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Origin and history

La Boisserie is a gentilhommière built around 1810 in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, Haute-Marne. Originally a brewery of the village from 1843 on, it bears the name of the Brasserie before adopting its current name. This fourteen-room building, surrounded by a 2.5-hectare park, was acquired in 1934 by Charles and Yvonne de Gaulle for 45,000 francs, with an annual rent of 6,000 francs. The property, then old (without water or telephone), is chosen to offer their daughter Anne, a trisomic, a protective rural setting. The family stayed there episodicly before the war, especially during de Gaulle's military assignments in Metz (1937-1939).

During World War II, Boisserie was looted and partially burned in 1944. After 1945, de Gaulle installed the hot water, central heating, and built in 1946 a hexagonal tower housing his office, where he wrote his Memoirs of War. The general regularly withdrew, especially during his political "crossing of the desert", saying: "I miss Colombey. I don't see myself living anywhere else. Elected president, he continued to spend every other weekend there, initially refusing to accept Elysée. He resigned in 1969 and died in his library on 9 November 1970.

The house, which remained owned by the Gaulle family, became a museum in 1980 to preserve its heritage. The ground floor (dining room, living room, library, office) and the two-hectare park, with its children's games and its flowered orchard, are preserved in the state. The objects exhibited include diplomatic gifts (Roman amphoras, Thierache steel cock), African masks, and the linked Memoirs of War of Green Leather. The estate, registered with the Historical Monuments in 2004 and labeled Maisons des Illustres in 2011, bears witness to the intimate and political life of the general.

Before the de Gaulle, the property was rented by the American writer Eugène Jolas and his wife Maria McDonald, parents of composer Betsy Jolas. Alice Bombal (1861–1939), daughter of architect Henry-Arsène Descaves, died drowned in her bath in Paris. During the occupation, the general's property was confiscated in 1940, but the Boisserie, auctioned, did not find the lessee. After the war, Yvonne de Gaulle lived there until 1978, before joining a retirement home in Paris, where she died in 1979.

The park, decorated with roses and peonies, houses statues, including a work by Antoine Bourdelle offered in 1944. The museum's pieces reveal the simplicity of the living environment: black and white tiles, Norman furniture, Aubusson tapestries, and personal items such as lighter or barbed wire from the Compiègne camp. The library, where de Gaulle died while watching television, preserved his Memoirs, works by Chateaubriand and Jules Verne, as well as photographs dedicated by heads of state (Kennedy, Elizabeth II, Churchill).

Future

As the financial burden of maintaining the property became too heavy, Boisserie became a museum open to the public.

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