For a "German" country, Alsace-Lorraine seems to have a great number
of landowners who are French, if one is to judge by the sequestrations
and confiscations with which the authorities have been so desperately
busy for three years.
In fact the local newspapers contain lists of sequestrations that are
almost as long as the lists of deserters.
And these confiscations apply not only to the landowners who live in
France. A large number have been pronounced against inhabitants of
Alsace-Lorraine who live abroad. Orders were given them to reenter the
German Empire, orders they had no possible chance of obeying, but
which gave the imperial government an easy pretext for pronouncing
their denationalization and the confiscation of their property.
Also, the sequestrations followed by sales under the hammer, of French
and Alsatian properties were extremely numerous. Among these
properties there are a certain number of considerable importance.
On the twenty-fourth of August, 1916, _Les Dernieres Nouvelles de
Strasbourg_, advertised the sale under the hammer of the properties of
Prince de Tonnay-Charente, situated at Hambourg and consisting of a
splendid chateau, furnished in Louis Fourteenth style, Gobelin
tapestries of great value, family portraits, green houses, outhouses,
ponds, farms, etc., etc.
The Strassburg _Post_ for the twenty-ninth of October announced the
liquidation sale of Cite Hof, belonging to the heirs of Paul de
Geiger, including "forty-two hectares of fine arable land, fine
dwelling houses, barns and stables, a very fine park, summer houses, a
coach house, etc." ... "of the Villa Huber, with a fine park,
servants' quarters, garden, surrounded by twenty-eight hectares of
fields."
The same paper for the fourth of October announces the sale of the
famous chateau of Robertsau, the property of Mme. Loys-Chandieu, nee
Pourtales, with two hundred and thirty hectares of farm land and one
hundred and thirty hectares of forest.
The _Metzer Zeitung_ for the twentieth of October announced the
liquidation of twenty properties in the Moyeuvre Grande district, and
of eleven in that of Sierek.
Many people have obviously been covetous of these French possessions.
On this subject curious letters and unceasing polemics appeared in the
Alsatian newspapers.
Certain interested persons complained (_Strassburger Post_ for the
third of November) that the time was so short that only the
inhabitants of the country and their immediate neighbors had any
opportunity of profiting by these occasions. They remarked with all
justice that to get the highest prices for these sales there ought to
be a large number of bidders.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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