LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF A MODERN CITY. BOURGEOIS MIDDLE-CLASSES IN ESCH-SUR-ALZETTE (1842-1922)

The middle classes have had more internal clashes than external. A plethora of intermediary categories is necessary to understand this historical period. And these go beyond the “black and white”nobility/middle-class and the rest. Everywhere the slightest division of the intermediary layers could pave the way to new social discriminations. What did this vast middle-class have in common? Despite their differences, industrialists, merchants, rentiers, high school teachers, higher civil servants what united them? I contend that what united them was they all owned some form of asset and this was the one common denominator fundamentally setting them apart the working class. It is the fact that they owned assets, their land, their knowledge, their business, their prestige and social esteem that set them aside from those who owned nothing but the product that the work earned with their own hands could grant them. Was the working class, though the common opponent of the middle class? In Esch, I argue this was nuanced . what my research highlights best is how the Zeitgeist affecting the nation at large manifested in Esch-sur-Alzette. Through some examples, such as those of the fights of the local council and the creation of the Industrial school in particular, it becomes clear that part of the capital’s rulers had no interest in the social emancipation of the city. This reflects the views of the bourgeois elites of the capital, more interested in maintaining a status quo , occasionally only tending a hand to the requests of the country’s second city. Most times just accepting changes when they were inevitable. This is best highlighted by the liberal stances on the role of women as well as their initial resistance to the idea of a universal suffrage. The working class city identity concealed other differences. the same did the 1st World War and the ordeal of teaming up against the “common enemies”: the central government, the German occupier, but also communism . In the working class city, the role of both some the upper middle classes and lower middle classes overlap. This may appear paradoxical, as in Esch, they were enablers, not deterrents of a social levelling. THere can be no doubt however, to the fact that they never called for revolution either. It is the capital’s bourgeoisie (in both their governmental institutional and civic roles ) that emerge as deterrents to a social leveling (not particularly interested in universal suffrage, the emancipation of women nor in a better access of the working classes to a more advanced education path.) I also contend that different strategies were put into place namely that of languages acting as barrier and the transformation of foreigners as the more differentiated social group, that is the one, one should actually be setting apart from. both strategies having been, otherwise already argued by Denis Scuto in his history of Luxembourgish nationality. As much as class is my dominant lens, I cannot but acknowledge that other important forces were at play in the population’s identification /individual identities .