for some, there was little time for heartache. The fire was a call to action—for firemen, the president and government officials (Notre-Dame belongs to the French state), Catholic Church officials, historical architects, scaffolders, logisticians, restoration specialists, foundation managers who would accept pledges and funds amounting to 840 million euros (940 million dollars at the time), lumberjacks, quarriers, etc., and journalists and photographers as well. I, myself, took a call from NBC Philadelphia the night of the fire. But once the (lead) dust had settled, media entrance to the cathedral was carefully limited.

Among those who repeatedly gained access to the wounded monument from 2020 to 2024, few journalists covered the restoration project as thoroughly as Sophie Laurant, senior history and cultural heritage reporter for Le Pèlerin, a weekly Christian general news magazine, France’s oldest continually published magazine (1873).

Even fewer, if any, photographers were authorized to enter the worksite as frequently and extensively as Stéphane Compoint, an independent photojournalist specialized in architecture, cultural heritage and aerial photography, and a World Press Photo winner, tasked with Le Pèlerin to cover the restoration project. Stéphane had earned his stripes as a photographer of Notre-Dame well before the fire; in 2013 he’d made major photographic study the cathedral for a special edition of Le Pèlerin, producing photographs that became precious historical documentation of the state of the cathedral before the fire. From the date of the fire until its reopening, he photographed Notre-Dame on 63 occasions from the inside and nearly as many times from outside.

Several days after the reopening of the cathedral to Catholic and non-Catholic visitors alike on December 8, I had the opportunity to interview Sophie and Stéphane, in writing. As you will read in the combined interview below, theirs is a precious testimony to the restoration process and to its technical achievements, its emotional impact, and the collective and individual investment involved, including their own.

(The original, French version of these interviews can be read here.)

Gary Lee Kraut: In your work you demonstrate an acute sensitivity toward heritage sights in general and religious heritage sights in particular. You’ve undoubtedly visited all of the Gothic cathedrals of France? But before examining these structures with the eyes of a professional journalist and photographer, what was your relationship with these magnificent mastodons of the Middle Ages? Do you recall the first time that you visited Notre-Dame?

Stéphane Compoint: A Parisian forever, I grew up in the 6th arrondissement. My grade school and high school were near Notre-Dame. The cathedral has always been a part of my immediate landscape.

My family was rather secular, even anticlerical. But my maternal grandfather drew closer to the God of the Catholic religion after the tragic death of his oldest son (my uncle), who died from drowning while trying to save a friend, who survived. He therefore became a believer and started going regularly to mass, often taking me with him to churches in the neighborhood (Saint Germain des Près, Saint Sulpice, Saint Séverin, Notre-Dame des Champs, Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, along with Notre-Dame) ever since I was a child. At the very least that taught me to be patient because at six years old mass can seem long. If I was well-behaved, I’d get a box of Legos afterwards!

Sophie Laurant: I grew up in Bourges, a lovely medieval town located in the very center of France. The town has one of France’s most beautiful Gothic cathedrals, built starting in 1195. It rose slightly after Notre-Dame (whose construction was launched in 1163) and is a contemporary of Chartres. Furthermore, my father was a history professor and often gave tours of the monument, of which the inhabitants are quite proud, whenever friends or family were visiting. So I learned at a young age how to distinguish Gothic art from Romanesque art. My father explained to us that Bourges was famous for the red of its stained-glass windows whereas it’s the blue of Chartres that dazzled. He pointed out that our cathedral, unlike most, didn’t have a transept but the shape of the overturned hull of a boat.

I don’t recall the first time that I visited Notre-Dame de Paris. It was undoubtedly with my parents when we went up to Paris as tourists. However, I do remember that when I was a university student [in Paris] I went in one Sunday afternoon when I was feeling quite lonely in the capital. By chance I arrived just when the traditional weekly organ concert was going on. It was magnificent. I went back several times afterward, especially since it was free, which is a blessing for a student.

Gary Lee Kraut: Where were you on Monday April 15, 2019 when you learned that Notre-Dame was in flames. How did your evening unfold?

Stéphane Compoint: I was at home, heaving with sobs! But I quickly got into a long phone conversation with Catherine Lalanne, the editor-in-chief of Le Pèlerin, which projected us both into the immediate future and into action, which did me a world of good. Because it was Monday, the day the weeklies go to press, we had to put in place an appropriate editorial strategy right away, modify the issue due to come out on the following Thursday, and launch a special edition that would be published the following Friday. We didn’t get many hours of sleep that week, but at least we were working rather than sitting passively faced with the enormous loss.

Sophie Laurant: While I was in the metro on my way home from work, I received a text from a colleague, but I didn’t realize how serious it was—not until I reached the foot of my building and got a call from my editor, Catherine Lalanne. She’d just asked that the deadline for our weekly edition going to press be pushed back since it was on its way to the printing press, as every Monday evening. She just had time to insert a large photo and a caption. I then followed the events on TV, while at the same time speaking with a friend who does restorations of historical monuments who explained to me that the outbreak of a fire is the nightmare of companies that restore roofing frameworks. I didn’t turn off the TV until it was clear that the monument had been saved. And the next morning I intentionally took a bus to work that passes by the cathedral. I had to see with my own eyes that it was still there. I even took a picture through the bus window to reassure myself. As soon as I arrived at work, we decided to republish our special edition that we’d brought out in 2013 for the cathedral’s 850th anniversary, adding in updated information. For each copy sold, 1€ was donated to the Notre-Dame fund. We sold 33,000 copies and therefore, from the start, had the feeling that we were being useful. It was important to overcome the disaster. Moreover, the architects [responsible for restoring Notre-Dame] asked to consult Stéphane’s photographs, which at that point had become historical documents.

Gary Lee Kraut: When were able to enter Notre-Dame for the first time following the fire? Tell us how that unfolded and about your impressions.

Stéphane Compoint: Despite its status as a Christian weekly, the negotiations between Le Pèlerin and the state’s media communications directors for the restauration project to allow me to enter the site were difficult. Finally, our salvation came from General Georgelin* himself, the person overseeing the cathedral’s restoration, a believer who was sensitive to the mid-elevation photographic work that I’d done with a tethered balloon in 2013 for the 850th anniversary of the cathedral. We gave him large prints of these photographs and he decorated his office with them. I was able to enter the wounded cathedral for the first time on March 3, 2020, ten and a half months after the fire.

Sophie Laurant: I finally went inside Notre-Dame on October 21, 2020. During the first year [after the fire] the teams were busy with decontaminating the lead and consolidating the cathedral. Also, under the management of General Georgelin, a very strict, top-down administration was put in place to filter press requests. Luckly, Le Pèlerin had published in 2013 a special edition magazine entirely devoted to Notre-Dame, prepared with assistance from the clergy. Stéphane was able to enter for an initial post-fire photo reportage in March 2020. Catherine than insisted—incessantly—to the general and to the communications services for the restoration project that Le Pèlerin wanted a print journalist to be able to enter. They finally accepted for us to become “partners,” allowing us to regularly follow the rehabilitation in pictures and in text. I didn’t go often, but more than most other media.

I have an indelible memory from that first visit of climbing scaffolding, of the incredible view over Paris that then revealed itself. When I reached the top of the walls of the cathedral, I had a view of the charred beams that were still stuck into the angles of the crossing of the transept. That’s all that remained of the base of the spire! It was then that I fully realized the extend of the task that lay ahead.

* GLK note: Notre-Dame Cathedral belongs to the French state and so it is the state’s responsibility to maintain the edifice. The day following the fire, President Emmanuel Macron announced his wish that the reconstruction be complete within five years. General Jean-Louis Georgelin was appointed to spearhead the project the next day. General Georgelin did not live to see it reopened since he died in a hiking accident on August 18, 2023.

Gary Lee Kraut: Carrying out the research necessary for the restoration project gave specialists the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of the building and its history. Were there any discoveries or analyses that particularly surprised or impressed you?

Sophie Laurant: Yes, the researchers were the first to mobilize, immediately after the fire. At the Association des Journalistes du Patrimoine*, we quickly organized press encounters with some of them. Their primary message was the following: “We have a lot of information about Notre-Dame and we have to put it to the service of the restoration.” Immediately, the architects** asked them to take sample, to carry out analyses and studies, to make surveys and collect data throughout the monument in order to document as much as possible all of the elements, including the debris. These details studies enabled them to refine their restoration strategy. For example, to select a limestone very similar to the origin when cutting new stones.

Over those five years, the specialists discovered enormous amounts of information about Notre-Dame. For example, that the walls were consolidated by enormous iron staples. We didn’t think that that technique had been so used in the 12th century.

But the most spectacular discovery is undoubtedly the uncovering during the archeological digs at the crossing of the transept of high-quality pieces of sculptures from the medieval jube [also known as a rood or choir screen in English]. That decorative wall enclosed the church’s chancel, separating the sacred space where mass was said from the more secular space of the nave where the public came to hear (but not see) the service. Catholic liturgy evolved in the 16th century, prompted by the Protestant Reform movement. Jubes were destroyed in almost all churches and cathedrals in order to bring the clergy and the congregation closer together and allow a better understanding the ceremonial rites. However, since the sculpted figures represented Christ, Mary, the Apostles, etc., the workers had the habit of piously burying their pieces on site as they removed them. That’s why archeologists have found pieces of the jube in many cathedrals, such as in Bourges or Chartres. What’s incredible here at Notre-Dame is that sculptures retained colors that would have been lost if they’d stayed in contact with the air inside the building. On certain figures from the Gospels, we see that they have blue eyes or a delicately pink complexion, as in illuminated manuscript from the period. It’s magnificent! They’re now exhibited at the Cluny Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris. I also learned that one of the heads found during prior work on the cathedral in the 19th century, and that’s now found at Duke University in North Carolina, fits perfectly with a bust that was found in March 2022. For a project called “Notre-Dame in color,” the American researcher Jennifer Feltman is pursuing research with French colleagues to gather together the different pieces.

Stéphane Compoint: As a photo-journalist I’ve participated in many campaigns of archeological excavations throughout the world (Egypt, Turkey, Peru, Chili, etc.), including underwater excavations of the Lighthouse of Alexandria from 1995 to 1997, for which I won a World Press Photo. I was particularly moved by the discovery of the medieval jube in the spring of 2022. Seeing the face of Christ, eyes closed, emerging from the archeologists’ large and small brushes in the middle of the crossing of the transept is something that I’ll never forget. I also remember the reaction of the chief archeologist, who was right next to me at that moment: “The greatest emotion of my career!” Since I was the only press photographer on site that day, it gave me even greater professional satisfaction.

* GLK note: The Association des Journalistes du Patrimoine is France’s association of journalists covering all manner of cultural heritage. From 2016 to 2022, Sophie Laurant served as its president. Gary Lee Kraut served as the association’s secretary general 2016-2020. Stéphane Compoint is also a member.

** GLK note: In France, historical monuments are preserved by specialized architects known as “Architectes des Bâtiments de France.” These civil servants entrust restoration projects to other specialists, the “architectes en chef des Monuments historiques.” Philippe Villeneuve is the chief architect in charge of the cathedral restoration project.

Gary Lee Kraut: Over the course of your respective work, you’ve met many craftsmen, workers and managers of the restoration project, in Paris and throughout France. Are there any whose approach or personality particularly impressed or fascinated you?

Sophie Laurant: They were all high-level, passionate craftsmen. I especially appreciated meeting the painting restorer Marie Parant, who coordinated one of the groups that restored the paintings in the chapels of the choir of Notre-Dame. A great admirer of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc*, the architect who painted them in the 19th century, she invited me to visit her workshop near Bastille to show me documents and help me understand the quality of the colors. She also participated in the “chorale des compagnons,” a chorus consisting of all those who took part in the restoration, whether archeologists, logistic specialists, stone cutters, etc. The chorus sang inside the cathedral on Dec. 11, [several days after its reopening,] to celebrate the working community that they formed together. We could sense a real “Notre-Dame effect” that had unified them, a mix of pride with respect to the monument, of the joy of working on a common project, and a fervor for something greater than themselves individually.

I was also struck by the strong personality of Loïc Desmonts, a young lead carpenter (only 25 years old!), who’s redeveloping in Normandy the art of building wooden framework using medieval methods. He and his team cut wood while it’s still green using hand tools. He also promotes the “French-style scribing tradition in timber framing,” which is a way of creating on the ground a full-scale drawing of each piece of the frame before cutting it. That tradition of scribing has existed since the 13th century and is recognized by UNESCO on its list of “intangible cultural heritage of humanity.” While visiting him, I met members of the NGO “Carpenters Without Borders.” Among them were two American craftsmen who spoke to me with tears in their eyes of their love for Notre-Dame, the reason that they came to France to give a hand to their French colleagues. There are in fact very few carpenters anywhere in the world with the know-how to cut the framework in the way it was done back in the day.

Finally, there’s Iris Serrières, a stained-glass artist who works in the company run by her mother, the stained-glass restorer and creator Flavie Vincent-Petit, in Troyes [100 miles southeast of Paris]. When I met this deliberate and joyful young woman, she was hesitating between becoming a theologian and a master glassmaking! Maybe, she said, she could do both. The family workshop restored a portion of the cathedral’s 24 upper bay windows. The two women shared with me their feeling about being a part of a long line of master-glassmakers and of rediscovering how and continuing “to combine intelligence, gesture and spirituality” so that “these windows were again legible.”

Stéphane Compoint: I was impressed by the encyclopedic knowledge that Philippe Villeneuve, the chief architect, has of the monument and by the sound way in which he made decisions that were crucial but far from obvious in the days following the fire. I also appreciated the personality of the head scaffolder, Didier Cuiset, whose academic training is limited but whose know-how is exceptional. Like many journeymen, he comes from a modest background and was brought up with little inclination to speak of oneself, but he had to learn how to explain what he knows and how he knows it in order to satisfy the media. He made a lot of progress in five years.

*GLK note: Viollet-le-Duc led a major restoration of Notre-Dame in the middle of the 19th century. In doing so, he also added new elements, some of which existed but in different forms over the centuries, including the spire that collapsed during the fire and has since been rebuilt.

Gary Lee Kraut: Was there a moment during your journalistic or photographic work inside the cathedral that particularly surprised you or that has left a lasting impression?

Sophie Laurant: There was one moment that I’ll remember for a long time. It was in the spring of 2022 when I decided to interview the crane operator who was piloting the crane from 80 meters (262 feet) overhead. The crane was there throughout the entire project. In order to reach him, I had to take an elevator up to a tiny platform, 60 meters (197 feet) up, and from there climb a caged ladder the final 20 meters (65 feet) before reaching his heated and comfortable cabin. I had vertigo from the start, and I was afraid of stopping paralyzed in the middle of the ladder, suspended in mid-air. I decided that I’d rather give up on attempting the final ascent, because if ever I blocked ongoing work due to a panic attack, I undoubtedly would never be given permission onto the site again. The crane operator, very much at ease up there, offered instead to conduct the interview on the tiny platform! I wasn’t so calm there either, but I didn’t dare refuse. So in the cold and the wind, with the crane lightly swaying, I gathered my courage, avoided look down at the miniscule workers working down below on the temporary roof of Notre-Dame, and I asked him my questions. I’m rather proud to have succeeded because at home I have vertigo on a stool!

Stéphane Compoint: In the summer of 2020, at the end of a day photographing inside the cathedral, at one-thirty in the morning, I was struck by an unexpected encounter with the top of the charred spire imbedded in the exterior curve of an arch of the nave. I’d entered the building at 7:30 a.m. and hadn’t eaten or drunk for 18 hours, but that vision, that photo, was well worth the effort! In the fall of 2020, I also had that first long-awaited overall exterior view that took in all of the devastated wood framing, which I was able to take thanks for a giant tripod (of my own creation) that I’d raised about 15 meters (49 feet) above the devastated transept crossing.

Gary Lee Kraut: Do you feel that the public was sufficiently informed throughout the rehabilitation period? Did you encounter any difficulties doing your journalistic work?

Sophie Laurant: In the end a lot of articles were written. The entire international press covered the project, from near and from far. It’s true that the public powers overseeing the project were selective in choosing media that could enter the site and they limited access. Some of the reasons are understandable. The cathedral was entirely covered in lead dust. We had to get entirely undressed in a special chamber, put on a disposable boilersuit, and take a shower and shampoo when we finally left, like all workers who enter a “contaminated zone.” Furthermore, the project had to be done in five years, so the teams didn’t have much time to devote to the press. Clearly, it was difficult for the journalists to endure, to have to incessantly request authorization to interview anyone involved in the project. But at Le Pèlerin we had the privilege of being able to follow operations on a regular basis. I entered the cathedral seven times over five years. Stéphane entered far more frequently.

Gary Lee Kraut: Sophie, you wrote most of the text and, Stéphane, you took the photographs for the special edition of Le Pèlerin about the “exceptional construction site” of Notre-Dame published to coincide with the reopening of the cathedral. Does this signal the end of the Notre-Dame adventure for you or will you continue to report on and photograph Notre-Dame?

Stéphane Compoint: After the reopening, Le Pèlerin will naturally reduce its written and photographic coverage of the construction site. Nevertheless, work will continue for about another three years on the exterior of the cathedral, particularly around the apse and the buttresses of the nave and the chancel. We’ll try to be present at key moments during that work.

Sophie Laurant: We’re going to continue to follow the restoration which is now focused on the chevet [east end] and gables of the cathedral, outside. Stéphane will also try to exhaustively document the cathedral as it today, as he did in 2013. And we’re going to be very attentive to the choice of master glassmaker who will be designing new windows for the southern side of the nave; the installation of contemporary tapestries in the northern chapel in the next 18 months; the upcoming creation of a museum decided to Notre-Dame in the Hôtel-Dieu [the old hospital that occupies one side of the square in front of cathedral], and the square itself that will be entirely remodeled and modernize so as to allow for a better reception and flow for visitors. We’ll likely be publishing many of these reports on our internet site over the coming years.

Gary Lee Kraut: Having followed the restoration these past five years, has your view of the cathedral changed?

Sophie Laurant: Yes. I now know it very well, whereas before it was just one of many cathedrals that I didn’t enter very often before the fire. And I remember its grey walls, the semi-darkness, the crowds. Now it’s blond, clean, extremely well lit, and that showcases the paintings (now all cleaned) unlike in any other church in France.

Stéphane Compoint: The first thing that changed in my view of the cathedral was that I was better able to measure the extent to which the work of the builders of the 12th and 13th centuries is full of technical achievements. Being able to listen to lead architects speaking often and at length on site is worth any number of lectures in a lecture hall. I therefore learned a lot of fascinating things about a field—architecture—that has always interested me (my father was an architect). And the way I see Notre-Dame has changed because we’ve gone from a dark cathedral to a luminous cathedral, and, like many photographers, I like the light! Finally, I know that from now on I’ll see images of the expert craftsmen and journeymen at work superimposed onto my actual view whenever I visit the restored cathedral, and that’s a privilege.

To learn more about Sophie Laurant’s journalistic work, see here. 
To learn more about Stéphane Compoint’s photographic work, see here. 
Entrance to Notre-Dame Cathedral is free. Timed reservations are not required but can help avoid long lines, especially during busy periods. For a timed reservation, see here. 

© 2024 Gary Lee Kraut / France Revisited

The post Notre-Dame: An Interview with Witnesses to a Dazzling Restoration appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

En regardant les flammes s’élever et la flèche tomber sur la cathédrale Notre-Dame le 15 avril 2019, ceux qui vivaient à Paris ou l’avaient déjà visitée ont ressenti un sentiment de perte presque personnel. Notre-Dame était vraiment « notre » Dame, qu’elle soit vue dans les yeux d’un croyant ou non. Même parmi les centaines de millions de personnes qui ont vu les images du sinistre mais n’ont pas encore eu le plaisir de visiter la capitale française, beaucoup ont qualifié l’événement de calamité ou de tragédie. La plupart ont éprouvé ce sentiment de perte durant des jours.

Mais pour certains, il n’y a pas eu de temps pour le chagrin. L’incendie a été un appel à l’action – pour les pompiers, le Président et les représentants de l’Etat (Notre-Dame appartient à l’État français), ceux de l’Église catholique, les architectes des monuments historiques, les échafaudeurs, les logisticiens, les spécialistes de la restauration, les responsables des fondations qui ont accepté puis géré des dons s’élevant à 840 millions d’euros (940 millions de dollars à l’époque), etc. Même activité intense chez les journalistes et les photographes. J’ai moi-même reçu un appel de la chaîne américaine NBC Philadelphie la nuit de l’incendie, mais aucun média ne pouvait entrer dans la cathédrale durant ces premiers moments. Et même plus tard, lorsque le risque d’inhaler de la poussière de plomb a diminué, l’entrée de médias a été très soigneusement limitée.

Parmi ceux qui ont pu entrer à plusieurs reprises dans le monument meurtri entre 2020 et 2024, se trouvent la journaliste Sophie Laurant et le photographe Stéphane Compoint, tous deux travaillant pour Le Pèlerin, un hebdomadaire chrétien d’informations générales, le plus ancien hebdomadaire de France à être publié sans interruption depuis sa fondation, en 1873.

Peu de journalistes ont été autorisés à pénétrer dans la cathédrale pendant la période de restauration aussi souvent que Sophie Laurant, grand reporter histoire et patrimoine au Pèlerin. Et encore moins de photographes ont obtenu des autorisations aussi fréquemment et aussi largement que Stéphane Compoint, photojournaliste indépendant spécialisé dans l’architecture, le patrimoine et la photographie aérienne, et lauréat du World Press Photo, chargé par Le Pèlerin de couvrir le projet de restauration. Stéphane avait gagné ses galons de photographe de Notre-Dame bien avant l’incendie puisqu’en 2013, il avait réalisé une étude photographique majeure de la cathédrale pour une édition spéciale du Pèlerin, produisant des photographies qui sont devenues une documentation historique précieuse de l’état de la cathédrale avant l’incendie. Entre la date de l’incendie et la réouverture, il a photographié Notre-Dame à 63 reprises de l’intérieur et presque autant de l’extérieur !

Quelques jours après la réouverture de la cathédrale aux visiteurs—catholiques et non catholiques—le 8 décembre, j’ai eu l’occasion d’interviewer Sophie et Stéphane, par écrit. Comme vous pourrez le lire dans l’entretien combiné ci-dessous, il s’agit d’un témoignage précieux sur le processus de restauration et ses réalisations techniques, sur son impact émotionnel et sur l’investissement collectif et individuel, y compris le leur.

Gary Lee Kraut : De par votre travail vous avez une sensibilité aiguisée pour le patrimoine en général et pour le patrimoine religieux en particulier. Vous devez bien connaître toutes les cathédrales gothiques de France. Mais avant de voir ces édifices de l’œil d’un journaliste professionnel, quel était votre rapport avec ces magnifiques mastodontes du moyen âge ? Vous rappelez-vous de la toute première fois que vous avez visité Notre-Dame ?

Stéphane Compoint : Parisien depuis toujours, j’ai grandi dans le 6ème arrondissement, mes collège et lycée étaient très proches de Notre Dame : la cathédrale a toujours fait partie de mon paysage proche !

Ma famille était plutôt laïque, voire anticléricale… Mais mon grand-père maternel s’est rapproché du Dieu de la religion catholique après la disparition tragique de son fils ainé (mon oncle, donc), qui est mort noyé en voulant sauver un ami, lequel s’en est sorti. Il est donc devenu croyant, s’est mis à aller à la messe régulièrement et m’emmenait très souvent dans les églises du quartier (Saint Germain des Prés, Saint-Sulpice, Saint Séverin, Notre Dame des Champs, Saint Germain l’Auxerrois mais aussi Notre Dame) dès mon plus jeune âge. Au moins, ça m’a appris à être patient car, à l’âge de 6 ans, la messe peut sembler longue ! Si j’étais sage, j’avais droit à une boite de Lego à la sortie !

Sophie Laurant : D’abord, j’ai grandi à Bourges, une jolie cité médiévale située exactement au centre de la France. Or, cette ville possède l’une des plus belles cathédrales gothiques de France, construite à partir de 1195. Elle est légèrement postérieure à Notre-Dame (dont le chantier commence en 1163) et contemporaine de Chartres. En outre, mon père était professeur d’histoire et faisait souvent visiter ce monument dont tous les habitants sont fiers, à des amis ou des membres de la famille venus en visite. Si bien que j’ai appris très jeune à distinguer l’art gothique de l’art roman ! Mon père nous expliquait que Bourges était fameux pour le rouge de ses vitraux alors qu’à Chartres, c’était le bleu qui éblouissait. Il nous faisait remarquer que notre cathédrale, contrairement à la plupart, n’avait pas de transept mais une forme de carène de bateau renversée.

Je ne me souviens pas en revanche de ma première visite à Notre-Dame de Paris. Ce fut sans doute avec mes parents, lorsque nous « montions » à Paris en touristes. Cependant, je me rappelle que lorsque j’étais étudiante, j’étais entrée, un peu par hasard, un dimanche après-midi où je me sentais très seule dans la capitale. Et, par hasard, je suis tombée au moment du traditionnel concert d’orgue hebdomadaire. C’était magnifique et je suis ensuite revenue plusieurs fois. Surtout que c’était gratuit : une aubaine pour une étudiante !

Gary Lee Kraut : Où étiez-vous le 15 avril 2019 quand vous avec pris appris que Notre-Dame était en flammes et comment s’est déroulé votre soirée ?

Stéphane Compoint : J’étais chez moi, attaqué par des sanglots ! Mais je suis entré très vite dans une longue conversation téléphonique avec Catherine Lalanne (la rédactrice en chef de Pèlerin), ce qui nous a tous les deux projetés dans un futur proche et dans l’action, ce qui m’a fait un bien fou ! Car nous étions un lundi, jour de bouclage des hebdomadaires, et il a fallu tout de suite mettre en place une stratégie éditoriale adaptée, modifier l’édition à paraitre le jeudi suivant et mettre en route un n° hors-série à paraitre le vendredi suivant…. La semaine fut très courte en heures de sommeil mais au moins nous étions dans le travail plutôt que passif face à cette immense perte !

Sophie Laurant : J’étais dans le métro, je rentrais chez moi du travail. J’ai reçu le SMS d’une consœur, mais je n’ai pas réalisé que c’était grave. C’est seulement arrivée au pied de mon immeuble que j’ai reçu l’appel de ma rédactrice en chef, Catherine Lalanne : elle venait de demander qu’on recule le bouclage de notre numéro hebdomadaire qui partait à l’imprimerie, comme tous les lundis soirs. Elle a juste eu le temps de faire insérer une grande photo avec une légende. Du coup, j’ai suivi tous les événements devant ma télévision, tout en dialoguant avec un ami restaurateur de monuments historiques qui m’expliquait que les départs de feu sont la terreur des entreprises qui restaurent les charpentes. Je n’ai éteint la télé que lorsqu’on a appris que le monument était sauvé. Et le lendemain matin, je suis passée exprès en bus devant la cathédrale : j’avais besoin de vérifier de mes yeux qu’elle était toujours bien là. J’ai même pris une photo à travers la vitre, un peu rassurée. Dès je suis arrivée au journal, nous avons décidé de republier notre hors-série paru en 2013 pour les 850 ans de la cathédrale, avec évidemment une actualisation. Sur chaque numéro, 1 € était reversé pour la collecte en faveur de Notre-Dame. Nous avons vendu 33 000 exemplaires… Nous avons donc eu, dès le début, le sentiment d’être utiles. C’était important pour surmonter ce désastre. D’ailleurs, les architectes ont demandé à consulter les images de Stéphane qui devenaient des documents historiques.

Gary Lee Kraut : Quand avez-vous pu rentrer à Notre-Dame pour la première fois après l’incendie ? Pouvez-vous nous raconter l’aventure et vos impressions ?

Stéphane Compoint : Malgré le statut d’hebdomadaire chrétien, les tractations entre Le Pèlerin et les responsables médias du chantier pour me laisser accéder au site furent très difficiles. Finalement, c’est du général Jean-Louis Georgelin lui-même (chef de l’Établissement Public chargé de reconstruire la cathédrale*), croyant et sensible au travail photographique à mi-hauteur (en ballon captif) que j’avais réalisé en 2013 pour le 850e anniversaire de la cathédrale, que viendra le salut. Nous lui avons offert des grands tirages de ces photographies, avec lesquelles il a décoré son bureau… Et j’ai pu entrer pour la première fois dans la cathédrale blessée le 3 mars 2020, soit 10 mois et demi après l’incendie.

Sophie Laurant : Ce fut seulement le 21 octobre 2020. Car durant la première année, les équipes étaient occupées à dépolluer le plomb et à consolider la cathédrale. En outre, se mettait en place, sous la direction du général Georgelin nommé par le président de la République Emmanuel Macron, toute une administration pyramidale qui filtrait les demandes de la presse. Heureusement, au Pèlerin, nous avions publié en 2013, un hors-série entièrement consacré à Notre-Dame, réalisé avec l’aide du clergé. Stéphane a pu déjà effectuer un premier reportage en mars 2020. Ensuite, Catherine a insisté, insisté sans cesse, auprès du général et du service de communication de cet établissement public chargé de la restauration. Finalement, ils ont accepté que nous soyons « partenaires », c’est-à-dire, que nous puissions assez régulièrement, suivre le chantier, en images et en textes. Ce n’était pas beaucoup mais c’était plus que la plupart des autres médias.

De cette première visite, je garde le souvenir des échafaudages à escalader, de la vue incroyable sur Paris qui se dévoilait alors. Quand nous sommes arrivés sur le sommet des murs de la cathédrale, j’ai vu les poutres calcinées encore fichées dans les angles de la croisée du transept : c’était ce qui restait de la base de la flèche ! J’ai ressenti une impression de désolation. Là, tout à coup, je me rendais compte de l’ampleur de la tâche qu’il restait à accomplir.

* NDLR : La cathédrale Notre-Dame étant propriété de l’État français, c’est à l’État qu’incombe l’entretien de l’édifice. Dès le lendemain de l’incendie, le président Emmanuel Macron a annoncé son souhait que la reconstruction soit achevée dans les cinq ans. Le lendemain, le général Jean-Louis Georgelin est nommé à la tête du projet. Le général ne vivra pas le temps de la réouverture puisqu’il décède dans un accident de randonnée le 18 août 2023.

Gary Lee Kraut : Les recherches préalables à la restauration étaient l’occasion pour les spécialistes d’approfondir leurs connaissances de l’édifice et de son histoire. Y avait-il des découvertes ou des analyses qui vous ont particulièrement surprise ou impressionnée ?

Sophie Laurant : Oui, les chercheurs ont été les premiers à se mobiliser, dès le lendemain de l’incendie. A l’Association des journalistes du patrimoine*, nous avons d’ailleurs organisé très vite une rencontre avec certains d’entre eux. Leur premier message était le suivant : « nous avons beaucoup d’informations sur Notre-Dame et nous voulons les mettre au service de sa restauration. » Tout de suite après, les architectes** leur ont demandé de réaliser des prélèvements, des analyses, des études, des relevés dans le monument afin de documenter au maximum tous les éléments, y compris les débris. Ces études très poussées leur ont permis de préciser leur stratégie de restauration. Par exemple, de choisir un calcaire très similaire à celui d’origine pour tailler les pierres nouvelles.

Au fil des cinq ans, les scientifiques ont découvert énormément de nouvelles informations sur Notre-Dame. Par exemple, que ses murs étaient consolidés par d’énormes agrafes de fer. On ne pensait pas que cette technique était autant utilisée dès le XIIe siècle. Mais la découverte la plus spectaculaire est sans aucun doute, la mise au jour, lors de fouilles archéologiques à la croisée du transept, des morceaux de sculptures de grande qualité du jubé médiéval. Ce mur décoratif servait au Moyen Age à fermer le chœur de l’église et à séparer l’espace sacré où était dite la messe, de l’espace plus profane de la nef où le public venait écouter l’office (mais ne voyait pas). Au XVIe siècle, la liturgie catholique évolue, poussée par la Réforme protestante. Les jubés sont détruits dans presque toutes les églises et cathédrales afin de rapprocher le clergé de l’assistance et de mieux faire comprendre le rite.

Cependant, comme les personnages sculptés représentent le Christ, Marie, les apôtres… les ouvriers avaient l’habitude d’enterrer pieusement sur place les morceaux qu’ils démontent. C’est ainsi qu’on a retrouvé des morceaux du jubé dans de nombreuses cathédrales, comme Bourges ou Chartres. Mais là, à Notre-Dame, ce qui est incroyable c’est qu’on a pu sauvegarder les couleurs des sculptures avant que l’air ambiant ne les détruise. Et l’on découvre ainsi que certains personnages de l’Evangile ont les yeux bleus, un teint délicatement rosé, comme sur les enluminures ! C’est magnifique. On peut les voir en ce moment exposés au musée de Cluny, à Paris. Et j’ai appris qu’une tête qui avait été retrouvée au XIXe siècle lors de précédents travaux, et qui se trouve aujourd’hui à l’université américaine Duke, en Caroline du Nord, s’adapte exactement à un buste qui vient d’être retrouvé, en mars 2022. La chercheuse américaine Jennifer Feltman avec le projet « Notre-Dame in color » poursuit la recherche avec ses collègues français pour rassembler tous les morceaux…

Stéphane Compoint : En tant que photo-journaliste, j’ai participé à de nombreuses campagnes de fouilles archéologiques dans le Monde (en Égypte, Turquie, Pérou, Chili, etc.) dont celle sur les fouilles sous-marines sur les vestiges du Phare d’Alexandrie en 1995-1997, où j’ai reçu un World Press Photo. J’ai été donc particulièrement ému par la découverte des vestiges du jubé médiéval, au printemps 2022 : voir un visage du Christ, les yeux clos, émerger des brosses et pinceaux des archéologues au beau milieu de la croisée du transept, c’est quelque chose que je n’oublierai jamais. Je me souviens aussi de la réaction du chef des archéologues, qui se trouvait à côté de moi à ce moment précis : « La plus grande émotion de toute ma carrière ! ». Et puis, j’étais le seul photographe de presse sur le site ce jour-là, ce qui m’a également procuré une grande satisfaction professionnelle !

* NDLR : Sophie Laurant a été présidente de l’Association des journalistes du patrimoine du 2016 to 2022. Gary Lee Kraut servait du secrétaire général du 2016 à 2020. Stéphane Compoint est également membre.

** En France, les monuments historiques sont conservés par des architectes spécialisés appelés « architectes des Bâtiments de France ». Ces fonctionnaires confient les chantiers de restauration à d’autres spécialistes, les « architectes en chef des Monuments historiques ». Philippe Villeneuve est l’architecte en chef des monuments historiques à la tête du chantier de restauration de la cathédrale.

Gary Lee Kraut : En préparant vos articles sur les multiples facettes de la restauration, vous avez pu rencontrer de nombreux artisans, ouvriers et responsables, à Paris et à travers la France. Y a-t-il une ou plusieurs personnes dont l’approche ou la personnalité vous a particulièrement impressionnée ou fascinée ?

Sophie Laurant : Ce sont tous des passionnés et des artisans de très haut niveau. J’ai beaucoup apprécié de rencontrer la restauratrice de peintures, Marie Parant, qui a coordonné un des groupes qui restaurait les peintures des chapelles du chœur de Notre-Dame. Cette professionnelle est une admiratrice d’Eugène Viollet-le-Duc*, l’architecte qui les a peintes, au XIXe siècle et elle m’a invitée deux fois dans son atelier, à Bastille, pour me montrer sa documentation et me faire comprendre la qualité de ces couleurs. Elle a aussi participé à la chorale des compagnons qui s’est formée entre tous les intervenants, qu’ils soient archéologues, logisticiens ou tailleurs de pierre. Ils ont chanté le 11 décembre dans la cathédrale pour célébrer la communauté de travail qu’ils ont tous formé. Il y a réellement eu un « effet Notre-Dame » que nous sentions chez tous : mélange de fierté devant un tel monument, de joie de travailler à un projet commun, d’élan vers plus grand que soi.

J’ai aussi été marquée par la personnalité forte de Loïc Desmonts, un tout jeune patron charpentier (il a 25 ans), qui redéveloppe, en Normandie, l’art d’ériger des charpentes à la façon médiévale : avec ses équipes, il taille le bois encore vert et utilise des outils manuels. Il défend aussi « l’art du trait à la française » qui est une façon de tracer, à l’échelle 1, les épures de chaque pièce de charpente, sur le sol, avant de les tailler. Cet art est reconnu par l’Unesco. Chez lui, j’ai rencontré des membres de l’ONG « Charpentiers sans frontières ». Notamment deux artisans américains qui m’ont parlé, les larmes aux yeux, de leur amour pour Notre-Dame, pour laquelle ils sont venus en France, donner un coup de main à leurs collègues français. Car il existe très peu de charpentiers, dans le monde, qui savent encore tailler des charpentes à l’ancienne.

Enfin, je citerai Iris Serrière, qui est vitrailliste dans l’entreprise de sa mère, la restauratrice et créatrice de vitraux, Flavie Vincent-Petit, à Troyes. Cette jeune fille très réfléchie et joyeuse, hésitait, quand je l’ai rencontrée, entre devenir théologienne ou maître-verrier ! Peut-être, se disait-elle, qu’elle pourrait pratiquer les deux… L’atelier familial a restauré une partie des 24 baies hautes de la cathédrale. Les deux femmes m’ont confié leur émotion de s’inscrire dans une lignée de maître-verriers, de retrouver et continuer à « allier l’intelligence, le geste et la spiritualité » pour « redonner à lire ces vitraux ».

Stéphane Compoint : J’ai été très impressionné par la connaissance encyclopédique du monument par Philippe Villeneuve, l’architecte en chef, et par la sureté de ses prises de décisions, cruciales mais qui n’avait rien d’évidentes, dans les jours qui ont suivi l’incendie. J’ai aussi beaucoup apprécié la personnalité du chef des échafaudeurs, Didier Cuiset, dont le cursus académique se limite à un bac -3 mais dont le savoir-faire est exceptionnel. Comme de nombreux compagnons, il est d’origine modeste et a reçu une éducation où on est peu enclin à parler de soi-même, mais il a fallu qu’il apprenne aussi le faire-savoir pour satisfaire les médias… et il beaucoup progressé en cinq ans !

*NDLR : Viollet-le-Duc a dirigé une importante restauration de Notre-Dame au milieu du XIXe siècle. Ce faisant, il a également ajouté de nouveaux éléments, comme les chimères, ces sculptures de créatures imaginaires et en a remplacé d’autres comme la flèche qui s’est effondrée lors de l’incendie et qui a été reconstruite depuis.

Gary Lee Kraut : Y a-t-il un moment dans vos recherches qui vous a particulièrement surpris ou marqué ?

Sophie Laurant : Je pense à un moment dont je me souviendrai longtemps : au printemps 2022, je devais interviewer le grutier qui pilotait la très grande grue de 80 mètres de haut. Elle a accompagné tout le chantier. Celui-ci m’a fait monter en ascenseur jusqu’à une minuscule plateforme, à 60 mètres de haut où l’on doit ensuite prendre une échelle à crinoline pour franchir les 20 derniers mètres avant d’arriver à sa cabine chauffée et confortable… Déjà, j’avais le vertige, mais j’ai eu peur de rester paralysée au milieu de l’échelle, suspendue dans le vide… J’ai préféré renoncer, car si jamais j’avais bloqué le chantier par une crise de panique, je n’aurais sans doute plus jamais eu le droit d’entrer à nouveau. Le grutier, très à l’aise, m’a donc proposé de faire l’interview sur la minuscule plateforme ! Je n’étais guère plus tranquille, mais je n’ai pas osé refuser. Alors, dans le froid, le vent, avec la grue qui oscillait légèrement, j’ai rassemblé mon courage, évité de regarder les ouvriers minuscules qui œuvraient plus bas, sur le toit provisoire de Notre-Dame, et je lui ai posé mes questions. Je suis assez fière d’avoir réussi, car chez moi, j’ai le vertige sur un tabouret !

Stéphane Compoint : A l’été 2020, j’ai été marqué par la rencontre inattendue avec la partie sommitale de la flèche calcinée, encastrée dans l’extrados de la nef, lors d’une fin de journée de reportage, à une heure et demi du matin : j’étais entré à 7h30, sans pouvoir manger ou boire durant ces 18 heures, mais cette vision et cette photo valait bien tous ces efforts ! A l’automne 2020, il y a aussi cette première vue générale extérieure tant attendue, qui englobe toute la charpente dévastée, que j’ai pu prendre grâce à mon trépied géant (de ma conception) que j’ai élevé à une quinzaine de mètres au-dessus de la croisée dévastée.

Gary Lee Kraut : Estimez-vous que le public ait été bien informé pendant toute cette période de réhabilitation de Notre-Dame ? As-tu rencontré des difficultés en faisant tes reportages ?

Sophie Laurant : Il y a eu énormément d’articles au final. Toute la presse internationale a couvert le chantier, de près ou de loin. Mais il est vrai que l’Etablissement public a choisi les médias qui pouvaient accéder sur le chantier et a restreint l’accès. Certaines raisons sont compréhensibles : la cathédrale était entièrement couverte de poussière de plomb. Donc, il fallait se déshabiller entièrement dans un sas, se vêtir d’une combinaison jetable et prendre une douche avec shampoing au retour du reportage. Comme tous les ouvriers d’ailleurs qui pénétraient « en zone sale ». D’autre part, le chantier devait se mener en cinq ans, donc les équipes n’avaient pas beaucoup de temps à accorder à la presse. Mais c’est sûr qu’il était difficile à vivre, pour les journalistes, de devoir demander sans cesse des autorisations pour toutes les interviews des acteurs du chantier… Et encore, au Pèlerin, nous avons eu le privilège de suivre régulièrement les opérations : je suis entrée sept fois en cinq ans sur le chantier et Stéphane presque dix fois plus.

Gary Lee Kraut : Sophie, vous avez rédigé la plupart des textes, et Stéphane, vous avez pris les photos pour le hors-série important sur ce « chantier d’exception » publié par Le Pèlerin la semaine de sa réouverture. Ces reportages signalent-ils pour vous la fin de l’aventure Notre-Dame ?

Stéphane Compoint : Après la réouverture, Le Pèlerin va évidemment alléger la couverture écrite et photographique du chantier. Néanmoins, le celui-ci va durer encore trois ans environ à l’extérieur de la cathédrale, notamment au niveau de l’abside et des arcs boutants de la nef et du chœur : nous nous efforcerons donc d’être présents aux moments clés de ces travaux.

Sophie Laurant : Nous allons continuer de suivre les travaux qui désormais se concentrent sur le chevet et les pignons de la cathédrale, à l’extérieur. Stéphane va aussi essayer de documenter de manière exhaustive la cathédrale telle qu’elle est aujourd’hui, comme il l’avait fait en 2013. Et nous allons être attentifs au choix du maître-verrier qui doit proposer de nouveaux vitraux pour le sud de la nef ; à la pose de tapisseries contemporaines, dans les chapelles nord, d’ici dix-huit mois ; à la création prochaine d’un musée de l’œuvre de la cathédrale, dans l’hôtel-Dieu, sur le parvis… parvis qui va être entièrement remodelé et modernisé pour un meilleur accueil des visiteurs. Nous publierons sans doute beaucoup de ces reportages sur notre site internet, dans les années qui viennent.

Gary Lee Kraut : Après avoir suivi de près la restauration ces 5 dernières années, votre regard sur la cathédrale a-t-il changé ?

Sophie Laurant : Oui. Je la connais désormais très bien alors qu’elle n’était pour moi qu’une cathédrale parmi d’autres dans laquelle je n’entrais pas si souvent avant l’incendie. Et puis, je me souviens surtout des murs gris, de la pénombre, de la foule… Là, elle est blonde, propre, extrêmement bien éclairée. Cela met en valeur les tableaux (tous nettoyés) comme dans aucune autre église en France.

Stéphane Compoint : La première chose qui a changé dans mon regard sur la cathédrale, c’est que j’ai pu mieux mesurer à quel point le travail des bâtisseurs du XII° et XIII est parsemé de prouesses techniques ! Car pouvoir écouter régulièrement et longuement les architectes en chef sur le terrain, cela vaut tous les cours magistraux d’architecture en amphi ! J’ai donc appris beaucoup de choses passionnantes sur une discipline, l’architecture, qui m’a toujours intéressée (mon père était architecte). Quant à mon regard, il a changé car nous sommes passé d’une cathédrale obscure à une cathédrale lumineuse. Et moi, comme beaucoup de photographes, j’aime la lumière ! Enfin, je sais que, à l’avenir, je verrai des images d’artisans d’art et de compagnons au travail se superposer à ma vision actuelle lors de mes prochaines visites de la cathédrale restaurée : un privilège !

Pour en savoir plus sur le travail journalistique de Sophie Laurant, voir ici.
Pour en savoir plus sur le travail photographique de Stéphane Compoint, voir ici. 
La réservation (gratuite) pour visiter Notre-Dame n’est pas obligatoire. Cependant, elle est vivement conseillée pour un temps d’attente réduite.Voir ici. 

© 2024 Gary Lee Kraut / France Revisited

The post Interview : Notre-Dame, témoins clés d’une restauration éblouissante appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Watch below the wide-ranging video interview with Kristen Grauer, the U.S. Consul General in Marseille, conducted by France Revisited’s Gary Lee Kraut on October 8, 2021. (With apologies for pronouncing Madame Consul General’s title as “counsel” instead of “consul.”) Also see further below Marseille & les Américains, a documentary produced with assistance by the consulate about the U.S. presence in southeastern France during and immediately after WWII, from August 1944 until early 1946.

Timeline for the 25-minute video interview
00:00 – Introduction and Kristen Grauer’s background as a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State.
02:33 – How does the U.S. Consulate General in Marseille help Americans in southern France and Monaco? Lost passports, missing persons, natural disasters and civil unrest.
08:18 – Will the U.S. Consulate get me out of jail if I’m arrested?
10:07 – The U.S. Consulate’s involvement in American economic development.
12:21 – The consulate and the U.S. Sixth Fleet.
13:14 – Operation Dragoon and the invasion of southern France, “the Second D-Day,” in August 1944. (See further information about the landing and about Marseille and the Americans at the bottom of this page.)
17:03 – Kristen Grauer speaks about American WWII heroes Varian Fry, who helped writers, artists and other anti-nazis flee persecution in Europe (the square in front of the consulate has been renamed in his honor) and Vice Consul Hiram Bingham, who bypassed the official policies of the United States in order to provide visas and passports to allow many to obtain visas allowing them escape France.
19:11 – Kristen Grauer’s travels in and impressions of southern France and Monaco.
22:34 – Does Kristen Grauer enjoy the anise-flavored spirit pastis and the rosé wines of Provence? Does she play pétanque?

Kristen Graeur is a career diplomat who previously served in France as the economic officer at the American Embassy in Paris (2010-2013). She most recently served at the U.S. Department of State as the Deputy Director in the Economic Bureau’s Office of Economic Policy and Public Diplomacy. Earlier in her career, she completed tours as an embassy economic officer in Baghdad, Iraq, and Moscow, Russia, and as a political officer in Monrovia, Liberia and Cotonou, Benin. As a career diplomat rather than a political appointee, her assignments don’t necessarily follow the election cycle. She has held her current position as Consul General in Marseille, a 3-year assignment, since the summer of 2020. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan, completed a mid-career Master of Science in National Resource Strategy at the U.S. National Defense University’s Eisenhower School, and is a graduate of the Foreign Service Institute’s long-term economic course. She is married and has two sons.

The U.S. Consulate General in Marseille covers southern France (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Occitanie), Corsica and Monaco. For more information about services provided by the consulate, including its location and contact information, see here.

Operations Dragoon 1944 and Marseille & the Americans

Even among the millions who’ve toured the D-Day Beaches in Normandy, few American visitors to France are aware of the second major D-Day landing in France during the summer of 1944. Code-named Operation Dragoon, it involved the amphibious invasion on August 15, 1944 by the U.S. Seventh Army on a stretch of the Riviera just west of Saint Tropez.

After penetrating inland, forces veered west toward the Rhone Valley. Free French forces then entered the scene to capture the ports of Toulon and Marseille. Led by the Americans, together they pushing German forces to withdraw from the south. Within four weeks, the U.S. forces that had entered from the Riviera linked up with some of those that had earlier entered from Normandy to continue their northern and eastern drive.

Travelers to the region can visit the Rhone American Cemetery in Draguinan, 25 miles from the coast. It’s the burial site of 851 servicemen, with an additional 294 names inscribed on the Wall of the Missing.

After the southern landing and for the following two years, there were major American bases between Marseille and Aix-en-Provence through which two million soldiers would transit. The Consulate General assisted in the creation of a documentary about that American presence. The 4-part documentary entitled Marseille & les Américains is available in French and in English. Here’s Part 1 of the English version.

The Consulate General in Marseille also recently supported an upcoming film on Jamaican-American Harlem Renaissance author Claude Mckay who lived in Marseille from 1924-1929.

The post Video Interview: Kristen Grauer, U.S. Consul General in Marseille appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Over the past 20 years, France, and Paris in particular, has made great strides in rendering accessible buildings that were formerly inaccessible to disabled or handicapped persons—those now more broadly considered to be “in a situation of disability.”

A number of factors has caused these changes: increasingly applied laws, active associations defending the rights of those with disabilities, public awareness, and architects such as Edouard Pastor, one of France’s leading architects specialized in accessibility.

“My own handicap didn’t lead me to becoming an architect,” says Pastor, who sometimes uses a wheelchair due to an accident during childhood that permanently damaged one leg. “But I feel that I’m a good consultant because in addition to my know-how I live in a situation of disability and am aware of the sense of exclusion that can come with it.”

Having opened his own office as a professional in Lyon 1988, Pastor started to become interested in accessibility in 1991 when a man who was quadriplegic asked him to design an adapted house for him.

“Being handicapped brought me into contact with others who were more heavily handicapped than I,” he says. “That job made me want to continue work in the field; I realized then that there were very few, if any, specialists in accessibility.”

The evolution of French law concerning accessibility

It was also in 1991 that France adopted a law requiring that measures of accessibility be integrated into new construction. Previously, a framework law of 1975 had outlined the general principles of accessibility, but, says Pastor, it was never applied because there was no obligation to do so. But the law of 1991 stipulated application by 1995, giving greater urgency and visibility to questions of handicap accessibility.

Honing his skills, knowledge and focus on accessibility over the following years, Pastor took on increasing amounts of work in the field, and by 2001 he considered himself singularly specialized in accessibility. The passing of the Disability Law of 2005, which codified the need to create conditions for autonomy and participation for all gave him further visibility as a specialist in the field.

That law obliged owners of private and public property that receives the public to render their property accessible to all before 2015. Though overly optimistic in its timing, the stage was set for a decree of 2014 that would turn that optimism into an obligation. Known as Ad’AP, Agenda d’accessibilité programmé (Agenda for Programed Accessibility), it required that property owners receiving the public establish by September 2017 a calendar by which they will render their properties accessible over 3, 6 or 9 years, depending on complexity, feasibility and financing.

Coinciding with the implementation of the requirement for an Ad’AP, Paris was awarded the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which will likely accelerate improved accessibility as the 2012 Games did for London.

But it wasn’t just the Olympics that made London more accessible, says Pastor. It was also because the British were “less utopian” in their view of accessibility. They understood early on the interest of “design for all,” meaning that accessibility measures should serve the greatest number of people, including those with disabilities.

“In France, we’re more regulatory; we prefer to maintain a conformity in the slope of an access ramp, and if we can’t do it we’ll propose a secondary access. That may seem correct, but in Anglo-Saxon countries that would be discriminatory. They’d rather allow everyone to pass through the same entrance even if means a slightly higher ramp slope.”

Edouard Pastor’s Paris Projects

Pastor has been involved in accessibility audits and programing for a number of high-profile monuments in Paris, including the Eiffel Tower, the Palais Royal and Comédie Française Theaters, the Pompidou Center, the National Archives, the National Library and the Musée de l’Homme. He was also involved in the actual adaptation work for the latter.

As part of the accessibility audit for the Eiffel Tower, Pastor’s evaluation outlined steps to be taken to render the tower safe for visually impaired visitors at risk of bumping into sloping girders or unable to hold securely onto rails or climb slipper steps. It was, of course, impossible to modify Gustave Eiffel’s work by moving girders that are low enough that someone might bump into them, and it was aesthetically inappropriate to attach cushioning on all of them. Pastor therefore recommended creating a discernable path that would avoid low or sloping girders, along with anti-slip steps and orientation tables with braille. Within his recommendations several solutions are possible, so it is up to the firms realizing the project to develop the final plans, expected to be completed in about five years. Regarding wheelchair accessibility, the first and second levels are already accessible, though by request from the fire department there is a derogation from making the upper level wheelchair accessible due to limited evacuation space should the elevators fail.

While Pastor’s role is to assess plans and structures in order propose solutions in view of current regulations, he is not one to insist that all historic building be adapted at any cost to the integrity of the building or regardless of the expense.

Pastor’s recommendations in preparation for the lengthy renovations at the Salle Richelieu, the historic venue of the Comédie Française, France’s premier repertory theater, are an example of his willingness to look beyond strict rules for appropriate solutions. Having been awarded the task of advising the State on questions of accessibility for the project, he recognized that it would be counterproductive to fully integrate the regulation that for every 50 seats of a theater there must be space for two wheelchair.

“On a typical night there might be two individuals in wheelchairs, perhaps occasional a small group would wish to attend a play. But removing dozens of seats in order to follow the regulation to the letter for a theater with over 800 seats would mean eliminating dozens of seats in order to provide space for 16 or so wheelchairs, space that would largely go unused.” He therefore developed a compromise proposal whereby ten wheelchair accessible places would be created while allowing for the possibility to remove additional valid seating should a larger number of individuals or a group requiring wheelchair space contact the theatre in advance. “Flexibility is to everyone’s advantage in that case,” he said.

Wheelchair access, he said, involves far more than seating spaces; elevators, rest rooms and bar areas must also be adapted. For the theater’s bar, where staff typically serve only from behind the counter, it would be ideal to have a bar counter where someone in a wheelchair could saddle up by having the wheels roll under the bar. But in order to preserve the aesthetics of the existent bar counter, Pastor instead suggested creating a separate, wheelchair accessible table and having the bar staff come over to serve.

The Pompidou Centre, though only 40 years old, was built at a time when an awareness was developing as to the need for wheelchair accessibility, but it was not designed with the needs of the visually impaired in mind. Like the Eiffel Tower, there is a similar problem with low portions that are of potential harm to visually impaired visitors. He was therefore called upon to provide advice on rendering one of the staircases safer though improved lighting, contrasting lines on steps and anti-slip material.

Gardens, too, raise questions of accessibility. Thus Pastor recently completed a mission, conferred by the Louvre, to define elements that would favor the autonomy of visually impaired individuals in the Tuileries Garden while respecting the 17th-century imprint of André Le Notre.

“The question,” he says, “is how to remove the sword of Damocles for a visually impaired person who, with each step, asks himself if he’s going to encounter an obstacle or slip or hit something.” For the Tuileries he developed strategies of placing paving stones on the ground in certain places, barriers near gardens, tactile maps near the entrance, and sound beacons that operate via Bluetooth on smartphones, all of which will eventually be put into place.

France on the forefront of recognizing four types of disability

While handicap accessibility was once generally viewed as concerning adapting buildings for people in wheelchairs, it has come increasingly to refer to four categories of handicap or disability: motor, mental/intellectual, hearing and visual. France may lag in accessibility with respect to London, says Pastor, yet it is now on the forefront, at least theoretically, of recognizing those four types of disability that must be addressed in spaces and buildings that receive the public.

Furthermore, one no longer speaks of rendering buildings accessible to disabled or handicapped persons but to those “in a situation of disability.”

“We’ve made much progress in integrating the first three types of disability,” says Pastor referring to motor, hearing and visual disabilities, “and I believe that in the next three or four years intellectual disability will come to the forefront. It’s the most complicated type of disability to understand, until one thinks about one’s own experiences. Because we can all find ourselves in situations of intellectual disability.”

Travelers need only imagine visiting China and the disorientation and frustration of being unable to decipher signs written in Chinese characters. Regular metro and RER users in Paris need only think of navigating the tunnels of the Châtelet-Les Halles station to understand how a structure’s layout, lighting and signage can induce anxiety and a feeling of being lost or entrapped.

According to INSEE, the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies, 20% of French were in a situation of disability in 2016. Furthermore, there are in France about 800,000 pregnant women per year, 2.4 million children under 3 years old and, by 2025, 11% of the population will be over 75, all of whom have a direct interest in accessibility.

Derogations to the law

Pastor’s primary role now is as a consultant, advisor and auditor, assisting clients or project managers in defining, planning and programing accessibility for a property, whether a historical monument, another existing property or a new construction.

“Accessibility was long seen as an add-on, but for the past two or three years, since Ad’AP, I’m consulted before the project’s overall architect arrives in order to establish the programing of its broad principles.”

Not everything can be rendered accessible, says Pastor. There are four possible derogations in the law: cases where the structure of the building prohibits modification, cases where the heritage value needs to be protected (i.e. adapting for accessibility would degrade the site), cases where the financial cost would be unreasonable, and cases where the modifications would be unreasonable.

As Pastor’s career has evolved along with the law and public awareness concerning accessibility, so has his reputation. In 2008 he moved to Paris from Lyon and founded the firm Handigo, which now has two architects and three urbanists/programists along with a part-time secretary.

One of Handigo’s current contracts is with the European Parliament. In 2015 the firm was awarded the multiyear task of homogenizing accessibility among official European Union buildings throughout the union. That involves auditing dozens of buildings, beginning with those in Strasbourg, Luxembourg and Brussels, followed by those in each country of the EU, while taking into consideration the different standards in each country along with strong French regulations and international standards. In particular, Handigo’s mission for the European Parliament is to develop “reasonable” propositions that favor the autonomy of those in situations of sensorial disability, broadly concerning visual and auditory disabilities.

In 2011 Handigo was awarded the contract to consult for and then accompany the total renovation of the Musée de l’Homme at Trocadero in Paris. Built in 1937, the museum’s interior was mostly gutted and rebuilt and Handigo was involved in all stages, even working with the museographers and scenographers to ensure full accessibility. The end result is a visit that, unbeknownst to most visitors, allows access to the four types of disability: display cases have room underneath to allow for someone in a wheelchair, lighting and signage is sufficiently contrasted and large enough to be read by the visually impaired, braille notices, and there are adapted acoustics and an intuitive flow through the museum.

As an uncommon specialist, Pastor is often called upon to give seminars to other architects, notably to those involved in adapting heritage sites, the Chief Architects of Historical Monuments.

“Architects involved with historical buildings are often wary that rendering a building accessible will denature the structure. They’ll work on lighting whereas the original building had no electricity and they’ll work on toilets where it had no toilets. They see that as an obligation of use. But accessibility has a negative connotation though it’s also part of its contemporary use. These architects have the power to say no, but that’s less and less the case because of social pressure in addition to the law.”

“A structure’s adaptation may seem correct, but from the point of view of someone living in a situation of disability it feels completely off the mark. [Yet] it’s possible to do something nice, something beautiful, and to remove the negative connotations of accessibility.”

* * *

For information about accessible monuments, museums and restaurants in Paris and elsewhere in France, see part 2 of this article.

In November 2017 Gary Lee Kraut organized an event for the French press to inform members of the Association des Journalistes du Patrimoine about issues concerning accessibility of historical monuments. The event featured presentations and informal discussions with architects Edouard Pastor and Mirabelle Croizier. A summary account of that event can be found in French here.

© Gary Lee Kraut

This article was first published in a slightly different version in the October 2017 issue of The Connexion.

The post Accessible Paris: An Interview with Architect Edouard Pastor appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Quentin and his brothers Ted Jr., Archie and Kermit all served in WWI. Ted Jr. would later be the oldest American soldier and highest ranking officer to land by sea in Normandy (Utah Beach) on D-Day June 6, 1944. He died of a heart attack five weeks into the invasion. Quentin was originally buried in the village of Chamery, where his plane crashed. The two brothers are now buried side by side at the Normandy American Cemetery above Omaha Beach.

In this exclusive France Revisited interview, Christiane Sinnig-Haas, author of a forthcoming book about Quentin Roosevelt, tells about “the most famous American victim of the First World War” and how, after becoming director of the Jean de La Fontaine Museum in Château-Thierry, she became interested in Quentin’s life.

[This interview was conducted in 2012. In 2015 Château-Thierry inaugurated the Maison de l’Amitié France-Amérique on Place des Etat-Unis. The building houses the tourist office, an exhibition space that speaks of the life and death of Quentin Roosevelt and a “mini-school” offering English classes for children.]

[Cliquer pour la version originale française de cet entretien.]

France Revisited: How did you come to be interested in Quentin Roosevelt?

Christiane Sinnig-Haas: I came upon Quentin Roosevelt by chance, as is the case with many encounters. His story is tied to the history of the First World War in the Chateau-Thierry region. I discovered the tragic destiny of Quentin Roosevelt when I took over as director of the Jean de La Fontaine Museum of Chateau-Thierry, which is also a Maison d’Ecrivain [Writer’s House].

I had just finished a book about a great contemporary Chinese writer Ba Jin who lived in Château-Thierry in the 1920s and whom the city wanted to honor when a friend took me to Chamery to the site where Quentin’s plane crashed on July 14, 1918.

The City of Château-Thierry also held a series of events and exhibitions in honor of the memory of Quentin Roosevelt in 2010.

In doing research about Quentin I discovered that he had left numerous letters telling about his short life before and after his arrival in France where he enlisted as a volunteer. He had inherited from his father, President Theodore Roosevelt, a taste for writing. In 1921 his brother Kermit published a selection of Quentin’s letters. Reading between the lines one discovers the portrait of the extremely likable and brilliant young man that was Quentin.

I traveled to Harvard, to Sagamore Hill [home of Theodore Roosevelt and family] and to Washington to better understand the reality of his daily life. It’s through his letters and through the archives maintained by the family that I entered into the world of Quentin Roosevelt.

Another decisive encounter was my meeting Richard Derby Williams and his wife Mary. Richard Derby Williams, grandson of Quentin’s sister Ethel to whom he was very close, attaches, as does the entire Roosevelt family, great significance to paying homage to Quentin’s sacrifice, and he was extremely positive about this project in English. He knows Château-Thierry well and has become friends with those here who honor and maintain the memory of Quentin. His grandmother Ethel Roosevelt Derby, guardian of the family memory, had established a friendship with a couple of teachers from the area, the Corets, who perpetuated the celebration of Memorial Day at Quentin’s tomb in Chamery, part of the commune of Coulanges-Cohan since 1954.

These warm relations have been perpetuated by her grandson and family, the Theodore Roosevelt Association, local authorities, the City of Château-Thierry, and the Aisne-Marne Cemetery at Belleau Wood.

FR: Quentin Roosevelt was the youngest son of President Theodore Roosevelt and is often described as being his favorite. Why?

C.S-H.: As his name indicates, Quentin was the fifth child of Theodore and Edith Roosevelt. His half-sister Alice and his mother Edith often remarked that he was undoubtedly the most talented of the President’s children and that he possessed a strong sense of humor.

At a young age he showed himself to be very bold and reckless and to have little physical inhibition, which frightened his parents. Intelligent, full of joie de vivre, direct, sensitive and inventive, he was a born leader, as can be seen early on in episodes of the White House Gang which delighted the press and the American public. The president attached great importance to the development of Quentin’s sense of responsibility and principles and channeled this spirit that he recognized in himself.

He was an excellent student whose interest in reading and writing were encouraged by his parents.

Theodore Roosevelt nourished high ambitions for Quentin in whom he might have seen a potential political heir. He shared his father’s traits both physically and intellectually, and Theodore didn’t fail to notice that Quentin had a certain charisma.

While a student at Harvard, Quentin became the epistolary confidant of his father who shared with him his opinions particularly regarding domestic and international politics. Like the president, he was charming and full of energy; he was sincere and applied the principles in which he believed.

Quentin had an absolutely limitless admiration for his father, whom he adored.

FR: Where did Quentin’s passion for flying come from and how did he become a pilot?

C.S-H.: Quentin surprised his friends and family early on with his strong attraction and innate talent for mechanics, which was both a passion and a gift.

In August 1909, during a family journey in Europe, he was struck by the beauty of an aerial show in Reims, which was for him a revelation. He was almost 12 years old. He returned to the region in 1918, as a pilot enlisting voluntarily to meet his destiny.

Poems that he wrote at a young age reveal his fascination with aviation, mechanics and engines. His enthusiasm for experiences involving mechanics wasn’t always shared by the family. While a student at Harvard he considered completing his degree at MIT and said that he wanted to become a mechanical engineer.

Theodore Roosevelt, for his part, understood very early on the strategic importance that aviation was going to have in the European conflict, especially after the first Battle of the Marne. He had written articles on the subject and Quentin was well aware of them.

In 1917, when the United States entered the war, Quentin, then at Harvard, immediately informed his parents of his decision to enlist in order to become a fighter pilot, despite problems with his back and his sight. His father gave his support and totally adhered to his decision.

Before leaving for France in July, Quentin was trained at the Mineola Aviation School then completing his training in France.

In 1917 the American army had less than one hundred trained pilots, and the manpower needs for the conflict in Europe were enormous.

FR: How did his father, a former president, feel about his son going to war?

C.H-S.: It’s undeniable that Theodore Roosevelt’s personality and ideas definitely marked the choices of his sons and of his entire family.

Theodore Roosevelt’s political perceptiveness concerning the conflict and the worldwide situation in Europe were remarkable. With premonitory insight he warned his countrymen of the economic and strategic dangers of a German victory for Europe as well as for the United States. He was convinced very early on of the necessity for the United States to get involved in Europe. The attitude of his successor in the White House, Woodrow Wilson, and of the latter’s refuge behind political neutrality—which enabled Wilson’s reelection in 1916—distressed Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt early on sought to convince the American people that Wilson’s non-interventionist attitude and his pacifism were reprehensible; he called President Wilson a coward.

To Roosevelt, the United States’ entrance into the conflict in 1917 came very late and he considered the country to be unequipped and that a lot of time had been lost. (As early as 1914, Quentin’s sister Ethel, a nurse, had accompanied to France her husband Richard Derby, a surgeon voluntarily enlisted to work at the American Hospital in Paris.)

President Wilson’s refusal to allow Theodore Roosevelt (“Colonel” Theodore Roosevelt) to enlist, despite the insistence of allies who believed that his presence would have a positive effect on troop morale, left a bitter taste in the former president’s mouth since he was well-known and popular in Europe. His sons, he said, were his pride and his substitution due to the prohibition against being on the front in Europe himself.

In June 1917, his sons Ted and Archie sailed to France and Kermit for Mesopotamia (now Iraq). On July 23, 1917, Quentin sailed for France. For the entire family, participating in the war effort was a question of honor.

FR: What’s known of Quentin’s last dogfight?

C.S-H.: Quentin’s squadron, the 95th Pursuit Squadron, along with 94th Pursuit Squadron were the first American fighter plane squadrons.

On July 14, 1918, the situation in the Chateau-Thierry sector was extremely dangerous. German aviation had very strict orders to prevent any observation and reconnaissance attempts—the great German “Friedensturm” offensive was planned for the following day, July 15. The German commander had given orders to totally neutralize any observation flights along the front line.

On July 14, Quentin’s unit, based at Saints near Château-Thierry, took off early in the morning under the command of Lieutenant Edward Buford. The squadron’s mission was to fly cover for an observation plane of the 88th that would take photos behind the front line The photos were taken and the observation plane headed back to base when German Fokkers appeared. The formation of five American planes that had gone over the front line found themselves faced with a formation of seven German Fokkers.

Confronted with so many enemy planes, Lieutenant Buford decided to cease combat and to bring the unit back behind the lines. The weather was cloudy and windy and visibility wasn’t good. Between cloud layers, Lieutenant Buford caught sight of a Nieuport in difficulty being attacked by three Fokkers. It had apparently been hit. The dogfight lasted five to six minutes. Quentin had thrown himself into combat, undoubtedly the victim of his own great boldness, his bravery and his lack of fear, convinced that he was doing the right thing.

At the same time it was raining in Paris and the allies were parading down the Champs-Elysées for the July 14 French national holiday, Bastille Day.

Quentin was signaled as missing when the other airplanes returned to base. He had been shot down and had crashed in Chamery, in the German zone.

Quentin had deplored the superiority of the new design of the German Fokkers over the older American Nieuports in his letters and had noted the problems of being underequipped that his father had predicted at the start of the conflict.

FR: Quentin’s plane crashed on the other side of the front. The Germans buried him and, conscious that he was the son of a former American president, immediately informed the French military. What’s known about the reaction of the German and the French authorities to his death?

C.S-H.: News of Quentin’s death shocked the entire world. The press everywhere told of his sacrifice, and his courage was saluted unanimously. The Roosevelt name was known and respected by the French as well as by the Germans, both civilians and the military.

On July 15 he was buried in Chamery, a little village in the department of Aisne, at the place where his plane had crashed. An eyewitness described an impressive honor guard of German soldiers giving him military honors at the site.

In keeping with tradition, the broken blades of the propeller and the buckled wheels of his plane marked the site of his tomb surmounted by a wood cross.

A photo of his remains next the plane was taken by the German military. Its use as propaganda to lift troop moral quickly turned out to be extremely counterproductive among both civilians and the German army. It was even quite demoralizing for the troops. The comparison of the courageous son of the former American president dead in aerial combat with the six sons of the Kaiser who maintained a respectful distance from the front was rather unflattering for the latter and further glorified the sacrifice of Quentin and of his brothers Theodore Jr., Archie and Kermit, all on the front and volunteers in the name of the fight against barbarism.

The American press was explicit: On August 4, 1918 the Chicago Sunday Tribune printed photographs of the sons of President Theodore Roosevelt and the sons of the German Kaiser with the heading “THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND AUTOCRACY.”

On the French side, Quentin’s death confirmed the admiration and the gratitude for these American volunteers. The high French authorities quickly send their condolences to Theodore and Edith. Quentin was decorated with the Croix de Guerre avec palme [a French medal for exceptional conduct during WWI].

FR: Quentin Roosevelt was killed in aerial combat on July 14, 1918, the French national holiday, Bastille Day? Is that in some way significant?

C.S-H.: Quentin had a rendez-vous with destiny. The symbolic date of his death amplified the prestige of his sacrifice. That date is part of what made him a legend. Le 14 juillet (the 14th of July), the national holiday, date of the storming of the Bastille, is the French equivalent of America’s Independence Day. It’s as though the son of a French president had been killed by the enemies on American soil on a 4th of July!

Quentin’s sacrifice and the Americans who volunteered to enlist in the First World War left a very strong mark in the collective memory; their enthusiasm, their energy and their indefectible faith in doing the right thing lifted the morale of soldiers and of the French people. The ferocious battles that took place in the area around Château-Thierry during the Second Battle of the Marne have marked forever the sites themselves and French-American friendship.

FR: Can you tell us about the reaction of the Roosevelt family to the news of Quentin’s death and the bond it created between the family and France after that?

C.S-H.: President Roosevelt was informed at Sagamore Hill [his home] on the morning of July 17. The reaction of the parents before the press and before the American people was one of great reserve and great dignity. They saluted Quentin’s courage and his sacrifice along with that of all parents whose sons were in danger or had died on the front in a foreign land. They wanted to share their pain with the American people and with parents who suffered as they did. Quentin’s father and mother didn’t ask for any more compassion than ordinary citizens.

In private the shock was violent. It was a shock of the ideals on which Theodore and Edith had built their lives confronted with the reality and pain of Quentin’s death. It’s possible that Theodore couldn’t stand the sense of guilt concerning Quentin’s tragic end. He was devastated. Something was extinguished in Theodore’s heart with Quentin’s death. His family, those close to him and he himself recognized it. The “Lion,” as his family called him, died six months later at the age of 60.

American troops liberated the area of Chamery and discovered Quentin’s tomb several days after his death. His parents wanted Quentin’s remains to stay buried there where he had fallen, and the authorities accommodated their desire.

Early in 1919, Quentin’s mother came to meditate on his tomb. The former First Lady had a fountain built in Quentin’s memory in the village of Chamery.

[Editor’s note: Quentin’s oldest brother Theodore Roosevelt Jr. died during the Invasion of Normandy 1944. After the creation of the Normandy American Cemetery above Omaha Beach, the Roosevelt family sought and obtained permission to have Quentin’s remains exhumed from Chamery and buried beside those of his brother. ]

FR: Beyond the personal story of his engagement in the war and the family tragedy of his death, how do those events fit in with the larger narrative of the war and why do you consider them significant?

C.S-H.: Quentin’s life, his birth, his personality, his intellectual abilities, his charisma and his humor formed an exceptional individual and someone who was extremely likable; he would undoubtedly have made his mark on America’s political or social landscape. He considered himself as someone who was very ordinary yet he had many uncommon qualities.

There’s a tragic and romantic dimension to his destiny about which he had a premonition. He went through very dark phases of depression but he felt that he had a mission that he could not and would not escape. That sentiment appears repeatedly in the letters to his fiancée Flora Payne Whitney. He belongs to a generation that expressed a pressing desire to fight for ideas. It gives pause to consider today the consensus at the time around the determination and the will to fight to the death that invaded the entire society, whatever the price may be. He was only 20 years old yet his letters reveal great maturity.

Reading his letter we can imagine someone for whom friendship was precious. His comrades-in-arms, the soldiers and the mechanics under his orders were unanimous in their great appreciation and respect for him. It’s difficult to fake your personality when death is lying in wait at every mission. Quentin belongs to the collective memory as do all those pilots who died in aerial combat.

He was undoubtedly the most famous American victim of the First World War.

Crushed by his destiny, by the war and by the events that engulfed the world, he would have belonged—had he not carried the Roosevelt name—to the thousands of forgotten aviators and aces who, like Quentin, wanted to bring an end to this war and to its butchery.

[Editor’s note: Regarding American WWI pilots who were killed in action, see also this information about the Escadrille Lafayette Memorial near Paris.]

One of his favorite expressions was “noblesse oblige,” something that defines him well; he carried a famous name that personified courage, it gave him responsibility, and he assumed it with nobility.

He embodied the quote from Theodore Roosevelt engraved on Quentin’s fountain in Chamery: “Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die.”

FR: How did you, as an expert on Quentin Roosevelt, come to be chief curator and director of a museum dedicated to Jean de La Fontaine? What brought you to the La Fontaine Museum?

C.S-H.: It’s because I’m director of the Jean de La Fountaine Museum in Château-Thierry, which is labeled “Musée de France” and “Maison d’écrivain” (Writer’s House), that I became interested in Quentin Roosevelt. My approach was essentially literary. His character emerged through a reading of his letters and through the archives.

Jean de La Fontaine was born in Château-Thierry. The museum occupies a 16th-century home that once belonged to his family and is listed as a Historical Monument. It’s just received from the Ministry of Culture the label “Maison des Illustres” [designating a home of someone “illustrious” or renown]. Restoration of the façade has just been completed.

La Fontaine is one of the great poets of the French literature. He lived in the 17th century, the century of Louis XIV, who both admired and was wary of La Fontaine’s genius. Great artists have illustrated his fables and tales: Fragonard, Oudry, Chagall, Dali, etc.

The museum has collections of exceptional paintings and miniatures as well as a library devoted to the writer.

Quentin knew French literature, including La Fontaine and La Bruyère, and had visited France in his youth. He had been impressed by the Louvre. In his letters he quotes authors in French. Through his education he had a command of French both spoken and written.

FR: English-speakers are especially familiar with Aesop’s fables but few know those of La Fontaine. In what way would the La Fontaine Museum be interesting for those who don’t know the writer’s work?

C.S-H.: Aesop’s fables are known in Anglo-Saxon literature and are found in La Fontaine, whose own work they inspired. The 17th century is the century of fables and tales that were showcased in French literature and at the Court of Louis XIV

La Fontaine uses animal anthropomorphism, putting to the forefront animals such as the fox, the wolf, the hare, the frog, the cat, the town rat and the country rat. That animal world is also the key to the success of Walt Disney, who adapted fables, fairy tales—stories with a moral component, often inspired by European literature. Among his sources of inspiration were the fables of La Fontaine.

The mouse known around the world, Mickey, sticks the tip of his snout into La Fontaine’s animal world. As with La Fontaine, the purpose is to permeate the imagination of children and adults, to get around censures and to give lessons in morality by using animals to give a message or to make situations less alarming.

Walt Disney’s The Tortoise and the Hare, a short film from Silly Symphonies released in 1935, was inspired by a fable that Jean de La Fontaine wrote for the king’s son.

There was a before and an after La Fontaine in literature just as there’s a before and after Walt Disney for their adaptation to the movies. Both are unequaled and incomparable. The fables and the ideals that they convey, such as courage, know no borders and are a bond between our two cultures.

Christiane Sinnig-Haas is the chief curator and director of the Musée Jean de La Fontaine in Château-Thierry. She is founder of the Association pour le Musée Jean de La Fontaine and vice president of the network of Writers’ Houses in the Picardy region.

The responses in this written interview, originally in French, are the copyright of Christiane Sinnig-Haas, 2012. Translation by Gary Lee Kraut.

The post Quentin Roosevelt, President’s Son, the Most Famous American Killed in France in WWI appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Christiane Sinnig-Haas est conservateur en chef, directrice du Musée Jean de La Fontaine. Elle est Fondatrice de l’Association pour le Musée Jean de La Fontaine et Vice-Présidente du réseau des Maisons d’écrivains de Picardie.

[Click here for the English version of this interview]

France Revisited : D’où vient votre intérêt pour Quentin Roosevelt?

Christiane Sinnig-Haas : C’est une rencontre due au hasard comme beaucoup de rencontres. Son histoire est liée à l’histoire de la première guerre mondiale dans la région de Château-Thierry. En prenant la direction du Musée Jean de La Fontaine de Château-Thierry qui est également une maison d’écrivain, j’ai découvert le destin tragique de Quentin Roosevelt.

Je venais de terminer un ouvrage sur un grand écrivain contemporain chinois Ba Jin qui vécut à Château- Thierry dans les années 20 et que la Ville de Château-Thierry souhaitait mettre à l’honneur quand un ami m’emmena à Chamery sur le lieu où s’était écrasé l’avion de Quentin le 14 juillet 1918.

La Ville de Château-Thierry a consacré l’année 2010 à Quentin Roosevelt.

En approfondissant ma recherche j’ai découvert que Quentin avait laissé de nombreuses lettres relatant sa courte vie avant et après son arrivée en France en tant qu’engagé volontaire.

Il avait hérité de son père, le président Théodore Roosevelt, le goût de l’écriture. Son frère Kermit avait publié en 1921 une sélection des lettres de Quentin. Entre les lignes se dessinait le portrait d’un jeune homme extrêmement sympathique et brillant : Quentin.

Je me suis ensuite rendue à Harvard, à Sagamore Hill, à Washington pour mieux appréhender la réalité de son quotidien. C’est par ses lettres et les archives conservées de la famille que je suis entrée dans le monde de Quentin Roosevelt.

Une autre rencontre a été déterminante celle de Richard Derby Williams et de son épouse Mary. Petit-fils d’Ethel la sœur de Quentin dont il était très proche, Richard Derby Williams attache comme toute la famille Roosevelt une grande importance à l’hommage rendu au sacrifice de Quentin. Il a été extrêmement positif pour ce projet en anglais . Il connaît bien Château-Thierry et les amis de longue date de Quentin. Sa grand-mère, Ethel Roosevelt Derby, gardienne de la mémoire de la famille avait notamment établi des liens d’amitiés avec un couple d’instituteurs du lieu, les Coret qui ont perpétré la célébration du Memorial Day sur la tombe de Quentin à Chamery, commune de Coulanges-Cohan à partir de 1954.

Ces liens chaleureux ont été entretenus par son petit-fils Richard Derby Williams et la famille, l’Association Théodore Roosevelt, les autorités locales, la Ville de Château-Thierry, et le célèbre site de Bois-Belleau.

FR : Quentin Roosevelt, le fils cadet du Président Theodore Roosevelt, est souvent décrit comme étant le préféré de son père. Pourquoi ?

C.S-H. : Comme son nom l’indique Quentin était le cinquième enfant de Théodore et Edith Roosevelt. Sa demi-sœur Alice , sa mère Edith n’ont pas manqué de souligner qu’il était sans doute le plus doué des enfants du Président et doté d’un solide sens de l’humour.

Il fit preuve très tôt d’une grande audace, il était téméraire et avait peu d’inhibition physique, ce qui effrayait ses parents.Intelligent, plein de joie de vivre, direct, sensible et inventif, il était un leader né comme en témoignent très tôt les épisodes de la White House Gang durant sa jeunesse qui ont fait les délices de la presse et des américains. Le Président attachait une grande importance au développement de son sens des responsabilités et des principes et canalisait cette fougue où il se reconnaissait. Excellent élève, son goût pour la lecture et l’écriture fut encouragé par ses parents.

Théodore Roosevelt nourrissait de grandes ambitions pour Quentin en qui il voyait peut-être un successeur politique potentiel. Il avait des traits communs avec son père, physiquement et intellectuellement. Théodore n’avait pas manqué de percevoir un charisme certain chez Quentin.

Etudiant à Harvard, Quentin devint le confident épistolier de son père qui lui faisait part de ses opinions notamment en matière de politique intérieure et extérieure. Comme le Président il avait du charme et beaucoup d’énergie, il était sincère et appliquait les principes auxquels il croyait. Quentin de son côté avait une admiration absolument sans borne pour son père qu’il adorait.

FR : D’où vient la passion de Quentin pour les avions et comment est-il devenu pilote?

C.S-H. : Très tôt Quentin étonna son entourage par sa grande attirance et ses talents innés pour la mécanique, c’était une passion et un don. En août 1909 au cours d’un voyage avec sa famille en Europe, il fut bouleversé par la beauté d’un show aérien à Reims, ce fut pour lui une révélation, il avait 12 ans. Il reviendra dans cette région en 1918, pilote engagé volontaire à la rencontre de son destin.

Dés son jeune âge ses poèmes traduisent cette fascination pour l’aviation, la mécanique, les moteurs. Son enthousiasme pour ses expériences mécaniques n’était pas toujours partagé par la famille. Etudiant à Harvard il souhaitait compléter son cursus au MIT et avait déclaré vouloir devenir ingénieur en mécanique.

Par ailleurs Théodore Roosevelt avait compris très tôt l’importance stratégique qu’allait prendre l’aviation dans le conflit en Europe, notamment après la première bataille de la Marne. Il avait écrit des articles à ce sujet et Quentin en était tout à fait informé.

En avril 1917 lors de l’entrée en guerre des Etats-Unis, Quentin qui était à Harvard avait immédiatement informé ses parents de sa décision de s’engager pour devenir pilote de chasse, malgré des problèmes de dos et de vue. Son père lui accorda tout son soutien et adhéra totalement à sa décision.Avant de partir pour la France en juillet il sera formé à l’Ecole d’aviation de Mineola, formation qui sera complétée ensuite en France.

L’armée américaine avait moins d’une centaine de pilotes entraînés en 1917, les besoins du conflit en Europe étaient énormes.

FR : Que pensait le père de Quentin, ancien président, du désir de son fils à s’engager dans la guerre?

C.S-H. : Il est incontestable que la personnalité de Théodore Roosevelt, ses idées ont définitivement marquées le choix de ses fils et de toute sa famille. La clairvoyance politique de Théodore Roosevelt concernant le conflit et la situation mondiale en Europe étaient remarquables. D’une perspicacité prémonitoire il mettait en garde ses concitoyens contre les dangers économiques et stratégiques d’une victoire allemande pour l’Europe comme pour les Etats-Unis. Il fut très tôt convaincu de la nécessité de l’engagement des Etats Unis en Europe.

L’attitude de son successeur à la Maison Blanche Woodrow Wilson et son refuge dans une neutralité prudente -qui permit d’ailleurs la réélection de Wilson en 1916 -était un désespoir pour Théodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt a très tôt cherché à convaincre le peuple américain que l’attitude de non-ingérence et le pacifisme de Wilson étaient condamnables; il traitait le Président Wilson de lâche.

L’entrée des Etats-Unis dans le conflit en 1917 lui semblait très tardive, il estimait le pays sous équipé et beaucoup de temps avait été perdu malgré sa véhémence.

Dés 1914 la sœur de Quentin, Ethel avait accompagné comme infirmière son époux Richard Derby chirurgien engagé volontaire à Hôpital Américain de Paris.

Le refus du président Wilson de l’engagement de Théodore Roosevelt malgré l’insistance des alliés, qui pensaient que sa présence aurait un effet positif pour le moral des troupes fut très amèrement ressentie par Théodore Roosevelt qui était connu et populaire en Europe.

Ses fils comme il le disait étaient sa fierté, sa substitution à l’interdiction qui lui était faite d’être sur le front en Europe. En juin 1917 ses fils Ted et Archie embarquaient pour la France, Kermit pour la Mésopotamie (Irak actuel). Le 23 juillet 1917 Quentin embarquait pour la France. Pour toute la famille participer à cet effort de guerre était une question d’honneur.

FR : Que sait-on de son dernier combat aérien?

C.S-H. : L’escadrille de Quentin la 95th Pursuit Squadron  ainsi que la 94 th Pursuit Squadron ont été les premières escadrilles de chasse aérienne américaine.

Ce 14 juillet 1918 la situation du secteur de Château-Thierry était extrêmement dangereuse. L’aviation allemande avait des ordres très stricts pour empêcher toute tentative d’observation et de reconnaissance : la grande offensive allemande «  Friedensturm » était prévue pour le lendemain 15 juillet. Le commandement allemand avait donné des ordres pour neutraliser absolument tout vol d’observation sur la ligne de front.

Le 14 juillet l’unité de Quentin basée prés de Château -Thierry à Saints décolla tôt ce matin là sous le commandement du lieutenant Buford Edward. La mission de l’escadrille était de couvrir un avion d’observation du 88 th qui prenait des photos derrière la ligne de front. Les clichés avaient pu être pris  et l’avion d’observation était reparti vers la base lorsque des Fokkers de chasse allemands apparurent. La formation des cinq avions américains qui avaient  franchi la ligne de front s’est trouvée face à une formation de 7 Fokkers allemands.

Le lieutenant Buford devant le grand nombre d’avions ennemis décida de cesser le combat et de ramener l’unité derrière les lignes. Le temps était couvert, nuageux, il y avait du vent et la visibilité n’était pas bonne. Le lieutenant Buford aperçu un avion Nieuport en difficulté entre les couches de nuages, attaqué par trois Fokkers et qui avait apparemment été touché. Le combat avait duré cinq à six minutes.

Quentin s’était jeté dans le combat sans doute victime de sa grande témérité, de sa bravoure  et de son manque de peur, convaincu de son bon droit. Au même moment il pleuvait à Paris et les alliés défilaient sur les Champs Elysées pour la parade du 14 juillet. Au retour l’avion de Quentin était signalé manquant : il avait été abattu et s’était écrasé à Chamery en zone allemande.

La supériorité des appareils allemands : des Fokkers de chasse de conception nouvelle sur les appareils américains de vieux Nieuport avait été déplorée par Quentin dans ses lettres et rappelait les problèmes de sous équipement que son père le Colonel Roosevelt avait prédit dés le début du conflit.

FR : L’avion de Quentin s’est écrasé au delà du front. Les allemands l’ont enterré et conscients qu’il était le fils d’un ancien président américain ont prévenu immédiatement les français de sa mort. Que sait-on de la réaction des autorités allemands et des français par rapport à sa mort?

C.S-H. : La mort de Quentin a été un choc dans le monde entier, la presse a relaté son sacrifice dans tous les pays et son courage a été salué de façon unanime. Le nom de Roosevelt était connu et respecté des français comme des allemands, civils et militaires.

Le 15 juillet il a été enterré à Chamery, petit village de l’Aisne à l’endroit où son avion s’est écrasé. Un témoin oculaire mentionne une garde d’honneur impressionnante de soldats allemands lui rendant les honneurs militaires sur le site. Conformément à la tradition les pales brisées de l’hélice et les roues voilées de son avion ont marqué l’emplacement de sa tombe surmontée d’une croix de bois.

La photo de sa dépouille à côté de l’avion a été prise par les services allemands. Son exploitation à des fins de propagande pour remonter le moral des troupes s’est très vite révélée extrêmement contre-productive au sein de la population comme de l’armée allemande. Elle était même très démoralisante pour les troupes.

La comparaison du courageux fils du président américain mort en combat aérien avec celle des six fils du Kaiser qui se tenaient à distance respectueuse du front était peu flatteuse et glorifiait encore davantage le sacrifice de Quentin et de ses frères Théodore, Archie et Kermit tous au front et volontaires au nom du combat contre la barbarie.

La presse américaine était explicite : Le Chicago Sunday Tribune du 4 août 1918  affichait la photo des fils du président Théodore Roosevelt et des fils du Kaiser allemand avec comme titre «  LA DIFFERENCE ENTRE DEMOCRACIE ET AUTOCRACIE ». Cela ne laissait aucun doute sur l’opinion publique partagée largement au-delà des frontières.

Du côté français la mort de Quentin confirmait l’admiration et la reconnaissance pour ces volontaires américains. Les hautes autorités françaises ont très vite fait part de leurs condoléances à Théodore et à Edith. Quentin a été décoré de la Croix de Guerre avec palme.

FR : Quentin Roosevelt est mort lors d’un combat aérien le 14 juillet 1918, jour de la fête nationale française. Cela a-t-il une importance particulière?

C.S-H. : Quentin est allé à la rencontre de son destin. La date symbolique de son décès  a amplifié  le prestige de son sacrifice. Cette date fait partie de son entrée dans la légende. Le 14 juillet français, jour de fête nationale de la prise de la Bastille est l’équivalant français de l’Independence Day américain. C’est un peu, comme si le fils d’un président français avait été abattu par les ennemis sur le sol américain un 4th of July !

Le sacrifice de Quentin et des volontaires américains de la première guerre mondiale a laissé un souvenir très fort dans la mémoire collective, leur enthousiasme, leur énergie, leur indéfectible foi en leur bon droit avaient remonté le moral des soldats et du peuple français. Les batailles féroces menées dans le secteur de Château Thierry dans le cadre de la seconde bataille de la Marne ont marqué à jamais les lieux et l’amitié franco-américaine.

FR : Le président Roosevelt est mort six mois après son fils, à l’âge de 60 ans. Pourriez-vous nous parler de la réaction de la famille Roosevelt lors de la nouvelle de la mort de Quentin et les liens que cela a créé entre la famille et la France par la suite ? 

C.S-H. : Le Président Roosevelt a été informé à Sagamore Hill dans la matinée du 17 juillet  La réaction des parents devant la presse et devant le peuple américain a été d’une grande réserve et d’une grande dignité, saluant le courage de Quentin et son sacrifice, incluant ce sacrifice dans celui de tous les parents dont les fils étaient en danger ou morts sur le front en terre étrangère.

Ils voulaient partager cette douleur avec le peuple américain et les parents dans la peine comme eux. Le père et la mère de Quentin ne souhaitaient pas plus de compassion que des citoyens ordinaires En privé, le choc fut très violent, choc des idéaux sur lesquels Théodore et Edith avaient construit leurs vies avec la réalité de la douleur de la disparition de Quentin. Il n’est pas exclu que Théodore ne pouvait supporter un sentiment de culpabilité concernant la fin tragique de Quentin. Il était dévasté. Quelque chose s’est éteint dans le cœur de Théodore avec la disparition de Quentin, sa famille, ses proches, et lui-même le reconnaissaient. Le «  Lion » comme le surnommait sa famille s’éteindra six mois plus tard à l’âge de 60 ans.

Les troupes américaines ont libéré le secteur de Chamery et ont découvert la tombe de Quentin quelques jours après sa mort. Ses parents souhaitaient que Quentin repose là où il était tombé et les autorités ont tenu compte de ce souhait.

Au début de l’année 1919 la mère de Quentin viendra s’y recueillir. L’ex First Lady fera construire une fontaine à la mémoire de Quentin dans le village de Chamery.

FR : Au delà de son engagement personnel dans la guerre et de la tragédie familiale de sa mort, en quoi l’histoire de Quentin Roosevelt est-elle importante?

C.S-H. : La vie de Quentin , sa naissance , sa personnalité , ses capacités intellectuelles , son charisme, son humour, en faisaient une personnalité hors norme et quelqu’un d’extrêmement attachant et il aurait sans doute compté dans le paysage politique ou social américain. Il se qualifiait de très ordinaire, mais il avait beaucoup de qualités peu communes. Il y a une dimension tragique et romantique dans son destin dont Il avait la prémonition.   Il passait par des phases de dépression très noires  mais se sentait investi d’une mission à laquelle il ne pouvait et ne voulait pas échapper. Cela apparaît de façon récurrente dans les lettres à sa fiancée Flora Payne Whitney. Il appartient à une génération qui exprime un désir impérieux de se battre pour des idées. Ce consensus autour de cette détermination et de cette volonté de lutte à mort qui envahissait toute la société de son temps quelque soit le prix à payer donne à réfléchir.

Il avait vingt ans, mais ses lettres sont d’une grande maturité. En le lisant on se dit qu’il était quelqu’un dont l’amitié était précieuse. Ses compagnons d’armes, les soldats, les mécaniciens sous ses ordres étaient unanimes, et avaient pour lui une grande sympathie et du respect : il est difficile de tricher sur votre personnalité quand la mort vous guette à chaque mission.

Quentin appartient à la mémoire collective, comme tous ces pilotes qui ont trouvé la mort en combat aérien. Il fut sans doute la victime américaine la plus célèbre de la première guerre mondiale. Broyé par son destin, par la guerre, par des évènements qui laminaient le monde, il aurait fait partie -sans le nom qu’il portait -des milliers d’aviateurs et as oubliés qui avaient comme lui le désir de faire cesser cette guerre , de faire cesser cette boucherie.

L’une de ses expressions préférées était «  noblesse oblige » et cela le définit très bien. Il portait un nom célèbre qui personnifiait le courage, il avait cette responsabilité, et l’a assumé avec noblesse. Il incarnait la citation de Théodore Roosevelt gravée sur la fontaine de Quentin à Chamery : “Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die”. “Seuls sont bien vivants ceux qui n’ont pas peur de mourir”.

FR : Comment se fait-il qu’une experte sur Quentin Roosevelt soit également directrice d’un musée consacré à Jean de La Fontaine? Qu’est ce qui vous a amené au Musée La Fontaine?

C.S-H. : C’est parce que je suis conservateur directrice du musée Jean de La Fontaine de Château-Thierry qui est labellisé Musée de France, mais aussi Maison d’écrivain que je me suis intéressée à Quentin Roosevelt, l’approche a été essentiellement littéraire , le personnage s’est dessiné ensuite au fil des lettres, et des archives.

Jean de La Fontaine est né à Château-Thierry. Le musée est un hôtel particulier qui fut propriété de la famille classé monument historique, il vient d’être labellisé Maison des Illustres. La restauration des façades vient d’être achevée.

La Fontaine est l’un des plus grands poètes de la langue française, il a vécu au 17ème siècle, siècle de Louis 14 qui admirait et se méfiait du génie de La Fontaine. Les plus grands artistes ont illustré ses fables et ses contes Fragonard, Oudry, Chagall, Dali …

Le musée possède des collections de peintures et de miniatures tout à fait exceptionnelles mais aussi une bibliothèque unique consacrée à cet écrivain.

Quentin connaissait la littérature française, La Fontaine, mais aussi La Bruyère et il avait visité la France  dans sa jeunesse. Il avait été impressionné par le Louvre. Dans ses lettres il cite les auteurs en français dans le texte. De par son éducation il maîtrisait le français aussi bien à l’oral qu’à l’écrit.

FR : Les Anglophones connaissent surtout les fables d’Esope mais peu celles de La Fontaine. En quoi le Musée La Fontaine pourrait-il donc intéresser ceux qui ne connaîtraient pas à priori cet auteur?

C.S-H. : Les fables d’Esope sont connues dans la littérature anglo-saxonne et se retrouvent chez La Fontaine qui s’en est inspiré. Le 17ème siècle est le siècle des fables et des contes qui ont été remis à l’honneur dans la littérature française et à la cour de Louis XIV.

L’anthropomorphisme animal est présent chez La Fontaine, il a mis au premier plan des animaux comme le renard, le loup, le lièvre, la grenouille, le chat, le rat de ville et le rat des champs, ce monde animal est la clé du succès de Walt Disney qui a lui aussi adapté les fables, les contes de fées, les histoires à visée morale et souvent d’inspiration  européenne. Parmi ses sources d’inspiration figurent les fables de La Fontaine.

La souris mondialement connue Mickey pointe le bout de son museau dans le monde de La Fontaine. Comme chez La Fontaine il s’agit d’imprégner l’imaginaire des enfants et des adultes et de détourner la censure, de donner des leçons de morale en se servant des animaux pour faire passer un message ou dédramatiser des situations.

Le Lièvre et la Tortue de Walt Disney, un court métrage des Silly Symphonies sorti en 1935 s’inspire de la fable de Jean de La Fontaine, qui l’avait écrite pour le fils du roi, le jeune dauphin.

Il y a eu un avant et après La Fontaine dans la littérature comme il y a eu un avant et un après Walt Disney pour l’adaptation au cinéma. Ils sont inégalés et inégalables tous les deux.

Les fables et les idéaux qu’elles véhiculent comme le courage n’ont pas de frontière et sont un lien entre nos deux cultures.

Réponses dans cet entretien avec Gary Lee Kraut paru en premier lieu sur France Revisited en juillet 2012 © Christiane Sinng-Haas.

Christiane Sinnig-Haas est conservateur en chef, directrice du Musée Jean de La Fontaine. Elles est Fondatrice de l’Association pour le Musée Jean de La Fontaine et Vice-Présidente du réseau des Maisons d’écrivains de Picardie.

The post Quentin Roosevelt, fils du président américain, mort pour la France le 14 juillet 1918 appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

First the California-based North American Travel Journalist Association informed me that I was their “featured writer” of the month.

Then I was interviewed for the web magazine My French Life, a Francophile publication that developed out of Melbourne, Australia. The full interview is found here.

The post My French Life, the Interview appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Already one of the most famous paintings in the world at the time and the centerpiece of the French art collection for nearly 400 years by then, the theft of the Mona Lisa—known as la Gioconda in Italian and la Joconde in French—was a catalyst to its launch to superstardom as the global icon of art itself.

On August 21, 2011, the 100th anniversary of the theft, Joe Medeiros will screen his 88-minute documentary “The Missing Piece: The Truth About the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa” to a select audience in Philadelphia, PA. (Subsequent to these early screenings, Madeiros changed the name of the documentary to “Mona Lisa is Missing.”)

I caught up with Joe Medeiros for the exclusive interview below as he was preparing for the event.

In the documentary, which I was able to preview, Medeiros carries out a thorough and fascinating investigation into the theft and into the life of the thief.

In piecing together pieces of Peruggia’s life, the documentary explains Peruggia’s arrival in Paris among a wave of Italian workers, tells how he went from a house painter to briefly have a job cutting and cleaning glass at the Louvre, describes in detail how he removed the Mona Lisa from the museum, shows where and how he kept the painting in Paris for over two years, examines his arrest in December 1913 in Florence, including the ensuing psychiatric report and trial, and tells what happened to Peruggia between his release from jail seven months later and his death in 1925.

Far more than a paper and painting trail, which would be absorbing enough, The Missing Piece is also a story about how his descendants view the crime, particularly his 84-year-old daughter Celestina, who never got to know her father directly since he died of a heart attack when she was only two. The filmmaker’s personal search to learn about Peruggia quickly becomes a quest to bring the truth to Celestina as to why, at age 29, her father stole the Mona Lisa. Since Celestina is too old to travel, Medeiros travels to Paris and to Florence with Peruggia’s grandchildren.

Joe Medeiros, a Hollywood television comedy writer by trade, spent 16 years as head writer for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.  He started out as joke writer from 1988 to 1992 when Leno was guest hosting for Johnny Carson.  He moved to California in 1992 when Leno took over the show. Medeiros became co-head writer in 1993 and sole head writer in 1995, a position he held until May 2009 when Leno left the show for the first time. Though Medeiros never worked for Carson he did write jokes for Bob Hope from 1988 to 1992.

Now 60, Joe Medeiros has been shooting and editing his own short films since the early 1970s. He has also directed and edited the short documentaries Sailing the Star of India, Doors of Florence and Friends of Independence.

The Missing Piece: The Truth About the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa is his first feature-length documentary. Currently in post-production, the film is being screened in Philadelphia on the 100th anniversary of the theft in part because Philadelphia is nearly Medeiros’s hometown—he grew up in nearby Bensalem, PA. His wife Justine has been actively involved in the documentary not simply by tolerating her husband’s passion for the subject over the years but, as the film’s executive producer, by making sure that all the details behind the camera are taken care of, that people get paid, interviews are scheduled, and the crew is organized. They have lived in Los Angeles for the past two decades.

Interview with Joe Medeiros

Gary Lee Kraut: Most people are underwhelmed when they see the original of the Mona Lisa for the first time. When did you first see the painting and what was your impression?

Joe Medeiros: The first time I was at the Louvre was in 1974 when Justine and I were on our honeymoon. The Mona Lisa … well, she wasn’t there. France had loaned her to Japan and the Soviet Union. She was making a tour of Tokyo and Moscow. So I was faced with the same empty space on the wall that visitors to the Louvre saw when she was stolen in 1911.

I saw her for the first time in 1977. A year after I got the idea to write a screenplay about the theft. She was behind bulletproof glass surrounded by crowds. I felt bad for her. She seemed to be a prisoner of her own fame.

GLK: That is the original shown at the Louvre, isn’t it? Are there any conspiracy theories that claim it’s a fake?

JM: It is the original as far as I know. I am not a believer in conspiracy theories.

GLK: How did you get interested in the theft of the Mona Lisa?

JM: It all began in 1976 when I read a sentence in a book about Leonardo da Vinci. On a page about the Mona Lisa, it said that ‘On August 21, 1911, an Italian workman named Vincenzo Peruggia stole the painting to take to Italy.’ I was immediately hooked. As a recent film school graduate from Temple University in Philadelphia, I thought this story would make a great feature film. So I did months of research into the details of the theft reading the newspaper accounts of the day and any book I could find about the crime.

GLK: You’re film thoroughly examines the various steps of the theft. Can you give us an overview of how it happened?

JM: The painting disappeared on a Monday when the museum was closed. The theft wasn’t discovered until the next day because the Louvre guards assumed the masterpiece was with the museum photographer. There was a worldwide search that turned up more false leads than actual clues. Even Pablo Picasso was questioned for unknowingly having stolen statues from the Louvre in his possession.

All the time, Peruggia was living with the painting in a room in Paris about two miles from the Louvre. He had worked a short time at the museum for a subcontractor who was helping to cover 1600 masterpieces with glass. Peruggia was one of five workers entrusted with cutting and cleaning the glass.

As Peruggia worked, he became familiar with all the Italian art and wondered why it was in a French museum. One day as he was paging through a book, he read that Napoleon had looted Italy’s art treasures when he conquered that country and brought them back to Paris. Peruggia believed – wrongly – that all the Italian art in the Louvre was there illegally and he was determined to bring one picture back to its home country. The picture he chose was the Mona Lisa. He took her because she was small and easy to carry.

Peruggia kept the Mona Lisa in his tiny room in Paris and then in December 1913, brought her to an art dealer in Florence Italy claiming to be an Italian patriot. He was quickly arrested and the painting was soon sent back to Paris.

GLK: You said that you originally intended to write about the theft in a screenplay for a feature film. How did that intention develop into an investigative documentary?

JM: In my early research, I found many details about the crime and its investigation, but there was little information on Peruggia the man – who he was, what he thought and why he really stole the painting. So I was unable to write my script because I was unwilling to make up things about Peruggia. I wanted the truth. But he was dead and the Mona Lisa can’t talk, so where could I find it?

Thirty-two years passed, but I still wanted to tell Peruggia’s story. Then one day while Googling his name, I came across a magazine article about his 84-year old daughter Celestina who was living in the town where Peruggia had been born. So I went to see her with the thought that I could make a documentary about her father and that she would have the answers I needed.

She was a kind, charming woman – the type of Italian grandmother I always wanted. Unfortunately, she didn’t know much about her father because he died when she was a toddler. But all her life she wanted to know the truth. We both did. So I set out to find it.

This involved getting access to the original police files and court documents in France and Italy. We also found a critical piece of evidence – the report of the psychiatrist who interviewed Peruggia. With the help of a team of translators, I began to piece together Peruggia’s life story.

GLK: What was the most fascinating part of the research and investigations for you personally?

JM: I was fascinated by the psychiatrist’s report on Peruggia. It was commissioned by Peruggia’s lawyers to help with his defense and was performed by Dr. Paolo Amaldi, a leading Florentine psychiatrist of the day. It gave me quite a bit of information on Peruggia’s life history as well as the events that led up to him stealing the Mona Lisa.

Once I had that we went to the Louvre with Peruggia’s grandson Silvio Peruggia and re-traced the route his grandfather took to steal the painting. And in Paris, we found the apartment where Peruggia kept the painting for nearly 2 ½ years.

We then traveled to Florence with Peruggia’s granddaughter Graziella Peruggia. There we visited the hotel room where he was arrested and the prison where he was held. And in the Florence archives, we found the key to the mystery – the letters he wrote to his parents shortly after he stole the Mona Lisa.

In the letters we found what I think was Peruggia’s true motive for stealing the Mona Lisa. But it wasn’t what his daughter Celestina would want to hear. However I had promised to return to her with the truth and that’s what I had to do.

GLK: Did you discover any clues or facts that hadn’t been revealed before?

JM: From the documents I was able to piece together why I think Peruggia selected Monday, August 21 as the day to steal the Mona Lisa. It was a very deliberate choice. I don’t think that’s been mentioned. Also, how Peruggia got the painting out of the museum. Many people say he stuck it inside his workman’s smock. I show that that’s impossible. I also point out a medical ailment that Peruggia had that may have contributed to his two prior arrests. Also, that the psychiatrist’s diagnosis of Peruggia as ‘mentally deficient’ may have been an intentional exaggeration. Finally, we discover what Peruggia’s true motive might have been.

GLK: Where did Peruggia live in Paris and where did he keep the Mona Lisa for the 27 months before he took it to Florence?

JM: Peruggia lived at 5 rue de l’Hôpital Saint-Louis which is around the corner from where you live, Gary. I know that for his farewell dinner before he left for Italy he ate at a café on avenue Richerand. I wonder if it was the Café Richerand on the corner of Rue Bichat.

He said that he first kept the painting on a table in his room, and his daughter corroborates that. Several months after having the painting, he built a wooden crate with a false bottom to hide the painting in. He kept the trunk in a 6×6-foot closet in his room until he went to Italy.

GLK: There are many theories as to why Vincenzo Peruggia stole the painting and who his accomplices or sponsors were. Can you tell us in a nutshell your thoughts on why he stole the Mona Lisa and who was involved?

JM: I don’t want to reveal exactly why he stole it because that’s in the film. But I believe he stole the painting alone, although he did share information with his close friend Vincenzo Lancellotti who lived on the floor below him on rue de l’Hôpital Saint-Louis.

I can say that I believe Peruggia was convinced the Italian art in the Louvre had been stolen and that he wanted revenge against the French who had mistreated him. Returning the Mona Lisa to Italy was to be his ticket out of France to a better life.

GLK: Do you get in heated arguments with people who hold other theories?

JM: No. It’s hard to get into arguments with people over something that happened 100 years ago. But I do get somewhat miffed when people say that the theft was orchestrated by a mastermind—an Argentinean conman—to sell Mona Lisa forgeries. That “theory” came out of a 1932 magazine article by an American writer named Karl Decker. In our film, we discredit Decker and his story. There was no conman. Peruggia was the mastermind of the crime.

GLK: Whatever became of Peruggia?

JM: After serving 7 months of a 13-½ month sentence, he was released from prison. He joined the Italian army during World War I and became an Austrian prisoner of war. He was held for two years. After the war, there was no work in Italy so he was forced to return to France but went there under his given birth name Pietro Peruggia so that the authorities couldn’t trace him. He worked as a painter and died on October 8, 1925 from a heart attack. It was his 44th birthday. He was buried in France in the Parisian suburb of Saint Maur des Fosses.

GLK: After all your research and your encounters with Peruggia’s descendents, how do you feel about the man himself?

JM: I understand him now. He was a man who was tired of a job that was making him physically ill. He was put down by the French for being a foreigner and he missed his family and his home. For him the theft was a way to a better life. He had good intentions, just a bad way of achieving his goals.

GLK: How do you feel about the Mona Lisa now, compared to your first impressions which you told us earlier?

JM: She’ll always have a special place for me because of what I know about the man who stole her and had her for 2 ½ years. What he did is a part of her history. And what I’m doing in this film is a very small part of that history too. I’m proud to be associated in this very minor way with this great masterpiece. After all, if Peruggia had stolen any other painting, there would be no need to tell this story.

GLK: What are the plans for the documentary after the test screening in New York on August 17 and the screenings in Philadelphia on August 21 and 22?

JM: Once I have audience feedback from those two screenings, we will lock picture and have the final mixing and color correction done. Then we will start entering festivals and looking for an international distributor.

GLK: Are there any plans to show the documentary in Paris?

JM: I would love to show it in Paris as well as in Italy. We are working on possible screenings there in the near future.

“The Missing Piece: The Truth About the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa” by Joe Medeiros. To see a trailer of the film and for further information the film’s official website.

(c) 2011, Gary Lee Kraut.

Comments may be left at the bottom of the page.

Postscript in French by Danièle Thomas-Easton who attended the Aug. 21 screening in Philadelphia. Danièle Thomas-Easton is the Director of France-Philadelphie, which provides consulting for French-American business and cultural projects.

Depuis la récente tentative de destruction d’un Matisse à la National Gallery of Art (par une récidiviste, qui plus est), la question est d’actualité: comment protéger les musées contre le vol, les dégradations ou tout acte de vandalisme? Malheureusement, le problème ne date pas d’aujourd’hui!

Si, en 1998, le vol d’un tableau de Jean-Baptiste Corot, Le chemin de Sèvres, survenu en plein jour dans la Cour Carrée du Louvre, avait provoqué une onde de choc dans le monde des arts (et des directeurs de surveillance des grands musées), que dire de la disparition, le 21 août 1911, de La Joconde? Une peinture sur un panneau de bois de 77 sur 53 centimètres, plus difficile à escamoter que la toile de Corot (24 x 37 cm.)!

Beaucoup d’encre a déjà coulé sur ce crime (presque) parfait. Il faudra en effet plus de deux années pour retrouver le tableau et arrêter le coupable en décembre 1913 à Florence. A l’aube de la première guerre mondiale, ce mystère captivera le monde entier et contribuera certainement à médiatiser l’énigmatique sourire de Mona Lisa. Plus tard, des cinéastes en exploiteront le thème (la comédie de Michel Deville, On a volé la Joconde, par exemple). On s’est peu penché cependant sur la personnalité du voleur, un vitrier italien qui avait travaillé au Louvre, Vincenzo «Leonardo » Peruggia, et sur ses motivations. C’est la lacune, the missing piece, que le réalisateur Joe Medeiros comble dans ce documentaire.

Présenté aux Etats-Unis dès septembre 2011 à l’occasion de plusieurs festivals de films, The Missing Piece apportera enfin à cette énigme de début de siècle une pièce à conviction inédite. Voilà donc le fruit d’un long travail de détective mené pendant trois ans par Joe Medeiros et son épouse Justine, qui leur aura permis, au fil de recherches entre la France et l’Italie, de retracer les pas de Vincenzo et de rencontrer sa fille, Celestina, et ses petits-enfants. C’est à Celestina qui n’a pas connu son père que Joe Medeiros avait promis de découvrir la vérité, toute la vérité sur l’affaire. Chose promise, chose due.

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Over the course of a single day, the novel follows the parallel stories of the three Americans and their respective tutors through separate walks on the streets of Paris: A woman who’s traveled to Paris alone after the death of her married lover; a women living in Paris and seeking freedom from family life; and the husband of a well-known actress who’s in the French capital to make a film.

Their parallel stories are explorations of love, loss, fidelity and loneliness—and of course of the beauty of Paris. In each case, the characters must decide what to do about their attraction to their opposite-sex French tutors.

Originally from Trenton, New Jersey, as is this interviewer, Ellen and her husband Neal now live in the San Francisco Bay area. She has two grown daughters.

Gary Lee Kraut: How did you learn French and was your teacher cute?

Ellen Sussman: When I moved to Paris I had a one-year-old and I was pregnant with my second child. So I never had time for real French lessons. For a short period of time I did set up for a French tutor to come to my apartment to give me lessons. We’d sit at the kitchen table and my daughters would be a constant distraction. No wonder my French is so bad! When I created the character of Riley in French Lessons I wanted to make two major differences between us so that I would feel freer to write fiction rather than memoir. Riley hates Paris – I loved Paris. And Riley got a hot French tutor. Mine was definitely not hot.

GLK: What is it about Paris that arouses fantasies about sex and romance?

ES: Come on – you guys are always making out on the street! Well, maybe not always. But there are more kisses and caresses on Parisian streets than we might find in the US. And I don’t blame the French. Paris is very romantic. It’s a gorgeous city – and there’s a long history of romance tied to the place. So when we visit Paris we think about love, we think about sex. We might also think about loneliness. A long walk along the Seine at night will make a person yearn for someone, maybe even someone they haven’t yet met.

GLK: Two of the American characters learning French in your novel are women, one is a man. In your opinion, do men and women have different perceptions of Paris?

ES: I used all three characters to explore different perceptions of Paris. I’m not sure the differences are gender-based. In fact, Jeremy might be my most romantic character, rather than either of the women. And the one who lives in Paris hates it – at least, in the beginning of her day. Maybe Paris is a reflection of our own need for love and romance in our lives.

GLK: Did you write any of French Lessons while in Paris?

ES: No, but I was taking notes! I think I spent every day of the five years I lived there taking mental notes, and sometimes filling notebooks with my observations. Every walk I took – with one baby in the stroller and one in the Snugli – every dinner conversation – every hour spent in the parks, became material for French Lessons. When I finally started writing the novel – years after I left Paris – it poured out of me. I was so ready to use my Paris.

GLK: How did you select the three specific walks that your characters take?

ES: That was a joy to create! I wanted my characters to hit some of my favorite spots in Paris. So I led them through the different arrondissements, stopping at small museums or parks along the way. My writing challenge was to make Paris matter. I didn’t want each location just to be a pretty background. I wanted each spot to make a difference to the characters – to change them in some way. So, for instance, when Josie and Nico reached the Eiffel Tower, they had to walk up the stairs; they had to gaze from the top – they had to be transformed by the Tower.

GLK: Paris is so associated with romance. Do you recommend it for single travelers?

ES: Yes! I think romance is good for the soul, even if it’s the romance of dreams. And Paris moves us to dream.

GLK: When did you first visit Paris? Do you remember how you felt that first time?

ES: I was 24 on my first visit to Paris. But it was too quick, too short. When I moved there I was 33 and I discovered the real Paris, not the tourist’s Paris. I think everyone who visits should stay awhile. Walk the streets of Paris and take it in. You can learn so much from the city. Explore the nooks and crannies – the secrets of Paris off-the-beaten-track.

GLK: Has your appreciation of Paris changed over the years?

ES: Yes. It helps that I finally speak French (sort of – well, at least on the level of a five-year-old.) And that I know the city and push myself to explore new areas every time I’m there. I’d like to live in Paris again for a long period of time. I think the city has changed a great deal and I’d like to get to know this new diverse city. It’s less formal, less traditional. It’s younger!

GLK: You lived in Paris from 1988 to 1993. How did your time in Paris influence you as a writer?

ES: I think all writers should live abroad for a period of time! It’s a remarkable experience – it opens your eyes and makes you see the world in a brand new way. I think it’s good for writers to be outside their comfort zone – and living abroad will do that. We also learn the world in a bigger way – so that the vision of the world we bring to the page can be a deeper, more expansive one.

GLK: What’s your process for writing a novel?

ES: I write a first draft fairly quickly. It might take 6 months to a year. Then I spend another six months or so revising that draft many many times. I don’t have a plan when I write the first draft – I discover the characters and the plot as I write. So there’s a lot of work to be done on that manuscript. I’m also a very disciplined writer – I write every morning, for three or four hours.

GLK: What’s your next writing project? Are you working on a new novel? Where does it take place?

ES: I’m almost done with my new novel. It’s called The Paradise Guest House and it takes place in Bali. (Yes, I like exotic locations!) The story: A young woman is caught in the terrorist attacks in Bali in 2002 and returns to the island five years later to find the man who saved her.

I’m already thinking about the next novel – and I know where it takes place: the south of France. Back to France!

“French Lessons” by Ellen Sussman. Published in paperback in July 2011 by Ballantine Books. 256 pages.
Ellen Sussman’s website.
A schedule of Ellen’s book readings can be found here.

Comments may be left at the bottom of this page.

The post An Interview with Ellen Sussman, Author of the Novel “French Lessons” appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

In addition to operating Paris Writers News, Laurel Zuckerman is a novelist. She is author of Sorbonne Confidential, an insightful and good read about the trials and tribulations of an American resident in France trying to obtain a prestigious French degree to become an English teacher.

The interview can be read here.

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