The Sharpshooter Bartholdi Carved

In Division 4 of Père-Lachaise, a bronze monument shows a man standing, rifle in hand, looking east. At the foot of the statue, a little girl in Alsatian costume, cast in zinc, lays a wreath. The figure is Ignace Hoff, born in 1836, a sergeant of the Paris francs-tireurs during the siege of 1870–1871 — the most feared sharpshooter in the Prussian army, according to the patriotic legend of the Third Republic. The sculptor is Auguste Bartholdi, the creator of the Statue of Liberty. The Sergeant Hoff monument at Père-Lachaise is Bartholdi's last known work, finished shortly before the sculptor's death in 1904. It was funded by public subscription — an honour the Republic reserved for national heroes.

Ignace Hoff was an Alsatian, born in 1836, a locksmith by trade. When war broke out in July 1870 and Alsace was invaded, Hoff joined the Paris francs-tireurs — those units of armed civilians, sharpshooters and scouts who harassed the Prussian army in the suburbs and fortifications of the besieged capital. Sergeant Hoff earned a reputation as an exceptional marksman. The Parisian press, hungry for heroes in a war turning to disaster, turned him into a figure of legend: the Alsatian picking off Prussians one by one from the ramparts, the man the enemy had put a price on, the sharpshooter no one could hit. The exact number of casualties attributed to Sergeant Hoff varies by source — patriotic propaganda was never short of figures. After the war and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, Hoff became a symbol of Alsatian resistance.

The statue of Sergeant Hoff is Bartholdi's last work, the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty. The monument was funded by public subscription — a rare honour for a non-commissioned officer.

Ignace Hoff died in 1902 in Paris, at sixty-six. The public subscription for his funerary monument was launched at once. Bartholdi, himself an Alsatian from Colmar, accepted the commission. The choice was symbolic: France's most celebrated sculptor — the man who had given Liberty to America — carved the last tribute to the sharpshooter of the lost war. Bartholdi shows Hoff standing, in the uniform of a franc-tireur, rifle in hand, in a watchful pose. At the foot of the monument, a little girl in traditional Alsatian dress — a bonnet with a wide black bow, an apron — lays a laurel wreath. The zinc girl, more modest than the sergeant's bronze, represents Alsace in mourning. Bartholdi died on 4 October 1904: the Sergeant Hoff monument is one of his very last works. Another monument to Hoff's memory stands at Bry-sur-Marne.

The Sergeant Hoff monument stands in Division 4 of Père-Lachaise, not far from Rossini's cenotaph and Félix Faure's grave. The bronze statue escaped the metal melt-downs of the Second World War — unlike hundreds of bronze busts at Père-Lachaise sent to the foundry during the Occupation. The little zinc Alsatian girl still keeps watch at the foot of the monument. A street in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, named in 1910, bears Sergeant Hoff's name. A visitor who stops at the grave in Division 4 finds a monument signed by the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty, raised in memory of an Alsatian locksmith who fired from the ramparts of Paris during the siege of 1870 — and whom the Republic turned into a national hero at a time when France needed to remember that the defeat had not been total.