“The second time I came to stay in Paris, I was lucky enough to get a room in the Cité universitaire, in the Deutsch de la Meurthe Foundation which was founded by a famous wealthy man to house students. It was free to live there. There was a dining hall, with generous portions of healthy food. I lived in room number 114.”
Habib Bourguiba, first President of Tunisia, former resident of the Deutsch de la Meurthe Foundation
“I definitely did my most regular work, or certainly the most, when I lived in the Cité universitaire. I studied ten hours a day. But from Saturday evening at six until Monday morning, it was all rest and entertainment, the theatre, cinemas, concerts, museums, not to mention the evenings and on into Sunday mornings that we spent dancing; and we always enjoyed ourselves most when we were at the Cité universitaire.”
Léopold Sédar Senghor, writer and former President of Senegal, former resident of the Deutsch de la Meurthe Foundation.
“Going from school at Lycée Louis le Grand to the Cité universitaire was like escaping from one of Piranesi’s prisons and finding oneself in the Garden of Eden. I was given a room in the Deutsch de la Meurthe Foundation, with its air of a delightful Flemish convent. Houses scattered across the lawn, paths winding their way among the trees, the central building with its cheerful belfry… I had a single room, a room just for me alone, where no one could come poking around…”
Paul Guth, writer and former resident of the Deutsch de la Meurthe Foundation (extract from Une enfance pour la vie – published by Plon, Paris 1985).
“I come from Bogota, and I have been studying art and design in Paris since 2007. Through a happy coincidence the person living one door down from me just happens to be Florencia, my Chilean friend from the Arts and Image technology programme at Paris 8 university. She has been with me through the past year of changes. I came to the Deutsch house in December, my head full of expectations because Florencia had been there since September and she had told me about everything, what the rooms were like, her friends, going out to bars on Wednesdays, and lots more. But when I got there, it was nothing like what she described, everyone was on holidays, Florencia included, and I was there all alone in this big, old building. And I have to say that the Deutsch “on holidays” looks like something out of a fairy tale but it feels more like a haunted house filled with the whispers of past students (famous and not-so-famous). Thousands of souls floating around in this space that is part of the infinite cycle, a cycle that I’m part of now, too. During those scary days alone, I found comfort in the desk drawer that belonged to me during my stay in 2007-2008.Once I had moved into the room, I made it mine in every way I could. That’s the only way to fight the solitude and keep your spirits up in those impersonal rooms, swept clean three times a week as if to remove any trace of our ever having been there. And that’s when I came across what is now my most precious memory of the Deutsch. As I slowly opened the drawer, I saw it appear – page after page of writing, all types of pen and all types of penmanship, in different languages, written at different times. As the light fell across the pages, the lines began to tell the stories of all the people who had lived there. More signatures than you could count, along with the date and where they came from, appeared from out of the darkness to remind me of my part in this myth and what it really meant to be staying at the Cité Internationale. It’s good to be a part of and also to continue this utopian ideal that most Parisians don’t even know about, but that the tourists come to photograph regularly, unwittingly photographing me along with the building as I opened the heavy curtains on Sundays.
After the December holidays were over, the residents returned our routines started again – cooking after going to the bar on Wednesdays, parties in our rooms, staying up all night drinking teas and coffees from all over the world. Another year passed in the blink of an eye and people started leaving again; Florencia too went back to Chile. Since my studies are not yet finished, I’ll be staying here in this room, but we’re already planning how we will meet up in January 2011, in Columbia. I see the old students leave and new ones arrive; I’m here to welcome them with the few other students who are staying on. And it begins again, the cycle continues.”
Diana Mesa, Deutsch De La Meurthe Foundation resident from 2008 to 2010
