This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the French Wikipedia. (December 2008) Don't speak French? Click here to read a machine-translated version of the French article. Click [show] on the right to review important translation instructions before translating. Google's machine translation is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. After translating, {{Translated|fr|Moselle (département)}} must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Moselle
—  Department  —
Coat of arms
Location of Moselle in France
Coordinates: 49°02′02″N 6°39′43″E / 49.03389°N 6.66194°E / 49.03389; 6.66194Coordinates: 49°02′02″N 6°39′43″E / 49.03389°N 6.66194°E / 49.03389; 6.66194
Country	France
Region	Lorraine
Prefecture	Metz (2 arrondissements: Metz-Ville, Metz-Campagne)
Subprefectures	Boulay-Moselle Château-Salins Forbach Sarrebourg Sarreguemines Thionville (2 arrondissements: Thionville-Est, Thionville-Ouest)
Government
• President of the General Council	Philippe Leroy
Area1
• Total	6,216 km2 (2,400 sq mi)
Population (2006)
• Total	1,036,776
• Rank	20th
• Density	170/km2 (430/sq mi)
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)
• Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
Department number	57
Arrondissements	9
Cantons	51
Communes	730
^1 French Land Register data, which exclude estuaries, and lakes, ponds, and glaciers larger than 1 km2

Moselle (French pronunciation: [mɔ.zɛl]) is a department in the east of France named after the river Moselle.

History[link]

Saint-Stephen cathedral in Metz, prefecture of Moselle.

Moselle is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. It was created from the former province of Lorraine.

In 1793, the foreign enclaves of Manderen, Lixing-lès-Rouhling, Momerstroff, and Créhange (Kriechingen), all possessions of princes of the German Holy Roman Empire, were annexed by France and incorporated into the Moselle département.

By the Treaty of Paris of 1814 following the first defeat and abdication of Napoleon, France had to surrender almost all its conquests since 1792. On the northeastern border, France was not restored to its 1792 borders, but a new border was established to put an end to the convoluted nature of the border, with all its enclaves and exclaves. As a result, the French exclave of Tholey (now in Saarland, Germany) as well as a few communes near Sierck-les-Bains (both territories until then part of the Moselle département) were ceded to Austria. On the other hand, the French annexations of 1793 were confirmed, and furthermore, the south of the Napoleonic département of Sarre was ceded to France, including the town of Lebach, the city of Saarbrücken, and the rich coal basin nearby. France was thus a net beneficiary of the Treaty of Paris, all the new territories ceded to her being far larger and more strategic than the few territories ceded to Austria. All these new territories were incorporated into the Moselle department, and so Moselle had now a larger territory than ever since 1790.

However, with the return of Napoleon and his final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, the Congress of Vienna in 1815 imposed much harsher conditions on France. Tholey and the communes around Sierck-les-Bains were still to be ceded as agreed in 1814, but the south of the Sarre department with Saarbrücken was withdrawn from France. In addition, France had to cede to Austria the area of Rehlingen (now in Saarland) as well as the strategic fort-town of Saarlouis and the territory around it, all territories and towns which had been French since the 17th century, and which were part of the Moselle department since 1790. In the end of 1815, Austria gave all these territories to Prussia, and it is from them that Prussia invaded France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.

Thus, by the end of 1815, the Moselle department had finally the limits that it would keep until 1871. It was slightly smaller than at its creation in 1790, the incorporation of the Austrian enclaves not compensating for the loss of Saarlouis, Rehlingen, Tholey, and the communes around Sierck-les-Bains. Between 1815 and 1871, the department had an area of 5,387 km² (2,080 sq. miles). Its prefecture (capital) was Metz. It had four arrondissements: Metz, Briey, Sarreguemines, and Thionville.

After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, almost all of the Moselle department, along with Alsace and portions of the Meurthe and Vosges departments, was returned to the German Empire by the Treaty of Frankfurt on the ground that the population in those areas spoke German dialects. Only one-fifth of Moselle (arrondissement of Briey in the extreme west of the department) was spared annexation by Bismarck, as it was a French-speaking area. Bismarck later bitterly regretted his decision when it was discovered that the region of Briey and Longwy was rich with iron ore. The Moselle department ceased to exist on May 18, 1871, and the territories returned to Germany became part of the Reichsland of Elsaß-Lothringen. The remaining area of Briey was merged with the truncated Meurthe department to create the new Meurthe-et-Moselle department (a new name chosen on purpose to remind people of the lost Moselle department) with its préfecture at Nancy.

In 1919, with the French victory in the First World War, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France by Germany at the Treaty of Versailles. However, it was not decided to recreate the old departments of Meurthe and Moselle by reverting to the old department borders of before 1871. Instead, Meurthe-et-Moselle was left untouched, and the four-fifths of Moselle that had been annexed by Germany in 1871 were merged with the one-third of Meurthe also annexed in 1871 to create a new department of Moselle. Thus, the Moselle department was reborn, but its borders were quite different from those before 1871. Having lost the area of Briey, it had now gained the areas of Château-Salins and Sarrebourg which before 1871 were in the Meurthe department (being one-third of it) and which had been part of the Reichsland of Elsaß-Lothringen since 1871.

The new Moselle department now had its current area of 6,216 km² (2,400 sq. miles), larger than the old Moselle because the areas of Château-Salins and Sarrebourg were far larger than the area of Briey and Longwy.

During World War II Moselle was again stripped from France and became part of the Gau - Westmark according to the armistice of June 22, 1940. Adolf Hitler considered Moselle and Alsace part of Germany and as a result the inhabitants were drafted into the German Wehrmacht.

Moselle was liberated by the American army in 1944 and returned to France, within the same frontiers that it had in 1919. As a result of the war and German aggression that led up to it, the Germanic heritage of the region was shunned by the French government and the local population as well. The dialect more or less fell into disuse in the public realm. Recently, efforts have been made to revive the dialect and distinct culture of the region as with the onset of open borders and cordial Franco-German relations the language no longer is associated with the war.

Geography[link]

Moselle is part of the current region of Lorraine and is surrounded by the French departments of Meurthe-et-Moselle and Bas-Rhin, as well as Germany (states of Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate) and Luxembourg in the north. Parts of Moselle belong to Parc naturel régional de Lorraine.

The following are the most important rivers:

• Moselle
• Sarre (Saar)
• Seille

Demographics[link]

The inhabitants of the department are called Mosellans in French.

The population has remained relatively stable since World War II and now exceeds 1 million, located mostly in the urban area around Metz and along the river Moselle.

If the Moselle department still existed in its limits of between 1815–1871, its population at the 1999 French census would have been 1,089,804 inhabitants. The current Moselle department, whose limits were set in 1919, had less population, with only 1,023,447 inhabitants. This is because the industrial area of Briey and Longwy lost in 1871 is more populated than the rural areas of Château-Salins and Sarrebourg gained in 1919.

A significant minority of inhabitants of the department (fewer than 100,000) speak a Germanic dialect known as platt lorrain or Lothringer Platt (see Lorraine Franconian).

Linguistically, Platt can be further subdivided into three varieties, going from east to west: Rhenish Franconian, Moselle Franconian, and Luxembourgish.

Law[link]

Moselle and Alsace to its east have their own laws in certain fields. The statutes in question date primarily from the period 1871 - 1919 when the area was part of the German Empire. With the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France in 1919, many in central government assumed that the recovered territories would be subject to French law.

Local resistance to a total acceptance of French law arose because some of Bismarck's reforms included strong protections for civil and social rights. After much discussion and uncertainty, Paris accepted in 1924 that pre-existing German law would apply in certain fields, notably hunting, economic life, local government relationships, health insurance, and social rights. Many of the relevant statues continue to be referred to in the original German, as they have never been formally translated.

One major difference with French law is the absence of the formal separation between church and state: several mainstream denominations of the Christian church as well as the Jewish faith benefit from state funding, despite principles applied rigorously in the rest of France.

See also[link]

• Arrondissements of the Moselle department
• Cantons of the Moselle department
• Communes of the Moselle department
• German exonyms (Moselle)

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Moselle

• (French) Moselle.pref.gouv.fr, Prefecture website
• (French) CG57.fr, Conseil General website
• (English) France-voyage.com, Moselle Tourism Guide
• (French)/(Platt) Plattweb.free.fr
• (French) Moselle-annuaire.fr, Moselle's Websites Directory

v t e SaarLorLux Members Belgium French Community German-speaking Community Walloon Region France Lorraine Meurthe-et-Moselle Moselle Germany Rhineland-Palatinate Saarland Institutions Summit Conferences Regional Commission Interregional Parliamentary Council University Charter European cultural capital 2007 House of the Greater Region Private cooperations

This article is about the political philosopher. For the singer, see Yves Simon (singer).

Yves René Marie Simon (March 14, 1903–1961) was a French Catholic political philosopher.

Life[link]

Simon studied under Jacques Maritain at the Institut Catholique de Paris.^[1] He taught at the Institut Catholique de Lille from 1930 to 1938. In 1938, he came to the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, as a visiting professor. He was unable to return to France because of World War II, and after the war he remained as a professor at Notre Dame until 1948. He then joined the Committee on Social Thought, at the University of Chicago. He remained at the University of Chicago until his death. In 1975, Maurice Cranston called him one of the world's "most original and distinguished political theorists."^[2]

Simon left many materials unfinished at his death, and many of his publications have only appeared after his death. His son, Anthony O. Simon, has taken on the role of director of the Yves R. Simon Institute, which contributes to the effort to publish such materials. Simon's papers are at the University of Notre Dame.^[3]

Scholarship[link]

Simon trained to work in the realm of Thomism or scholastic philosophy. Thus, in 1955, he was one of several contributors to the translating of John of St. Thomas into English.^[4]

However, he is better known for his work in moral and political philosophy. There, he defended the traditional Thomistic account of moral action and the virtues. He was an ardent defender of the proposition that this traditional account was compatible with liberal democracy in the West, arguing that French Catholics had erred in holding that the Catholic faith supported their adherence to monarchy, à la Action Française.^{[citation needed]}

Bibliography[link]

• A General Theory of Authority.
• Philosophy of Democratic Government.
• The Definition of Moral Virtue.
• The Tradition of Natural Law: A Philosopher's Reflections.
• Freedom and Community.
• Work, Society, and Culture.
• A Critique of Moral Knowledge.
• Philosopher at Work (a collection of articles).

Works about his thinking include:

• Vukan Kuic, Yves R. Simon: Real Democracy (Rowman & Littlefield 1999).
• Thomas R. Rourke, A Conscience as Large as the World: Yves R. Simon Versus the Catholic Neoconservatives (Rowman & Littlefield 1997).
• Anthony O. Simon, Acquaintance with the Absolute: The Philosophy of Yves R. Simon (Fordham University Press 1996) (introduction by Rev. James V. Schall, S.J.; essays on six aspects of Simon's thought by six different scholars; and a 100-page bibliography compiled by Anthony O. Simon).

See also[link]

• Neo-Thomism

References[link]