Quotes About Alsace

This is what I grew up on in Alsace. It's choucroute. I'd wake up every morning with the smell of cabbage and potatoes and pork.

I was born on September 30, 1939, in Rosheim, a small medieval city of Alsace in France. My father, Pierre Lehn, then a baker, was very interested in music, played the piano and the organ, and became, later, having given up the bakery, the organist of the city. My mother Marie kept the house and the shop.

The Hugel story, in many ways, is the story of Alsace. "My grandfather had to change his nationality four times," Johnny's brother André said. Grandfather Emile was born in 1869. He was born French, but two years later, in 1871, Alsace was taken over by Germany after the Franco-Prussian War, and he became German. The end of World War I in 1918 made him French again. In 1940, when Alsace was annexed, he was forced to become German.

I grew up in Alsace - in Strasbourg, by the canal; the family business was coal handling. It was still in the days when three generations would live under the same roof. There were 15 people for lunch, 20 for dinner.

In the days after Sedan, Prussian envoys met with the French and demanded a large cash indemnity as well as the cession of Alsace and Lorraine.

I grew up near Strasbourg in Alsace, where my family were coal merchants.