Sélestat
Sélestat is a commune in the Grand Est region of France. An administrative division of the Bas-Rhin department, the town lies on the Ill river, from the Rhine and the German border. Sélestat is located between the largest communes of Alsace, Strasbourg and Mulhouse. In 2019, Sélestat had a total population of 19,242.
First mentioned in the 8th century, Sélestat later became a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire and prospered as a member of the Décapole. During the Renaissance, it was a noted centre of humanism. Sélestat's fortunes declined amid the turmoil of the Reformation and experienced constant warfare. Following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, it was formally annexed by France, under which its decline continued though it remained a town of strategic importance.
Sélestat's city walls, reconstructed by Vauban in the late 17th century, were demolished in 1874 after the town was annexed by the German Empire. It became French again after the First World War, was again annexed by Germany during the Second World War, before finally returning to France. Since 1945, Sélestat has experienced steady growth and become a regional industrial centre and commercial hub.
Sélestat's well-preserved old town features a distinct blend of French and German cultural heritage and is site to numerous architectural landmarks from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The Humanist Library, inscribed by UNESCO in its Memory of the World Register, houses one of the oldest and most homogeneous collections of medieval and Renaissance works in Europe.
Name
The present name of the town is a Frenchification of the original Germanic name. It appeared soon after the French conquest in the 17th century. The town is called Schlettstàdt in Alsatian and in German.Sélestat was first mentioned in 727 as Sclastat. It was mentioned as Scalistati in 775, as Slectistat in 881, as Sclezistat in 884 and as Slezestat in 1095. The current German name, Schlettstadt, appeared in 1310, although various spellings can be noticed on posterior documents, such as Schlestat, Schletstat and Schlettstat. The French administration used various forms from the 17th to the 19th century, such as Frenchified and Germanic. The town was officially known as Schlettstadt between 1871 and 1919, when Alsace was part of the German Empire. Since 1920, the town's French name is fixed as Sélestat.
The origin of the name "Schlettstadt" is unclear. It probably derives from Germanic words slade or sclade meaning "marshes", and stat for "city". Sélestat would then be a "city in the marshes", a reference to its position in the Grand Ried, a vast area subject to flooding that stretches over the centre of Alsace. Stat could also mean "area" rather than "city".
A popular myth explains that the town takes its name from a dragon called Schletto that founded the settlement after opening up the nearby Lièpvre valley in the Vosges mountains.
History
Birth of the town
Sélestat was first mentioned in 727 AD but the town probably has an earlier Celtic or Roman origin. Archaeological findings provide evidence of human settlement during the Mesolithic, the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. A large number of wood piles dating from the 1st and 2nd centuries AD were discovered around St. Quirin chapel, suggesting a Roman settlement. At that time Sélestat might have already been a port on the river Ill.When Sélestat started to appear in written documents in the 8th century, it may have been a market town or simply a village populated by fishermen and farmers. The area was part of the estate of Eberhard, a member of the Alsatian ducal family, who donated it to Murbach Abbey at the end of his life. In 775, Charlemagne spent Christmas in Sélestat, which indicates that the town must have had enough appropriate buildings and population to accommodate his court and troops.
In the 1080s, Sélestat was the property of Hildegard von Eguisheim, mother of Frederick I, Duke of Swabia, the first member of the House of Hohenstaufen. Hildegard transformed the place into a religious centre when she founded St. Faith's Church, which she gave to the Benedictines of Conques Abbey. Monks from Conques opened a priory next to the church in 1092. The House of Hohenstaufen quickly became the leading dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire, which came to the imperial throne in 1152. Being under their protection, the priory of Sélestat strongly influenced local life. Even though Sélestat constituted a distinct parish, its priest had only limited power and the Benedictine prior was the true head of the municipality. At the end of the 12th century, the Hohenstaufen dynasty gradually lost power and as a result the priory started to decline. The citizens used this opportunity to reduce the prior's dominance and secure the power of their parish. They started to build a new parish church in the 1220s. St. George's Church was designed in Gothic style and was significantly larger than St. Faith's Church, another way to signify the end of Benedictine hegemony.
Free imperial city
, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire in the 13th century, realised that his dynasty was losing its power and granted freedoms to many cities to keep their allegiance. These cities became Free imperial cities and Sélestat became one of them in 1217. Under the new status Sélestat was able to build city walls and collect taxes on its own. Its serfs and settlers were freed. The German monarch Adolf of Nassau granted Sélestat a constitution in 1292. It was amended many times but it regulated local politics until 1789. Although the new status favoured trade and prosperity, free cities in Alsace were afraid that they would not be defended by imperial forces if a conflict was to occur. So they decided to form an alliance called the Decapolis in 1354, which comprised ten cities:. The seat of the alliance was in Haguenau but its archives were kept in Sélestat. Because the town was the most centrally located, it often hosted meetings of the association.The Benedictine priory was closed in 1424 after many years of decline. It had long lost its power to the local nobility that were gradually replaced by the bourgeoisie in the mid-14th century. Nevertheless, Sélestat remained a religious centre even after the closing of the priory. Convents were established in the 13th century by Dominicans, Knights Hospitaller and Franciscans. Several abbeys located outside of the town also had a residence in town. At the beginning of the 16th century, Sélestat was a noted centre of Renaissance humanism thanks to its celebrated Latin school. Reformers Beatus Rhenanus and Martin Bucer were among the school's alumni. This school helped spread Protestant ideas among the population, although the local authorities remained faithful to Rome. Erasmus of Rotterdam visited Sélestat four times between 1515 and 1522.
Being a free city, Sélestat attracted settlers from the region who sought protection, freedom and a thriving economic environment. The first city wall, which had become too constricting, was replaced in 1280, and a third wall had to be erected in the 16th century as the city grew. At the end of the Middle Ages, the population was estimated at between 5,000 and 6,000. It was then the fourth largest Alsatian town after Strasbourg, Colmar and Haguenau. The local economy reached its zenith around 1500. It was centered on shipping and trade. As the road network was poor and dangerous, goods transited via the Ill river.
Decline
The decline of the town started in the 1520s, when the humanist school lost its former influence. The troubles surrounding the Protestant Reformation brought instability and unrest to the region. The town experienced the German Peasants' War in 1525 and its convents were sacked by a mob in 1534. During the same period Sélestat lost its pre-eminence in the Decapolis because the city of Mulhouse left the alliance in 1515 and was replaced by Landau in 1521, moving the geographical centre of the alliance to the north.During the 17th century, Alsace was one of the main battlefields of the Thirty Years War. Sélestat was seized by the Swedes in 1632 after a month-long siege. They surrendered the town to their French allies two years later. The local population long remained predominantly faithful to the House of Habsburg. The Peace of Westphalia formalised the annexation of the Decapolis by France. Sélestat was briefly occupied by the Germans during the Franco-Dutch War in 1674. The Treaties of Nijmegen that ended the war also abolished the Decapolis.
At first, Sélestat was a major strategic stronghold for the French. Located near the Rhine, it controlled the access to the Vosges mountains and the rest of France. Vauban, the foremost military architect at that time, rebuilt the town walls between 1675 and 1691. However, after the conquest of Strasbourg in 1681 Sélestat lost much of its strategic importance, as Strasbourg was better located. But it remained a garrison town, and the troops stationed there helped to improve the faltering local economy. Although Protestantism was not forbidden in Alsace, French authorities largely encouraged Catholicism and opened three new convents in Sélestat. Jews were expelled from the town in 1642. During the French Revolution the population was extremely conservative and opposed to change. The new territorial organisation confirmed the decline of the town, which did not become a prefecture and was not distinguished as a subprefecture until 1806, when it replaced Barr in that capacity. Sélestat suffered from the Napoleonic Wars as it was besieged and bombed by the Bavarians in 1814 and blockaded by a German coalition in 1815.
Since 1815
Industry appeared very early in Sélestat. The town had already several factories at the beginning of the 19th century: a tilery, a sawmill, 12 tanneries and 11 mills. Sélestat quickly became specialised in wire gauze making but it never became a large industrial centre, remaining a small town with limited influence. The completion of the Strasbourg-Basel railway, one of the first to be built in France, did not lead to significant urban development. The town walls that still encircled the town were a significant factor in its economic and demographic stagnation. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Alsace and a part of Lorraine were annexed by the new German Empire. The German authorities demolished the city walls in 1874 and built new spacious neighbourhoods around the old town, as they did in Strasbourg and Metz.Sélestat became French again after the First World War, during which almost a thousand inhabitants died. Following the Battle of France of the Second World War, it was annexed by Nazi Germany. Its liberation took three months and ended in February 1945. The town is a recipient of the Croix de guerre of 1914–1918 and 1939–1945. Sélestat has experienced steady demographic and economic growth since 1945. Its population almost doubled between 1946 and 1999 and two industrial parks were built to accommodate new large factories. The service industry has enriched the town's economy since the 1970s with a large number of small businesses.
South of the town, at, a large broadcasting facility was used for transmitting on 1161 kHz and 1278 kHz in the medium-wave range. It was opened in 1948 and ceased to emit on 1 January 2016.