Departments of France
In the administrative divisions of France, the department is one of the three levels of government below the national level, between the administrative regions and the commune. Ninety-six departments are in metropolitan France, five are overseas departments, which are classified as regions. Departments are further subdivided into 334 arrondissements, themselves divided into cantons; each department is administered by an elected body called a departmental council. From 1800 to April 2015, these were called general councils; each council has a president. Their main areas of responsibility include the management of a number of social and welfare allowances, of junior high school buildings and technical staff, local roads and school and rural buses, a contribution to municipal infrastructures. Local services of the state administration are traditionally organised at departmental level, where the prefect represents the government; the departments were created in 1790 as a rational replacement of Ancien Régime provinces with a view to strengthen national unity.
All of them were named after physical geographical features, rather than after historical or cultural territories which could have their own loyalties. The division of France into departments was a project identified with the French revolutionary leader the Abbé Sieyès, although it had been discussed and written about by many politicians and thinkers; the earliest known suggestion of it is from 1764 in the writings of d'Argenson. They have inspired similar divisions in some of them former French colonies. Most French departments are assigned a two-digit number, the "Official Geographical Code", allocated by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques. Overseas departments have a three-digit number; the number is used, for example, in the postal code, was until used for all vehicle registration plates. While residents use the numbers to refer to their own department or a neighbouring one, more distant departments are referred to by their names, as few people know the numbers of all the departments.
For example, inhabitants of Loiret might refer to their department as "the 45". In 2014, President François Hollande proposed to abolish departmental councils by 2020, which would have maintained the departments as administrative divisions, to transfer their powers to other levels of governance; this reform project has since been abandoned. The first French territorial departments were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René d'Argenson to serve as administrative areas purely for the Ponts et Chaussées infrastructure administration. Before the French Revolution, France gained territory through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the close of the Ancien Régime, it was organised into provinces. During the period of the Revolution, these were dissolved in order to weaken old loyalties; the modern departments, as all-purpose units of the government, were created on 4 March 1790 by the National Constituent Assembly to replace the provinces with what the Assembly deemed a more rational structure.
Their boundaries served two purposes: Boundaries were chosen to break up France's historical regions in an attempt to erase cultural differences and build a more homogeneous nation. Boundaries were set so that every settlement in the country was within a day's ride of the capital of a department; this was a security measure, intended to keep the entire national territory under close control. This measure was directly inspired by the Great Terror, during which the government had lost control of many rural areas far from any centre of government; the old nomenclature was avoided in naming the new departments. Most were named after other physical features. Paris was in the department of Seine. Savoy became the department of Mont-Blanc; the number of departments 83, had been increased to 130 by 1809 with the territorial gains of the Republic and of the First French Empire. Following Napoleon's defeats in 1814–1815, the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size and the number of departments was reduced to 86.
In 1860, France acquired the County of Nice and Savoy, which led to the creation of three new departments. Two were added from the new Savoyard territory, while the department of Alpes-Maritimes was created from Nice and a portion of the Var department; the 89 departments were given numbers based on the alphabetical order of their names. The department of Bas-Rhin and parts of Meurthe, Moselle and Haut-Rhin were ceded to the German Empire in 1871, following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. A small part of Haut-Rhin became known as the Territoire de Belfort; when France regained the ceded departments after World War I, the Territoire de Belfort was not re-integrated into Haut-Rhin. In 1922, it became France's 90th department; the Lorraine departments were not changed back to their original boundaries, a new Moselle department was created in the regaine
France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Charles Hueber
Charles Hueber was an Alsatian politician. He was the mayor of Strasbourg between 1929 and 1935, a member of the French National Assembly twice. Hueber became involved in political struggles at a young age. In 1900 he founded the Alsatian section of the Metal Workers Trade Union. In 1910 he became the secretary of the Social Democratic Party branch in Alsace-Lorraine, he fought in the German Army during World War I, became a sergeant. During the revolutionary upsurge of 1918, Hueber acted as the chairman of the Strasbourg Soldiers CouncilAt the end of the war, Hueber argued in favour of the creation of an independent, neutral Alsatian state. During the December 1920 Congress of Tours, Hueber and a several other Alsatian delegates supported the call to form a French Communist Party. A month he founded the communist newspaper Die Neue Welt. Hueber became the most prominent figure of the Communist Party in Alsace, he became the editor of the Alsatian edition of l'Humanité. In 1923 Hueber took part in an international communist meeting in Essen, organized to protest the French occupation of the Ruhr.
He was arrested by French authorities for his participation in the event, a fact that elevated his standing within the Communist Party. He was imprisoned at La Santé Prison; the fame he achieved from being arrested helped him to get elected to the French National Assembly the following year. Hueber was elected from the 1st constituency of Bas-Rhin. Hueber was elected mayor of Strasbourg in 1929 by the Volksfront. Hueber claimed, he was expelled from the Communist Party in the autumn of 1929. He became one of the main leaders of the Opposition Communist Party of Alsace-Lorraine. During the period of 1933 and 1936 Hueber and his followers moved towards pro-Nazi positions. However, he publicly denied to being antisemitic. In 1935 the Volksfront fell apart as the Republican People's Union deserted it. Hueber lost his seat as Mayor to Charles Frey as the coalition, he was re-elected to the National Assembly in 1936. During both of Hueber's National Assembly tenures, he formed part of the committee on Alsace-Lorraine.
Hueber addressed the Assembly in Alsatian language. On December 8, 1927 Hueber held a speech in Alsatian in the National Assembly, the content of which were so shocking for the Assembly that large chunks were stricken from the official protocol. Hueber had attacked the status of the French language in Alsace-Lorraine, stating that France was oppressing the Alsatian working class and that Alsace was under French colonial rule. Hueber escaped arrest in the 1939 crackdown on Alsatian autonomist leaders, due to his deteriorating health. Hueber did not take part in the 1940 Congress of Vichy vote. In 1941, Hueber became a functionary of the NSDAP. On February 14, 1942 Hueber was appointed municipal councilor of Strasbourg by the German authorities
Théodore Deck
Joseph-Théodore Deck was a 19th-century French potter. Born in Guebwiller, Haut-Rhin, he began learning the trade in his early 20s, moving to Paris at age 24. In 1856 he established his own faience workshop, Joseph-Théodore Deck Ceramique Française, began to experiment Islamic style of ceramic making, in particular the Iznik style. In the 1880s he worked in the Chinese tradition collaborating with Raphaël Collin, other artists of the time, he died in Paris. In 1887 he published a treatise under the title La Faïence, available in facsimile online. Ceramics Today, Théodore Deck and the Islamic Style CBS Resource Library, Théodore Deck Théodore Deck, La faïence, Paris, 1887. 300 p. complete text online at Gallica À la Mémoire de Théodore Deck. Érection d'un Monument à Guebwiller, sa ville natale, J. Dreyfus impr, Guebwiller?, 1911? Jules-Antoine Castagnary, « Théodore Deck », in Revue Alsacienne, 1880 Antoinette Faÿ-Hallé, Françoise Fournière, Brigitte Grenier et al. Théodore Deck ou L'éclat des émaux, 1823–1891, Musées de Marseille, Marseille, 1994, ISBN 2-9500996-7-X André Girodie, « Biographies alsaciennes: Théodore Deck », in Revue Alsacienne illustrée, 1903, vol.
V André Girodie, Un céramiste alsacien: Théodore Deck, Art & Industrie, Nancy, 1912 J. Loebnitz, Article nécrologique sur M. Théodore Deck, in La Céramique et la verrerie, 1891? Sandor Kuthy, Albert Anker, faiences, en collaboration avec Théodore Deck, Lausanne, 1985 Alexandre Meichler, Théodore Deck: magicien du feu, Guebwiller, 1976 Théodore Deck, Le Musée, Marseille, 1979? Théodore Deck: la véranda des glycines, Musée du florival, Guebwiller, 1989 Théodore Deck: 1823–1891, Musée du Florival, Guebwiller, 1991, ISBN 2-908367-20-3 Musée Théodore Deck, Théodore Deck Museum, City of Guebwiller, France Deck and the Islamic Style Théodore Deck in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website
Gustave Schlumberger
Léon Gustave Schlumberger was a French historian and numismatist who specialised in the era of the crusades and the Byzantine Empire. His Numismatique de l'Orient Latin is still considered the principal work on the coinage of the crusades, he was awarded the medal of the Royal Numismatic Society in 1903. A large portion of his extensive Crusader coin collection is housed in the Cabinet des Médailles a department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, he was born in Guebwiller, Alsace part of France but annexed to Germany. From 1863 he studied medicine in Paris. During the Franco-Prussian War, he served on the French side as a medic. In 1871 he returned to Paris, was awarded a doctorate in 1872 for a thesis on the respiratory tract. After this he travelled extensively in North Africa, Asia Minor, Portugal and Italy and turned to research into the history of the Crusader states and the Byzantine Empire, he was elected president of the Societé des Antiquaires de France. In 1884 he was elected a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
In 1903 he was awarded the Medal of the Royal Numismatic Society. He was a friend of Edith Wharton, who described him as looking like'a descendent of one of the Gauls on the arch of Titus', he corresponded extensively with the Greek writer Penelope Delta, which correspondence influenced several of her historical novels set in Byzantine times. He was an active supporter of the anti-Dreyfusard movement. With Edgar Degas, Jean-Louis Forain and Jules Lemaître, he stormed out of the salon of the hostess Genevieve Straus when her friend Joseph Reinach pointed out Dreyfus' innocence. In his memoirs, he wrote of his old friend Charles Haas: "The delightful Charles Haas, the most likeable and glittering socialite, the best of friends, had nothing Jewish about him except his origins and was not afflicted, as far as I know, with any of the faults of his race, which makes him an exception unique." Following his failure to be elected a member of the Académie française in 1908, who disliked him, described him as a'disabused pachyderm'.
In his memoirs, who received a passing mention in Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, described the novelist as'bizarre' and described his books as'admired by some, quite incomprehensible to others, including myself'. The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres has created an award in his name, the Gustave Schlumberger Prize. Winners have included Denys Pringle. 1878-1882 Numismatique de l'Orient Latin 1884 Les iles des Princes - a history of the Princes' Islands under the Byzantines. 1890 Un empereur byzantin au dixieme siecle: Nicephore Phocas - a biography of the emperor Nikephoros II. 1896-1905 L’Epopée byzantine à la fin du dixième siècle - a study of Byzantine epic poetry. 1898 Renaud de Châtillon, prince d’Antioche, seigneur de la terre d’Outre-Jourdain - a biography of the crusader Raynald of Châtillon. 1906 Campagnes du roi Amaury Ier de Jérusalem en Egypte, au XIIe siècle 1914 Prise de Saint-Jean-d'Acre, en l'an 1291 1926 Le siege la prise et le sac de Constantinople par les Turcs en 1453, 8e Ed.
Paris: Librairie Plon. 1922/23 Récits De Byzance Et Des Croisades 1927 Byzance et les croisades 1934 Mes Souvenirs 1844-1928 - posthumously published recollections of life in the Third Republic 1962 Lettres De Deux Amis - correspondence between Schlumberger and the novelist Penelope Delta
Alsatian dialect
Alsatian is a Low Alemannic German dialect spoken in most of Alsace, a disputed region in eastern France that has passed between French and German control five times since 1681. A dialect of Alsatian German is spoken in the United States by the so-called Swiss Amish, whose ancestors emigrated there in the middle of the 19th century; the 7,000 speakers are located in Allen County, with "daughter settlements" elsewhere. Alsatian is related to other nearby Alemannic dialects, such as Swiss German and Markgräflerisch as well as Kaiserstühlerisch, it is confused with Lorraine Franconian, a more distantly related Franconian dialect spoken in the northwest corner of Alsace and in neighbouring Lorraine. Like other dialects and languages, Alsatian has been influenced by outside sources. Words of Yiddish origin can be found in Alsatian, modern conversational Alsatian includes adaptations of French words and English words concerning new technologies. Many speakers of Alsatian could, write in reasonable standard German.
For most this would be rare and confined to those who have learned German through work. As with other dialects, various factors determine when and with whom one might converse in Alsatian; some dialect speakers are unwilling to speak standard German, at times, to certain outsiders and prefer to use French. In contrast, many people living near the border with Basel, will speak their dialect with a Swiss person from that area, as they are mutually intelligible for the most part; some street names in Alsace may use Alsatian spellings. C, Q, X are only used in loanwords. Y is used in native words such as Dytschi, but is more common in loanwords. Alsatian has a set of 19 consonants: Three consonants are restricted in their distribution: /kʰ/ and /h/ only occur at the beginning of a word or morpheme, only if followed by a vowel. Alsatian, like some German dialects, has lenited all obstruents but, its lenes are, voiceless as in all Southern German varieties. Therefore, they are here transcribed /b̥/, /d̥/, /ɡ̊/.
The phoneme /ç/ has a velar allophone after back vowels, palatal elsewhere. In southern dialects, there is a tendency to pronounce it /x/ in all positions, in Strasbourg the palatal allophone tends to conflate with the phoneme /ʃ/. Short vowels: /ʊ/, /o/, /ɒ/, /a/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /i/, /y/. Long vowels: /ʊː/, /oː/, /ɒː/, /aː/, /ɛː/, /eː/, /iː/, /yː/ Since 1992, the constitution of the Fifth Republic states that French is the official language of the Republic. However, along with other regional languages, is recognized by the French government in the official list of languages of France. France is a signatory to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages but has never ratified the law and has not given regional languages the support that would be required by the charter; the policies of the Paris government have had the deliberate effect of weakening the prevalence of native languages in France that are not "French." As a result, the Alsatian dialect of German has gone from being the prevalent language of the region to one in decline.
A 1999 INSEE survey counted 548,000 adult speakers of Alsatian in France, making it the second most-spoken regional language in the country. Like all regional languages in France, the transmission of Alsatian is declining. While 43% of the adult population of Alsace speaks Alsatian, its use has been declining amongst the youngest generations. Adolphe Stoeber François Héran, et al. "La Dynamique des langues en France au fil du XXe siècle". Population et sociétés Ined. "L'Alsacien, deuxième langue régionale de France" Insee, Chiffres pour l'Alsace no. 12, December 2002 Brunner, Jean-Jacques. L'Alsacien sans peine. ASSiMiL, 2001. ISBN 2-7005-0222-1 Laugel-Erny, Elsa. Cours d'alsacien. Les Editions du Quai, 1999. Matzen, Léon Daul. Wie Geht's? Le Dialecte à la portée de tous La Nuée Bleue, 1999. ISBN 2-7165-0464-4 Matzen, Léon Daul. Wie Steht's? Lexiques alsacien et français, Variantes dialectales, Grammaire La Nuée Bleue, 2000. ISBN 2-7165-0525-X Media related to Alsatian language at Wikimedia Commons'Hover & Hear' Alsatian pronunciations, compare with equivalents in English and other Germanic languages.
Euromosaic: The status of Germanic languages in France. Alsatian placenames Wörterbuch der elsässischen Mundarten Alsatian artists Webschnuffler, article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on new versions of Microsoft programs in Alsatian ^ When Amish communities become too big, a number of families move away and form a new settlement, referred to as a daughter settlement; the settlement from which they leave is the mother settlement
Castelfiorentino
Castelfiorentino is a town and comune in the Metropolitan City of Florence, central Italy, halfway between Florence and Siena. The population is 20,000 inhabitants, it is part of Valdelsa. Castelfiorentino borders the following municipalities: Certaldo, Gambassi Terme, Montaione and San Miniato. Collegia church of Sts. Lawrence and Leonard, it houses a crucifix by Giovanni Pisano Romanesque-Gothic church of St. Francis, with a Madonna with Child by Taddeo Gaddi, other works by Cenni di Francesco, Giovanni del Biondo and other 15th century Florentine schools paintings. Pieve of Santi Ippolito e Biagio, with a 14th-century crucifix and two 15th-century frescoes Oratory of Santi Lorenzo e Barbara. Sanctuary of Santa Verdiana Romanesque pieve of Santi Pietro e Paolo, at Coiano Guebwiller, France Official website
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