Immerse yourself in 200 years of carefully preserved industrial history!
The Departmental Archives are available at this address:đź”— www.archives57.com
Introduction
In Saint-Avold is the Center for Industrial and Technical Archives of Moselle (CAITM), or the memory of the working worlds in Moselle.
Paper, photos, posters, films, city plans, and many treasures to discover in a different way the adventure of coal, iron and other industries which made the heyday of the history of the Moselle. Located near the Jeanne-d'Arc city in Saint-Avold, in the former central equipment store of the Houillères du bassin de Lorraine (HBL), the CAITM is built around the very important HBL archives. The funds were enriched with the archives of other industries which have marked the history of our territory. We invite you to discover, among other things, the history of the Bata shoe manufacturing factory, the Metz tobacco factory, and the Hartzviller crystal factory...
Did you know?
A former mining equipment store
The Moselle Industrial and Technical Archives Center occupies a former mining equipment store measuring nearly 200m long and 3,500m² in surface area. Built in the late 1940s, it was designed to be accessible from the railway tracks that ran alongside it.
A long document
In 1963, the Houillères du bassin de Lorraine planned the installation of a 50km long belt conveyor between the Marienau coking plant and the La Maxe coal-fired power station, located near Metz. This project was unsuccessful, but it left a plan (83 FTE 40) measuring almost 40m long!
A unique service of its kind
The Moselle Center for Industrial and Technical Archives is currently the only departmental service specializing in the conservation and promotion of the written heritage of industries and organizations linked to industry (such as unions).
Atypical visits
Visitors to the cultural action of the Moselle Industrial and Technical Archives Center also have the chance to enter the main repository of the service. In fact, the surface area of the building is almost entirely occupied by a large conservation space where the exhibitions take place.
A mine for genealogists
The Moselle Industrial and Technical Archives Center notably keeps the career files of Moselle coal miners born before 1943 and Bata employees. Many users go to the reading room to discover the professional lives of their ancestors, sometimes with photographs and surprising details.
In numbers
The CAITM preserves 10 km of archives to tell 250 years of history: 5,000 films, 6,000 works, 50,000 photographs, 200,000 maps and plans on the adventures of coal, iron and other industries (Bata, glassworks, tobacco factory, etc.).
Do research at the Archives
All users, whether they are there for professional or personal reasons, are welcomed free of charge and helped by service staff to carry out their research. French law opens archives according to their degree of confidentiality after varying periods of time, but most documents over 50 years old are freely communicable and consultation authorizations can still be granted for documents containing confidential data (private life and mainly court files). All you need to do is show ID to register.
Historical or administrative research is carried out on site, but copies of precisely designated documents can be issued (for payment) and a quantity of documents (civil status until 1904 in particular) are available on the Departmental Archives website: đź”— www.archives57.com.
In pictures
