Archives départementales des Vosges

Created during the French Revolution by the law of 5 brumaire an V (26 October 1796), the departmental archives have the task of collecting, classifying, preserving and communicating the written heritage of the department: administrative, family and business archives, and iconographic documents. The creation of the Departmental Archives was the result of the political will to centralise the Nation's archives at the departmental level, which was already evident in the decree of 20 April 1790. In the Vosges, as in many other departments, the archives were initially kept in the premises of the Prefecture: in the former Jesuit college, now the Ecole du Centre, and then in the premises of the current Prefecture built in 1828. In 1808, a fire spared the archives, but they were nevertheless downgraded when they were temporarily evacuated. In 1841, the filing system was improved, even though it did not follow the 1817 standards, by derogation of the Minister of the Interior. Successive archivists endeavoured to complete, classify and preserve the collections in the most suitable premises possible. The oldest document preserved in the Vosges is the charter of Adalberon II, bishop of Metz and brother of Thierry I, Duke of Lotharingia, dating from 985. This diploma from the abbey of Senones, listed as 2 H 1, confirms the abbey's possession of the church of Vacqueville (today in Meurthe-et-Moselle) and its dependencies. The departmental archives then had to suffer from conflicts. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 caused administrative complications with the fluctuation of the border, leading to the extraction of documents from the archives by the German authorities, which was only resolved after the First World War. The First World War led to the removal of 70 boxes of the most valuable archives to Montpellier. Many documents were destroyed in the communes following the occupations. The Second World War had the same effects: archives were moved and destroyed in the communes. In particular, the archives of the tribunal de grande instance of Saint-Dié, two departments of the Prefecture, the Inspection académique, and most of the war damage files from the First World War disappeared. For the departmental archives of the Vosges, the post-war period was a time of blossoming. The collection continued actively, so much so that the premises of the Prefecture, despite renovations, had to be supplemented by an annex in the former chapel of the Franciscans in Épinal, and then by another in Golbey. From the mid-1970s onwards, the number of staff increased. Even before the decentralisation, the General Council undertook the creation of a new building in La Voivre. Work began in 1986 and the new home of the Departmental Archives opened its doors on 18 April 1988. This building was used to store the 14 linear kilometres of collections that existed at the time. Decentralisation accelerated the growth of the team, which reached 18 people in 1991 and 27 by 2011. 

Reservations must be made at least the day before for the following day and before 4pm.