Paul Magès' reply to the CTV Communication Department, 12 August 1997

Paul Magès acknowledges receipt, from Chaville, of the letter announcing that a street at the Vélizy Technical Centre will bear his name, and expresses his emotion and his wish to attend the inauguration.

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Presentation and original captions

During 1997, a competition was organised to name the streets of the Vélizy Technical Centre. Later, a notice informed the centre's staff of the names of the inventors selected. On 31 July 1997, the Vélizy Communication Department informed Paul MAGÈS of the result of the consultation. He accepted, of course, and gave his agreement on the following 12 August. During September, a ceremony was organised on site. Paul MAGÈS unveiled the plaque, and oh surprise, the plaque bore the following name: Rue Paul MAGÈS "inventor of the hydraulic connector" instead of "inventor of Citroën hydraulics". His son Michel, who was standing next to him, heard him say "I hope this one won't leak". The next day, his son contacted the Communication Department and expressed his father's disappointment, who thought that if he was considered to be merely the inventor of a connector, the honour bestowed upon him was undeserved. A promise was made to rectify the "error". We will never know if the promise was kept. We have made a photo-montage of the plaque as we had suggested to the Communication Department. To this day, the plaque has disappeared; it has been replaced by a "Totem" simply indicating: Rue Paul MAGÈS. One might wonder if this name means anything to the generations that followed his retirement.

Understanding this document

In this document

This is a typewritten letter signed by Paul Magès, dated "Chaville, 12 August 1997" and addressed to Automobiles Citroën, Centre technique de Vélizy, Service Communication p. 3.

Magès acknowledges receipt of the "letter of 31 July concerning the signage of the Vélizy site" p. 3. He says he is "very honoured by this mark of recognition" and sends his "moved thanks to the Management and Staff of the Citroën Establishments" p. 3.

He expresses the wish to attend "the inauguration at the beginning of September" and asks to be informed of the chosen date p. 3. The letter closes with a standard polite closing formula.

The personal address indicated is "20, rue Alexix Maneyrol, 92370 Chaville" p. 3.

Context

This letter is, in all likelihood, part of the process of naming a street at Citroën's Vélizy Technical Centre (CTV) after Paul Magès, in tribute to the engineer who invented the hydropneumatic suspension, an iconic system of the DS in particular.

At the end of the 1990s, Citroën carried out several internal memory operations (naming streets, commemorative plaques) to honour the brand's prominent technical figures. This type of internal communication letter, exchanged between the department concerned and the person involved, is part of these initiatives — an element of context external to the document itself.

It should be noted that this letter was written from Chaville and not from Ramatuelle (Var), where Paul Magès had retired after his retirement from Citroën in September 1974 (Photographs of Paul Magès' retirement) and where he then held municipal responsibilities, notably as 2nd deputy mayor since 1983 (List of members of the Ramatuelle municipal council since 6 March 1977). This address in Chaville suggests either a secondary residence or a pied-à-terre in the Paris region kept by Magès, or a temporary stay at the time of writing this letter, without any other document in the collection allowing for a definitive conclusion.

Archivist's perspective

This handwritten-typewritten response, sober and courteous, testifies to the respect and attachment that Paul Magès maintained towards Citroën, even after retiring to Chaville — or, at the very least, being present at this address at the time of this exchange, two years before his death on 22 September 1999 (Speech by Mr. Raphaël, Mayor of Ramatuelle, in tribute to Paul Magès). The tone — "moved" recognition — suggests that this late tribute deeply touched the engineer p. 3.

The document is probably a piece of correspondence directly following the Letter from the CTV Communication Department to Paul Magès, 31 July 1997, to which he explicitly replies. It also sheds light on the genesis of the Internal information note "Signage project", and finds a visual extension in the Photographs of the "Rue Paul Magès" plaque.

It is a brief but precious document for Magès' human biography, showing his personal reaction to the official recognition of his work.