Bordeaux was around 300 BC. Founded under the name Burdigala by the Celts who traded tin here. The trading center then experienced particularly under Roman rule, the 56 BC. Began an economic boom. The Romans made Burdigala the capital of their province Aquitaine and started the wine to intensify. The city thus became one of the most important in Gaul. After the mass migrations had brought the Roman Empire to a collapse, Visigoths, Franks and Merovingians alternated in ownership of the city. For almost three centuries, from 1154 to 1451, Bordeaux was owned by the English in France.
The period of the Hundred Years’ War (1336-1453) in particular helped Bordeaux to great fortune, as the city maintained economic ties with all those involved in the war. After the war, the trade did not break off, since the exchange of goods with the new colonies of France was added. In 1441 the university was founded in Bordeaux. In 1494 the first city parliament began its work.
From the French Revolution in 1789, according to abbreviationfinder, Bordeaux began to develop under the authority of the artistic directors who were directly subordinate to Paris. You can still perceive the wealth of this era in the magnificent buildings and squares within the city. The port was also expanded at that time, making it the most important of its kind in France. In the 18th century, the business of the port city on the Atlantic coast continued to flourish, but only until the time when Napoleon imposed a continental barrier against Great Britain imposed that separated the city from important trading partners. It was only with the cultivation of the country during the period of the Restoration, from 1815 to 1830, that a new period of lucrative business with various trading partners began.
During the Second World War, Bordeaux was occupied by Wehrmacht troops, but it was also the center of French resistance. After the end of the war, the Resistance fighter Jacques Chaban-Delmas was elected mayor. He held this post for almost 50 years.
Today it is above all the trade in wine and the various branches of industry that bring money into the coffers of the city and the citizens.
Bordeaux: Known people
Pope Clement V – original name: Bertrand de Got (around
1250/1264 – 1314) Bertrand de Got was born in Villandraut in France in 1250. He was elected Pope in 1305, before that he had been Archbishop of Bordeaux since 1299.
He died on April 20, 1314 in Roquemaure in the French department of Gard.
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689 near Bordeaux – 1755)
French writer and political theorist, lived in Bordeaux.
Francisco de Goya (1746-1828)
painter. Francisco de Goya was born on March 30, 1746 in Fuendetodos in the province of Zaragoza in the autonomous community of Aragon. He later moved to Madrid, where he married in 1773.
In the 1770s he had Luis de Borbón y Farnesio (1727-1785), brother of the Spanish King Charles III. (1716-1788) and later portrayed his family members several times.
Not least because of his painting “The Naked Maja” from 1800 he aroused the displeasure of the Inquisition as well as the rulers. His painting “The Shooting of the Insurgents” from May 3, 1808, which was created in 1814, is also important.
When the situation had become increasingly stressful for him and his health had deteriorated, he moved to Bordeaux in 1824, where he settled with his housekeeper and their daughter at 57 Cours de l’Intendance.
His painting “The Milkmaid of Bordeaux” from 1827 was his last work.
Odilon Redon (1840-1916)
painter and draftsman . Odilon Redon was born as Bertrand-Jean Redon on April 22, 1840 in Bordeaux.
He belonged to the art movement of the Symbolism and was a co-founder of the group of the Société des Artistes Indépendants.
Odilon Redon died on July 6, 1916 in Paris.
François Mauriac (1885-1970)
writer and Nobel Prize winner. François Mauriac was born in Bordeaux on October 11, 1885.
Mauriac is considered one of the most important writers of the time between the two world wars. He was a representative of the “Renouveau catholique”, a movement that had emerged around 1890 and was based on Catholic social teaching. In 1952 he had received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
He died on September 11, 1970 in Paris.
Jean Anouilh ( 1910-1987 )
playwright. Jean Anouilh was born in Bordeaux on June 23, 1910.
He was an important playwright whose works were frequently performed in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s.
Worth mentioning are his first works L’Hermine (The Hermelin) from 1932 and Le Voyageur sans bagages (The traveler without luggage) from 1937.
His last work was “Life is unheard of” from 1987
. Died in Lausanne in October 1987.
Jean-Jacques Sempé (born 1932)
draftsman and caricaturist. Jean-Jacques Sempé was born in Bordeaux on August 17, 1932.
He had drawn both individual drawings and entire picture stories, with Goscinny, Modiano and Süskind being the only authors whose texts he had illustrated.
Philippe Sollers (born 1936)
writer and critic. Philippe Sollers was born in Bordeaux on November 28, 1936.
In 1959 he had a great success with the classic narrative novel “Une curieuse solitude” (A strange loneliness).
Between 1960 and 1982 he published the magazine Tel Quel, which had developed into a platform for post-structuralist thought. In 1983 he was able to bring out a bestseller with “Femmes”. He later made frequent comments in the French media on topical issues.
Boris Cyrulnik (born 1937)
psychologist and psychoanalyst. Boris Cyrulnik was born in Bordeaux on July 26, 1937.
Cyrulnik had been particularly concerned with the psychological concept of resilience. Resilience is the ability to cope with crises and use them as an opportunity for future developments.
