Ma petite Jeannie chérie" exhibition

June 11 to 29, 2018
Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Sète Marine Station, 2 rue des chantiers
Designed by Sète's municipal archives department, the "Ma petite Jeannie chérie" exhibition presents the correspondence between Bernard Collin, a biologist at Sète's zoological station, and his wife during the Great War. An intimate and touching testimony between memory and history.

An intimate correspondence in the Great War

Bernard Collin was a biologist at the Sète zoological station when the First World War broke out. A non-commissioned officer in the 21st infantry regiment, he joined the front on November 7, 1914, near Béthune in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. He was killed during the 3rd Battle of Artois in the autumn of 1915. He was barely 34 years old.
From August 1914 until his death, Bernard Collin and his wife Magali wrote to each other almost every day.
Their correspondence bears witness to the intensity of their feelings, but also to the bloody conflict ravaging Europe. Magali Collin talks about their daughter Jeannie, born in 1911. Bernard Collin shares with his wife his thoughts, as a cultured and sensitive man, on his experiences at the front.
This humanist also addresses his daughter, to whom he dedicated sketches and drawings.

Travelling exhibition

It is from this beautiful correspondence - over 600 letters preserved by Bernard and Magali Collin's granddaughter - that the Sète municipal archives department has created the exhibition
"Ma petite Jeannie chérie".
A travelling exhibition comprising a documentary film and 23 panels featuring a host of originals, including letters, photos, drawings, postcards, newspapers and archive documents...
The fruit of painstaking collection work, they bear witness to an era and a wonderful love story brought back to life today.