On August 22nd, 1914, because of the war hundreds of buildings in the center of Charleroi were destroyed in a fire. Les Magasins Raphaël went up in flames. The owner of the department store, the Raphaël Gugenheim-Aaron family, scrambled from the ruins. Within a year they would sell the decorated Belgian relief flour sacks with great dedication for the benefit of the Comité National de Secours et d’Alimentation (CNSA).
The elements of this story are purely Belgian, although they have reached me through contacts with multiple American institutions.
The history is fascinating, but by no means complete; hence I have written this blog.
Department store with embroidery thread
In September 2018 I found an online source about a Belgian department store with embroidery thread owned by the Gugenheim family in Charleroi, province Hainaut. [1]
‘In Charleroi, Belgium, Alice Gugenheim’s family had a warehouse of embroidery thread which had been used by the embroidery workers prior to the war. Because of the war there was no material to embroider, and the workers were out of business.
She could find no bleach to remove the writing on the flour sacks, but the fabric was good and strong. Women began enhancing the designs which were used to cover lampshades, waste baskets, tea cozies, pillow covers and even school smocks. The items were sold on a prominent street in Brussels and yielded tens of thousands of gold-standard francs to the Belgium Relief.’
Remarkably, Alice Gugenheim had tried to bleach the Belgian relief flour sacks to remove the printing but was unsuccessful. Then the women had used the prints as patterns.
To know more I contacted the author of the article and asked “who was/is Alice Gugenheim and family who had the warehouse of embroidery thread in Charleroi? Where can I find more information about her?!”
The author, Polly Horn from Sunbury, Ohio, only remembered that the information came from the Hoover Institution in California.
Occupied with other priorities I dropped the subject.
Gugenheim (Alice Aron) Papers [2]
On June 1st, 2022, I was doing research at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives (HILA) in California and received a message with photo included from Samira Bozorgi [3] : “One other reference photo of mine from the Alice Gugenheim Papers”.
An interesting photo featuring ladies, apparently saleswomen, a display of decorated flour sacks and some scribbled names. Where did the photo come from and when was it taken? I was supposed to meet Samira in the Reading Room, but we missed each other.
June Sanders
I then looked up what the Alice Gugenheim Papers were. It turned out to be a box with diary notes, photos, maps, etc. in the French language. The papers had been donated to HILA by Miss June Sanders [3a] in 1961. Unfortunately, it was impossible to request the box due to lack of time.
Again occupied with other priorities I dropped the subject.
Monsieur le Président Hoover
On June 18th, 2022, I was doing research at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum (HHPLM) in Iowa. In the Reading Room I flipped through boxes and files and saw a photocopy of a postcard addressed to “Monsieur Le Président Hoover” with a photo of a Belgian shop window displaying decorated flour sacks. That looked interesting. Craig Wright, HHPLM’s Supervisory Archivist, searched for the original photo, scanned it, and sent me the digital file. [4]
I filed the photo among my research collection of thousands of digital documents and forgot about it.
The Hoovers and their flour sacks
In June 2023 I was working on the blog The Hoovers and their flour sacks. By chance I saw the scan of the Belgian shop window with display of flour sacks and realized it was a postcard sent by Madame Raphaël Gugenheim, Brussels, to Monsieur le Président Hoover.
Apparently, the Belgian lady had given Mr. Hoover a decorated flour sack as a gift because she asked Hoover to confirm he had received the decorated flour sack. The postcard had been written in 1938, at the time Hoover was in Brussels; the former American president received a royal reception in Belgium.
Anyway, I added the photo of the postcard to the blog and did not give it another thought.
Madame Raphaël GUGENHEIM is Alice AARON
Then Hubert Bovens, specialist in biographical research, read the blog The Hoovers and their flour sacks. He spontaneously started looking for the antecedents of Madame Raphaël Gugenheim. His finds came unexpected and surprised me. “Alice AARON is the wife of Raphaël GUGENHEIM,” Hubert texted, “Both were born in Lorraine, France. They lived in Brussels from 1938.” [5]
Telephone consultation with Hubert followed. Why would a lady of French birth in 1938 donate a decorated flour sack and send such a postcard to Hoover visiting Belgium? Would she have known him personally?
We considered everything, until Hubert revealed that the Gugenheim couple had a daughter, born in Charleroi. Charleroi?
But then, is the name written Gugenheim, or would it be Guggenheim? No, it was definitely Gugenheim.
Hubert continued his research, finding three children of the couple born in Charleroi: Ida, Nathan and Lise; the birth certificates stated their father was “négociant” (salesman).
Grand Magasins Raphaël, Charleroi
The second telephone consultation took place after Hubert had found photos of the Grands Magasins Raphaël on the website “charleroi-decouverte.be”.
The images showed the buildings radiant around 1900, they were prosperous and inviting. This was the department store of the Gugenheim-Aaron family!
This was the Alice Gugenheim from the department store with embroidery thread! The family had a large store in Charleroi, hence the postcards with photos of displayed decorated flour sacks. Everything seemed to come together.
Grand Magasins Raphaël destroyed
However, what followed were shocking photos of the destroyed storefront. That was a big downer. When war broke out and the German army invaded Belgium, the center of Charleroi was set on fire and buildings went up in flames on August 22nd, 1914. Les Magasins de Raphaël lay in ruins, proven by two desolate photos. [6]
Conflict resonance
The photos of the ruins echoed “conflict resonance” as described in Nicholas Saunders’ trench art articles.
‘Industrialised war creates and destroys on a larger scale than any other human activity.
Modern war has an unprecedented capacity to remake individuals, cities and nations, and thus to shape conceptions of individual and collective identity.’[7]
Until that moment I did not believe the history of the decorated Belgian relief flour sacks would be touching on the materiality and Great War landscapes, the material destruction and reconstruction of cities, streets and shops. The elements of Alice Gugenheim-Aaron’s story proved otherwise.
Evidently, the Raphael Gugenheim-Aaron family got back on their feet. Alice and her daughter Ida, together with fellow saleswomen, were confidently depicted on the postcard with decorated flour sacks. This would have been in 1915. Within a year they were eager to sell the decorated flour sacks for the benefit of the CNSA.
To be continued
After August 22nd, 1914, where did the family members rebuild their lives and business? What meaning did they assign to the decorated flour sacks? What international relationships did they have? How did the events of the 20th century shape their lives, leading Madame Raphaël Gugenheim’s box of Belgian WW I war documents to be included as “Alice Aron Gugenheim Papers” in the American Hoover Institution Library & Archives, repository of archival collections pertaining to war, revolution and peace?
That needs to be further investigated.
Addition December 26, 2023
Evelyn McMillan managed to gain access to the Gugenheim (Alice Aron) Papers at HILA and photographed the album. A valuable document in the historiography of American flour sacks has emerged. You’ll read it in my blog: Rode Kerst, het oorlogsdagboek van Alice Gugenheim.
Addition May 5, 2024
The war book by Aline Burls, né Bouquié – Les Arts de la Femme [8]
Aline Burls, né Bouquié, had been secretary of the board of “Les Arts de la Femme” in Brussels since 1908. Aline’s cousin was the American Frederic William Meert who lived in Brussels and devoted his best efforts to the Commission for Relief in Belgium from autumn 1914 to summer 1919. Aline and her family with two young sons also lived in Brussels until 1916. Because her eldest son was 15 years old at the time and the German occupier threatened to call up more and more Belgian boys and men for work in Germany, Aline’s family fled Belgium and eventually ended up in Paris. Aline decided to write a book about her experiences “in the Brussels prison, two years under the German yoke“. Her book was published in 1917, she wrote about the sale of the decorated flour sacks:
“Would you believe that several stores had exclusive sales of these sacks?
For example, the large building that the English Red Star Line shipping company had necessarily abandoned, was equipped for this purpose (the shop of Alice Gugenheim and her daughters on Boulevard Anspach – AvK). The cheapest sacks cost four or five francs – they sold them for charity – but there were some “originals” (I mean before they were embroidered or decorated) that were bought and fetched as much as twenty-five or thirty francs each!
When I asked one of the saleswomen (Alice Gugenheim-Aaron?!-AvK) about the sales successes, she told me that there were people who collected flour sacks, and that one amateur had now collected more than 700 different copies. The Cinquantenaire Museum had put together a beautiful collection of 300 artistically decorated specimens.”
(Burls, Aline, né Bouquié, Dans la Geôle Bruxelloise. Deux années sous le joug allemand. 1917, p. 176, 177)
“Sacks are full of memories. Each sack cherishes a precious and fragile story.”
Thanks to:
– Hubert Bovens in Wilsele, Belgium, for researching the biographical data, his initiatives and thinking along about the life story of the Gugenheim-A(a)ron family, making the story a purely Belgian decorated flour sacks history.
Hubert also discovered the book by Aline Burls, né Bouquié.
– the contacts in the American institutions who have provided me elements of the Alice Gugenheim history over the years: thanks to Polly Horn, Myers Inn Museum, Sunbury, Ohio; Samira Bozorgi, HILA, Palo Alto, California; Craig Wright, HHPLM, West Branch, Iowa.
– Evelyn McMillan for consultation and photography of the HILA Gugenheim (Alice Aron) Papers coll. no. 61012.
Footnotes:
[1] Polly Horn: ‘Burrer Mill’. Big Walnut Area History, Businesses. Mrs. Polly Horn, director of the Myers Inn Museum in Sunbury, Ohio, is the author of dozens of blogs on the website of the Big Walnut Area Historical Society.
In 2021 Polly Horn invited me to develop a program on the decorated Belgian relief flour sacks. The program is commissioned by the Big Walnut Area Historical Society, Ohio, and is available on YouTube “From Aid to Embroidery in Ohio, USA”.
[2] HILA Gugenheim (Alice Aron) Papers coll. nr. 61012.
Alice Aaron (°Toul, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Lorraine, F. 1872-02-29 +Paris 1955-03-25); on her birth certificate her maiden name is AARON; in her 1955 death certificate, made in Paris, 15th arrondissement, the name is written with one ‘a’, as ‘ARON’. Subsequently her maiden name is written “ARON” in the HILA archives.
[3] Samira Bozorgi is Assistant Archivist for Exhibitions, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Palo Alto, Ca. She conceived and curated the HILA exhibition Women and the Great War in 2015. See also: Hoover Digest, 2015, No. 2, Spring, p. 188-198
[3a] Miss June Sanders (°Drummond, Mont., VS, 1902 +Carmel, Ca., VS, 1963-07-29) has been Palo Alto High School French teacher, world traveler and a devoted supporter of local music affairs. (June Sanders obituary, The Peninsula Times Tribune, Palo Alto, California, 1963-08-01).
[4] HHPLM 31-1919-66. Postcard Madame Raphaël Gugenheim, Brussel, to Monsieur le Président Hoover, 1938.
In 1938 the Embassy of the USA in Brussels was located Rue de la Science 33 (instead of 38).
[5] Alice Aaron married Raphaël Gugenheim (°Kolbsheim, Bas Rhin, Alsace, F. 09-03-1863 +South of France 1946) in March 1893 in Toul, France. Their three children were all born in Charleroi: Ida °1894-06-06 +1946; Maurice Nathan Simon °1895-10-15 +Paris 1971-01-16 ; Lisa °1896-11-19 +Antibes, F. 1989. From 1938 they lived Rue Antoine Bréart 135, Brussels.
Maurice married Suzanne Galerne, °Bobital, Bretagne, F. 1912 -07-17 +Asnieres-sur-Seine, Ile de France F. 2008-03-04. Lise married a man named Helge sometime between 1939 and 1941.
[6] www.charleroi-decouverte.be: “Grands Magasins Raphaël’
[7] About trench art: Nicholas J. Saunders, Culture, conflict and materiality: the social lives of Great War objects.
[8] Loes Hubrechts, Les Arts de la Femme (1908-1918). Een Brusselse vereniging voor en door vrouwen. (“Woman’s Art (1908-1918). A Brussels association for and by women”). Ghent University, Master’s thesis, 2017