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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The Fort of Queuleu, also known as Fort Goeben, is a key element of the first fortified belt of Metz, built between 1868 and 1870 under the impulse of Lieutenant-Colonel Séré de Rivières. Designed as a "strong detached", it was to form a discontinuous enclosure around the city, with forts spaced according to the range of the cannons of the time. Its architecture is inspired by the bastioned enclosures of Vauban and Cormontaigne, with a 700-metre city side façade and four 350-metre fronts each. The fort, unfinished during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, was completed by the Germans after the annexation of Alsace-Moselle, becoming a symbol of Franco-German tensions.

Between 1872 and 1889, German engineers modernized the fort, adding battled shelters, flanking boxes, auxiliary batteries and counter-mine galleries. Renowned Feste Goeben in tribute to Prussian general August Karl von Goeben, he lost his strategic role after 1899 with the construction of a second walled belt further away. During the First World War, it served as a camp for prisoners of war, then between 1940 and 1944, the Nazis made it a camp for resistors, an antechamber of deportation to concentration camps like Natzweiler-Struthof.

Released in November 1944 by the Americans after fierce fighting at the Battle of Metz, the fort became a supervised residence centre for German collaborators and civilians until 1946. Between 1948 and 1950, he welcomed Indo-Chinese workers, former colonial demands who remained in France after the war. Disused militarily in 1971, it was partially classified as a Historical Monument in 1970 and 1972. Since 1977, a memorial has commemorated the victims of the Resistance and Deportation, while associations have been working for its preservation and valorisation as a place of memory.

The fort is distinguished by its complex military architecture, including a bastioned enclosure, a dominant central rider, a reinforced throat ditch and auxiliary batteries. Its Jaumont stone casemates, underground galleries and defensive developments reflect the technological developments of the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, the site also houses a health trail and serves as a setting for film shoots, while remaining a symbol of the suffering endured during global conflicts.

Heritage protections include the registration of barracks II/casemate A in 1970 and the entire site in 1972. A convention signed in 2016 by the state and local authorities allowed the partial rehabilitation of the fort, with the creation of an interpretive centre to transmit the history of this emotional place. The graffiti left by the prisoners, the cells of Casemate A and the remains of the German installations still bear witness to his tormented past.

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