Marianne Maire was born on 17 May 1906 to Georges Maire, a clerk and later an executive in a textile industry, and Fernande Kampmann, the daughter of Alfred, an industrialist and manufacturer of highly prized straw hats. She has two older siblings, Pierre and Yette; Pierre especially, judging by the photographs, is very fond of her and always keeps her close.
Marianne is a slim, vivacious little girl, always combed with the typical bob that in the early post-war period replaced women’s long hair in fashion, creating a scandal, and gives her a cunning and jaunty air, helped by her dark, intelligent eyes. These will be characteristics that she will maintain once she becomes an adult.
It is this kind of girl that wins the heart of Peppino Caprotti, a young Italian who came to his city to study weaving at the renowned Vosges school, the ‘École supérieure de filature et de tissage de l’Est’. This was in 1922. Two years later, in 1924, Peppino and Marianne married in Épinal, then moved to Italy, to Albiate, in Brianza, where the Caprotti family had their family home and their textile factory.
Bibliography:
“MAIRE, Georges“, entry in “Filæ. Registre des naissances en France – Etat civil à partir de 1529′.
“Marianne Maire,” entry in “Filæ. Registre des naissances en France – Etat civil à partir de 1529. Ma généalogie, par Cecilecarp’.
FOCUS. “L’Industrie textile dans le Pays d’Epinal“, p. 20.
“École supérieure des industries textiles d’Épinal (ESITE)“, voix dans “Wikipédia, L’encyclopédie libre”.
G. CAPROTTI, “Le Ossa dei Caprotti. Una storia italiana’, Milan, 1924/3.
ID., “‘Le Ossa dei Caprotti'”. The Caprotti women: my grandmother Marianne Maire, 1920s. Cues from the book‘.
