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Abbé Pierre
A baby froze to death in the cité des Coquelicots in Neuilly-sur-Marne on the night of 3 to 4 January 1954. Housed with his parents in an old carcass of a bus, he had not withstood the bitter cold of that winter.
The Cité des Coquelicots was one of the relief camps organised by Abbé Pierre to house the homeless in Paris and the surrounding area, following the problems of post-war reconstruction.
After Emmaüs was founded, Abbé Pierre bought the Champs Fleuris site in Neuilly-sur-Marne in 1950 for temporary housing, and in 1951 the Coquelicots site between the railway line and the old gasworks. As a member of the MRP party in the National Assembly, he had often defended the need for emergency housing estates pending the creation of housing.
Faced with the Administration's slowness, he resigned.
Following the baby's death, he wrote an open letter to the Minister for Reconstruction, seeking a reaction from the public authorities and the release of funds. The Minister attended the baby's funeral. It was the start of a media campaign that continues to this day. Emmaus, hitherto unknown to the general public, was on the front page of all the newspapers.
Antonin Artaud
French poet, actor and theatre theorist (1896-1948)
Inventor of the concept of the "theatre of cruelty" in Le Théâtre et son Double, Antonin Artaud attempted to transform literature, theatre and cinema from top to bottom.
Through poetry, directing, drugs, pilgrimages, drawing and radio, each of these activities has been a tool in his hands, "a means of reaching a little of the reality that eludes him".
Suffering from chronic headaches since his adolescence, which he fought with constant injections of various medications, the presence of pain influenced both his relationships and his creative work. He was interned in an asylum at Ville-Evrard for almost nine years, undergoing frequent series of electroshock treatments.
Camille Claudel
Camille Claudel (Fère-en-Tardenois (Aisne) 8 December 1864 - Montdevergues (Vaucluse) 19 October 1943) was a French sculptor and sister of the poet and writer Paul Claudel. She had a passionate and tumultuous relationship with the sculptor Auguste Rodin, twenty-four years her senior. Her love was impossible, and she lived a miserable life, soon shutting herself away in solitude and gradually sinking into madness. She was almost fifty when her father died on 2 March 1913, without Camille's knowledge.
She did not attend the funeral. Her family had her committed to the Ville-Evrard asylum, which she entered on 10 March, and asked that her visits and correspondence be restricted.
In 1914, the First World War broke out and hospitals were requisitioned: on 9 September, she was transferred to the Montdevergues insane asylum in Montfavet, Vaucluse, where she remained for the rest of her life.
She was interned for 30 years. She died on 19 October 1943. She was buried a few days after her death in Montfavet cemetery, accompanied by hospital staff. Her remains were later transferred to a mass grave, as her relatives had not claimed her body.
Foulques de Neuilly
In the twelfthth In the 19th century, the abbot of Neuilly-sur-Marne, Foulques de Neuilly, made a name for himself as a preacher. His motto was Diex el volt ("God wills it"). Pope Innocent III and Saint Bernard entrusted him with the Fourth Crusade.
The construction of the church of Saint-Baudile was undertaken on his initiative in 1118. The pillars were modelled on those of Notre-Dame de Paris.
It is characterised by a blend of Romanesque and Gothic (ogival) styles. Foulques returned to his rectory to die in 1201, and was buried in the church of Neuilly.
François-Xavier Donzelot
Born on 7 January 1764 in Mamirolle (25), died on 11 June 1843 in Neuilly-sur-Marne.
With General Count Donzelot, the Château de Ville-Évrard had its most brilliant guest, and the twenty years of retirement of this Franc-Comtois, a child of the Revolution, made the Château de Ville-Évrard the last refuge of a hero who remained a bachelor, as well as the cradle of modern sinology. By a chain of causes that lovers of the designs of the
Providence will appreciate that the village from which Foulques, the preacher of the Crusade that diverted Western military forces to the Christian East, came was home for twenty years to the man who kept Napoleon Bonaparte's "Oriental dream" alive and who, as Governor of Corfu under the Empire after having been entrusted with the administration of conquered Egypt with the future First Consul, stayed away from the imperial pomp and circumstance, only to meet up with the Emperor again at the time of Waterloo; He too experienced failure, but he recovered very well, as Louis XVIII entrusted him with the government of Martinique.
François-Xavier Donzelot's destiny is certainly astonishing, as he himself tells us when we contemplate his tomb in the cemetery of Neuilly-sur-Marne, a cemetery that he donated to the people of Nocé and which was built after his death (1855).
The General's tomb, facing Ville-Evrard and the rising sun, does not face the main entrance to the cemetery; it is loaded with symbols for eternity. (see Discover Neuilly, Monuments, Tomb of François-Xavier Donzelot).
Jean-Baptiste Du Hamel
In the XVIIth In the 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Du Hamel, parish priest of Neuilly (11 June 1624 - 6 August 1706) obtained the removal of the abbots of Saint-Maur's title deeds.
Son of Nicolas Du Hamel, a lawyer in Vire, he began his studies in Caen and completed his philosophy in Paris. In 1642, aged just eighteen, he published an explanation of Theodosius of Tripoli's Spherics, to which he added a treatise on trigonometry. The following year, he entered the Oratory congregation, which he left ten years later to take charge of the parish of Neuilly-sur-Marne. At that time, physics had been stripped of everything that could make it interesting, and presented only sterile and thorny questions.
Du Hamel set about putting it back on a better footing by publishing his Astronomie physique and Des météores et des fossiles in 1659. He left this post in 1663 to become Chancellor of the Church of Bayeux.
When Colbert founded the Académie des Sciences in 1666, he appointed Du Hamel its first secretary, a position he held until 9 January 1697. Through lectures at the Académie des Sciences, he developed his knowledge of anatomy and, when it was reorganised in 1699, he became a pensioner anatomist, the first to be appointed by Louis XIV on 28 January 1699.
He was professor of Greek and Latin philosophy at the Collège royal when he resigned and was, on his own recommendation, replaced by Fontenelle. In 1668, he accompanied Colbert's brother, the Marquis de Croissy, first to Aix-la-Chapelle for the peace negotiations and later to England, where he came into contact with the most prominent scientists, notably the physicist Boyle.
Louis Porte
Although the Allied landings in June 1944 gave rise to a wave of hope among the population, in Neuilly-sur-Marne the liberation was preceded by a tragic and symbolic event: the deportation of the chairman of the special delegation, Louis Porte, who was arrested by the Germans on 17 July 1944.
This arrest followed various demonstrations organised in the town to mark 14 July, the celebration of which was banned by the occupying forces. Doubtless buoyed by the numerous actions of the Resistance and the news of imminent liberation, the people of Nocé celebrated the bank holidays in a patriotic burst that aroused the anger of the German authorities. In retaliation, they took the mayor hostage and deported him to Buchenwald camp, where he died a few months later. The story of those days is recorded in the town council's minutes and in a collection of accounts written by Gabriel Desclaux*, a schoolteacher from Neuilly-sur-Marne, who chronicled life under the occupation under the title "Neuilly-sur-Marne sous la botte allemande 1940-1944" ("Neuilly-sur-Marne under the German boot 1940-1944").
This 14 July 1944 took a special turn. On the evening of the 13th, after curfew, around sixty people decorated the town. Many tricolour flags made from old clothes or dyed fabrics were hung from trees, telephone wires and the façade of the town hall. On the main road, the three colours of the nation were painted along with patriotic slogans, and on the chimney of the waterworks, an employee had installed a huge tricolour flag made from sheets. This patriotic outpouring was followed on 14 July by a parade from the war memorial to the town hall.
Between 1,500 and 2,000 people took part. As instructed, some were dressed in blue, white and red, while others sang La Marseillaise. The crowd dispersed in front of the town hall before a lorryload of German soldiers arrived. On 15 July, the Germans tore down the flags and burned them in the street.
They tried to shoot down the flags hanging in the trees and on the wires with their machine guns," notes Gilbert Desclaux, "by threatening them, they forced the municipal firemen to remove the patriotic emblems. Mr Vignal, a lieutenant in the fire brigade, was asked to remove the flag from the chimney and burn it. He managed to hide it.
These events culminated in the arrest of Louis Porte.
Although warned by one of the leaders of the Resistance, he did not leave the town. Supporting its mayor, the town council unanimously decided to send a delegation of three councillors to the Prefect to ask him to intervene on Louis Porte's behalf. The initiative was supported by the mayors of neighbouring towns. On 31 July, they sent a joint letter to the Prefect of Seine-et-Oise asking him to defend Louis Porte. To no avail.
Landmarks
Born in 1884 in Issy-les-Moulineaux, Louis Porte was a market gardener in Neuilly-sur-Marne. In August 1941, he became the town's "mayor" when he succeeded Isidore Cadario at the head of the special delegation, a body set up at the start of the war to replace the town council.
Gabriel Desclaux, a mathematics teacher, was elected deputy mayor in charge of education from 1977 to 1989 on the Union de la Gauche list led by Jacques Mahéas.