Saint-Louis is a French commune in the tri-national agglomeration
of Basel, located in the Haut-Rhin department, in the Grand Est
region. This municipality is located in the historical and cultural
region of Alsace and borders on the border between France and
Switzerland. Its inhabitants are called Ludoviciens and
Ludoviciennes. It is the third commune of the department in terms of
number of inhabitants. Saint-Louis has existed since 1684, by order
of King Louis XIV.
The coat of arms of the city must have
been that of the coat of arms of the Kingdom of France, azure with
three golden fleur-de-lis, but a defect occurred during the
registration at the Court of Mulhouse, the fleurs-de-lis were white
and not yellow , therefore the official coat of arms became azure
with three silver lilies placed two and one.
Its rapid
development is due to its geographical location. The town was
founded between the Riss and the Flandrien, two Rhine plateaus, next
to Huningue, which was then a village surrounded by a fortress of
Vauban (now destroyed), and next to Basel, a strong city. In
addition, it is the last (or first) French town on the busy road
linking Strasbourg to Basel. This road still exists and is used by
several departmental roads. Finally, thanks to its proximity to
Switzerland and Germany, Saint-Louis attracts a lot of workers,
especially cross-border workers.
The town is made up of four
districts, three of which are recognized. These are
Saint-Louis-center, Bourgfelden (former municipality having merged
in 1953), Neuweg (former district of Blotzheim having joined
Saint-Louis five years later) and Michelfelden (former locality
belonging to Basel having, in 1793, joined Bourglibre, name of
Saint-Louis during the French Revolution).
Saint-Louis is a "young town" of a little over 300 years old,
which officially exists, by order of Louis XIV, dating from November
28, 1684. But Saint-Louis experienced human colonization very early
on. Tombs, dating from 1500 BC, and a Gallic treasure, dating from
80 BC, have been discovered there. Three great Roman roads started
from a place called Arialbinum, which was probably in a triangle now
bounded by Bourgfelden, Binningen and Saint-Louis. In the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, Saint-Louis would have already been a very
small village called Birsen, which has disappeared today. On October
4, 1259, the Cistercian convent of Michelfelden was founded on the
Roman site of Magnus Campus. It is by far the oldest built heritage
in the region, but is not classified as a historical monument.
From the origins to the 18th century
From the 13th to the
17th century, only two inhabited places can be found between Basel
and Kembs: Alt-Hüningen - or Altdorf, a small fishing village - and
Michelfelden. The Hardt forest, populated by bears and wolves, then
reaches practically as far as the Rhine. In 1680, Vauban and the
engineer Jacques Tarade undertook the construction of the fortress
of Huningue, by order of the Sun King. All around the stronghold, a
glacis must be cleared. Also, the village of Huningue, which is
located between the new fortress and Basel, is razed. The majority
of its inhabitants will then rebuild a new village a kilometer and a
half away. Officially, it was called Bourg Neuf d'Aoust, but very
quickly it would be called Village-Neuf du Grand-Huningue, then
quite simply Village-Neuf - or Neudorf.
But some settled, at
the same time as a small number of workers of the fortress, on the
road to Paris, where it crosses the road coming from the Porte
Saint-Jean-de-Bâle, near a relay station for horses and a small
chapel. The current location of this site is in front of the
Saint-Louis church. Thus was born the hamlet of Saint-Louis. When in
1684, Louis XIV granted it to bear this name, a customs house and a
dozen very low houses had been built along the road. Those who live
there are "tobacco guards", that is to say customs officers. The
excellent location of this hamlet, both crossroads and border post,
is the starting point of the exponential curve of its growth. The
development of Saint-Louis is initially slow, but it is constant. At
the end of the Ancien Régime, in 1789, the village had nearly 600
inhabitants and 500 meters of streets. It is however only an annex
of Village-Neuf, because it depends on its municipality and its
parish priest. It was the removal of internal customs barriers,
decreed by the Assembly on October 31, 1793, that marked the
beginning of the real rise of Saint-Louis.
The French
Revolution gave it the two keys to its success: on the one hand, the
establishment of the national customs in 1791. Saint-Louis then
became a real border post, with customs officers and soldiers. On
the other hand, on October 22, 1793, the directory of the department
grants Saint-Louis and Michelfelden municipal autonomy. These two
villages are united under the name of Bourg-Libre.
The
nineteenth century
The expansion can accelerate. From 1800 to
1815, many manufacturing workshops and transport houses, including
Danzas, were established in Saint-Louis, which took over this name
in 1814. In 1816, Alexandre Freund founded the Grande-Brasserie de
Saint-Louis. Since 1808, Saint-Louis has organized its independent
primary education and has a school. On June 27, 1827, Charles X
ordered the creation of an independent parish in the town. The
latter then had 1,400 inhabitants. The Saint-Louis Church was not
built until 1842.
October 25, 1840 is a big date for
Saint-Louis: the Mulhouse - Saint-Louis railway line is officially
inaugurated. Access to Basel was completed in 1845. Saint-Louis's
future was assured. Between 1845 and 1850, the letter post adopted
the railroad as a new means of transport for mail. It's the end of
mail trunks. On April 14, 1847, another great victory was won.
Louis-Philippe I approves, by ordinance, the division of the
territory between Village-Neuf, Saint-Louis and Huningue, which had
already been planned in 1845. He thus puts an end to a trial started
in 1808. Saint-Louis finally has a finage municipal authority and
thus frees itself from its financial tutelage, the last one still
exercised by Village-Neuf over it. In 1866, during a new general
census, Saint-Louis was the most populous municipality in the canton
with 2,546 inhabitants. Trade is very active, but agriculture still
plays a big role in the economy of the town. The agricultural show,
which was held on September 9, 1867 in Saint-Louis, brought together
around thirty farmers.
It was under the German regime, from 1870 to 1914, that
Saint-Louis industrialized. The establishment of large Basel ribbon
factories, silk weaving, cigar factories, metal construction
workshops, food and chemical factories, printing presses, cardboard
factories and lithography workshops, in the town, causes an influx
of workers from the countryside. The town was transformed into a
town which was to acquire a telegraph, a public telephone, gas and
then electric lighting, a drinking water distribution network and an
electric tram which was inaugurated on March 1, 1900.
The
twentieth century
Saint-Louis was living its "golden age" before
the catastrophes of the two world wars. According to an urban plan,
a reformed church, a synagogue, new schools, a large number of
workers' housing, a slaughterhouse and a prison were built, among
other things. Large hotels and department stores are opening their
doors. After a four-year paralysis during the Great War, Saint-Louis
became French again in November 1918. In fact, the city was
completely isolated by a barbed wire and electrified network set up
by the German military high command. The postwar period is a
difficult time. The shortage of raw materials has caused
unemployment. The industry must reconvert and turn to the French
market.
From 1920 to 1938, Saint-Louis, despite the crisis
which led to the closure of the main ribbon factories, tried to find
a new industrial boom thanks to metallurgy. One of the concerns of
Mayor Jules Wallart is the housing of workers. In 1923 work began on
the garden city, which was to be called the Wallart district upon
completion. Large buildings were built, including the Hôtel de la
Gare and the Grand Hôtel Pfiffer, in a very modern style for the
time, the Ursuline boarding school, now a music school, and the
neighborhood school. The city also acquired a municipal stadium and
had its war memorial built by architects Berger and Rudloff. In
1930, the municipal budget exceeded two million francs for the first
time. Saint-Louis had 8,629 inhabitants in 1936. From 1939 to 1944,
it was the tragic period of the Second World War. From September
1939 to September 1940, the entire population of the city was
evacuated to Lectoure and its surroundings, in the Gers. On the way
back, Alsace is German. Saint-Louis is under Nazi occupation. On
November 20, 1944, the city was freed from the yoke of Nazi
occupation. On March 1, 1953, the municipality merged with the
municipality of Bourgfelden. Then it was the 1955 Tour de France
which passed through Saint-Louis on the Colmar-Zurich stage. On
March 6, 1958, the district of La Chaussée was detached from the
town of Blotzheim to be attached to the town of Saint-Louis. In the
same year, on December 31, the Basel tramway was removed to make way
for the district bus.
On June 17, 1970, Saint-Louis
inaugurated the Basel-Mulhouse-Friborg international airport where
the President of the French Republic Georges Pompidou and the
President of the Swiss Confederation Hans Peter Tschudi are present.
In 1984, the city organized its first Book Fair. In 1986, the first
Théatra festival of short shows. A few weeks later, the
Schweizerhalle disaster will contaminate the Rhine with a reddish
mixture. The incident will be called “Chernobyl” in reference to
Chernobyl. In 1989, the first part of the restructuring work in the
town center was completed with the inauguration of the town hall by
Jean Ueberschlag, recently elected mayor. On October 23, 1993, the
media library was completed and inaugurated, followed by the
completion of the Lys crossroads, a modernized and pedestrianized
city center. In 1999, the 504-seat theater and the three-screen
cinema were completed, along with the underground car park. On July
22, 2000, the Fernet Branca distillery closed its doors.
21st century
On June 15, 2004, Jean Ueberschlag opened the
Fernet Branca contemporary art museum in the former premises of the
distillery. On October 11, 2005, at around 12:40 p.m., a major fire,
visible for several tens of kilometers around, ravaged the Ciba
chemical plant in Grenzach-Wyhlen in Germany. At the end of December
2006, the company GeoPower AG, located in Kleinhüningen (Basel
district), caused a wave of panic. Indeed, GeoPower, specialized in
geothermal energy, dynamites the ground at a depth of nearly 3,000
meters. And more precisely on December 8 when, on several occasions,
the magnitude of three on the Richter scale had been reached. But it
continued at the beginning of 2007. As the population was not
informed of these operations, the company was ordered to compensate
the affected households. Finally, on December 12, 2008, Switzerland
entered the Schengen area which, however, did not reduce heavy truck
traffic jams on the A35 motorway. In 2010, a fire at the Frigo-Bell
warehouses in Basel lasted 2 weeks around Easter. The streets of
Saint-Louis are flooded with smoke.
Following the death of
Jean-Marie Zoellé on April 6, 2020, Pascale Schmidiger, number two
on the latter's list in the 2020 municipal elections and deputy
during the previous term, ensures de facto the function of interim
mayor. On May 23, 2020, she was officially elected mayor of
Saint-Louis by 33 votes out of 35, during an extraordinary municipal
council relocated to the FORUM. At the same time, she becomes the
first woman to take up this post.