🗼 May 6, The Eiffel Tower

 

🗼 1. May 6, 1889 — The Opening

On May 6, 1889, the Eiffel Tower was opened to the public alongside the Paris World Exposition. Standing 324 meters tall and weighing 7,300 tons, the structure was assembled from 18,038 individual parts and 2.5 million rivets. At the time, it was the tallest man-made structure on Earth.

The tower was designed as a temporary structure from the start. Built specifically for the Exposition, it was scheduled for demolition twenty years later, in 1909. The city government did, in fact, approve the demolition rights that year.

What saved the tower was not its appearance but its function. Beginning in 1903, the French military installed wireless telegraph antennas at its summit. During World War I, these antennas intercepted German military communications. The tower's value as communications infrastructure prevented its removal.

At the time of its construction, the Eiffel Tower was far from welcomed. In 1887, three hundred artists and intellectuals — including Alexandre Dumas, Charles Gounod, and Guy de Maupassant — published a protest letter in the newspaper Le Temps, denouncing the tower as "useless and monstrous" and a "barbaric mass." Of the 7.8 million francs required for construction, Gustave Eiffel himself had to cover most of the cost from his personal funds.

📰 2. The Situation in 1925

By 1925, the Eiffel Tower had once again become a burden. Thirty-six years after the Exposition, the structure had rusted, and it required 60 tons of fresh paint every seven years. That same year, Gustave Eiffel passed away. The City of Paris, which had owned the tower since 1910, found the maintenance costs increasingly difficult to bear. Newspapers regularly published articles discussing the upkeep problem and the possibility of demolition.

One of these articles caught the eye of a con artist. Victor Lustig: Austro-Hungarian by birth, thirty-five years old, fluent in five languages, operating under forty-five aliases. He used the newspaper coverage as the foundation for his next scheme.

🎩 3. The Structure of the Scam

Lustig hired a forger to produce counterfeit official documents from the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs (Ministère des Postes et Télégraphes). He then identified the five largest scrap metal dealers in Paris and invited them to a confidential meeting at the Hôtel de Crillon.

At the meeting, he introduced himself as the Deputy Director-General of the Ministry and explained the following:

• The government had concluded that the maintenance costs of the Eiffel Tower were no longer sustainable.
• A demolition decision had already been made once in 1909.
• The government had decided to sell the tower for scrap metal.
• Public backlash was expected, so all transactions had to remain confidential.

Apart from the final point, all of this information was close to the truth. The painting costs, the 1909 demolition approval, the likelihood of public backlash — every detail could be verified in the newspapers. The only false element was Lustig's claim to represent the government.

After the meeting, Lustig used a forged access pass to take the five dealers to the third level of the tower for a panoramic view of Paris.

💰 4. Selecting the Mark and the Bribe

Among the five dealers, Lustig selected André Poisson as his target. A newcomer to Paris from the provinces, Poisson was eager to gain entry into the city's upper business circles.

A few days later, in a one-on-one meeting, Lustig let slip that he was a poorly paid civil servant in a position to decide who would receive the contract. Poisson interpreted this as a request for a bribe — and that very interpretation served as evidence that Lustig was a genuine government official. By acting like a corrupt bureaucrat, Lustig disarmed all suspicion.

Poisson handed over 20,000 dollars in cash, with an additional 50,000 dollars promised on the condition that his bid would win. The total came to roughly 70,000 francs. Immediately after the transaction, Lustig boarded a train to Vienna.

🚂 5. The Second Attempt

In Vienna, Lustig monitored the newspapers, expecting a wanted notice. None appeared. Poisson had not reported the crime — admitting that he had "bought the Eiffel Tower" would have destroyed his social standing.

Confirming this, Lustig returned to Paris later the same year and attempted the identical scam again. He gathered five new scrap metal dealers at the same hotel and selected a new target through the same method. This time, however, the target reported him to the police before completing the transaction. Lustig escaped just before arrest and boarded a ship to the United States. The story made the papers — but he was already across the Atlantic. 🚢