Francofonia Page #2

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Please wait here for me, I will call you.

Very modest.

Very modest.

Please be seated...

Then I'll sit down here...

Hlne, Hlne...

bring us some coffee, please.

M. Jaujard,

you are the first high-ranking

French civil servant I meet at his post.

I must inform you

that I represent the head

of the military administration in Paris

and its significant department,

the Kunstschutz.

Our mission

is to preserve art collections,

museums and historic monuments

in France and Europe.

Here is my calling card.

Would you kindly inform me

as to the current state of the museum?

Well?

Yes.

You'll find all the relevant information

in this folder.

Thank you.

So...

It's all there.

It's all there.

Are the curators showing much solidarity?

They are.

Do you speak German?

No, I am very French.

The Count is 46 years old.

His interlocutor is 44.

Jaujard volunteered for the front

in the First World War,

where he caught TB and was discharged.

His father died on the front.

Count Metternich was in active service

in the German Army

throughout the duration

of the First World War.

WWI was almost domestic,

was fought family by family...

and was thus

particularly cruel and insane.

It left long-lasting,

evil recollections in its wake.

Cities, churches, monuments,

cultures were crushed,

people were murdered, tortured.

And how often had battles been fought

between Germans and French...?

This is the private archive

of the Metternich family.

This is him as a child.

Here he is already a soldier.

Ferdinand, Count Wolff Metternich,

his father, awaits him at home.

His mother is Flaminia,

Princess of Salm-Salm.

She will die on the eve of WWII.

The family is large,

nine brothers and sisters.

A German nobleman

and a Republican Frenchman.

Jacques Jaujard was swift

to find his calling as a civil servant,

but whether

this would be his vocation

and whether he would be a happy man

was known only to fate

and his future wives.

Incidentally, it was as a young secretary

to prominent left-wing politician

and mathematician, Paul Painlev,

that Jaujard received

his first Legion of Honor.

Thank you, no need. Good-bye.

- Good-bye.

Hlne, where are you?

Hlne... Is everyone hiding?

The Louvre, the Louvre...

Silence.

Nobody here...

Many colleagues are sent to the chteaux

where an collections are hidden.

All that is left in the halls are

some classical and medieval sculpture.

What is the Louvre?

What is it,

now that France has lost the war?

When occupying soldiers

stroll through Paris,

when people seem

to have gotten used to this,

when shops, cinemas and cafs are open,

when French industry is successfully

working for the Wehrmacht,

and when thousands of French students

have developed a new interest

in the German language?

Perhaps these young French

think a life shared with Germany

is here to stay.

At the start of the War,

the French apparently

didn't want to believe

in a total and ferocious war

with their European sister.

The young French soldiers resisted

as best they could,

but their politicians struggled among

themselves and forgot about their land.

The state yields to Nazi force.

The state restrains its army.

French losses for this period:

tens of thousands of soldiers.

Millions of refugees.

The map of the French Republic.

And this is already a different country.

It's called the French State.

It's no longer a republic.

Parliament is dissolved.

There is no president.

This line is where

German troops decided to stop.

From then on,

the country consisted of two parts:

the occupied, and the not yet taken.

This is what the border

between them looks like.

The government of new France

is formed in the small town of Vichy.

It's a resort... waters, clinics...

Marshal Ptain, French Ambassador

to Spain, a hero of WWI,

agrees to lead the government in exile.

But he is 84 years old.

He was born in the 19th century.

At his birth,

Emperor Napoleon III was in power.

His family revered Bonaparte!

That's how it turned out.

A French Marshal, hero of WWI,

came out against resistance

to an aggressor.

That's how it turned out,

that a French Marshal disbanded his army,

urged his citizens to stop resisting,

and announced the beginning

of a new revolution

and the foundation of a new country.

The Vichy French, who'd been rejecting

distant Russian Bolshevism,

overlooked neighboring Nazism.

Ptain, reserved, cold,

and undistinguished of birth,

believes in the possibility and necessity

of partnership with Hitler.

And sees in it France's salvation.

And here we have his government,

his cabinet.

They are to support the occupying forces,

collect all taxes,

and organize the French workforce

to replenish Germany's resources.

This same government will head museums

and cultural institutions

throughout all France.

So the same old slow-seller

reappeared on the market.

Can you guess which I mean?

This product may be very expensive

or be free.

But the price of this product

is always set by the buyer.

Were you able to guess?

No?

Think it over.

REGULARS' TABLE

I see you weren't able to guess.

It's peace. Simply peace.

Calm.

Peace can always be bought.

The grand war fell silent in France.

The French soldiers...

are returning home.

Paris...

Paris...

Hundreds of museums, libraries,

theaters, galleries, universities,

sciences, crafts, workers, engineers,

press, democracy and customs.

Would you give it all up

for the sake of principles,

political convictions, slogans,

and start a fully-fledged war

throughout France

and in Paris?

Paris, the open city,

means Paris without bombardments

and without battles.

There's the computer.

His signal has come through again.

What a storm!

Get rid of the cargo or you will perish!

This museum freight, why did you take it?

Dirk! Dirk!

Your bridge is in chaos.

Files have fallen on the floor...

Is it that bad?

It seems vicious.

The connection is gone again...

Today is a bad day.

Somehow it's all so close,

the storm, sinking ships,

Europe, Paris, war.

Time is a tight knot.

What has time got to do with it?

The First World War, the Second...

There.

The beauty of an ancient world.

These are but fragments

of that civilization.

Assyria.

All of this once decorated

the king's palace in the Assyrian capital.

That state is long gone,

but these messages from 700 BC

summon numerous strange feelings.

Lamassu, winged bulls.

Threatening and naive,

like in the fairy tales.

The fear of power.

Fear in the face of power.

Brilliance of craftsmanship,

the perfect creation of fear.

In the 19th century,

all this was brought by ship

from afar to the Louvre.

Some items were bought...

some were war trophies.

But on that long voyage,

in severe storms,

overloaded ships sank to the bottom.

Uncounted are the creations

hidden from us in the suffocating depths,

and uncounted the seamen who perished.

What a price...

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