I suspect Ryan Fellini may possibly have his wars mixed up, I and II, and his
history of Alsace-Lorraine slightly boggled. I believe Strasbourg and the
surrounding area were a largely independent buffer area between France and
Germany from the times of the Alemanni and the Merovingians, neither French
nor German, until Louis XIV annexed the city to France in 1681 after the
surrounding area had been annexed to France in 1648. It became German when
annexed by Bismarck in 1871 in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, and
became French again in the aftermath of the World War (later retroactively
renamed the First World War, when there was a second) in 1918. It was thus
"German" for forty-eight of the last four hundred twenty years, "French" for
three hundred seventy two, and not purely undiluted either ever. The relative
Germanness and Frenchness of Strasbourg when Bugatti first worked there may be
suggested by place-names; his drawing office was in the Hotel de Paris, at rue
de la Nuee Bleue, and his workshop was at 54 Faubourg de Pierre.
The pre-World War history of Bugatti, De Dion Bouton, Prinetti & Stucchi,
Gulinelli, Isotta Fraschini, de Dietrich, Lorraine, Mathis, Hermes, and Deutz
is fragmented and open to differing interpretations, but Bugatti certainly
built powered tricycles and quadricycles in Milan for Prinetti & Stucchi and
certainly worked primarily in Alsace after leaving Milan and before the War
started. When rumors of impending war started becoming serious his principal
assistants made their way to France via Switzerland while Bugatti himself took
two of his cars to Milan and went from there to Paris (with his family) where
he spent the war years designing aircraft engines, including a sixteen
cylinder 'twin eight' which was licensed to the French, Italian, and American
governments and built in Elizabeth, New Jersey by the Duesenberg brothers.
(One is in the Auburn Museum, others I believe in various aircraft museums).
After the war he returned to then indisputably French Alsace, and built cars
which I think everybody considers French and nobody I know of ever considered
German.
I know nothing of Ettore Bugatti's citizenship; all citizens of Alsace
automatically became French citizens under the Versailles treaty, but he may
still have had the Italian citizenship he was born with at that time. He died
in 1947; I doubt he would have waited until after WW II to become a French
citizen.
I believe the car that started this thread was a "Bugatti" which had no more
to do with Bugatti than "Rolls Royce" and "Bentley" have to do with Rolls
Royce and Bentley, but that is one of my personal hang-ups, which all are free
to discount. (And that is all the Alfa content there is in this post-)
0) Suspicions about WW1/WW2 mix-ups: unnecessary, though thanks.