Les casemates servent de cachot. Observer la disposition des ouvertures. Il est enrichi par des donations, en particulier des peintures de Trouillebert et l'herbier Abot.
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Elle sert au logement des soldats pendant les grandes manoeuvres de l'automne A l'occasion de ces travaux, les bases de la tour N. Mais pourquoi supprimer les parapets qui l'entouraient? Cette reconstitution a quelque chose d'abstrait. Before discussing and maybe resolving this contradiction, let us take a closer look at the idea of "authenticity" and its alleged agent, the eyewitness, and their importance for historical awareness in Restoration France. The Modern Quest for Authenticity: Eyewitnesses, Memoirs and the Royalist Cult of Remembrance in Restoration France Nowadays, the eyewitness plays an important role in historiography and popular history.
The eyewitness, with first-hand experience, supposedly has the capability not only to provide factual information on a specific event but also to give genuine and vivid insight into his experiences and to draw a colorful portrait of the past. This belief is questionable. Eyewitness testimonies are compromised by several factors, such as the limitations of sensory perception, the complexity of memory, and social and cultural imprints and conventions.
Therefore, contemporary historiography is not only concerned with the question of whether a witness's testimony is accurate, but also—in a postmodern approach—whether objective testimony is possible at all, and whether something like "historic authenticity" really exists. However, in popular history there is a widespread assumption that eyewitness accounts revive the past in a striking and extraordinary manner. This modern understanding of historical authenticity and testimony is not a historical constant but emerged slowly in early modern times.
In this complex history, the period of the French Revolution and its aftermath—including the Restoration era—is especially significant. The French Revolution apparently had an immense effect on the historical consciousness of the time. Through its drastic, violent, and unpredictable process, it helped to develop an understanding of history as a sequence of unique events, while at the same time questioning the idea that history has a meaning or is rationally explicable.
Likewise, they were eager to share information and to take over the role of the eyewitness. After Napoleon's downfall—twenty-five years after the storming of the Bastille— new interest was aroused in eyewitness accounts of revolutionary events. Of course, in Restoration France, these reports no longer met daily information needs; they were now regarded as historical sources and belonged to the literary genre of memoirs.
Different reasons can be given for this astounding popularity. After Napoleon's downfall, the interest in the Nation's history generally intensified, either out of curiosity, political calculation, or because looking back in history promised national self-assurance and identity.
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Memoirs responded to the growing public interest in the Revolution, and specifically in the victims' perspective, which finally, after the end of intense Napoleonic censorship, could be openly considered. Eyewitness accounts of the s as well as subsequently published memoirs of the Restoration era also satisfied the desire for historical authenticity.
The term "authentic" or "authenticity" became significant as a commonly used catchphrase in the context of contemporary testimony, [61] referring to something being "genuine," "credible," "attested by witnesses," "approved" or even "canonical. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, the meaning of "authentic" was based on the Greek and Latin as "genuine," indicating that the given account had actually been written by the person claiming to be its author, and had originated in the year as alleged; therefore, it is truthful. The history of the term "authentic" also helps one understand the concept of the figure of the eyewitness in late 18th- and early 19th-century France.
Contemporary eyewitness accounts indicate that the witness to history took on the role of the authority who guaranteed "authenticity"; that is to say he verified history. The witness himself was fully aware of his significance: This especially applied whenever he could tell of an extraordinary event that had happened secretly and only few people had witnessed; for example, the confinement of the royal family in Paris.
His Journal , published for the first time in in London, was a huge success in Europe. The eyewitness's awareness of being a unique "historical source" resulted in a specific literary style which seems meant to increase the credibility of his reports, which often have a formal character, similar to official accounts or certified documents, giving exact descriptions of objects, places and chronology.
But at the same time, they were epistemologically convinced that objective perception and representation were possible, and they believed in the concept of an "impeccable" witness who could report the historical facts as they had happened. This conviction lead to a high appreciation of eyewitness accounts as historical sources, and explains how memoirs could have become some kind of "historiographical principle" [67] in Restoration France.
Representations of History in Nineteenth-century France It was and still is common to draw conclusions about authenticity based on outer appearance and formal criteria. In Restoration France, historical curiosity was inspired by this kind of "visible" authenticity that became manifest in appearances and material.
Above all, nothing will amaze the attentive reader more than the accent of truth and sensibility that characterizes this script, historical monument of the highest interest … Here, everything bears the character of authenticity: Thus, history not only had to be authentic, it also had to look authentic; all kinds of historical sources and relics—including sites—were considered fascinating witnesses that seemed to have preserved history directly.
Louis XVI's testament and Marie-Antoinette's letter to her sister-in-law, for example, were appreciated as such witnesses. During the Restoration, both manuscripts, which the king and the queen had written with their own hands, were often published as facsimiles. At the moment, it is not enough to discover the soul of an excellent prince, we also want to know the traits with which his hand has painted it, and we are impatient to possess the original of this precious Testament, sacred relic of a Martyr-King, presented … as facsimile, or as a perfect imitation.
The quest for "authentic history" was part of a decidedly modern approach to the past, and marked the beginning of modern historiography as well as the development of an understanding of cultural heritage. With reference to Friedrich Nietzsche's categorization of approaches to history, Stephen Bann has demonstrated the antiquarian foundations of the romantic "cult of the past.
Romantic artists and writers, being inspired by the imaginative force of historical relics, developed a new dramatic and detail-loving way of historical representation. Gervais Simon's troubadour-style depiction of Marie-Antoinette can be cited as an example of this kind of antiquarian romanticism in painting fig. Hence, I would like to come full circle and return to Marie-Antoinette's expiatory chapel and the question of how to solve the contradiction between authenticity and politics. Authenticity Behind the Staging As we have seen, Marie-Antoinette's expiatory chapel was, on the one hand, meant to be part of the political propaganda of the Restoration era.
Liberté de la presse sous la Restauration
Its decoration aims at an "image" of the queen that does not follow the rules of authenticity and historical truth, not least in the fact that its original architecture was destroyed. On the other hand, contemporaries were fully aware of the location's historical significance and symbolic meaning as a place of remembrance. Knowing the high regard in which memoirs and historical truth in Restoration France were held, the transformation of the queen's cell into a chapel appears even more contradictory.
Therefore, I want to ask whether the desire for authentic history was taken into consideration when the queen's cell was transformed. The rise of modern historical consciousness in 18th-century France became manifest in an understanding of history as being a single, coherent narrative that doesn't repeat itself. The desire to erect expiatory memorials primarily at the sites of unique historical events, consequently highlighting the significance of where history actually took place, attests to the contemporary appreciation of historical uniqueness and its protagonists' individual fates.
As a result, the original form of Marie-Antoinette's former prison cell in the Conciergerie was destroyed, but it was not to be forgotten, as Peyre's drawing of the chapel indicates fig. He depicted not only the newly built monument, but also the genuine floor plan of the cell in His drawing shows the transformation of the site and therefore also allows the beholder to reconstruct the original cell in his mind.
In situ, this mental reconstruction could be based upon tangible objects. There was one single conserved relic of the cell which was of great importance: Montjoye's representation of the floor plan of the cell puts special emphasis on its pattern by showing and even naming it fig.
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His account of Marie-Antoinette's incarceration had been the contemporaries' main historical source, which might explain why the characteristic floor pattern is also represented, among others, in Peyre's fig. Being the sole empirically verifiable residue, the herringbone pattern was meant to guarantee the pictures' historical integrity. This becomes evident if one thinks about the paintings that were put in the expiatory chapel: Represented past and existing present overlap.
Therefore, the pictures can authenticate the room by identifying it with the one in which the queen had prayed and suffered. In turn, reality can authenticate representation: At this point, the underlying idea of the chapel's interior decoration becomes clear. The authorities wanted the event to be visually represented where it had actually taken place; they aimed at an interplay of historical site and the depiction of history. In , journalist and art critic Edme Miel claimed that the best way of vividly communicating historical knowledge would be through pictures, and he called for a prolific interaction of historical representations and monuments:.
The best way to write the history of France, and the best way to engrave it into the memory and the heart of the French, is to paint it. But these national representations will only exert all of their influence if they are truly monumental, that is if they decorate the sites where the events have taken place. It is exactly the kind of "monumental painting" Miel had in mind that appeared in Marie-Antoinette's expiatory chapel: Here, pictures, historical traces, and the site itself equally serve as pillars of remembrance. Gervais Simon's detailed depiction of Marie-Antoinette's cell particularly serves this interpretation of a "monumental history painting.
By contrast, Pajou and Drolling both concentrate on theatrical pathos and atmosphere. However, they, too, do try for historical truth. Most likely, both follow the same model for the queen's looks and garment: This often-copied and well-known picture was famous for being one of the last portraits the queen actually posed for.
A visitor to the Conciergerie in Paris today, comes across Marie-Antoinette not only once, but twice. On the one hand, there is a life-sized figure of the queen in a small room that attempts to provide a truthful reconstruction of the cell in which she was imprisoned in fig. On the other hand, Marie-Antoinette's fate is recalled through paintings hung in the cell that she actually inhabited until her execution and that had become an expiatory chapel in Thus, we are confronted with two different models of representation and transfer of historical knowledge.
The first one reproduces the historical environment—it stages authenticity for educational or entertainment purposes. The expiatory chapel, on the contrary, aims at a heroic, Christian re-interpretation of actual events—it stages history for political purposes. Nietzsche called this interpretive approach to history "monumental": Consequently, Marie-Antoinette's chapel in the Conciergerie is hard to define as to its mode of showing and communicating history: Therefore, the chapel does not give a genuine impression, but it still permits one to recall what once was: In this process, the paintings take over the role of the chapel's tourist guide: It is, however, evident that authentic and symbolic content are not balanced—the desire for an idealized portrait of the queen and her fate clearly predominates in the chapel.
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Remembering the royal victims of the Revolution in Restoration France was more than just problematic; the legacy of the French Revolution played a significant role in the fervent political arguments of the time in which contemporaries struggled for nothing less than the identity of the French nation.
While the Revolution wasn't openly discussed, its political and historical evaluation was the issue underlying most political debates. Thus, the original appearance and design of Marie-Antoinette's prison cell had been demolished and, consequently, history cannot be experienced directly any more. That demolition was criticized by contemporaries: As we traverse a corridor, my guide stops me and shows me a small door … This was the door of Marie-Antoinette's cell, the only thing of her prison that had been conserved the way it was after it had been transformed into a chapel by Louis XVIII.
Through this door the queen went to the Revolutionary Tribunal; through there she went to the scaffold ….
If you had seen there the naked pavement, the naked wall, the barred cellar window, the camp beds of the queen and the gendarme, and the historical room divider that separated them, that would have given a profound emotion and an inexpressible impression. There exists a respectful vandalism that is even more outrageous than the hate-filled vandalism because it's foolish. You didn't see anything any more that had been in front of the queen's eyes, if not a little of the pavement.
Hugo's account exemplifies the historical consciousness of modern romanticism: It is in fact impossible to have such an experience in Marie-Antoinette's expiatory chapel. Still, it would be wrong to contemplate the chapel only as a monument to serve propaganda. The authorities and artists involved at the time tried to reconcile politically motivated idealization with the authentic.
As a result, the queen's chapel can be considered the predecessor of today's historical theme parks in which authenticity is the determinant of historical staging. This paper is based on a chapter of my doctoral thesis entitled Topographie der Erinnerung: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Berlin, I would like to thank Volker Ferenz for his input and comments, and Isolin Fitzpatrick and Sara Ackermann for helping me with the translation of the text. All translations from French and German into English are my own. Die Gesellschaft der Restauration und das Erbe der Revolution , ed.
Gudrun Gersmann and Hubertus Kohle Stuttgart: Considering a broader view of the cultural politics of Restoration France, there are several important papers that help to understand this period in French history, for example, Sheryl Kroen, Politics and Theater: Both authors argue that the monarchy's weakness and failure in Restoration France were the outcome not only of wrong political decisions, but also of a failed policy of representation or image building.
With regard to the monarchy's expiatory monuments. I agree with this thesis. Gallimard, , xvii—xlii. Article XI of the new Charte Constitutionnelle of prohibited all research of former political convictions. See Pierre Rosanvallon, La Monarchie impossible: Faut-il qu'une reine dise bonjour en d'autres termes qu'une villageoise? Nous n'avons plus de provinces, et nous avons encore environ trente patois qui en rappellent les noms. Bref, c'est la prononciation qui se modifia le plus, avec le vocabulaire administratif.
La valeur de la perche , de la toise , du pied , du pouce , de la ligne , de l' aune , de la livre , du muid , etc. En voici quelques exemples: Le petit nombre qui restait demeurait bien faible pour subvenir aux besoins scolaires de toutes les villes et encore moins de tous les villages de France. De plus, le chaos politique dans lequel vivait la France empirait la situation.