Château de la Côte
THE ABANDONED CASTLE IN FRANCE
‘Château de la Côte’ is one of the outbuildings of ‘Château Menier’ which in reality was called ‘Tournebride’. The French castle was built in 1913 for George Menier, a famous chocolate industrialist. It was designed by architect Charles Léon Stephen Sauvestre.
The Menier estate included two main buildings that are still in use today. Near the old entrance porch are the abandoned keeper’s house, Château de la Côte and the old stables.
Menier Chocolate
The Menier Chocolate company is a French chocolate manufacturing business founded in 1816 as a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Paris, at a time when chocolate was used as a medicinal product and was only one part of the overall business. Founded by Antoine Brutus Menier, the company remained managed by his family until 1971. In 1988, Menier became part of Swiss conglomerate Nestlé.
Lebensborn
During the Second World War, Nazi Germany occupied the castle. They started the only Lebensborn in France, here in the castle. Heinrich Himmler inaugurated the facility in February 1944. This Lebensborn was a maternity hospital that housed French, Dutch, Belgian, or Norwegian women that were pregnant from SS officers. The goal was to create Aryan children with persons classified as ‘racially pure’ and ‘healthy’. A few months after their birth, their baby was sent to Germany for adoption.
‘Château de la Côte’ is where the members of the Schutzpolizei lived, they were responsible for surveillance and security of the site. The mothers and newborns lived in ‘Château Menier’.
Since 1955 the castle is a rehabilitation center for children. It is managed by the Red Cross, which became the owner of the premises in 1967. I visited the abandoned château in 2017.
