Legacy 22- Lorraine

Quiche, Crosses, Prefabs and a failed King of Poland

Oct 3, '12 6:01 AM for everyone

The sadly customary apology for silence- though if you get here via my Flickr  account you’ll know I’ve been on the road lately.   I won’t write any more about my work-related visit to Cyprus, which I covered over there.   Since then I’ve also had a week’s break in France- in Nancy, historic capital of Lorraine, to be precise.

I suspect the automatic association which the word “Lorraine” evokes for most readers will be “quiche”.   I certainly tucked into my share of that pleasant comestible (properly made with no cheese, I discovered), as well as a wide range of excellent fruit tarts (mirabelle plums are a big local delicacy) but there’s more to the region than food, however excellent.  

Perhaps the next word association might be “Cross of”, which gets one closer to the unusually complex history of this bit of France.    Strictly speaking, the two barred cross ought to be known as the Cross of Anjou as its original heraldic association was with the House of Anjou, a junior line of the medieval French royal family who became titular Kings of Jerusalem years after that title had ceased to mean very much.   Members of the family did however at different times in the 14^th and 15^th centuries actually rule over the south of Italy, Sicily, Hungary (the Angevin cross can still be seen on the flag of Slovakia and in the heraldic arms of the modern Hungarian state as a result), Provence- and Lorraine, where the dynasty managed to retain its autonomy well after the King of France had gobbled up Anjou and Provence.   Its 20^th century association with de Gaulle and the Free French was apparently a pure accident- a Gaullist admiral with Lorraine origins (for somewhere a long way from the sea, Lorraine produced a lot of sailors…) hit upon it as a relatively simple addition to the regular French tricolour flag to differentiate Free French ships from those loyal to the Vichy regime.   De Gaulle (who had no particular Lorraine connections)  and his intellectual supporters latched on to it and played up aspects of the Lorraine past which I’ll say a bit more about later to give it a kind of transcendent French identity (which must puzzle passing Slovaks).

This is more than a little ironic given that Lorraine only became part of France in the late 1760’s, and was a very reluctant addition to the kingdom.   If history’s cards had fallen differently, Lorraine might well have become a rather larger cousin to Luxembourg as an independent duchy perched between France and Germany.  Legally it was part of the Holy Roman Empire- indeed one could almost argue that the Holy Roman Empire was part of Lorraine, as the region’s very name ultimately derives from Lothar, Charlemagne’s grandson and Emperor.   Its problem was that it lay a bit too conveniently at the crossroads of western Europe.  In the 15^th century the Dukes had to fend off attempts by their cousins the Dukes of Burgundy to take over their duchy and link up the northern and southern chunks of their territory- the last Valois Duke of Burgundy was killed in January 1477 while besieging Nancy and the troubled years leading up to the battle help to explain why Nancy is a medieval city with no surviving buildings predating the late 1480’s.   In the next three hundred years the threat came from the west as successive kings of France sought to grab the duchy as part of a drive east towards the Rhine.   The sieges and sacks and years of French occupation in the 17^th century saw off a good deal of the city’s architecture- it is cruelly symbolic that Lorraine’s greatest artist of that era, Jacques Callot, is best known for his horrific depictions of the sheer brutality of war.   The duchy was erased from the map of Europe- and then reinstated thanks to the stubborn determination of its exiled dukes and their role as commanders in the service of the Hapsburg Emperor in Vienna (a Lorraine Duke captured Buda from the Turks in 1686).  

In this context the enemy was clearly French.   There appears to have been a distinct Lorraine patriotism- Callot, though prepared to take commissions from the French king, refused point blank to engrave a picture celebrating the French capture of Nancy in the 1630’s- which even today finds echoes on the captioning and interpretative material in the Lorraine Museum.   The problem for the restored duchy in the early 18^th century wasn’t that the dynasty had lost support among the local elites- it was a matter of political geography.   Lorraine was to all intents and purposes impossible to defend on its west side, which runs pretty well seamlessly into the bare rolling east French plains which stretch to Paris (even today this is an incredibly empty featureless landscape, whose most striking features are massive grain silos which look from a distance like Greek temples on steroids).   To make matters worse, in a pattern familiar in the Holy Roman Empire, the duchy’s political map was a Swiss cheese riddled with enclaves where the duke’s writ didn’t run.  Crucially, three of these (the bishopric lands of Metz, Toul and Verdun) were under French control.  

The long term solution to this issue involved a diplomatic manoeuvre which looks quite bizarre to modern eyes, at least in those parts of the world where there’s a sense that people might actually like a bit of a say in who rules them and where a degree of personal autonomy over marriage is favoured.    In 1723 France faced something of a crisis.   The king, Louis XV was only 13 years old and looked in shaky health (nobody could have foreseen he would live another fifty years).  Every responsible figure in the Versailles court must have shuddered every time he coughed.  He’d come to the throne in 1715 on the death of his great grandfather Louis XIV after a run of deaths which had left him the only heir in the direct line.   If he died without an heir the result was likely to be chaos.  His uncle Philip had had to renounce his rights to the French succession to take over as King of Spain in the final settlement of the War of the Spanish Succession but had never in his heart accepted his exclusion- France and Spain had even fought a slightly farcical war in the late 1710’s when Philip sought to press his claims to act as Regent.   The man who actually ended up as Regent, the Duke of Orleans, was detested by much of the political elite but his family could also advance plausible claims on the throne if Louis died.   The War of the Spanish Succession had devastated Europe for the first decade and a half of the century; a War of the French Succession didn’t bear thinking about.   Louis needed to be married in order to father an heir as soon as possible. 

In essence French diplomats were left placing a rather odd “Situation Vacant” advertisement along the lines of  “Wanted, Princess to become Queen of France.   Must be of royal status and a Roman Catholic.   Candidates must be of child bearing age.  Looks and financial status irrelevant- this is unlikely to be a monogamous relationship but the life style on offer is unparalleled”.  

But for the immediate crisis I don’t suppose Maria Leszczyska, the plain, pious daughter of an impoverished exiled King of Poland would ever have ended up Queen of France.   Her father, Stanislas Leszczynski, came as part of the flitting.   Polish kingship was decidedly odd by normal 18^th century standards.   Kings were elected rather than succeeding on a hereditary basis.  The precise membership of the electorate, however, was vague and electoral Diets were dominated by masses of dirt-poor minor nobles little better off than peasants, full of their status and wide open to bribery and influence from foreign powers.  Inevitably disputed elections were commonplace.   Stanislas had gained the throne as the candidate of Charles XII of Sweden and lost it when his backer was defeated by the Russians in 1709.   He’d scraped by in penurious exile until fortune came knocking on his door.   He moved to France and settled down in a disused royal palace.   Then in 1733 Polish politics took another turn, the throne became vacant and Stanislas had another go at taking over, backed by his son-in-law.   He didn’t do much better second time round.  Though it’s clear he had genuine support in parts of the country, he was bundled off the throne again by the Russians in the War of the Polish Succession.   This time, though, his French links meant that he had to be given a better consolation prize than a German micro-duchy- Louis XV’s honour required it.   Conveniently, the last Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany was clearly not long for this world and had no heirs.   Even more conveniently the ruling Duke of Lorraine had a tenuous hereditary claim to Tuscany.  So a swop was arranged.   Francis of Lorraine went off to take over in Florence (quite a nice trade, some might feel) and Stanislas was appointed Duke of Lorraine on the clear understanding that the duchy would become French when he died.  This was not expected to be a lengthy arrangement; Stanislas was pushing sixty, very overweight and didn’t look in prime health.

He was to rule Lorraine for nearly thirty years.   “Rule” is perhaps a misnomer; the arrangement was that he cast the refulgence of his royal dignity (he was still allowed to call himself King) while the serious work was done by a team of officials loyal to Louis.   In a way this worked really well for Stanislas.  He saw himself as a model Enlightened prince, a patron of arts and sciences and a benefactor to the wider public.   The Lorraine public were inclined to see the nice bits of his rule- the free medical consultations for the poor, the improved education system, the major building programmes with the employment they brought- as personal gifts from him while blaming the nastier bits- the taxes which paid for it all- on his government.  After a shaky start, the local population came to like their rather improbable ruler.  Perhaps it helped that he wasn’t French.

Stanislas certainly made his mark on Nancy.   He rebuilt much of the city centre, creating one of the most magnificent 18^th century squares in Europe, where his statue (erected many years later) now stands.   The buildings have recently been burnished and polished until it glows in the sun, the ornamental ironwork restored and re-gilded to great effect.  It isn’t a bad memorial to a man who failed at his day job.

So why did a region which in the 1770’s was a pretty reluctant part of France come to be seen as a hotbed of French patriotism a hundred years later?    “Seen as” may be the operative term here.  It’s perfectly possible that a lot of this was projection by a limited number of elite Lorrainers- writers like Maurice Barres and Paul Deroulede, artists like Majorelle and Galle involved in the Ecole de Nancy- of their own feelings on a wider population.  Nevertheless the image did matter.   The developing 19^th century patriotic cult of Joan of Arc, a local girl, presumably played a part.  So no doubt did those great mechanisms for turning peasants into Frenchmen- military conscription, compulsory education conducted in “standard” French with a hefty patriotic content, the role of state employment, railway links- though these are usually seen as being at their strongest in the last quarter of the 19^th century.  

The key issue, however, was undoubtedly the partition of Lorraine after France’s crushing defeat in the Franco-Prussian War on 1870-1 which left Nancy as a heavily militarised frontier town waiting for the next war.   The partition was almost an accident, in the sense that it wouldn’t have happened if the French Provisional Government had made peace after the overthrow of Napoleon III.   The new-minted republic, however, was run by men convinced that the very fact of being republican would enable them to repeat the epic victories of the Year 2 of the First Republic.   It wasn’t, and Bismarck was annoyed enough by the additional cost in lives and money imposed by their efforts that he imposed the annexation of the northern part of the region round Metz.   One can still see the effects in the look of the two cities.  Metz has an enormous railway station which looks as if it’s escaped from the “Niebelungenlied” and a late 19^th century “Imperial Quarter” (as it’s now labelled) full of buildings constructed in a historicising Teutonic style inflected at the edges by a whiff of “Jungstil”.   Nancy, its population boosted by wealthy business families who left German annexed Lorraine, has 19^th century suburbs full of villas built and decorated in the Art Nouveau style known as the “Nancy School”- all sinuous lines and forms drawn from the natural environment.  You’ve got to look quite hard at the detail of decoration to spot the nationalistic edge, but it’s there. 

I could go on at length about Art Nouveau in its Nancy version but I have to draw things to a close somewhere.   I suppose a good place is the series of linked shows across the Nancy museum system focused on the work of Jean Prouve.   Prouve is fascinating transitional figure.   His father, Victor, was a leading light in the Ecole de Nancy (as well as in local politics), noted mainly as a graphic designer.   Jean, born just too young to see active service in the First World War, started out as a metalworker in the strongly craft-related traditions of that school and ended up deeply involved in the more machine-based end of modernist architecture designing and supervising the manufacture of prefabricated elements for buildings like the terminal at Orly airport.  He also got into lecturing on design- he was perhaps happier in that mode as he seems to have had a lot of problems in the collaborations he undertook in the 1950’s and 60’s, even losing the right to sign his own designs for a bit.   It could be seen as a symbolic trajectory- especially as his son Claude himself became and architect specialising in steel framed buildings.  

Perhaps the most interesting of the sub-exhibitions was one which looked at the activities of Prouve and his company in the years from the late 1930’s to the early 1950’s- obviously including the period of the Germany Occupation of 1940-4.   This reinstated the pre-1914 frontier (so Metz was annexed directly to the Reich) and put Nancy into a region under even closer German control than, say, Paris- a zone probably being lined up for long term annexation post war.  French sovereignty was very much at a discount though (for instance) a Prefect appointed by the Vichy regime still sat in the office on Place Stanislas.   Raw materials were in desperately short supply as the occupiers snaffled most industrial production.  Prouve’s firm survived by designing and building very basic, wood-based, furniture (particularly for use in schools) and other consumer necessities- his design for a bicycle frame which used as little metal as possible looked remarkably modern.   Presumably his company only stayed in business by participating fully in the various quasi-state bodies set up to manage the penury and taking contracts from the collaborationist state.   I suspect they must have taken at least some from the Germans too, otherwise Prouve wouldn’t have been able to protect his work force from forced labour demands.     He played the paternalistic boss card in ways which chimed nicely with the Vichy regime’s sporadic corporatist tendencies and would have got good marks from the ex-trade unionist collaborationist left (there was one) while also cultivating contacts with a non-Communist resistance grouping.  Indeed he was in good enough odour with the Resistance to be appointed mayor of Nancy briefly in the period immediately after liberation; a nice example of the murky complexities of life during the Occupation.

After the war his company was very much involved in the creation of masses of prefabricated cottages to accommodate populations left homeless by the fighting.   This built on work designing lightweight temporary buildings before the war (the intended target then being the holiday colony market created by the establishment of paid holidays for the workers by the Popular Front government in 1936) but still had to work within an economy of shortages- the example on display in the museum looked pretty wooden, basic and crude by comparison with the prefabs which sprouted on the edge of many British towns and cities at the same time and offered such unexampled luxuries as fridges.   The Prouve cottages do seem to have served their purpose and, as is the way of these things, survived well beyond their intended lifespan.    The experience also made Prouve a “go to” designer when the French state was looking to run large programmes of temporary housing, whether in the Saarland (given specially favourable treatment within the generally very harsh French occupation regime in Germany because the French authorities hoped to build sentiment favourable to long term annexation to France) or in the French colonies.   Few of those schemes got past the prototype stage, even if design elements were to be taken up by later projects for temporary accommodation in refugee and disaster relief contexts.   It was all a long way, conceptually and in terms of materials, from the luxury iron work of the Ecole de Nancy- though still with a footing in the projection of French power and influence.