An auction of goods that belonged to former Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, scheduled for Saturday October 21 in Caen, has been suspended to allow direct negotiations with Senegal, which wishes to acquire all these lots, we learned from organizers.
“We were contacted by the Senegalese ambassador to France and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to present the Senegalese state's request for mediation regarding the lots from the estate of Léopold Sédar Senghor and his wife,” said explained to AFP Solène Lainé, auctioneer associated with the Caen auction house.
“Preserve memory and heritage”
“The Senegalese State wishes to acquire the entire Senghor fund”, which belongs to an individual and has nothing to do with the fund bequeathed to the town hall of Verson (Calvados), she added. It is in this town, where he died in 2001, that the former Senegalese president used to spend summer vacations after his marriage to Colette Hubert, a Norman, on the family property.
Senegal announced on Friday that it would acquire the lots auctioned in France to “preserve the memory and heritage” of its former president (1960 to 1980). These approximately 200 lots are mainly “jewelry and military decorations of Léopold Sédar Senghor” as well as various other objects, such as diplomatic gifts.
“My seller and I perfectly understand the excitement caused by this sale among the Senegalese and Senghorists, we therefore decided to postpone the sale with the aim of dialogue,” declared Solène Lainé.
The negotiation is “a matter of weeks”, according to the auctioneer, who wants to be optimistic. “The goal of all parties is to find common ground” and “if the negotiation is successful, it would mean the cancellation of the sale,” she said. In the event of failure, the lots would be re-auctioned in December.
Poet and writer, Léopold Sédar Senghor was a champion of negritude, a movement for the defense of the cultural values of the black world that he founded in the 1930s with the Martinican Aimé Césaire and the Guyanese Léon Gontran Damas. Graduated in French grammar, he was the first African member of the French Academy. He died in 2001 in Verson (Calvados) at the age of 95.
