Rarely does a song get exposed. But until February 20, you can go see it at the Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. This song, you all know it. Well, the first few sentences, at least. The first notes accompany sporting events, victories, parades and commemorations.
La Marseillaise, which is from Strasbourg. Attention, the Strasbourg, it is another. On April 25, 1792, the mayor of Strasbourg De Dietrich, yes, the same family as the gas cookers, Baron Philippe Frédéric de Dietrich, received at his home in Place Broglie Marshal Luckner, who led the Army of the Rhine, and generals, including Prince Victor de Breuil, I remind you that it is spelled Broglie, and a certain Jean-Baptiste Kléber, still second lieutenant-colonel. And a captain of engineers: Claude Joseph de Rouget de Lisle.
It will do better than what we have just heard. Mayor De Dietrich asks him to write a war song following the declaration of war by republican France on Austria, wanting to restore the monarchy.
Rouget de Lisle composed in his little home, in the Meisegàss, rue de la Mésange, his War Song for the Army of the Rhine, dedicated to Marshal Luckner. He returned to sing the first six verses at the mayor’s, accompanied by Madame De Dietrich on the keyboard, the De Dietrichs who lived on the site of the current Banque de France, at the level of the Broglie tram stop. The Marseille troops coming from Paris sing it in the capital, the song becomes “L’air des Marseillois” then the Marseillaise, national anthem only in 1879. This exhibition questions the multiple roles of this song which resounds when the fatherland or the rights of humans are in danger.
More than a war hymn, La Marseillaise became a revolutionary song that conquered the world and participated in all rebellions: from 1793 in South America, in 1794 in Poland, in the 19th century it accompanied opponents of the Tsar, after 1850 it was claimed by the Spanish Republicans. In the 20th century, it was sung during the Russian Revolution of 1917, it accompanied Mao’s Long March. In 1989 we hear it on Tiananmen Square and during the fall of the wall in Berlin.
It is exploited, politicized, sometimes hated, Pétain will try to reduce it to silence, in vain. It disturbs: yes, it is bloody, enraged, yes it cries revenge but also freedom, and it unites. You have until February 20 to appreciate the incredible scope of our national anthem at the Strasbourg Museum of Modern Art.
The MAMCS website with details of the exhibition.