In Saint-Exupéry’s footsteps in Friborg

Between 1915 and 1917, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a student at the Villa St-Jean boarding school run by Marianist fathers. He stayed there after his brother François and kept the humanist spirit, whose motto was "With all his soul!". .

This stay in Freiburg is a fundamental stage of his life and represents the last moment of his childhood that he will mention at the beginning of Flight to Arras: "I shut myself up with so much joy in this well protected childhood.” 

On 6 April 2017, 100 years after the passage of Saint-Ex in Fribourg, Christiane Castella Schwarzen, Rector of the Sainte-Croix College erected on the site where once stood the Villa St-Jean, on the now Rue Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, inaugurated an exhibition in the presence of Olivier d'Agay and Francois d'Agay.

During this event, Alain Vircondelet, writer-biographer and great specialist of Saint-Ex, spoke about the theme Renaissance of St-Ex, a modern hero.