I’ve already written about my grandmother Herta, about one of my Polish ancestors in the 16th century, and about how my four grandparents arrived to Buenos Aires at various points of the early 20th century. Now it’s time to learn about some great-great-grandparents from the side of my maternal grandfather.
Charles Wilhelm Georg
If you live in Geneva, you probably know that there is a small street named “Charles Georg”, relatively close to the Balexert shopping center. The reason for the honor is that Monsieur Charles Wilhelm Georg (1851-1923) was mayor of the Petit-Saconnex. This location is today just another neighborhood of Geneva, but back then it was a whole separate city. According to the official site of the city of Geneva (translated to English):
Born in Yverdon to a family from Basel, Charles Georg (1851-1923) ran the Geneva branch of the advertising firm Haasenstein et Vogler, which he bought out to create Publicitas S.A.
He also founded the Société Générale d’Affichage and was mayor of Petit-Saconnex from 1902 to 1914.
Why am I telling you this? Well, it turns out I’m one of the great-great-grandchildren of Charles Georg.
This is how it went: Charles Georg had seven children with his wife, Martha Emilie Haccius (1859-1954) (from the prominent Haccius family of Lancy, Geneva): Emmy Leonore, Jeanne, Marguerite, Charles Louis Germann Gustav (1884-1941), Marthe, Juliette, and Hélène.
To make things more confusing in the following generation, Emmy Leonore Georg married a certain Henry George (note the “e” at the end of the family name) (1874-1951) with whom she had four kids: André, Roland (1903-1981), Marianne (1905-1996), and Blanche (1907-1993). Emmy was, literally, “Madame George-Georg”.
(For the record, I met my grand-aunt Blanche just once, around 1991 a few months after my arrival in Switzerland, when she was living in Zurich.)
Attentive readers of this blog already know that my grandfather Roland Emile George married my grandmother Herta Schlerff (1903-1985) in Geneva around 1928, with whom she had 3 kids: my uncle Charles Roland (1932-1964), my uncle Henry Frédéric, and my mother, Evelyne Christiane (1944-2010).
Samuel Chappuzeau
The information above comes from personal records that my mother kept, and also from a genealogical tree available online. Thanks to this incredible page I discovered that one of my ancestors is Samuel Charles Chappuzeau (1625-1701), a French author, poet, and playwright who even inspired Molière. The sequence, according to said genealogical tree, is as follows:
- Jehan Chappuzeau (1515-1571)
- François Chappuzeau (1552-1592)
- Charles Chappuzeau (1577-1644)
- Samuel Charles Chappuzeau (1625-1701)
- Christophe Chappuzeau (1656-1732)
- Susanne Elisabeth Chappuzeau (1702-1782)
- Barbara Louise Elisabeth Eggers (1735-1789)
- Georg Christian Albrecht Haccius (1766-1846)
- Karl August Friedrich Haccius (1821-1921)
- Martha Emilie Haccius (1859-1954)
- Emmy Leonore Georg (?-?)
- Roland Emile George (1903-1981)
- Evelyne Christiane George (1944-2010)
- …and yours truly (1973-…)
The things one learns on the Internet! It is a weird feeling to see such a direct genetic sequence linking the early 21st century to the beginning of the 16th, with just… 14 people.
La Mandragore
But I digress. Monsieur Charles Wilhelm Georg lived (and was a mayor of) in the Petit-Saconnex, on the so-called “Domaine des Crêts” estate, established in 1809, where he owned a large villa named “La Mandragore”.
On a current map of Geneva like the one shown above, the ancient Domaine des Crêts roughly matches the area delimited between the Rue de Moillebeau, the Avenue Trembley, and the Chemin des Crêts, still holding the memory of the original name of the estate.
The website of the Geneva Library has some pictures of La Mandragore. There’s a postcard with a photo, whose description states that the official address was “Rue de Moillebeau 5”. There’s an even better picture in their archives, copied below.
The Geneva Library has even digitalized an album that my great-great-grandmother Martha Haccius offered her husband as a gift for their 25th anniversary in 1904, showing plenty of pictures of their Domaine des Crêts and La Mandragore, and even showing the menu served during the celebration.
What happened to La Mandragore? Well, according to this page on the website of Canton Geneva, it was demolished in 1945.
The estate was put up for sale on November 13, 1940. La Mandragore [= the former villa on this site] became a dependency of the Hôpital des Tilleuls, an establishment run by deaconesses from the Bern-based Kermont community, before passing into the hands of the State of Geneva in 1964. As for the mansion, after having housed a repair workshop run by territorial troops in 1939, it was demolished in 1945. It was replaced by a building by Arnold Hoechel, built by the Société Coopérative Suisse de Consommation. From 1959 onwards, the building housed the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. This was followed by the construction by architect Pierre Varenchon of a light, square administrative building (credit of 1,250,000 francs, no file), and then, in 1964, the restoration, again by Pierre Varenchon, of the old outbuilding. In 1994, the administration building was extended to the south.
So, there you have it. In the estate where La Mandragore stood, now we can find The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies (IFRC), plus a beautiful park named “Promenade des Crêts”. The website of the IFRC has a page telling the story of the Domaine des Crêts in full detail, with lots of pictures.
My relationship with the neighborhood of the Petit-Saconnex, as incredible as it might sound, does not end with La Mandragore. The mother of my grandmother Herta (Nina Vollenweider-Schlerff, née Havel) and two of her sisters (Hedy and Reemda) are buried in the Cimetière du Petit-Saconnex, and my own mother passed away in her apartment of the Chemin du Champ-d’Anier, also in the Petit-Saconnex.
Who knows. I would love to think that maybe Jorge Luis Borges visited La Mandragore once or twice when he lived in Geneva, from 1914 to 1919.
Update, 2024-10-18: Here are two ancient maps of Switzerland showing the area of Petit-Saconnex and Moillebeau, centered at the Domaine des Crêts. The first is from one of the oldest topographic maps of Switzerland, the Dufour Map (1845-1864).
Interestingly, on the leftmost edge of the screenshot above you can read “de Belessert” which evolved to the modern “Balexert” where is located the shopping center I mentioned previously.
The second is the Siegfried Map (1870-1926) (not at the same scale as the Dufour map).
These maps are screenshots courtesy of the swisstopo app for iOS and Android.