Sporting memory and its heritagisation: The example of Roland-Garros

Threefold imbrication of memory

In 1928, construction of the Roland-Garros stadium enabled the French team, winners of the previous year’s Davis Cup, to welcome its challenger and enhance its prestigious sporting victory in 1927 over the Americans led by Bill Tilden. The achievement marked the birth of a new national sports legacy created around tennis. Named after a former aviator and member of the Stade Français multi-sports club, the venue bore the mark of patriotism and memory from its very beginnings. As host, the same year, to the French Open created in 1925, the history of Roland-Garros established itself on two distinct foundations: the individuality of the name and the sporting dimension of the nation. Some 80 years later, a study of the venue, nestling in the surroundings of Porte d’Auteuil (Paris), brought to light a form of continuity. In fact, it appeared that the memory-based policy of French tennis officials operated on several levels, and in many spatial, symbolic and museological dimensions reminiscent of the three monument categories distinguished by Régis Debray (1999) in his definition of the concept of heritage, i.e. the ‘form monument’, the ‘message monument’ and the ‘trace monument’. In the case of Roland-Garros, there is little doubt that the three overlap.

The spatial impact of memory devoted to the past glories of French tennis is the most obvious. The area situated halfway between Court no. 1 and the Philippe Chatrier Court, known as the Place des Mousquetaires, ¹ was built in 1989 and offers visitors the opportunity to admire the bronze statues of René Lacoste, Henri Cochet, Jean Borotra and Jacques Brugnon, featured in action around a monument representing the Davis Cup Trophy. There can be no doubt whatsoever as to the profoundly memorial dimension of such a tribute. They are joined in heritage by one of their contemporary champions, Suzanne Lenglen, who also appears in action on a bronze panel at the entrance to Court A. Erecting these statues anchored the sporting venue in a form of heightened tradition, all the more so since they are supported by a whole host of symbolic eponyms. The latter serve to structure the institutional space, greatly supported by references from yesteryear. Indeed, Suzanne Lenglen has an entrance to the venue bearing her name, as well as a path which crosses one named after another French Open winner in 1946, Marcel Bernard. As for the Centre Court, since 2008 it has also had four stands bearing the names of each of the Musketeers. The exponential propensity of actors in French tennis to valorise memory issues can likewise be felt through the symbolic references that impact the identity of the tournament. Although the Musketeers were known as a collective entity, the Coupe des Mousquetaires has been given to the individual men’s singles champion at Roland-Garros since 1981. ² The previous trophy, from 1953 to 1979, bore the name of Pierre Guillou, captain of the French tennis team and technical expert of the Musketeers in the 1920s. In addition, the cup awarded to winners of the men’s doubles has been known as the Jacques Brugnon Cup since 1989. Last but not least, the winner of the women’s singles has been awarded the Suzanne Lenglen Cup since 1979. In this way, victorious symbolism remains attached to glorious ancestors, and calling upon the founding and prosperous past is an indication of a clear desire to celebrate the parentage and historical legitimacy of the tournament. Furthermore, the Musketeer myth is also apparent in the use of their nickname. Very recently, and also largely anticipated on account of their record of achievements, the name has likewise been given to the quartet made up of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Richard Gasquet, Gilles Simon and Gaël Monfils (Ezvan, 2008).

Over and beyond spatial and symbolic aspects, Roland-Garros has administered and centralised initiatives in the field of memory since the early twenty-first century in its own museological tool, the Tenniseum. The early stages of the project saw the light of day in the mid 1970s under the leadership of Gil de Kermadec, the first national technical director. His museum project was nonetheless put on the back-burner during the presidency of Philippe Chatrier. It was only after the election of Christian Bîmes at the head of the FFT in 1993 that the project was revived. In 1994, the Federation launched an acquisition policy aimed at collecting historical sporting objects. The following year, the project was officially registered by the FFT, and documentalist Isabelle Aimone was given the task of organising the content being collected. Initiated in 1999, inaugurated in 2003 and built over 2200 square metres of basement area, the Tenniseum’s collection is organised around key categories. The audiovisual content is one of the best stocked of the sporting world and the focal point of a technical programme centred on training and research. As for printed matter, it has a collection of over 3000 titles, including a rich selection of periodicals, and technical and pedagogical works. Finally, a substantial database enables the FFT to centralise information, symbolising the rise of the institution as a technological showcase of sport in France. The Tenniseum is divided into two distinct areas for the public, including a permanent display and temporary exhibitions. The latter concern the museum’s contemporary concerns and present a global cultural vision of historical and artistic topics. With regard to the permanent display, it has established itself as the foundations of a common heritage for the history of tennis in France by bringing together various symbolic objects related to the evolution of Roland-Garros. The chronological approach adopted makes it possible to contextualise the history of the venue and the tournament. As for the many trophies and racquets from former times, they conjure up a sentimental and even nostalgic past, leading memory towards the dimension of collective emotions. Lastly, the editorial line of the museum anchors tennis in the history of its time by retracing the evolution of fashion and techniques associated with the discipline. Designed to preserve the historical heritage of the tournament and develop a pedagogical framework, the museum valorises a new cultural approach within the space and identity of the Roland-Garros establishment. Unlike federations dedicated to cycling and football, tennis benefitted from a central and unifying venue during a large part of the twentieth century thanks to the Roland-Garros stadium. This probably explains why the stadium’s museum is France’s unique example of a temple dedicated to the memory of sport, and thus to promoting its own historical legitimacy.

A sanctuary of national heritage

The memory markers used within the Roland-Garros establishment leave little room for improvisation. Both architectural space and sporting symbolism are sustained (Holt and Ruta, 2015: 339–50) by reference to the original story of Roland-Garros. The challenge is not only to valorise the tournament and venue as sporting heritage, but also to highlight an evolution rooted in the socio-cultural sphere of the nation. By influencing the identity of the Roland-Garros site, the recurrent tribute paid to the Musketeers acknowledges the persistence of their story as the cornerstone of French tennis and, moreover, shows a ‘French spirit’ that was assimilated through the valorisation of a cultural practice. The same can be said for Suzanne Lenglen who, although mocked for her professional career choices for a while, saw her image reinstated in the national pantheon during the 1970s. More generally, the glorious past served as a foundation for the myth surrounding the origins of French tennis. The situation created a form of inequality, however, in the way memory treated champions from the second half of the twentieth century, whose integration in sporting modernity has not benefitted from the same identificatory references. From the 1980s onwards, it was more necessary than ever for Roland-Garros to establish and legitimise modernity through heritage rooted in tradition.

The mythological origin (Barthes, 1972 [1957]) of Roland-Garros is embodied in the ‘Musketeers’. They are at the very foundations of the traditional history of tennis, as well as at the intersection of ascendant memories. As successive winners of the French Open between 1925 and 1932, they formed the practically unchanged composition of the French Davis Cup team which won the competition for six consecutive years from 1927 to 1932. These performances highlighted the emergence of a national sporting model and a feeling of collective pride. At the time, the sport promoted the propagation of identificatory representations around unity of place and group. Furthermore, identification by public opinion was facilitated by the fact that these champions belonged to a variety of social classes and represented a range of social strengths and geographical backgrounds. The ‘legend of the Musketeers’ was not, however, only built on the emotions generated by their performances. From 1927, the authorities of the FFT became aware of the potential effect of international domination (Samazeuilh, 1927). In October of that year, a major exhibition was held with the aim of presenting the French players to their public. This guaranteed a feeling of apparent closeness, conducive to the development of a mass identification phenomenon (Le Miroir des sports 1927b: 283). Popular enthusiasm and media hype surrounding the champions secured attention and crystallised the imaginary: ‘Sporting consecration becomes a time of collective communion with, in the background as a political stake, the confrontation of nations striving for world leadership in economic and cultural terms’ (Peter and Fouquet, 2010: 442). Indeed, the French government and French Lawn Tennis Federation became aware of the diplomatic stakes underlying international tournaments and the prestige they brought (Le Faou, 2009: 170–2). Moreover, almost ten years after the end of the First World War, Franco-American rivalry went beyond the game: the issue of economic supremacy over the European continent and debts owed to the American allies emerged as a clear cause of tension (Milza, 1997 [1968]: 117). The Minister of Trade and Industry Maurice Bokanowski was well aware of the fact when he told the French weekly Le Miroir des sports that ‘Sport is an integral part of social life; the victory of our fellow countrymen makes the French people more popular in the United States … Americans feel something other than contempt for us’ (Le Miroir des sports 1927a: 232–3). Tennis events were therefore an opportunity to weaken America’s power and express French genius with each prestigious win. The very present memory of the Musketeers in the twilight of the twentieth century showed just how far these tennis players represented one of the first referential milestones in the evolution and identity of the sport in France. All the more so, since they never really retired from French tennis, remaining genuinely close to its leading authorities throughout the twentieth century. René Lacoste, for example, was FFT president between 1940 and 1943, before being made honorary president in 1977, as were Henri Cochet and Jean Borotra. Being part of the institution took them beyond their sporting fame, making them guardian figures and investing them with a profoundly allegorical dimension: ‘Since the Musketeers, French tennis has been orphaned of its heroes and must, for the time being, make do with honouring their memory each year, during the prestigious tournament of Roland-Garros’ (Le Faou, 2009: 167–81).

More generally, the Roland-Garros establishment perpetuated its glorious past by adopting a proactive memory policy towards well-known figures presented as being legitimate. This is what happened, for instance, in the case of the ‘Divine One’. Born on 24 May 1899 in Paris, Suzanne Rachel Flore Lenglen was the first female international tennis star, a few years before the Musketeers appeared on the scene. She made her mark on the history of both Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, as well as on the Antwerp Olympic Games in 1920. In the year of her last title at the French Open, the praise received for her final against Helen Wills at the Cannes tournament in 1926 was such that tennis may now be compared to the noble art: ‘the most sensational match since the Carpentier–Dempsey one [1921]’ (Hanot, 1926). Yet, the sirens of professionalism, although still widely criticised in Europe, lured her into a spectacular American tour of 38 matches. This audacious choice had two main consequences: she was side-lined from the competitions which had made her famous, and her ties with the FFT were broken (Castan-Vicente, 2016). She was idolised by the public, but her image was dented by the symbolism of an agreed, if not voluntary, departure from national sport. There then followed a period of ten years between the controversy and her reinstatement, following which she became involved in the training of young athletes for tennis and gained the recognition of her Paris organisation in 1936. However, she died of leukaemia in 1938. Yet her image and story returned to favour with the feminist struggles of the 30-year post-war boom, and Suzanne Lenglen became a symbol of emancipation in French society 40 years after her death. Her daring choice of clothes (Jamain-Samson, 2011), her relationship with the press and the spectacular dimension of her career all made her a resolutely modern athlete. When celebrating national heritage during the last decade of the twentieth century, Roland-Garros paid her a particular tribute: Court A, inaugurated in 1994 and a symbol of the stadium’s modernisation, was given her name three years after its construction. On a more political level, the FFT likewise sought to give legitimacy to a more ambiguous figure in French sport, Jean Borotra. Briefly president of the International Tennis Federation in 1961, he was intent throughout his whole life on defending the concept of amateur sport in France. In this regard, he collaborated closely with the reactionary Vichy regime led by Marshal Pétain, under which he pursued an innovative and authoritarian sports policy (Gautier, 2009). As Commissaire général à l’éducation générale et sportive between 1940 and 1942 (Dine, 1998: 301–11), Borotra placed federations under state control thanks to the Sports Charter promulgated in December 1940, which broke with the liberal and less-serious model of sport hitherto practised. He likewise provided the stimulus for setting up the Centre national des moniteurs et athlètes (CNMA) in Antibes in 1941 and reformed state education by creating a new subject oriented towards fulfilling national duty: general education and sport (Gay-Lescot, 2002). Overly patriotic, he was arrested and deported by the Germans in November 1942, and escaped all punishment at the Liberation. The fact remains that sport in general and tennis in particular contributed to a genuine rehabilitation process through the reactivation of selective memory. Thanks to his status as undisputed champion, he was back in favour from the mid 1950s. The role he played in the political structuring of sport was commended when he was appointed president of the Commission de la doctrine du sport by the Gaullist government in 1962, leading him to publish the Essai de doctrine du sport in 1965, which constituted one of the most important reports on reform for more than a decade. Jean Borotra was, moreover, personally committed to institutions focused on defending the original spirit of sport: he was a founding member and the president of the International Fair Play Committee between 1963 and 1988 (Grosset and Attali, 2011). His rehabilitation was final when he handed over the Davis Cup to Yannick Noah in 1991, in complete contrast with the support he had shown half a century earlier for a government maintaining racial inequality.

While the history of French tennis is not made up exclusively of early and founding successes, it would appear that some form of memory disparity affected champions following this Golden Age. Although French tennis player Simone Mathieu, the last women’s singles champion before the Second World War, has a trophy in her name (women’s doubles) and 1946 winner Marcel Bernard is linked to the prize awarded in the men’s doubles, the heroes of the second half of the twentieth century represent a very small part in this memory-based policy. Françoise Dürr, winner in 1967, Yannick Noah, winner in 1983, and Mary Pierce, winner in 2000, for example, do not feature in the heritage strategy implemented by the Federation. Several reasons may explain this situation. First, spatial and symbolic tributes are faced with two irrefutable technical restrictions: an enclosed area and a limited number of competing categories. Second, the historical context of the various careers and past periods must be taken into consideration. It is easy to imagine, for example, that the ideological and sporting crisis of the late 1930s was of little benefit to the memory of Simone Mathieu’s achievements. Last but not least, while it is difficult to understand the progression of sporting memory solely through gender issues, some contradiction should be noted in the absence of memorials dedicated to Françoise Dürr. Her career did indeed suffer from a memory deficit at the very time when women were beginning to obtain fundamental rights in the late 1960s.

The image of Suzanne Lenglen, on the other hand, was frequently reinterpreted as an incarnation of female modernity, intentionally linking the wave of emancipation in the 1920s to the feminist struggle of the 1970s. Representing a further form of orchestrating sporting representations, this approach confirmed how the influence of social continuity extended to include gendered considerations, once again for legitimisation purposes. Moreover, although representations during her heyday implied a reinforcement of gender stereotypes by emphasising in particular her elegance, suppleness and the aestheticisation of her game, memory made her an icon of modernity marked by the enhancement of women’s place in public spaces, which sport could not ignore. In retrospect, Suzanne Lenglen’s arrival on the sports scene may therefore be interpreted as a symbolic break between the old world and the new in terms of playing style, fashion and attitude (Hargreaves, 2003 [1994]: 116). Consequently, while the effect of gender on contemporary commemorations in the case of French international tennis championships cannot be denied, it was not necessarily linked to discrimination, but rather to a logic of contextual appropriation with a certain hierarchical ranking of cultural allegories. We therefore believe that, at the intersection of individual memories, a constantly renewed choice is made, aspiring to collectivise the issues of memory. The latter aims continually to legitimise the present in relation to a selected past, if not a fantasised one. In the case of the Roland-Garros tournament, memorial heritage built on the origins of contemporary, elitist and amateur sport remained more predominant than ever in the face of professional globalisation beginning in the late 1960s. The memory of pioneers relativised both the implosion of the original spirit of sport and the expansion of a lucrative model that its leaders had decided to sanitise by referring to the past.

The common historical foundation of French sport is therefore situated in the original evolutions of these ‘sites of memory’ (Nora, 1997), which include Roland-Garros. The FFT orchestrated a memory dedicated to the founding fathers of tennis, thus asserting its dominant role in national sporting culture and guaranteeing the continuity of sport through time in France.

The globalisation of sport and its representations

In 1968, the beginning of the age of Open Championships put an end to any distinction being made between ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ sporting entities. The international tennis scene initiated general harmonisation in favour of spectacular professionalism. When, in 1983, Yannick Noah raised the trophy on the Centre Court of Roland-Garros, this evolution had already changed the tennis landscape. It had, more particularly, thrown the sport into multifaceted modernity, where national belonging was henceforth only one dimension among others. The simultaneous and joint action of Philippe Chatrier at the head of the FFT ensured the development and future of the Roland-Garros tournament internationally. The contemporaneity of tennis merged into the globalisation of models and references and succumbed, as did the rest of society, to the acceleration of time and a new plurality of social frameworks (Nora, 2011). This was the reason why the Roland-Garros institution called upon memory for both legitimisation and justification purposes.

In the decades following the beginning of the Open era, the Roland-Garros institution underwent a number of major changes driven by the FFT. Since 1953, Philippe Chatrier had been advocating the unification of the discipline worldwide, considering that the divisions existing within it were an obstacle to modernity. He became president of the FFT in 1973. In the face of increasing demand, the training policy recommended by Philippe Chatrier proved effective. It appeared moreover as a sustainable link between amateurism and professionalism. A staunch advocate of the principles defined in Minister Pierre Mazeaud’s Law of 29 October 1975 concerning the development of physical education and sport, Chatrier believed in a solid link between the masses and the elite: the identificatory role of a champion vis-à-vis his spectators required him to be out on the field. Although there were only 224,442 tennis practitioners in 1972, this number rose to 545,254 in 1978, and as many as 801,054 in 1980. The figure reached its peak in 1990, when the Federation counted 1,363,9621 members (Bayle, 2009). In November 1980, together with the French Ministry of Youth Affairs, Recreation and Sport and the French National Olympic and Sports Committee, the FFT launched the ‘5000 courts initiative’ as part of the ‘Sport for All’ programme, with the aim of sustaining the rise in the popularity of tennis through a network of sports facilities around the country (Journal official de la République française, 1980; Brossard, 1993). At the same time, major work began to extend the Roland-Garros complex. The impressive architectural development undertaken between 1980 and 1994 aimed to meet the new challenges arising from the professional evolution of the sport. Originally covering a surface area of just over three hectares for five courts in 1980, the stadium also had five further playing areas, including Court no. 1, where the names of the winners at Roland-Garros were displayed. In 1986, there were 19 courts covering six hectares. Between 1987 and 1991, refurbishment of the Centre Court was also undertaken, alongside the setting-up of a suitable press and television centre. Meanwhile, in 1989, FFT leaders made a point of building a monument to the glory of the Musketeers, thus placing national sporting history at the heart of a rapidly expanding institution. Finally, after the construction of the Suzanne Lenglen Court with a seating capacity of 10,000, and the addition of seven new tennis courts, in 1994 Roland-Garros boasted 23 courts spread over 8.5 hectares. In total, 384 million francs (the equivalent of €58 million at the time), were invested in the modernisation and architectural development of the venue between 1978 and 1994 (Mairie de Paris, 2008).

These architectural developments were intended to lead the tournament into modernity, especially as media coverage of Roland-Garros was also expanding: after initially broadcasting on French television channel no. 1, which covered the whole of the tournament for the first time in 1978, Roland-Garros transferred broadcasting rights to the second channel in 1987. Economically speaking, the 1970s were conducive to the development of major partnerships and in 1973 the BNP and equipment manufacturer Adidas decided to take advantage of the increasing visibility of the competition, as did Perrier from 1978 onwards. Governed by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) from 1972, the international circuit discovered new generations of athletes whose skill and spectacular style charmed observers. Tennis spread through a significant part of the French population via ‘emotional contagion’ (Rimé, 2005: 115–20). In fact, the years between 1970 and 1980 brought about a new phenomenon in the perception and development of international tennis, via the emergence of ‘stars’ among the players. With players being well versed in the demands of professionalism and benefitting from technological advances, the period witnessed the birth of ‘sacred monsters’ Björn Borg (1973–84), Ivan Lendl (1978–96), John McEnroe (1977–92), Mats Wilander (1981–96), Martina Navratilova (1973–94), Chris Evert (1972–89) and Steffi Graf (1982–99), to mention but a few. Showcasing their talents on the courts of Roland-Garros, they now also benefitted from the iconic cult existing among the public (Riordan and Krüger, 2003). The emergence of frameworks for transnational sporting representations and allegiances was well underway. However, this modernist momentum did not make a clean break with the past, and a number of players from the first half of the twentieth century were quick to take advantage of this for their own private gain – one of the main reasons for their persistent presence in collective memory. The most significant example here is René Lacoste. By orienting his career towards sporting innovations, he lay the foundations of his technical and commercial legacy. In 1960, he invented the anti-vibration dampener which radically transformed stroke quality and eased pressure on the player’s arm. Following this, his steel racket, designed in 1963 and distributed by American sports equipment manufacturer Wilson, was a big hit between 1965 and 1980. Last but not least, in addition to its booming ready-to-wear and fashion business, the firm Lacoste and its creator developed their first tennis shoes in 1985. While the brand benefitted from the reputation of its creator at the beginning, it now contributes to sustaining the memory of his achievements, providing a link between tradition and modernity as illustrated by the vintage trend that has been revived by sports manufacturers.

Aiming to establish both its heritage identity and a new modernist direction, the Roland-Garros organisation valorised mythological memory, based on the Golden Age of its foundation. As a symbol of the continuity of time and tennis, this memory offered two guarantees for future sustainability: the quest for historical legitimacy linked to development spanning almost a hundred years and the enshrinement of the national sporting heritage paradigm. In the space of 30 years, from 1981 to 2008, spatial and symbolic statues, eponyms and a museum conquered Roland-Garros. Henceforth, the present greeted the past, as part of a doctrine devoted to legitimising the future. And further proof of the advent of memory issues within the FFT and its sanctuary came when the Centre Court was given the name of the emblematic president Philippe Chatrier in 2001. The stadium was rooted in history. On the one hand, the memory phenomenon served to justify the structural changes imposed by professionalism under the pretext of both continuity and heritage preservation and, on the other, resolved the issue of diversified representations by giving the institution a guaranteed identity within the globalisation of sport. The case of Yannick Noah was a telling one in terms of this duality. Although he was present throughout the cultural and social fabric of France, ³ it was a long time before his name became associated with national sporting memory. A relaxed icon and advertising muse, Yannick Noah nonetheless reflected the social currents of the 1980s, with his achievements and character being magnified by television. He was perceived as being the archetype of a champion vectoring plural social allegiances, particularly with regard to the frequent ethnic and moral issues concerning him (Villaret and Tétart, 2009), as well as symptomatic of a history that was breaking out of the strict national framework. This explains why he has not been endowed with memory status worthy of the name within the institution: a plaque bearing his name was inaugurated in the Roland-Garros village only in 2008.

It was therefore no accident that leaders of French tennis took the stance they did on memory. While it was characterised by the founding of national heritage intended to serve legitimising purposes, it likewise demonstrated an awareness of the multipolar and globalised stakes of sporting modernity. From the 1970s onwards, new ideological, professional and sporting factors made their way into institutional and popular perceptions of athletes. The period offered a massive diversification of memory factors where, more particularly, patriotic pride, recognition of transnational talent, media influence and the pluralisation of emotional representations could be distinguished. Implemented from the 1980s, the valorisation of cultural sporting heritage brought a partial response to the new plurality of representations. Initiatives taken in the field of memory over the final two decades of the twentieth century recalled the dogma of the governing bodies of French tennis in their quest for historical legitimacy: no modernity without tradition. ⁴

Conclusion

This study was faced with a twofold challenge: defining both the emergence and particularism of sporting memory. It is clear that memory’s main frameworks were situated somewhere between national instrumentalisation orchestrated for legitimising purposes, and heritage immateriality conducive to structuring national mythology around sport. Furthermore, it is important here to remember the specificity of sport, whose extensive disciplinary area further multiplies channels of interpretation and representation, making the understanding of ideological uses of the past and resulting memory more complex. Thus it is difficult not to think about Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (1983), who underline the ability of invented traditions simultaneously to symbolise social cohesion and group belonging – real or fantasised – to legitimise institutions and their status and to mythify the systems of values and beliefs inherent to society.

However, the emergence of memory issues and heritage aspirations was not solely based on the valorisation of tradition, but also on full consciousness of a matrix specific to sporting modernity and its plural representations (Violette, 2018). Through the example of Roland-Garros, it has been possible to observe how the memory phenomenon set in motion at the end of the twentieth century aimed to protect the continuity of sport through time by highlighting the national paradigm of a founding period, while taking on the modernist challenges of professionalism. And so, built on a line linking tradition and modernity, memory considerations represented an extension of the sporting sphere at national level, albeit based on a variety of frameworks.

This contribution aims to provide an understanding of the memory issues related to the heritagisation of sport in France. Although focused on sport, it must not be forgotten that the processes of remembering and forgetting inherent to memory do not concern only the sporting dimension of the Roland-Garros institution. In fact, the venue has experienced darker periods in its history, in particular when it was used as a transit camp for ‘undesirable’ foreigners between 1939 and 1940, as illustrated by the work of Arthur Koestler (1941).

More generally, this article is a resounding call to open the door resolutely to the history of sporting memory in all its dimensions. Indeed, while sport progressively conquered societal space in the twentieth century, it should be considered today as a legitimate object in the construction of representations, for it constitutes a multi-memory heritage at the turn of the twenty-first century.