She stands in New York Harbor as America’s most recognizable symbol—but the story of the Statue of Liberty begins thousands of miles away, in the charming Alsatian city of Colmar, France.
In this on-location episode, Tom ventures to the picturesque town where sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was born in 1834. Walking through Colmar’s cobblestone streets and half-timbered facades, Tom sits down with Juliette Chevée, curator of the Musée Bartholdi, to uncover the French side of this iconic American monument.
Who was Bartholdi? What did the statue originally mean to the French republicans who conceived it at an 1865 dinner party? How did a rejected Egyptian lighthouse design become the template for Liberty’s form?
And how did two Frenchmen—Bartholdi and the historian Édouard de Laboulaye—manage to convince a foreign country to accept a colossal structure without any government assistance from either France or the United States?
This is the forgotten story of how the Statue of Liberty was born in France as a symbol of enlightenment and republican values—and how it transformed into something neither Bartholdi nor the French ever anticipated: the ultimate symbol of American immigration, the promise of a new beginning, and later, a purely American icon.
From Bartholdi’s childhood home (now the museum) to the workshops in Paris where Liberty towered over the rooftops before ever reaching America, this is the epic adventure of Liberté Enlightening the World.
LISTEN TODAY: Made in France: Lady Liberty’s Alsatian Origins
FURTHER LISTENING
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