hidden europe 59

The Spirit of the Vosges

by Nicky Gardner

Picture above: The town hall and church in the Vosges town of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines. The town was once home to many Amish who in time emigrated to America (photo © hidden europe).

Summary

Join us as we discover the Vosges hills in the Alsace and Lorraine regions of eastern France. It's a region which has always been a wellspring of fine ideas, cutting a dash in the world of culture and industry. We visit a valley once settled by the Amish, learn about an illustrious tradition of printed textiles and roam through the montane heathland above the tree line.

The geographers are coming from hither and thither, all making their way to Saint-Dié, a mid-sized town in the Meurthe Valley in Lorraine. It’s a place shaped by textiles and timber, two historic staples in the economic landscape of the hilly Vosges region of eastern France.

But Saint-Dié has more than just timber and textiles. It has maps. And that’s made the Meurthe Valley hallowed ground for devotees of historical cartography, giving a town a sense of entitlement when it comes to geographical matters. Many visitors to the Vosges in early October head for the eastern flanks of the hills to experience the annual grape harvest in the celebrated wine villages of Alsace. But the geographers favour the quieter west side of the Vosges for the Festival International de Géographie in Saint -Dié.

“It was in Saint-Dié that America was invented,” explained a serious young man as we waited in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines for the bus to Saint-Dié.

Saint-Dié’s claim to cartographic fame dates back over 500 years to the period when local mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller created the first maps ever to use the label ‘America’ in depicting the New World.

The story of the Saint-Dié map is just one example of how the intellectual currents of the Vosges region have rippled around the world. Back in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, just 20 kilometres east of Saint-Dié and reached by a long road tunnel which burrows under the high wooded ridges which define the border between Lorraine and Alsace, the locals are proud of their American connections too. If the very idea of America was invented in Saint-Dié, Sainte-Marie claims special status for having exported to the New World a community which has profoundly coloured the American imagination.

The Amish are an Anabaptist group of fundamentalist Christians, these days primarily associated with Lancaster County in Pennsylvania; they trace their origins back to the Mennonites and other Anabaptist groups who moved from Switzerland to Alsace in the 1650s and 1660s. In 1693, Jakob Ammann, who fretted over the lax ways of the Swiss Mennonites and their evident lack of congregational discipline, led a group which split decisively from the Mennonites to form a new fundamentalist sect, taking the name Amish from Jakob’s surname. The Lièpvrette Valley around Sainte-Marie, richly endowed with silver and other mineral resources, became the heartland of the Amish, where they cultivated an aesthetic tradition which proscribed even the most elementary adornments such as buttons. It were descendants of the Lièpvrette Valley Amish who from 1737, long after the death of Jakob Ammann, moved to Pennsylvania taking with them their prayerful ways and remarkable skills in patchwork quilting — an Alsace speciality that was universally popular with people of all faiths, and a craft which still commands a strong following in the Vosges today.

This is just an excerpt. The full text of this article is not yet available to members with online access to hidden europe. Of course you can read the full article in the print edition of hidden europe 59.
Related articleFull text online

Flint country: stories set in stone

Laurence Mitchell introduces us to the many ways in which flint has shaped the cultural landscape of East Anglia. The distinctive stone that glistens in fields and is ground by the tides on the region’s beaches is used in many of East Anglia’s fine churches. Flint inflects the region’s history.

Related articleFull text online

The Hills of Western Serbia

There are many visions of Yugoslavia's past. Laurence Mitchell visits the hills of western Serbia to learn how heritage and history fuel the imagination. It's a journey that starts and ends in Uzice and takes in the famous Sargan Eight narrow-gauge railway.

Related articleFull text online

Pure theatre: homage to Lake Lucerne

Swiss lakes are in a class of their own. But is there one that just has the edge over the rest? Some may cast their vote for Léman, and others will argue the case for Lugano. But for us it’s Lake Lucerne, where the lake’s unusual vaguely cruciform shape changes a boat journey into pure theatre.