The CRAC museum is now open to everyone. The young institution of the Mont-Repais history group was inaugurated on Saturday morning. Objects retrace the rich history of the Col des Rangiers: from the lords of Asuel to the 12th century to the sentry drawn up in memory of the mobilization of the First World War. Its remains are now at the center of the old chapel. For Claude Hauser, professor of contemporary history at the University of Friborg and who worked as a scientific advisor on this project, the remains of Fritz indeed have their place in a museum.
“The place of memory has become an object of history”, explains the historian who confirms that “to take distance, it was also a question of decontextualizing the place where it was”. According to him, “by putting it in the museum, we make it an object of history, a story that is behind us, but which allows us to think and also understand what were the upheavals of the Jura question”.
The monument that has become a political symbol
If the Sentinel of the Rangiers was drawn up to pay tribute to the mobilization of the First World War, its symbol has gradually changed to become a sign of the Bern’s oppression. “If the Aries group and the Jurassic separatists had not mobilized to publicize the Jurassic cause and to protest against the arrival of a federal councilor and a Bernese state councilor in 1964, this Fritz would not have had a very great importance,” said the professor of contemporary history. /NCP
