Your Email:

Subject:

Message:
Entry: Learning to Love the French Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/learning_to_love_the_french#12281 Post contents: "In the wilds of Pennsylvania, a group of nobility attempted to replicate St. Martinville’s ephemeral success with a settlement called Azylum, Pennsylvania." Yes, and Mr Coloumbe, there were more than one such settlement of exiled French aristocracy in upstate Pennsylvania. Most towns with French names in upstate Pennsylvania were founded by French exiles who escaped the Revolutionary terror. I, too, am (on my maternal grandmother's side) descend from French who fled to America consequent to the French Revolution. But my family history is more complicated. My grandmother's grandfather, Conrad Dietsche, was born in Elzach, Baden in 1818, just across the river from his ancestral Alsace. The story of what happened to their family after 1789 still has some gaps, but here's a sketch: My ancestor Conrad's father (whose name I have written down somewhere) and his family were relatively poor provincial aristocrats in Alsace - whatever residual titles they held were merely honourary, going back to the ANCIENT (and by 1789, powerless) Seigneurs de Diest (Diest is in Belgium), and the descendants of Guillaume de Diest, the Bishop of Strasbourg in the early 1400s, a venal Bishop who ennobled the children he had through his mistresses. I descend from a Catholic Bishop of the 1400s, who ennobled his children and set them up well. To make a long story short, by 1789, my Alsatian-French ancestors had almost no political power and very little property left, BUT they were always staunchly pro-clerical (and very Catholic), and so they fled across the river to Baden during the French revolutionary terror of the 1790s. My grandmother told me that the main reason for their doing so, was because they were Catholics - THAT fact had MORE to do with their persecution by the revolutionaries, than their attenuated "aristocratic" ancestry did. Then around 1848, my great-great-grandfather, Conrad Ditsche (then 30 yrs old), returned from Baden to his ancestral country of France, after the family had been exiled from France for over 50 years - and then, for reasons which I'm still researching (informed by my grandmother's stories), he openly resisted the coup of Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III), and then in 1851 he found out that he was on a list of dissidents to be arrested. He and his wife escaped to Philadelphia, instead of being arrested and sent to Algeria like others of his kind were in 1851. The first time I ever visited Paris, in 1991, it warmed my heart to stand on a bridge bearing an inscription dedicated to Napoleon III, and to think, "nope, you didn't get all of us, Nappy! (Nappy Bony AND Nappy III). Here I am!" Anyway. My Grandmother knew this much; she told me stories which I later verified, of how we descended from provincial (and rather poor) aristocracy in Alsace, going back to the first Lord of Diest, Othon de Diest, circa 1050. (And through that line I am also a remote nephew of the Queen of Jerusalem c 1100, sorry but I gotta look up her name ;-) Now, all that said, here comes a WEE bit of a punchline: my grandmother, whose father was the son of Alsatians, was fiercely and proudly Francophile. In fact she was quite a Germanophobe (MUCH less so than I am); she was, if anything, a bit TOO determined to say she was "French and NOT GERMAN!" Well, I don't TOTALLY agree with her. Over 200 years after my ancestors exiled themselves from France to Germany, and now 62 years after WW II, now a time has come when I can say, "I am partly German", without shame. But the fact that it WAS shameful to be "German" for most of the past 60 years, is something which should never be forgotten. Anyway. I just wanted to share with Mr Coloumbe, my personal story about MY heritage as a (partly) French-American. And having roots in Alsace is not the least bit inconsistent with claiming French ancestry, or Francophilia. During the Napoleonic wars, one of Napoleon's officers complained to him about how the Alsatians didn't speak French. (But French was the first langage of my Alsatian ancestors.) Napoleon replied: "They (the Alsatians) don't speak French, BUT THEIR BAYONETS DO!" ;-) :-) At any rate, thank you, Mr Coloumbe, for your reminder of how and why Americans ought to love France, America's first ally. And it was quite a paradox for my great-great-grandfather, a descendant of French aristocracy, to rebel against Louis Napoleon and to emigrate to America because (as my grandmother told me), he wanted to live in a "real republic." But all sons of France (including diasporan sons of France, of whom I am one), understand that France is a paradoxical nation, with a love-hate relationship to traditional authorities both secular and sacred. And dare I say, THAT is PRECISELY what makes France a historically, deeply, Christian country! (And not just now, but in the future: France is "the once and future" country of the defense of Christendom!) Thus, all American patriots ought to begin taking a closer look at France, and at the eternal virtues of the French. Joyeux noel, from me to Mr Charles Coloumbe. Sent at: 2008 11 23