Jean-Marie Zoellé

Zoellé was appointed deputy mayor in 1989, under the direction of Jean Ueberschlag, the mayor of Saint-Louis.[1] He kept this role until 2011, when Ueberschlag resigned and he was elected mayor.[1]

In the 2014 Municipal Elections, he was reinstated in the next round with 79.91% of the vote in the first round, then topped a miscellaneous right list.[2][3][4] This was the best score for a town of 20,000 or more inhabitants in Alsace.[2]

On 15 March 2020, Zoellé was re-elected in the municipal elections with 84.03% of the votes cast in the first round, with a turnout of 24.09%.[5] Zoellé then described the decision to hold the local elections as an error in view of the worsening COVID-19 outbreak in France, stating that he would have preferred a postponement till October 2020.[5][6]

Shortly thereafter, Zoellé fell ill with Covid and was then hospitalized in Mulhouse due to respiratory failure.[7] On March 28, he was transferred to St Petrus Hospital in Bonn, Germany.[7][8] He died there on 6 April, aged 75.[9] Other local elected officials in the city have also died of the same illness.[4] He was buried on 14 April 2020.[10]