The flea market truly lived up to its name

Why the Parisians certainly did not mean the name as a compliment.

 

Paris, in the 1880s. When the city sleeps, the chiffonniers go to work – rag-and-bone men who pull hooks and baskets through the streets, picking out whatever can still be turned into money from the trash of the rich. Fabric scraps, bones, glass, metal, broken umbrellas, half-shoes. The Parisians called them "pêcheurs de lune," moon fishermen, which is astonishingly poetic for a profession where one rummages through strangers' garbage at night.

Two things make their lives difficult. Firstly, Baron Haussmann has redesigned the city: wide boulevards, grand facades, no more room for carts full of junk. Secondly, in 1884, the prefect Eugène Poubelle issues an ordinance requiring property owners to use closed waste containers. What was a step forward for hygiene was a catastrophe for the rag-and-bone men – the trash was suddenly locked away. As a consolation, the trash can in French is still called a "poubelle" to this day. After him.

So, the traders move outside, beyond the old fortifications, into a no-man's-land called "la Zone," where building was prohibited and therefore no one looked too closely. Near Saint-Ouen in the north, they spread their wares on the ground. What begins as an expulsion becomes a market within a few years: first the neighbors come, then the collectors, then the curious from the city center.

And they turn up their noses. They see sagging armchairs, coats with a history, dishes with even more history, and they mockingly christen the whole thing "marché aux puces" – flea market. They mean it literally. Back then, old textiles often still housed half the neighborhood, and anyone buying a coat there might have brought home more than they bargained for.

The mockery backfired completely. The name stuck, the market grew; from 1885 onwards, stalls were rented out, and later, permanent market halls were added. Today, Saint-Ouen is one of the largest antique markets in the world and attracts millions of visitors annually. The term traveled through half of Europe, was translated into German, and now stands for a pleasure for which people voluntarily get up at six in the morning.

The idea came to Germany relatively late. The market at the Hohen Ufer in Hanover, which started in 1967 and still takes place today, is considered the first flea market in this country. What was a makeshift solution for outcasts in Paris was, from the very beginning in Hanover, what it has become everywhere: a place where things get a second chance.

Fortunately, the subtenants did not travel along.

 

More pre-loved knowledge: