Patrick Bade
Eiffel Tower: A Symbol of Love

Patrick Bade - Eiffel Tower: A Symbol of Love

- Welcome back to my Paris apartment. I’m in a different room this time because Trudy is occupying the living room, and she asked me to give a talk on a more light-hearted theme to go with Valentine’s Day coming up in two day’s time. So, I thought I would talk about the Eiffel Tower as a symbol of love and as a symbol of hope and optimism. And the picture you see is a view of it from the Trocadero on the other side of the river with, appropriately, a little marble statue of Cupid. Now, the Eiffel Tower is the most visited manmade structure in the world. It gets 6 million visitors every year. And when it was first opened in 1889, it was the tallest manmade structure in the world at 330 metres or 1,083 feet. And it kept that title as the world’s tallest building until 1930 when the Chrysler building was completed in New York. So, here are some characteristic images that emphasise the joy, really, that goes with the Eiffel Tower. This, of course, very famous painting by Chagall of a young married couple floating through the air with a floating Eiffel Tower behind them. And if you go on the internet, you will find thousands of photographs like these. Couples who come from all over the world. I see it all the time down by the Seine on the bridges with the Eiffel Tower in the background. That people come from all over the world to pose in their wedding gear in front of the Eiffel Tower.

And everywhere you look, of course, in Paris, in every tourist shop, on the pavements, you can buy little Eiffel Towers by the thousand. These are actually two photographs I took this morning when I was out with Trudy. Or one on the right was this morning, one this afternoon when we were on the way to the Montmartre Cemetery. And Eiffel Towers come in all forms, in key rings, and fridge magnets, and washing up towels, and socks, and perfume bottles, and liqueur bottles. And I’m sure many of you will remember this famous film, “The Lavender Hill Mob” dating from 1951, where some bank robbers transformed their stolen gold bullion into souvenir Eiffel Towers. Now, the skyline of Paris is dominated by two buildings, the Eiffel Tower and the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur. And for me, these two buildings represent the two Frances. Ever since the French Revolution really, France has been a very divided country. I think more so, much more so than than other countries. There is the France of the Revolution. It’s France of liberty, equality, fraternity, and a belief in positive change and process. And that’s progress, and that’s what the Eiffel Tower represents. But there’s the other France, which is the backward-looking, reactionary, very Catholic France, which has played, I think especially in the history of the Jews, it’s played a rather negative role. Think Dreyfus case, Vichy, and so on. So, the Sacre-Coeur, I mean, these two buildings were being constructed simultaneously.

The Sacre-Coeur took rather longer. It wasn’t actually finished till 1914. But the express intention of the Sacre-Coeur was to expiate the sins of the revolution on a France ever since the French Revolution. So, wherever you go in the city, you see one or other, sometimes both. Here we’re looking from the terrace of Sacre-Coeur towards the Eiffel Tower. I think we have to be in a balloon for this particular one. But we’re hovering somewhere over the opera, looking up to the hill of Montmartre, crowned by the Sacre-Coeur. One place where you can see both, and I recommend it when you come to Paris, is the Pompidou Centre. There is this wonderful transparent cube of an escalator that takes you up to the top of the building, and then you get these amazing views across all of Paris. So, here we are looking towards the Eiffel Tower. You can see on the left, and in the far distance, the the tower blocks of La Defence. And, and just move along a little bit and turn your gaze to the right. And again, you can see Sacre-Coeur at the top of the hill. One of the delights, Paris is a city of vistas. You are constantly astonished by amazing vistas. And either the Eiffel Tower or the Sacre-Coeur is likely to be the climax of many vistas in Paris. And I often feel it’s, it’s like a game of, of peekaboo or hide and seek. You are walking around the cities and you turn this on the left, for instance, you’re walking along the Boulevard des Italiens, you turn the corner, you look left, and suddenly there it is towering above you. A painting by Hermine David on the right hand side, with the same way that the Sacre-Coeur suddenly appears.

This is also by her, actually, this is right beside me. This painting in this, in, in this flat, it’s in this room. It’s a little oil painting by Hermine David from the other side of the hill, from the working class area at the bottom of the hill, looking up towards the Sacre-Coeur. And it can be from near or it can be from far. You can be sitting on a bus and suddenly, whoops, there is the Eiffel Tower yet again. And sometimes, you know, sometimes it’s quite alarming, where suddenly out of nowhere, it’s absolutely towering over you. This is the photograph I took recently across the Place de la Concorde on a day where the clouds were very low. You can see the clouds actually cut off the top of the, the Eiffel Tower, which is disappearing in the, into the mist. Now, the Eiffel Tower was conceived to be the centrepiece of the World Exhibition, Exposition Universelle of 1889. These great exposition were a big feature of the 19th century. The very first one was London 1851, and the Crystal Palace was, was constructed for that. It’s one of the most ground-breaking structures. First great structure made out of industrially, mass-produced elements of iron and glass. The French wanted to get in on the act, and they had their first World Exhibition, 1855. Then this is the 1867 Paris World Exhibition. The 1889 one was a bit different because it was commemorating the centenary of the French Revolution. Now, it’s world famous as the Eiffel Tower. And this is Monsieur Eiffel, who was a, a very famous, one of the most, the greatest, most innovative engineers of the 19th century. But he didn’t actually conceive the idea of the tower. He didn’t actually design it. It was actually two designers in his office who came up with the idea. And they went to him. And actually, initially he wasn’t all that keen. It took some convincing to get him to commit to the idea of building the Eiffel Tower.

Of course, he’d done a, a mini Eiffel Tower just three years earlier in New York. Inside the Statue of Liberty, there is an iron Eiffel Tower that is the armature that holds up the statue. So, the foundations were laid in 1887. I love these kind of photographs where you can… The engineers are, are of course, middle-class. So, you can see they’re all wearing top hats. You identified, everybody wore a hat in the 19th century. Nobody went out without a hat on. And you could identify what class somebody came from. The workers are wearing berets or other kinds of hats, and the bourgeois are wearing the top hats. Here we see it getting going. Took, so two years, or more than two years actually, from 1887 to 1889. Here we can see it climbing up into the, the sky. As it was being built, a lot of people were horrified. They thought it was hideously ugly and not a positive addition to the Paris skyline. And in fact, there was a public letter signed by numerous, distinguished artists, including Charles Garnier, the architect of the opera. The painters, the painter, Bouguereau. The writer, Guy de Maupassant. The composers Meissonier and Gounod. They all protested. They said, “What is this hideous thing? We do not want it.” The final opening was delayed because the French didn’t have the technology for the lifts to go to the upper floors. Eiffel was very keen that everything in this structure should be French.

So, he resisted, but eventually he was forced to, to apply to the American firm of Otis. They came in at the last minute and they provide, provided these, I think, slightly scary looking lifts that took people to the upper floors of the structure. Now, as I said, the Eiffel Tower was meant to commemorate the French Revolution and above all, the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Trudy and I were looking at this very object on the right hand side this morning in the Musee Carnavalet. A very important document in the history of the the Western world. So, the whole point of the Eiffel Tower, it was, it was celebrating the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It was meant also to anticipate what they thought would be such a wonderful century coming up, that all man’s problems would be solved by progress, and industry. There’d be no more poverty. Everybody would love each other. We’d all be brothers. This was what the, the Eiffel Tower was meant to symbolise. So, the Eiffel Tower was… The first people to go up it were in March, 1889. It was officially opened to the public once the lifts had been installed in May. But in April, in between those two things, a baby was born in Austria, at Braunau. Here we have him, Adolf Hitler. And this baby ensured that the Eiffel Tower would not fulfil its promise of happiness and progress in the 20th century, and the brotherhood of man. Hitler did come to see it. He saw it. He, he paid a brief visit for a few hours on the 23rd of June, 1940, after the fall of Paris.

We see him here accompanied by Albert Speer on the left hand side, and the sculptor Arno Breker on the right hand side. He never went up the Eiffel Tower because the custodians of the Eiffel Tower, anticipating his visit, sabotaged the lifts. And so, but like any tourist today, of course, Hitler felt the need to pose in front of the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower was never meant to be a permanent structure. Most of the great structures of the great exhibitions were dismantled. And there was a, another great exhibition for Paris projected for the year 1900. And the Eiffel Tower would certainly have been dismantled to make way for new structures for that exhibition, if it were not for this man you see top right. This is Marconi. He is the inventor of radio. So, it was in the late 1890s. He first made his first successful radio transmissions, and they worked best from very high places. So, throughout this period, of course, there is always in the background the idea of revenge on Germany. The French wanted to get back Alsace-Lorraine, they wanted to revenge their defeat of 1870. So those all… The military are very influential. And the military realised the potential of the Eiffel Tower as a radio transmitter. And for that reason alone, the Eiffel Tower was not demolished. It was kept. The first great artist to paint it was George Seurat. This was actually painted before, while it was being constructed, before it was complete, You can see the top is not yet there. It’s actually a tiny painting, but exquisite. A shimmering, scintillating, dazzling, little picture, which is in the Museum of the Legion of Honour in San Francisco.

Shortly afterwards, you have the naive, inverted commas, “artist,” Henri Rousseau painting, you can see here, the Eiffel Tower and the Palais du Trocadero on the right hand side, which was also built for the… Actually, that was built for the 1878 World Exhibition. And of course, Chagall, who this is paint, this dates from 1913. And you can see Chagall himself in the bottom right hand corner as a kind of Janus figure. He’s looking in two opposite directions. And I think that is what he, he expresses his situation. He loved Paris. Paris, he was enabled to become a great artist through being in Paris and through discovering Cubism and, Fauvism, and so on. But of course, he was longing to go back to his long suffering, faithful fiance Bella in Vietbsk. He was about to do that. He did that the following year. So, you can see him looking backwards and forwards with the Eiffel Tower in the background. The artist who was perhaps most obsessed with the Eiffel Tower was Robert Delaunay. And throughout his progress to maturity as an artist in the years before the first World War, he repeatedly returned to the theme of the Eiffel Tower. You could make a lovely little exhibition, actually, entirely made up of images of the Eiffel Tower by Roberto Delaunay, following his development from this picture, which is a sort of Fauve picture, I suppose, with its brilliant, pure colours. And, and then you see the Eiffel Tower going through various stages of Cubism and eventually ending up, ending up very close to Abstraction. I mean, you have to know this, this image is inspired by the Eiffel Tower.

You wouldn’t necessarily guess it. Moving on to the 1920s, and this is the high point of the Ecole de Paris, this is Raoul Dufy, a former Fauve artist, very decorative, rather, sort of deco in a way. And the wonderful Hermine David, I’m kind of squeezing her into every lecture I do at the moment because she’s my fave rave as an artist. At this, this particular picture belongs to one of our listeners, Ron Bornstein, who’s a very distinguished collector. And he was incredibly lucky to find this at a, I have to say, indiscreetly, at an incredibly low price at a little gallery in the Passage in Paris just last year. And I’m going to show you now, some song covers. These, I’m surrounded by them in this flat. They’re very easy to pick up in flea markets for a tiny price, for a few euros, sometimes even one euro. All the popular songs from the early 1900s up to the 1950s. People would want to sing them. They want to play them on their pianos at home. And so these song sheets were produced and there are many, many songs about Paris and they nearly always have images of the Eiffel Tower on the cover. So these, this is a delightful way to collect images of the Eiffel Tower. Onto the post-war. Post First World War period, 1921. Ballets Suedois were for two or three seasons, a serious rival to the Ballet Russes of Diaghilev. The same idea really is to make ballet into an of, a meeting of music, poetry, the visual arts, and this spectacle called “Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel.” The Married Ones of the Eiffel Tower was conceived by Jean Cocteau, and he recruited five of the group of six.

They were a group of composers that were very much under his influence. And you can see the names at the bottom. Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, Tailleferre. Durey was the only one who didn’t contribute to this ballet. It’s kind of wonderful, surreal ballet with Cocteau himself narrating through a horn, as you can see. Another great exhibition, but not an Exposition Universelle. This is the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs that took place in Paris in 1925, and it was really intended to reassert French hegemony in design and the decorative arts. And many years later, the term Art Deco, wasn’t actually coined until 1970s, was, it was coined from a contraction of Exposition des Arts Decoratifs. And you can see that for this, the Eiffel Tower was decorated with a wonderful display of, a very Art Deco display of lights. It still, Eiffel Tower to this day is used in this way. It’s, it’s lit up at night in all sorts of different ways. Then onto the next, the last Great World Exhibition of, in Paris, which was in 1937. And you can see from this poster that the, the Eiffel Tower is still very central to the whole idea of the exhibition. It’s mainly remembered today as the last hurrah of peace in the interwar period. The Eiffel Tower there kind of being a kind of intermediary between the bitter enemies of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, and put Soviet pavilion on the right hand side. And the Nazi pavilion designed by Albert Speer on the left. And Hitler had his spies in Russia and he managed to get hold of the designs, the plans of the Soviet pavilion. And he immediately instructed Speer to double the height of his pavilion so that it would tower over the the Soviet pavilion.

So here we are now, I think I’ve shown you this image before. This is a fashion shoot that was made in the summer of 1939. So, immediately before the outbroke of war, this was a shoot for the couturier Lucien Lelong with a very brave, young model swinging from the Eiffel Tower. And then of course, the disaster of French collapse in May, 1940 with the German armies bypassing the Maginot Line, sweeping through Holland and Belgium, and arriving in Paris in June, 1940. And this visit that I’ve mentioned before of Hitler on the 23rd of June, 1940 and the, the Eiffel Tower was, you know, such an important symbol because it must have been extremely humiliating for Parisians to look up at their beloved Eiffel Tower and see “Deutschland Sieft Auf Allen Fronten.” So, Germany is winning on all fronts, It was hanging from the Eiffel Tower during the occupation. I’m sure you all know this story. You’ve probably heard it from all of us in different forms of what happened in Paris in June, 1940 with the vast majority of the population fleeing from the city in chaos. It was the, the, Paris that Hitler came to was a completely deserted city. And then when things settled down and the armistice was signed, people gradually filtered back and life to a large extent, for most people, at least, if you were not Jewish or communist, returned to normal. And people wanted that. That’s what they really wanted. And so this is Mistinguett, she was of course, the queen of the Paris Musical Hall, an adored performer already of a certain age by this time. And she’d been around since the 1890s and she returned to Paris for, sorry, I’m just going to shut the door here.

She, she returned to Paris in triumph for a great review at the Casino to Paris called “Toujours Paris,” Always Paris. And the hit number of it was a song called, “La Tour Eiffel Est Toujours La.” The Eiffel Tower is already there. And you can see from the words she’s, she’s singing, “Paris, my Paris, you’ve changed your, your physionomy. You are much calmer than you used to be. The, the taxis have disappeared from the Avenue du Bois and the women are, are wearing wooden shoes as they walk up and down the pavements, clacking,” and so on and so on. But the refrain of this is, “La Tour Eiffel est toujours la,” and of course, if the Eiffel Tower is always there, then that is very reassuring.

♪ Paris, mon Paris ♪ ♪ T'as changé de physionomie ♪ ♪ Tes rues sont calmes et tes taxis ♪ ♪ Sont à la retraite ♪ ♪ Dans l'avenue du Bois ♪ ♪ Les femmes avec leurs souliers de bois, ♪ ♪ Quand elles marchent sur les pavés de bois ♪ ♪ Font des claquettes ♪ ♪ Mais tonne ciel est toujours aussi léger ♪ ♪ Pour moi tonne coeur n'a pas changé ♪ ♪ Pour le voir il suffit je crois, ♪ ♪ De regarder autour de soi ♪ ♪ La tour Eiffel est toujours là ♪ ♪ Bonjour la Tour ♪ ♪ Bonjour bonjour Paris ♪ ♪ Y a des pigeons sur l'Opéra ♪ ♪ Et y a toujours deux tours à Notre-Dame ♪ ♪ La Seine est encore dans son lit ♪ ♪ Et le pont Neuf n'a pas vieilli ♪ ♪ Sur les bancs du Luxembourg ♪ ♪ On fait toujours des serments d'amour ♪ ♪ Y a d’ l'espoir mesdames ♪ ♪ La tour Eiffel est là ♪

• Another very poignant song, of course, inspired by the fall of Paris was “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” It was in fact, Oscar Hammerstein, was so moved and upset by newsreel film of Germans in Paris that he spontaneously wrote the words for this song. And he took it to Jerome Kern, who also was so moved by the situation that he was inspired to I think, write one of his most poignant and lovely songs. And you can see in this… Actually, I’m not sure that it is American, I think this might be a British publication. Turner Layton. But the cover you can see shows the, the Eiffel Tower. This is a little watercolour drawing that I bought a few years ago in the Passage in Paris that I find incredibly poignant. It’s initialled, but I haven’t managed to identify the artist. And it’s dated, and it’s dated 1942. Of course ‘42 was really the beginning of the darkest time of the occupation with the roundup of the, the Parisian Jews. And with hardships really beginning, the shortages of food and fuel and so on, really beginning to bite. So, it was a very gloomy time. And so for me, this, this watercolour has a lot of meaning. It you are, you are half, you are in the north of Paris. You are halfway up the hill of Montmartre and looking towards the Eiffel Tower. And I hope you can see it just, just, you can just see the, the, the through the mist, the shape of the Eiffel Tower, which offers you this little trace of hope in this, at this very, very dark time. And then of course, liberation of Paris in August, 1944 and here are GIs. And everybody, of course, wants to be photographed in front of the Eiffel Tower. And again, there are songs of the period that celebrate the, the liberation of Paris and the arrival of the Allies in Paris. And ooh, this is going to be a rather short lecture I think. But anyway, at least there’s plenty of time to answer questions at the end. And as I said last time, if you’ve saved up any questions from last time, I’ll try and answer them now. But I want to finish with a beautiful celebration of the Paris that we all love. So, this is Ella Fitzgerald singing about her love for Paris.

♪ Every time I look down ♪ ♪ On this timeless town ♪ ♪ Whether blue or grey be her skies ♪ ♪ Whether loud be her cheers ♪ ♪ Or whether soft be her tears ♪ ♪ More and more do I realise ♪ ♪ That ♪ ♪ I love Paris ♪ ♪ In the springtime ♪ ♪ I love Paris ♪ ♪ In the fall ♪ ♪ I love Paris ♪ ♪ In the winter ♪ ♪ When it drizzles ♪ ♪ I love Paris ♪ ♪ In the summer ♪ ♪ When it sizzles ♪ ♪ I love Paris ♪ ♪ Every moment ♪ ♪ Every moment ♪ ♪ Of the year ♪ ♪ I love Paris ♪ ♪ Why oh why do I love Paris? ♪ ♪ Because my love is near ♪

• Right. Well, let’s see what you have to say.

Q&A and Comments:

I’m glad you liked that opening photo. It’s perfect, wasn’t it? I wish you, I do actually have a wonderful view from my window. It’s really amazing. I always feel I’m in a, a Hitchcock movie because I can see directly into an Art Deco office building opposite and all night long I can see, you know, strange movements and going on.

Certainly yes, the Eiffel Tower is a very expensive building to, to keep up. And that, that just recently I read an article about the enormous amount of money that’s going to be needed to, to protect it.

I don’t who that art, it’s a neoclassical sculpture, very much in the style of Canova. but I’m not sure if it is by him. The building is in, it is the musee, it’s the Cite de l'architecture, and it’s in the Trocadero.

The names of the engineers, I’ve got them written down here, who actually designed it were Maurice Koechlin, and Emile Nouguier.

Yes, that’s true. Eiffel was principally, he’s very famous for his bridges. That’s true. Yeah, thank you.

Somebody else has written in Emile Nouguier and Maurice Koechlin. It was their idea. It should really be called the, the, the, The Koechlin Nouguier Tower rather than the Eiffel Tower.

Q: Why was the Eiffel Tower not bombed?

A: Well, cause Hitler wanted it to be destroyed. He, he gave in his instructions for the destruction of Paris to General von Cholitz, it was specifically singled out for destruction. Because once the Germans had it before the end of the war, there was no reason for them to destroy it. There could have been a reason for the Allies to destroy it because of its possible use, military use, for broadcasting. But I don’t think they would ever have contemplated that. The, the symbol, symbolism of it would’ve been absolutely disastrous to do that.

Question regarding my command line while after, if you… would the Communists? Yes. Well, of course the, the communists had already been rounded up, were in concentration camps in Germany well before the war. Yes. The, the, the, it was, and of course Vichy was very against communists as well. So it was still, it was, it would’ve been a very bad time to be openly communist.

Let me see where… Great photos of GIs in front of the Eiffel Tower. I don’t know who took that actually. And… yes, of course.

Rick saying, I mean, you, you should, the number of times that Trudy quotes that, that to me, I wish I had a, you know, a hot meal for every time that Trudy has quoted Casablanca to me.

Q: Thank you, Rita. But the question from last time, how did Durer paint the hare?

A: Yes, it’s so meticulous. I, I suspect the hare was probably dead even though he made it look alive.

Thank you, Carla. School of Paris I mentioned in regard to Dufy.

Did the French artist Jen Paul also of the… that I don’t know. I can’t answer you. I’d have to look that up.

Interesting. I’d love to see your fantastic photographs of Hanukkah at the Eiffel Tower.

Please talk about Durer’s Magic Square. I don’t think I can actually. I thought there might be a more romantic story, like the Taj Mahal. Yeah, I’m sure there are many, many romantic stories about the, the, the Eiffel Tower.

Thank you, Dennis. The evil baby born in 1889. Yes, isn’t that fantastic? Isn’t it incredible to think that Hitler and Charlie Chaplin were born in the same week? And I don’t know what that says about star signs really.

Margaret. Yes, you first went there in 1958. I first went there in 1963. Have very vivid memories of that.

Yes, Ron, that’s true. Because Cole Porter had a lifelong love affair with, with Paris. And that, as you say, comes from can-can, so, it’s quite late in in his career. It’s, I, I know that the, the, the Eiffel Tower is currently in quite a pile of state, structurally, and that a lot of money is going to have to be spent on it. Pre-Eiffel, but still Paris La Traviata I’m not quite sure what the connection is there.

I then, I know the name Jen Paul. I’m going to look up, I, I actually can’t picture what the pictures are like for the moment. Yes, Trudy, she’s in the next room to me. We had a wonderful day today. You, we had such a good onion soup for lunch. And we’re going out for a wonderful dinner at the Terminus Nord.

Right. Thank you all very, very much. And I’ll be back, we’ll be back to Germany, of course, but still a very jolly lecture, my next one. It’s about German Baroque and Rococo architecture, so, it’s not a depressing lecture. It will be an, an uplifting one, I hope. Thank you all very, very much. Bye-bye.