Bench à Morsbronn-les-Bains dans le Bas-Rhin

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Origin and history

The bench-rest of Morsbronn-les-Bains is part of a 19th century Alsatian tradition, born under the impulse of the prefects of Bas-Rhin. These public stone benches, often accompanied by lime trees, were designed to provide a stopping place for farmers visiting markets. Women put their heavy baskets on their heads, while men put their hoods on them. Their characteristic shape, with a top slab and a lower bench, reflected the agricultural uses of the era, now gone.

The first wave of construction, between 1811 and 1812, was launched by Prefect Adrien de Lezay-Marnésia to celebrate the birth of Napoleon I's son, nicknamed Aiglon. The Alsatian communes, responsible for the costs, built 125 benches that year, although some resisted invoking inappropriate land. A second campaign, in 1853-1854, was initiated by the prefect Auguste-César West and financed by the department, leading to 448 new sandstone benches in the Vosges. These monuments commemorated the marriage of Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie, while stimulating a local economy weakened by the crises of the years 1846-1848.

Under the German annexation post-1870, the bench-rests, deemed obsolete with the disappearance of the head port and the arrival of the carts, were gradually abandoned. In 1906, an alarmed press campaign on their degradation, but the maintenance measures prescribed in 1910 were not implemented, as the authorities considered their form inappropriate to modern needs. It was only from the 1980s that some banks, such as that of Morsbronn-les-Bains, were protected as historical monuments, thus preserving an emblematic heritage of Alsatian rural life.

Morsbronn-les-Bains Bank, listed in 1982, illustrates this complex history. Located along CD 250, it is now owned by the Bas-Rhin department. Although many have disappeared or been mutilated, these banks remain silent witnesses to the social and economic transformations of Alsace, between Napoleonic heritage and adaptation to agricultural change.

The bench-rests are divided into two main types in Alsace: those erected for the King of Rome (1811-1812) and those linked to Napoleon III (1853-1854). Their utilitarian design — a slab for burdens, a bench for rest, a pillar for hoods — met concrete needs, while their commemorative dimension gave rise to their political legitimacy. In Morsbronn-les-Bains, as elsewhere, their present preservation makes it possible to evoke an era when these monuments rhythmized the paths and lives of the Alsatian countryside.

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