March 18, 2021, marked 150 years since the Paris Commune began.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2021/03/150th-anniversary-of-paris-commune.html
Despite its short existence and bloody repression, the Commune marked
both the history of political ideas and that of revolutions. For 72
days, the communards fought to build a democratic and social republic,
organizing elections for its popular commune, initiating radical social
measures, discussing political issues in revolutionary clubs, organizing
resistance with the National Guard against the Versailles
counterrevolution, and more. During the fall of this short-lived revolutionary experience known as "Bloody
Week" (May 21 to 28, 1871), Pere Lachaise Cemetery saw bitter fighting
between 200 outnumbered communards made a final defiant against the troops of the National Assembly's
Versailles Army, who secured the area on May 27 which ended with the brutal repression of the communards by the French
government in Versailles. it saw one-hundred forty-seven federes, combatants
of the Paris Commune,who had holed themselves up in the Pere Lachaise cemetary, were overun, were shot, without trial and thrown in an open trench at the
foot of a wall in the cemetery, now known as the Communard's Wall.
To the left, the wall became the symbol of the
people’s struggle for their liberty and ideals and a reminder of the ferocity of the government's
reprisals. The massacre of the
Communards did not put an end to the repression. During the fighting
between 20,000 and 35,000 deaths, and more than 43,000 prisoners were
taken; afterwards, a military court pronounced about a hundred death
sentences, more than 13,000 prison sentences, and close to 4,000
deportations to New Caledonia.
In keeping with their anti-bourgeois principles the former Communards
rejected the grandiosity of monuments land wished only for a
simple plaque to mark the wall where the mass executions had taken
place. However, fearful of encouraging future insurrection, the
authorities attempted to sell off the plots associated with the common
grave and banned any mention of the events on individual or collective
monuments within the cemetery. Many leaders of the French Communist Party, especially those involved in the French resistance, are also buried nearby.
Jules Jouy, a chansonnier from Montmartre wrote:
"Tombe sans croix et sans chapelle, sans lys d'or, sans vitraux d'azur, quand le peuple en parle, il l'appelle le Mur.”
The memory of the
Commune remained engraved in the people's memory, especially within the
workers’ movement which regenerated itself in a few years time. However following the Commune, worker’s protests were not authorized in the
streets of Paris until roughly 1910. For anarchists and socialists commemorative ceremonies at the Wall of the Communards assumed
the same role that the funerals of opposition figures had during the
Restoration. The
first march to the Wall took place on 23 May 1880, two months after the partial amnesty for former exiled and deported
communards, which came into effect in March 1879, and just before the
general amnesty of July 1880. It would be coordinated principally by the
(Guesdist) Workers’ Party via its associated relays such as the
Socialist Committee for Aid to the Pardoned and Unpardoned (Comité
socialiste d’aide aux amnistiés et non-amnistiés) and the Federated
Syndical Workers’ Union of Workers of the Seine and the Socialist Press
(Union fédérative ouvrière et l’Union syndicale des travailleurs de la
Seine et la presse socialiste) which included the publications L’Égalité and Le Prolétaire.: 25,000 people, a symbolic "immortal" red rose in
their buttonholes, stood up against police forces. From that time on,
this "ascent to the Wall", punctuated French labour force political
history. Every year since 1880, the organizations of the French left
have held a demonstration in this symbolic place during the last week of
May.
The “Wall” has, little by little, become established as the open-air domus ecclesia
of a secular and revolutionary left. This secular space has become a
new space of sacralization around which those who still believe in and
hope for the coming of a more just and egalitarian society and for the
completion of the work left unfinished by the revolts of March 1871,
come to rest, to reassemble, and to recharge.
Unlike
the masculine crowds of street protests that often ended in
insurrection, these are respectful family affairs that included women
and children. Their orderly nature was later invoked to convince the
authorities to grant permits to political parties so that growing
worker’s movements might march in the streets of the capital. The modern
protest march, now an institution of Parisian life, can be said to have
in part been born within the walls of Père Lachaise, where innovations
of funerary practice and funerary architecture first allowed for
personal and collective commemoration.
Ironically Strangely, Adolphe Theirs is also buried in the cemetery. He was the
French President who presided over the execution. and the man most widely associated with the Communes brutal suppression. In May 1971, 100 years after the Commune and just three years after the 1968 protests that had rocked both the capital and the Fifth Republic, commemorators once again lined the streets. Some individuals tried to blow up the tomb of Adolphe Thiers. And in May 2019 thousands of gilet haunes poured out onto the streets and into Père Lachaise to commemorate the Commune and its stand against the French State. Many leaders of the French Communist Party, especially those involved in the French resistance, are also buried nearby.
“Ce que nous demandons à l’Avenir.
Ce que nous voulons de Lui.
C’est la Justice.
Victor Hugo (Inscription on the Communards’ Wall)
What we ask of the future
What we want from it
Is justice
Covering more than 100 acres Père Lachaise is the world's most visited cemetery. Its appeal lies not just in death, but in the fact that it's a brooding aggregation of French culture. Hundreds of celebrities, writers, artists, and musicians are buried there. This is where you come to honor the brilliant minds.
Among those buried in Pere Lachaise are Oscar Wilde,. Edith Piaf, Frederich Chopin, Eugene Delacroix,Amedeo Modigliani, Pissarro,Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein and Jim Morrison.
A chart bearing prominent names and locations is displayed at the
entrance gate. Every headstone tells a story. The cemetery is built on a
gently sloping hill side in Paris in the 20th arrondissement
on the eastern side of the city. To walk through it is almost to visit
the last 200 years of French history. The pathways are cobbled and
elegantly maintained. It is like walking along a stretch of peaceful
country lanes, a place where time seems to stand still. Vive la Commune.
The annual Memorial Meeting Near the Wall of the Communards in the Cemetary of Père Lachaise
Painting by Ilya Repin
