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Doctor Eugène Ricklin (1862 – 4 September 1935) was an Alsatian politician. == Biography == Eugène Ricklin was born in Dannemarie from a sundgauvian hotelier father and an Alsatian mother, ''Catherine Kayser''. After his secondary education in a school in Belfort, he frequented the colleges of Altkirch and Colmar. He then went to Germany to the east of the Rhine, to Ratisbonne, then Freiburg im Breisgau, München and Erlangen where he studied medicine. While he showed very young high interest for justice and common man's defense, he was noticed as soon as 29 years old and was offered to join the municipal council of his town. 34 years old, he succeeded to Mr Flury, deseded, and became mayor of ''Dannemarie'' in 1898. Detested by the German authorities because of his outspokenness, following a complaint about an offense to the Kaiser and as a sanction for having claimed the status of ''Bundesstaat'' (''federal state'') for Alsace-Lorraine, he was relieved of his mayor's duties in 1902 and replaced by the notary ''Centlivre'', then the Germans' man. Nevertheless, Ricklin stayed member of the municipal council until 1908. In 1896, as Flury's successor, he joined the ''Bezirkstag'' of Haute-Alsace (of which he became president during the war). In 1900, the ''Bezirkstag'' sent him to the ''Landesausschuss'' (''Alsace-Lorraine's parliament'') in Strasbourg, in place of the deseded Anton Cassal from Ferrette and, in 1903, he sat in the Reichstag in Berlin, having been elected deputy of the constituency of Thann-Altkirch. His rise didn't stop there. His authority, his rectitude and his competences made sure, within his party, the Catholic Zentrum (''centre''), respect and consideration from everyone and so that, elected with some of his colleagues of ''Zentrum'' (which obtained a relative majority) after the first election by universal suffrage for the Landtag in 1911, he could become its first president. The Landtag of Alsace-Lorraine, the only parliamentary institution of Alsatian history, succeeded the only indirectly elected Landesausschuss. Yet, his relations with the Germans were not the best. Within his family, it happened to be spoken French. Himself stayed faithful to the Alsatian people of which he didn't cease to fervently defend the interests in front of the imperial administration. From this point came his nickname ''the Sundgau Lion'' (als: ''D’r sundgauer Leeb''). Besides, he even refused the ''Roter Adlerorden'' he was supposed to be awarded. Before war broke out, he tirelessly worked for the peace preservation and, in 1913 and 1914, went with the abbot Haegy to the interparliamentary peace conferences of Berne and Basel where he met again other active pacifists like Jean Jaurès. During the war, he was sanctioned and transferred to northern France because he strenuously defended his friend ''Médard Brogly'' accused of being francophile by a German military court. Then, the war finishing, while he saw that the full autonomy granted by the Germans was coming too late (1918), he launched the idea of the ''Nationalrat'' (''National Council'') to try to save the Alsatian political assets by means of a negotiation with the French. He took the initiative of its convening for 12 November 1918. Elected president of the ''Nationalrat'', he proposed to submit to the French authorities' acceptance a text where would be guaranteed the Alsatian rights he knew threatened by the French Jacobinism.〔What happened next in Alsace proved to Ricklin that his fears were right.〕 But the wind had turned and, with it, many coats within the veterans of the ''Landtag''. He was put in minority, a major part of the ''Zentrum'' parliamentarians, with the social democrats, didn't want to irritate France and preferred to rely on the generals' promises. The end of the ''Nationalrat'', changed into National Council before its scuttling, is known. For the rest of his life, Ricklin reproached the other ''Nationalrat'' members for having "missed the bus". With the French arrival, Doctor Ricklin knew his hardest moments. For sure, they considered him as the man to be most feared in Alsace. So, they tried by all means to eliminate him from the political scene to keep free moves in the launch of the francization policy, ripely prepared in Paris for years. They also had to prevent him taking part to the reconstruction of the ''Zentrumspartei Elsass-Lothringen'' for which debates began in February 1919. So he was dragged in front of the ''Commissions de Triage'' (''people sorting commissions''〔These commissions had to sort people following their ancestry from class A : "pure" French or Alsatian to class D : "pure" German.〕) and, during March, the latter president of the ''Landtag'' of Alsace-Lorraine was sent into forced residence in the occupied zone near Kehl (during some time, he was even put in jail). In spite of the protest of every mayors and priests of ''Dannemarie'' and the French-speaking communes which he always defended during the German time, he was only allowed to come back in November 1919, after the parliamentary elections from which he had to be held away. When he came back from exile in his native town, ruined, he had moreover to face a plot meant to bring him down professionally. But Ricklin was a fighter and didn't give up the political fight for that. Disgusted, like many, in December 1925 by the behavior of the French, he came back to public life, first by joining the editorial committee of the ''Zukunft'', then by joining the team that initiated the manifest of the ''Heimatbund'' on 7 June 1926. Under his management, the committee of the ''Heimatbund'' went into relations with the Breton and Corse autonomists and developed the strategy of the ''Einheitsfront'' (''unity front''). The parliamentary elections of May 1928 approaching, Poincaré tried to prevent the autonomists to participate in them. Six autonomists newspapers were then forbidden and the leaders arrested: among them, Joseph Rossé, Karl Hauss and Ricklin. On 16 March 1928, Ricklin, 66 years old, was led handcuffed through Mulhouse to be imprisoned. But Rossé and Ricklin didn't let them be intimidated and, staying in jail, applied as candidates for the ''Union populaire républicaine'' (''republican popular union''). Their popularity hasn't been denied; even in jail, they were elected. After a trial parody, they were sentenced and then, due to the general outcry, released on 14 July by a presidential pardon. Ricklin was triumphantly welcome back in his whole native Sundgau where the people joined forces behind him, to the point of electing him again in the conseil général in October 1928. The French government tried then to block them, working for the invalidation of the mandate of the deputies Rossé and Ricklin, on the pretext that the presidential pardon didn't give them their whole civic rights. The French deputies agreed with the government and voted the invalidation with 195 voices pro, 29 against and 416 abstentions. The government made the same for their departmental mandate which the ''Conseil d’État'' (''State Council'') invalidated on 22 March 1929. But Ricklin and Rossé stroke back. They applied again as candidates and, one more time, were comfortably re-elected on 2 June 1930. The ''Conseil d’État'' had then to revive an organic decree dated 2 February 1852 to may pronounce a new invalidation. On constant public pressure, Ricklin was then promised an amnesty. During the election of the president of the Republic by the Parliament in May 1931, six Alsatian autonomist deputies voted for "Doctor Eugène Ricklin, last president of the Parliament of Alsace-Lorraine" as a protestation and to make Ricklin endly amnestied and wholly rehabilitated. In facts, while he continued with enjoying an enormous popularity, Ricklin never recovered from not to be officially rehabilitated during these years. He died Wednesday 4 September 1935 at 20:20 after a long stay in the hospital of his native town, Dannemarie. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eugène Ricklin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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