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A like Anastasia, B like Bertha, C like Chansons… This alphabet is your invitation to become part of Parisians’ daily lives during World War One. Its 26 chapters will lead you to discover documents from the Historical Library of the City of Paris--photographs, posters, postcards, prints, and small documents from daily life--that were assembled beginning right after the War to help portray the reality of the war years for the capital’s residents. They show a city that was distant from the fighting but at that was also noticeably changed. The streets were emptied of men and motorized vehicles, as Paris became cosmopolitan, flooded by waves of refugees, soldiers on furlough, and foreign volunteers. The walls were covered with posters calling for contributions to public subscriptions and charities. Schools, hotels and dancehalls were transformed to welcome the poor or wounded, and monuments were covered to protect them against bombardments. The tempo of daily life was set by fund-raising days and patriotic festivals… These documents also demonstrate how daily life was also dampened by censorship and rationing. Public opinion was subject to overt propaganda, and the atmosphere was overshadowed by a vague sense of worry resulting from concern for distant family members and a scarcity of information. But Parisians also seemed to want to resist adversity by maintaining the image of a brave-hearted city. This alphabet is intended to help give a sense of the atmosphere in the city at the time, but without trying to exhaustively represent the period or the events that marked it.
