The Carnavalet Museum explores Paris between the wars

Following the First World War, France changed its face. In 1931, for the first time, there were more workers and employees than farmers. The countryside is emptying, the big cities are attracting. And Paris in all this?

To shed light on this pivotal period and understand how the capital is transforming, the Carnavalet museum presents People of Paris 1926-1936an exhibition based on the research of demographer and historian Sandra Brée.

A capital in full transformation

Thanks to an artificial intelligence tool deciphering handwriting, she was able to analyze the census registers of 1926, 1931 and 1936 – the first to be nominative in Paris. These documents, now accessible online on the Paris Archives website, make it possible to follow family trajectories, migratory flows and the social geography of a rapidly changing capital. Name, age, profession, origin, household composition… everything is there. And everything speaks there.

In 1921, when Paris reached its demographic peak with 2.89 million inhabitants – a record never equaled – two thirds of its residents were not born there. “Parisians mainly come from the northern half of France,” explains Sandra Brée, “but we also find Bretons, Burgundians, Auvergnats, Limousins…”

Added to this are Russian refugees, Jewish families from Eastern Europe, and workers from the colonial Empire. The city of light attracts, absorbs, promises. She also likes young singles and women, more than half of whom declare employment. Few children, few elderly people: Paris attracts those looking for work, freedom, emancipation.

“We are all a little Parisian”

And then, there are the names that turn the statistics into romance. In 1931, Édith Gassion, future Édith Piaf, appeared in the registers. She is 15 years old, an “artist” and lives at 115 rue de Belleville with her divorced father, an unemployed acrobat from Calvados, and his new partner, born in Meurthe-et-Moselle. Five years later, we meet Charles Aznavourian, son of Armenian exiles fleeing the genocide, accompanied by his singer sister.

“These censuses allow us to draw threads like in a police investigation,” laughs Valérie Guillaume, the director of the Carnavalet museum. And above all, there is emotion: everyone can find an ancestor, a loved one. Ultimately, we are all a little bit Parisian,” she concludes, recalling that every life, even ordinary life, leaves a trace in the memory of the city.