Rue de l’Université, 12 février 2001
It is addressed to the Semprún couple in this envelope: “Fragile - ne pas plier. M. et Mme Jorge Semprun. Urgent. EV. Personnel”, with Karl Lagerfeld's bookplate mounted at the center in place of a visiting card.
On 12 February 2001, a violent explosion shook the 7th arrondissement of Paris, at the junction of the rue de l’Université and the rue de Bellechasse, just steps from the Musée d’Orsay. Around 1:30 p.m., a stretch of roadway more than twenty meters long was torn up, hurling mud and debris onto passers-by and the patrons of the restaurant L’Annexe: seven people were injured, and seventy buildings and several ministries were left without district heating for two days. The cause of the blast — attributed to a pipe of the CPCU network — has never been officially explained.
Karl Lagerfeld, who was then at his bookshop 7L, on the rue de Lille, opened in 1999, rushed to the scene, Hasselblad in hand, and captured the first images of the disaster on film. It is one of these photographs that he gave to Jorge Semprún and his wife Colette, the explosion’s immediate neighbors and direct witnesses of the scene, who were literally in the front row on that stretch of the rue de l’Université.