What follows is a translation of the work Fort-Louis – Geschichte von Festung, Stadt und Dorf, or in English, Fort-Louis – The History of the Fortress, the City, and the Village. It was written by P. Archangelus (Alphonse) Sieffert in 1935 for the Alsace-Lorraine Scientific Society. Alphonse, a Capuchin priest from nearby Altdorf, aimed to comprehensively chronicle both the military and civilian history of the fortress. At over 350 pages, I think he did an outstanding job.
My transcription and translation of this work were made possible with the help of modern AI tools. As a monolingual English speaker with only passable German and French reading abilities, I cannot overstate how essential this technology was for the project. While I will explain my process in more detail in the appendix, I’ll note here that although AI handled the bulk of the “grunt work” of translation, it required human direction and intervention to refine it to the level of polish that we all expect from a quality historical work.
My initial motivation for this project was to learn more about the mysterious Alsatian town where my earliest ancestors lived. For over 70 years, my 4x and 5x great-grandfathers called this place home. Yet, a suitable history of the fortress was not available online. One could cobble together a moderately detailed history by consulting numerous tertiary sources, but that would pale in comparison to Sieffert’s masterpiece. Not only does it provide vivid descriptions and event chronologies, but it also includes contemporary primary sources.
Note: Because the work’s copyright status is uncertain, this blog publishes only the foreword, introduction, and the first two chapters — the fortress and the town. The remaining chapters will have to wait until that question is settled.