Maurice Burrus (March 8th 1882 with Dambach-the-City - 1959 with Geneva) was a politician French.

Maurice Burrus belonged to a family of industrialists of tobaccos and cigarettes of Holy-Cross-with-Mines installed in Alsace under German domination. This family was expatriate in Switzerland at the beginning of the 19th century, because of the Napoleonean decrees extending the monopoly of the French State on the manufacture of the tobaccos. Maurice Burrus made his studies with Dôle, then with the Stanislas college in Paris. Graduate, it left for Hanover in order to initiate himself with the German language and the banking practice. Returned in Sainte Cross-with-Mines, it took the direction of the family Manufacture of the tobaccos. It also went on journeys in Asia Mineure, in Canada and the United States. Maurice Burrus becomes a rich man, immensely rich. He subsidizes many associations in Alsace. He builds large residences in France or abroad. He buys the famous forest of Saoû in Drome and made there build an immense residence as well as the counterpart of the Petit Trianon of Versailles. But Maurice Burrus is especially impassioned of archeology. He accomplishes many voyages in Greece and Asia Mineure on the traces of the French École of Athens and of the large German archeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, discoverer of the town of Troy at the end of the 19th century.

The villa of Holy Cross-with-Mines where it resided with his parents is requisitioned by the State German Major. Burrus were held to provide tobacco and cover to the German troops, which he refused. He is initially condemned 1 day from prison.

Maurice Burrus lived in a dramatic way the attachment of Alsace in Germany. In 1918 it is called up for the military service, but it will settle in Switzerland. Whereas at the beginning of the war he seeks the French casualties through the German lines, he is stopped by the Germans who threaten to shoot it. He is saved thanks to a customs officer. All its goods are requisitioned and liquidated. After the end of the war, it is decorated with the Military Cross and the medal of fidelity. Moreover it receives the medal of the Proscrits of Alsace that it présidait.
This strong association of: 4500 members gathered almost all those which expressed feelings anti-German. Maurice Burrus with leaving the Great War will work as from 1936 thanks to his mandate of radical deputy of the Haut-Rhin to the rebuilding of the defense and the unit of the nation.

But the Second world war catches up with it very quickly. It is expelled of Holy Cross-with-Mines and its villa is transformed into school of administration for invalid officers of war. With leaving this school, the reconverted officers can become senior officials of Reich. Maurice Burrus who is again obliged to flee, finds refuge in his brother in Lyon which gets a car for a discrete escape to him towards the Pyrenees where it has a property.

Thereafter it settles with Vaison-the-Roman (Vaucluse) city which it knew very well since the Thirties, thanks to archaeological research. After the war, he is suspected of collaboration with the enemy, which is worth its ineligibility in 1946 to him. In fact the suspicions which are reproached to him rest mainly on the fact that he voted the constitutional law of July 10th, 1940 giving the full powerss to the Maréchal Pétain. All the deputies having voted this same law were condemned to the same sorrow. The friend of Maurice Burrus, the mayor of Vaison it Roman, Ulysses Fabre will know the same disappointment with the Libération. These rumors of collaboration will deeply assign Maurice Burrus who withdrew himself in Geneva where it will die out in 1959. Funerals took place with Sainte Cross-with-Mines in the presence of many political personalities of France and abroad. Twenty and one years, after the end of the Second world war, in 1966, an important ceremony devoted to the memory of Maurice Burrus and the Sautel abbot proceeded in the middle of the antique theater of Vaison-the-Roman, in the presence of the prefect of Vaucluse, Pierre Hosteing, under prefect of Carpentras and many other religious and civil personalities. This presence sounded like a rehabilitation of the memory of Maurice Burrus and the recognition of the French State for its work.