Tuesday, June 25, 2013
2.21 (Binnengasthuis)
Situated in the Rhine borderlands, Alsace moved between France and Germany four times in the last two hundred years. Part of France before the Franco Prussian War, the region was annexed by the new German Empire in the aftermath of French defeat. In the wake of the First World War, Alsace returned to France again, only to repeat the annexation-reintegration process again after the Second World War. This entangled history naturally raises questions on the nature of Alsatian identity, in addition to broader questions of what it meant to be French and what it meant to be part of a nation. This question was especially sharp in the aftermath of the First World War, when Alsace was subject to extensive French triage commissions designed to investigate the loyalty of the local population and remove suspect elements across the Rhine. This reintegration of Alsace after nearly five decades of German rule destroyed the simple nostalgic view of Alsace as "toujours français," but also confronted those who feared the Alsatian population as a potential fifth column. Agents of both French culture and French political policy worked assiduously to (re)assimilate Alsace into the nation. This paper examines popular metropolitan print culture as well as French government policies and operations in the triage and purge commissions in order to illustrate a common philosophy of both -- the idea that a person could "become French" -- and its affect on the governance in Alsace and its implications for the definition of the French nation.
