“I had, and continue to hold, the deepest personal conviction that the only form of Democracy suitable to France is the Empire.” 1
—GEORGES EUGÈNE HAUSSMANN
Following the treaty of Westphalia in 1864 that concluded the Thirty Years’ War with its hardened religious divisions of the Holy Roman Empire, the Haussmanns, as Protestants, had fled Cologne. Eventually establishing themselves outside Colmar in French Alsace in the last half of the eighteenth century, this industrious family established a large factory manufacturing printed cotton cloth. One brother of this family, Nicolas, the grandfather of Prefect Haussmann, was the first to become a naturalized French citizen. Settling in Versailles during the Revolution of 1789, he became a deputy in the National Assembly and the Convention. Charged with the administration of the Department of Seine and Oise, he also served as a commissioner—war contractor—for the First Republic’s armies of the Rhineland and the North. Retiring with a substantial fortune, he acquired a large estate at Chaville (between Versailles and St. Cloud), where his grandson, the future prefect, was to spend most of his first seven years.
Twice the outsiders—as Germans and Lutherans—all the Haussmanns, including grandson Georges, consciously spent their lives proving their loyalty to the French people and the government of the day. Like the grandfather, his son, Nicolas Valentin Haussmann, also served with the army as a government war contractor and later as a military intendant. Unemployed during the Bourbon Restoration, 1815–1830, he resumed his work under the July Monarchy, serving under Louis Philippe in France and Algeria, retiring with the fall of his government in 1848.2
In 1806, Nicolas Valentin married into another German Lutheran family, the Dentzels. His bride, Eve Marie Caroline, was the daughter of a most unusual, highly decorated army officer. Born at Bad Dürkheim in 1855, Georges Frederic Dentzel had begun his career as a Lutheran pastor, moving to France, where he served first as a Protestant army chaplain under French Bourbon colors with Rochambeau in support of General Washington during the American Revolution. With the fall of Louis XVI, Dentzel continued, but in a military capacity under the French revolutionary flag. Exchanging the pulpit for a commission in the army under Emperor Napoléon, he participated as a soldier in the Prussian and Austrian campaigns, when Bonaparte appointed him military governor of Vienna. After surviving the Russian campaign of 1812, Dentzel went on to fight at Dresden and in Spain, where he was twice wounded and rewarded with a peerage as a baron and the Legion of Honor. Brigadier General Dentzel served on Napoléon’s staff to the very end, then retired to Versailles. Dentzel’s other son, Louis, also served with Napoléon as a lieutenant colonel until 1815. “Following the catastrophe of Waterloo, everyone in the family came home, including my uncle, Colonel Dentzel, his arm smashed by a musket ball,” Georges Haussmann recalled. “But no member of the family welcomed the return of the Bourbons, and Louis Dentzel was obliged to leave the country, going to Greece, where he was killed in battle fighting the Turks.”3
In the meantime, Nicolas Valentin and Caroline had produced a family, including the future prefect of the Seine, Georges Eugène Haussmann, born in Paris on March 27, 1809—at a time when his father was serving under Prince Eugène de Beauharnais, who acted as the boy’s godfather, hence the boy’s middle name. At the age of eight, Georges was sent to a new, very progressive boarding school for the aristocracy at Bagneux, some ten kilometers due south of Paris. There he was fortunate enough to be brought under the sway of the school’s brilliant director and oratorian, M. Legal.
The school was dedicated to the traditional classical education based on Greek and Latin culture, along with the usual courses in geography, mathematics, languages, drawing, fencing, gymnastics, and riding. The musically talented boy sang in the choir and studied the violin and cello. In his spare evening hours, he took special courses in physics, chemistry, biology, and astronomy. He had a simply unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Despite his very real adoration of both grandfathers, Georges Haussmann was never to demonstrate any interest whatsoever in either the military or politics. Although spending only two years at this prep school, his time there certainly disciplined his mind and helped shape his future studies, interests, and attitude toward life.
At the age of eleven, the precocious Georges was enrolled in the capital’s elite Collège Henri IV (formerly the Imperial Lycée, and today’s Lycée Condorcet). There he resumed his passion for learning and “immediately became head of my class,” where he remained. Although not gratuitously boastful, on the other hand Haussmann was never known for his modesty.4 There he resumed a classical curriculum, in addition to music, drawing, and fencing. He also audited courses at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France, including philosophy, differential calculus, chemistry, and physics. As student Haussmann put it, “One can cram a great many things into a schedule beginning at six a.m. and lasting until midnight, and beyond.”5
For this energetic prodigy and polymath, that did not suffice. He played the cello in the college orchestra, while concurrently taking courses at the Paris Conservatoire in harmony, counterpoint, and composition from the director of the conservatory himself, Luigi Cherubini. It was “composition” that most attracted him however. Every sonata had to have three well-balanced movements, every symphonic work the prescribed four. He did not agree with the free new romantic compositions of his friend and fellow student Hector Berlioz, preferring instead the reliable traditional works of Bach, Handel, and Haydn.6 Well-defined and balanced composition was everything. His well-rounded studies and disciplined mind, reinforced by his Protestant work ethic, were to help shape, formulate, and dictate his approach to the great work facing him in the future when prefect of the Seine.
Meanwhile the Collège Henri IV attracted not only the best academic students, but the sons of politically prominent families as well, including Haussmann’s new classmates, Auguste and Charles, the sons of Louis Philippe’s prime minister, Casimir-Pierre Perier, as well as that king’s eldest son, the Duke of Chartres (later Duke of Orléans), and his younger brother, the Duke of Nemours. Moreover, as one of the several industries in the hands of the wealthy Casimir-Perier family included the manufacture of printed cotton cloth, the name of Haussmann was already well known to them. All these contacts were shortly to aid Georges Haussmann’s early career. In addition, other friends, including Gabriel Boucher, his closest friend (future secretary-librarian to Louis Philippe, and senator during the Third Republic), Ferdinand Le Roy (a future prefect in his own right who later under Prefect Haussmann served as his director of the Caisse des Travaux de Paris), and Ferdinand de Lesseps’s brother, Jules. 7
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“No sooner had I completed my studies [at the age of seventeen] with my Bachelier ès Lettres behind me, than I enrolled in the School of Law.” There he concentrated on courses dealing with real estate and property contracts, mortgages, marriage contracts, inheritance, testaments, etc., all of which he would put to good use after 1853 during his prefectorial career. “With a good memory, I found my studies easy and painless.” He passed his third year in law still at the top of his class before going on to the final two years’ work, on his doctoral thesis.8 Fully grown now, he was very tall and sturdy after his frequent swims, fencing, and long walks.
On completion of his thesis at the École de Droit, Georges Haussmann had to decide on a career. Rejecting an army commission and a private law practice, “with my final diploma in hand I returned to the Duke d’Orléans to declare myself ready to enter the State administration.”9
The Duke d’Orléans tried to dissuade him, but King Louis Philippe had the new prime minister, Casimir-Pierre Perier, step in, “who then summoned me. He already knew me [through his sons] as well as my family [in Colmar as business associates].” And thus Georges Haussmann’s career in the French civil service was launched. “I was now attached as Secretary General of the Prefecture of Vienne [at Poitiers].” He never regretted his choice, and his career never looked back.10 Over the following twenty-two years he was to hold posts from the Var to the Gironde, during which he proved an exceptionally able, dedicated, and firm administrator, one not afraid to apply the authority of his office and the state to achieve his goals.
Nevertheless, the rapid promotion he had expected was checked for many years after the premature death of Premier Casimir-Perier, followed by the accidental death of Georges’s classmate, the Duke of Orléans, in a freak traffic accident in 1842. Meanwhile when still a deputy prefect in 1838, Haussmann met and married Octavie de La Harpe, of a prosperous Swiss Protestant family that owned a large estate and vineyards near Bordeaux. If hardly a love match, it was to prove a generally satisfying marriage, despite long periods of separation.
By 1853, a professionally disappointed Haussmann, modestly wealthy through his own family and his wife’s, had been in service for more than two decades and was beginning to think about concluding his career as prefect of the Gironde in a few years’ time. He was well known and well established in this region and anticipating marriages for his two daughters, when, on June 23, 1853, while dining with his deputy-prefect, a government courier arrived with a “telegram” from Interior Minister Persigny informing him that he had just been selected for the senior prefectureship of the country, that of the Seine. “This dispatch that I had just received not only took me aback, but more than that, caused me some anxiety.… Nothing had prepared me for this [new] nomination.” But the arrival of a second telegram from Persigny, informing him that Louis Napoléon was personally nominating him to his post, ended any possible hesitation on Haussmann’s part. In fact, he was immensely pleased, unlike his wife, who later wished to remain at Bordeaux. The prefecture of the French capital, however, was the jewel in the crown, the supreme quest.11
The following week, on the morning of the twenty-ninth, dressed in the state blue-and-silver-encrusted state uniform as prefect, Georges Haussmann alighted from his carriage and entered the sprawling splendor of the St. Cloud Palace. “From the vestibule I was led up the escalier d’honneur, the formal staircase, up to the first floor, through the great antechamber and the adjoining salons. Passing the Gobelins tapestries representing the Marriage of Henri IV and Marie de Médicis, we continued as far as the billiards room,” where a ministerial meeting was drawing to a close. “[Minister of the Interior] de Persigny then came out to lead us into the Audience Chamber where Louis Napoléon was standing. On seeing me he came over to tell me how pleased he was to be able to offer me a post to which he attached such exceptional importance during the present circumstances.” Persigny then assembled all the other newly nominated prefects and read out the oath: “Do you swear to uphold the Constitution and to be loyal to the Emperor?” “As the emperor took my right hand pressing it between his, I replied: ‘I swear it.’ I was now well and truly the Prefect of the Seine!”12
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Later on, Haussmann was surprised by the apparent cordiality of the interior minister, his new boss: “M. de Persigny welcomed me more warmly than I had been led to expect.” Little did he realize, however, what this same devious Gilbert Persigny was really thinking of him, as that interior minister’s Mémoires reveal. “I had before me one of those most robust and vigorous types, at once wily and crafty, resourceful and audacious,” a defensive Persigny began. “So self-assured about his own importance and accomplishments, this man went on to relate the full story of his career to date, and would have continued on about himself for another six hours if I had let him.… What a strange personality he revealed … underlined by a sort of brutal cynicism, so that I could not wait to see this animal of the big game variety thrown into the [political] arena against other men of equal ambition.”13 Little did Prefect Haussmann realize what hostile forces—both in Louis Napoléon’s ranks, and those outside—lay before him. Fortunately for him, Persigny would soon be replaced there.
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Following the ceremony and a reception by the ministers who had just emerged from the cabinet meeting—Saint-Arnaud, Ducos, Abbatucci, Magne, Drouyn de Lhys, and Fould—“the Emperor introduced me to the Empress,” as they were shown into the dining room. “Did you know that my uncle, Prince Eugène, was his [Haussmann’s] godfather?” Louis Napoléon informed Eugénie, “just as he was yours.” Haussmann added that “a general in her [his wife’s] family serving with the French army was killed while fighting in Italy, and his bust still stood in the Hall of Marshalls.” After asking the new prefect a few more questions about his family background, Louis Napoléon nodded, satisfied. “It’s quite true, you are Alsatian by origin.” A true sign of approval.14
It was clear that the two men had taken to each other and delighted at finding things that mutually reinforced this feeling. This was further strengthened when Louis Napoléon learned of Haussmann’s German ancestry and that he spoke German as well, the language of Louis Napoléon’s nostalgic school days in Augsburg. For personal friendships Napoléon III always reserved a special place for Italians and fellow Carbonari, while for serious posts in the government he felt a special confidence in those with German roots.
“After lunch the Emperor took me down to his [ground floor] office,” informing him that he would be given an entirely free hand in his work. In fact there would soon be no ministerial intermediaries; he would be responsible directly to him and him alone. And then Louis Napoléon came to the purpose of this visit. “The Emperor was anxious to show me a map of Paris on which he had traced blue, red, yellow and green lines, each color indicating the priority of the work anticipated.”15 Only when he had explained the meaning of those lines and what they were to encompass did Georges Haussmann begin to grasp the enormity of the project that lay in store for him. As prefect he was expected to rebuild the entire central heart of the French capital, in the course of which gutting and clearing hundreds of acres of medieval buildings and ancient narrow streets, while replacing them with modern structures, driving through spacious new boulevards, while not forgetting the introduction of the city’s entirely new sewage and freshwater systems. He was simply staggered. Although he had always been considered a brilliant student, hard worker, and efficient prefect, even for a Haussmann, this work would prove the most daunting challenge of his life. In addition, he would be responsible for the normal demanding administrative duties of running Paris, as the office of the prefect also comprised that of mayor of the capital.
Nor could he possibly foresee how this would evolve into a close daily working relationship with Napoléon III, one extending far beyond the formal official work. Indeed a relationship of trust and responsibility was to develop, resulting in Louis Napoléon depending heavily on Prefect Haussmann’s judgment over the next sixteen and a half years. No other official of his senior rank in the government, apart from Achille Fould, was to hold such a position continuously throughout the Second Empire. Georges Haussmann, for his part, genuinely respected the emperor and his office, and would work faithfully to serve them both to the utmost of his very considerable ability. The final product, an entirely new Paris, would reflect their mutual dedication. There was in fact probably not another single individual in the whole of Paris with Haussmann’s sweeping intelligence, splendid education, drive, integrity, indomitable spirit, determination, and sheer dedication capable of tackling this unique and most forbidding task.