monument aux morts

English translation

The text above is the record as published by the Ministère de la Culture, in French. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Ministère de la Culture; it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

History

As early as September 1919, the municipal council of Morteau decided to erect a monument commemorating the 146 Mortuaciens who fell in combat during the Great War. On 29 October 1920, the commune launched a competition circulated in the press in order to find "as much as possible an original project" and refused any mass-produced monument. On 26 February 1921, the municipal council and the delegation of combatants selected two projects, those of Georges Serraz and of "Guillemot". Then, in March and April, they summoned the families of the victims who selected, upon reading the letters sent by the two artists, the project of Serraz unanimously. On 23 July 1921, a contract was entered into with Georges Serraz artist painter in Dijon and Louis Hertig sculptor in Besançon, for a budget of 32,000 francs. The location chosen was situated at the right angle of the town hall square. On 29 October 1921, it was announced in the press that "the maquette of Georges Serraz" had arrived at the town hall and that it was validated on 9 December. The sources do not allow us to say whether Serraz is the sole designer of the monument, executed afterwards by Hertig or if the two artists worked in collaboration on the project. The monument was inaugurated on 1 November 1922. Georges Serraz (1883-1964) is a Burgundy painter and sculptor trained at the École des Beaux Arts of Besançon. From his demobilisation after the Great War, he devoted himself to sculpture for war memorials (Morteau, Genlis, competition for Verdun), then for religious monuments. He created several monumental statues in concrete: a Christ-King at Les Ouches (Haute-Savoie - 1934), the Virgin of Mas Rillier at Miribel (Ain - 1941), a Christ for the church of the Sacré-cœur of Dijon. He also erected the monument in memory of the resistance fighters of the Châtillon-sur-Seine Forest. In the 1920s-1930s, his studio was located in Paris, boulevard Brune. It was perhaps because of this distance that Serraz collaborated with Hertig to develop the monument of Morteau. Louis Hertig (1880-1958) was born in Besançon, in a family of Swiss and Protestant origin, the sculptor was trained at the École des Beaux-Arts of Besançon. He exhibited at the Salon des artistes français in Paris from 1907, where he obtained a mention in 1923 and received its gold medal in 1937. After the Great War where he was mobilised for Switzerland, he executed numerous war memorials in his studio rue Midol, for communes of the Doubs and Haute-Saône.

Description

The monument of Morteau offers a realistic representation of an assault captured in the manner of a photograph: the high relief represents four poilus of whom three emerge from the trench to go to the front, one screaming, while the fourth lies in the mud. Serraz and Hertig would partly reuse the model of Morteau for a monument inaugurated at Genlis (Côte-d'Or) on 19 April 1925, as well as for a competition opened for the erection of a memorial at Verdun (inaugurated in 1928) where it obtained the 2nd prize. In 1990, the monument was moved a few metres when the town hall square of Morteau was remodelled. The railings had been dismantled before that date.