Call Number:

CDG-B.France.Theis, Edouard

Repository:

Swarthmore College Peace Collection

Extent:

0.21 linear ft. (2.5 linear in.)

Preferred Citation:

[Identification of item], in the Édouard Theis Collected Papers (CDG-B France), Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

Date:

1947-1965 (bulk)

Creator:

Theis, Édouard, 1899-, Sangree, Carl, and Sangree, Florence

Abstract:

Édouard Theis was a missionary and teacher in Madagascar and the Cameroons, before joining the theology faculty at the University of Paris. As a pacifist and conscientious objector to war Theis resisted Nazi violence and racism during World War II. Along with André and Magda Trocmé, Theis and his wife, Mildred, co-founded the Collège Cévenol in 1938. Theis taught French, German, and Greek, and his wife taught there as well. Theis also served as the college's first [second?] director until his retirement in 1963.

Édouard Theis was born in 1899. He taught school in the United States, and was a missionary and teacher in Madagascar and the Cameroons, before joining the theology faculty at the University of Paris, where he met André Trocmé. Trocmé invited him to serve as half-time assistant pastor under him in the Protestant church of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in France. As a pacifist and conscientious objector to war Theis resisted Nazi violence and racism during World War II. Along with André and Magda Trocmé, Theis and his wife, Mildred, were leaders of the town's collective efforts to hide Jewish and other refugees from the Gestapo. He was arrested on February 13, 1943, along with André Trocmé and Roger Dacissac, and interned in a camp by the Vichy police, but was released after a few months. In the last months of the Nazi occupation, often at great risk, he guided refugees through the mountains of eastern France to the border of Switzerland, where they could pass into safety.

Theis and André Trocmé co-founded the Collège Cévenol in 1945. Theis taught French, German, and Greek, and his wife taught there as well. Theis also served as the college's first [second?] director until his retirement in 1963. Theis and his wife had eight daughters.

In 1952, Carl and Florence Sangree began The American Friends of the Collège Cévenol (AFCC). The AFCC helped raise funds for the college to purchase a 16-hectare farm on the edge of Chambon as the site of a new campus. It also organized work-camps at which the school's teachers and students, along with volunteers, passed the summers living in large tents while they built the new school with their own hands. Work-camps are still run today during the summers to help participants in their French language skills and to engage in community service projects. The college itself is currently named the Le Collège-Lycée Cévenol International.

[sources: 1/ "Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed" by Philip Hallie; 2/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Coll%C3%A8ge-Lyc%C3%A9e_C%C3%A9venol_International]

The collection consists of letters between Édouard Theis and Carl and Florence Sangree, who lived in the United States. The correspondence is primarily about the founding and maintenance of the Collège Cévenol in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Included are letters to/from André Trocmé.