Historical circuit of Soppe-le-Bas

Discover the history of Soppe-le-Bas through a walk enhanced with illustrated panels. They concern several remarkable buildings and provide information about the daily life of our ancestors. Let’s start with a brief presentation that will give you an overview of the village's rich past: The main street of the village was once the royal road No. 83 that connected Lyon to Strasbourg. Several inns lined its route. Soppe-le-Bas was an important staging post. Extra horses were provided to help heavy carts climb the slopes. The church is dedicated to Saint Vincent, the patron saint of winemakers. Indeed, the vineyard of Soppe-le-Bas, the southernmost in Alsace, had 181 plots in 1830. There was also, in the 19th century, a synagogue and a rabbi. A significant Jewish community lived in the municipality at that time. The first mention of the village dates back to 1259, in a document signed by Otto von Sulzbach, but it is a document from 1585 that speaks of a small castle in the village of Niedersulzbach belonging to the nobility of Sulzbach. A lease from 1781 informs us that there existed a motte castrale, which is the ancestor of the plain castles. The village experienced several destructions over the centuries. In 1648, the Habsburgs of Austria ceded all their possessions in Alsace to France, including the lordship of Thann, which depended on the county of Ferrette. At that time, Soppe-le-Bas was the seat of a town hall that grouped together the municipalities of Mortzwiller, Soppe-le-Haut, and Diefmatten, as evidenced by a report preserved in the archives of the Palace of Monaco (the county of Ferrette passed into the hands of the Grimaldi through marriage in 1777). During the annexation of Alsace to Germany in 1870, Soppe-le-Bas resumed the name of Niedersulzbach. An imposing customs building marked the Franco-German border towards Lachapelle-sous-Rougemont. It was destroyed during the war of 1914-1918. French troops retook the village at the very beginning of the Great War, on August 7, 1914. Soppe-le-Bas was mentioned in the army order and decorated with the Croix de Guerre. During World War II, German customs officers settled again in Soppe-le-Bas, as well as an office of the notorious Gestapo. With 272 inhabitants in 1962, the village experienced real development from 1993, with the opening of the bypass of national road No. 83.