the Palace of Versailles traces its German occupation

The Palace of Versailles and its park as we have never seen them. In the gardens and around the dry grand canal, the statues are concealed under heaps of sandbags or protected by wooden cages; the castle is deprived of light, the windows being all obstructed by planks. Inside, it’s desolation: the woodwork lining the walls and the bronze decorations have been dismantled, the crystal chandeliers, the furniture, the master paintings have disappeared. On the roof, a Nazi flag flutters in the wind.

These images, rarely or never seen, of the estate of Versailles during the German Occupation, illustrate an exciting documentary web series available from September 3 on the establishment’s website. Produced with the scientific support of art historian Claire Bonnotte, the series is enriched with original photographic archives, extracts from newsreels of the time, personal letters, administrative exchanges and ‘Press articles. The actor Denis Podalydès lends his voice to the commentary of the four episodes which, in about ten minutes each, retrace the tumultuous history of the castle during the Second World War.

A poorly documented period on which the researcher was brought to work after the discovery in 2005 of an archive, until then remained unexploited, containing a batch of letters from Gaston Brière (1871-1962). Former chief curator of the castle, he was in charge, during the occupation, of the deposit of the castle of Brissac (Maine-et-Loire) where works of Versailles were transferred before the arrival of the Germans. “The discovery of these documents which shed light on what happened during this period inside the castle and how the works were protected, created an electric shock in me, says the historian. I wanted to know more, I looked for the answers to these letters, went to investigate in Germany. A quest that occupied me for seventeen years! »

His work resulted in a book, The eclipsed Sun. The Palace of Versailles under the Occupation (Vendémiaire, co-edition Palace of Versailles, 2018), which, supplemented by the testimony left by Pierre Ladoué, curator between 1939 and 1941, And Versailles was saved. 1939-1941 (Ed. Henri Lefebvre, 1960), serves as the basis for the web series. The majority of the images come from the château’s archives, to which are added documents from the National Library of France, private collections, or even the Roger-Viollet agency. Photographs were recovered by the historian in Germany, the Nazi soldiers having photographed and filmed themselves a lot in the residence of the Sun King.

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