{"id":30907,"date":"2018-11-20T05:30:54","date_gmt":"2018-11-20T04:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=30907"},"modified":"2018-11-19T17:12:49","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T16:12:49","slug":"french-history-wwi-and-the-occupation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/french-history-wwi-and-the-occupation\/","title":{"rendered":"French History – WWI and the Occupation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week the world celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended\u00a0la Grande Guerre<\/strong> which ravaged Europe from 1914 – 1918*. As a young man living in France, I heard much more about\u00a0la deuxi\u00e8me\u00a0Guerre Mondiale <\/b><\/a>since my host parents had lived under that occupation**, but the recent anniversary got me thinking about that previous war and what life in France might have been like.<\/p>\n

\"Image

Bulletin de Lille, a bi-weekly publication appearing on Sundays & Thursdays. Published under the authority of the German command. For sale at Madame Tersaud’s 14 See-Aremhault Street.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Lille sous les Allemands<\/strong> \/ Lille under the Germans<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the best ways to understand events from the past is to examine primary resources like letters, newspapers, and official documents. A quick search of Project Gutenberg<\/a> led me to a series of local papers from the years that the city of Lille in northern France was under German occupation. En souvenir de ces evenements<\/b> (To remember those events)<\/em>\u00a0over the next few weeks, I’m going to share some of the interesting excerpts I found.<\/p>\n

The following is the description of an exchange that took place between the local French town officials and the German command about street cleaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
ACTES DE L’AUTORIT\u00c9 ALLEMANDE (dans l’\u00e9dition du jeudi 2 d\u00e9cembre, 1915)<\/strong><\/td>\nOfficial acts of the German Command (in the Thursday, December 2nd<\/sup>, 1915 edition)<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Samedi 27 novembre 1915<\/em><\/td>\nSaturday, November 27, 1915<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Propret\u00e9 de la voie publique.<\/strong> – L’autorit\u00e9 allemande signale \u00e0 la Municipalit\u00e9 que le nettoyage et le balayage des rues laissent \u00e0 d\u00e9sirer. Sp\u00e9cialement, les trottoirs sont fr\u00e9quemment souill\u00e9s par les ordures des chiens, et son Excellence exige que des mesures soient prises pour faire cesser cet \u00e9tat de choses.<\/td>\nCleanliness of the public way. \u2013 The German Command alerts the Municipality that the cleaning and sweeping of the streets leaves something to be desired. In particular, the sidewalks are often dirtied by dog waste, and his Excellence requires that measures be taken to stop this state of affairs.<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Des punitions seront inflig\u00e9es \u00e0 la Ville, si on n’y rem\u00e9die pas de suite.<\/td>\nPunishments will be imposed on the city, if the situation is not rectified immediately.<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
M. Cr\u00e9py-Saint-L\u00e9ger (rempla\u00e7ant M. le Maire, souffrant), dit que c’est aux propri\u00e9taires des maisons riveraines \u00e0 nettoyer ces trottoirs, et que cette obligation peut leur\u00a0\u00eatre rappel\u00e9e par le Bulletin de Lille.<\/td>\nMr. Crepy-Saint-Leger (standing in for the mayor who is unwell\/suffering), says that it is up to the owners of the homes abutting the streets to clean these sidewalks, and that they can be reminded of this obligation through the Bulletin de Lille. <\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
M. le G\u00e9n\u00e9ral objecte que l’autorit\u00e9 allemande n’a pas \u00e0 s’adresser aux propri\u00e9taires, c’est \u00e0 la Ville qu’elle s’adresse pour que des mesures soient prises afin d’assurer la propret\u00e9 de la rue.<\/td>\nThe General objects that it is not up to the German Command to address the homeowners, it is the city who is being addressed so that proper measures can be taken to insure clean streets.<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Key Vocabulary<\/strong><\/p>\n

propre\u00a0<\/strong>\/\u00a0clean<\/em><\/p>\n

sale <\/strong>\/\u00a0dirty<\/em><\/p>\n

nettoyer\u00a0<\/strong>\/ to clean<\/em><\/p>\n

le trottoir\u00a0<\/strong>\/ sidewalk<\/em><\/p>\n

les maisons riveraines\u00a0<\/strong>\/\u00a0the houses along the way\u00a0<\/em>(riveraines\u00a0<\/em>originally referred to buildings along\/on either side of a river, it now refers more generally to houses and buildings along a street or other way, as in\u00a0stationnement r\u00e9serv\u00e9\u00a0aux riverains \/ parking for residence only)<\/em><\/p>\n

les propri\u00e9taires <\/strong>\/ homeowners<\/em><\/p>\n

Want to read more? You can find the full\u00a0\u00e9dition du 2 d\u00e9cembre <\/strong>by following this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* The Great War,\u00a0<\/em>as World War I is known, is also referred to in France as\u00a0la guerre de 14 18<\/em>\u00a0(and WWII as\u00a0la guerre de 39 45).
\n** <\/em>In fact, both of my son’s great grandfathers were POWs and spent much of WWII in German prison camps.<\/p>\n

Images and text CC0 from Project Gutenberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Last week the world celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended\u00a0la Grande Guerre which ravaged Europe from 1914 – 1918*. As a young man living in France, I heard much more about\u00a0la deuxi\u00e8me\u00a0Guerre Mondiale since my host parents had lived under that occupation**, but the recent anniversary got me thinking about that previous…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":30911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[197,2149,250036,432,228833,12514,255501],"class_list":["post-30907","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-vocabulary","tag-armistice-day","tag-france","tag-french-history","tag-french-vocabulary","tag-lille","tag-vocabulaire-francais","tag-world-war-i"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30907"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30913,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30907\/revisions\/30913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}