Albert Memmi

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Albert Memmi (1982)

Albert Memmi (born December 15, 1920 in Tunis , French Protectorate Tunisia ; † May 22, 2020 in Paris ) was a Tunisian-French writer and sociologist who examined decolonization , racism , Jewish identity and emigration as well as the attitude to life in more than 20 books who brought up alienation and uprooting .

life and work

The son of Jewish parents grew up under the conditions of French colonial rule in Tunis. The family lived on the edge of the Jewish quarter of La Hara in Tunis, where conditions were favorable for his father's craft business. This part of the city sank increasingly in the spreading slum conditions ; despite attempts at renovation, it was demolished after the Second World War . His mother came from a Berber family and spoke Judeo-Arabic , but remained illiterate throughout her life . The father, a saddler of Italian descent, who with his Italian journeyman leather goods forMaltese coachmen and carters from Gabès spoke the Tunisian dialect of Arabic , Maltese and Italian .

Memmi experienced his first school years from 1924 at a Tunisian-Jewish school and was only able to switch to the French-run primary school of the Alliance Israélite Universelle at the age of seven . With a scholarship from the Jewish community he received in 1932, he was able to continue school at the Lycée Carnot in Tunis. In 1939 he completed this training with a baccalaureate and a degree in philosophy . In his free time, Memmi found connections in the Zionist youth organization Hashomer Hatzair and in socialist groups. At the lyceum he had a written commitment to the Vichy regimedemanded, but he refused. After this first political conflict, he enrolled at the University of Algiers in neighboring Algeria . During his student days he began to write and published in Tunisian newspapers. In 1942, during the German occupation of North Africa , he was met by anti-Jewish repression , as a result of which he was expelled from the university and sent to an internment and labor campwas instructed. In the consciousness of the politically attentive young man, the realization developed that his life as a descendant of a Jewish family of the lower social class could be difficult and that under the circumstances of the Vichy regime there would be hardly any development opportunities open to him.

After the end of the war, he went to Paris to study philosophy at the Sorbonne in 1946 and acquired an Agrégation de philosophie , which opened up a further academic path for him. During his studies, he met the head of the French department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , who wanted to win him over to a scientific position. These plans eventually failed because of differences of opinion between them. He was deeply disappointed by the social conditions in France at that time. In 1951 he married a French woman from Lorraine . Their different socializationmade the mutual relationship difficult. Both left France in 1955 and moved to Tunis. There he took a job as a teacher at the Lycée Carnot . In the 1950s, Memmi took part in the activities of the independence movement in Tunisia . During this time he founded with Béchi Ben Yahmed and Ben Smaïl a weekly newspaper called L'Action, which has been published since April 1955 (1960–1961 as Afrique-Action and thereafter continued as Jeune Afrique ). In 1956, when Tunisia became independentbecause of the increasingly one-sided Arab-oriented cultural orientation, he left his home country and turned back to France, where he took French citizenship in 1967 . This led to critical reflections among his companions.

He processed his own experiences with poverty and exclusion as a writer in the autobiographical novel Die Salzsäule , which appeared in 1953 and became a classic of French post-war literature that has been translated into many languages. For the Neue Zürcher Zeitung this novel is a “cathartic look back at the childhood and youth of an Arab Jew who feels torn between oriental roots and western enlightenment in his search for identity.” - The also well-known novel Die Fremdeis the literarily processed story of the first years of his marriage to a French woman who threatened to break due to the cultural contradictions of a binational partnership. The essay The Colonizer and the Colonized (French original 1957, German translation 1980) also became a classic critique of colonialism .

As a sociologist, Albert Memmi has also dealt scientifically with the subject of racism and has given a definition that has been adopted by important reference works such as the " Encyclopædia Universalis ". Quote:

“Racism has a specific function. (...) Racism is the generalized and absolute valuation of actual or fictitious biological differences for the benefit of the accuser and to the detriment of his victim, with which aggression is to be justified. "

- Albert Memmi

It is widely used in the now slightly modified version, but is also discussed as an alternative:

"Racism is the generalized and absolute evaluation of actual or fictitious differences for the benefit of the accuser and to the detriment of his victim, with which his privileges or his aggressions are to be justified."

- Albert Memmi

His late work, Portrait du décolonisé arabo-musulman et de quelques autres , published in 2004, is a critical examination of the immigrants in France and the political developments in its former colonies. It accuses many immigrants of Arab-Muslim origin of violence and persistence in a self-inflicted immaturity. The book received a lot of media attention and led to a heated debate. Many people from SOS Racisme and the MRAP movement , the initiative against racism founded in France in 1949, saw the book as an insult and a departure from what Memmi herself had represented and supported for decades.

Albert Memmi has received numerous prizes for his literary and scientific work, including the Grand prix de la francophonie (2004). He died in Paris in May 2020 at the age of 99.

Works (selection)

  • La libération du Juif . Editions Gallimard , Paris 2011
  • Portrait du décolonisé arabo-musulman et de quelques autres . Editions Gallimard, Paris 2004
  • The stranger. Roman, translation by Barbara Rösner-Brauch. Verlag Donata Kinzelbach , Mainz 1991, frequent new editions. (French original: Agar , Correa, Paris 1955),
  • The Pharaoh . Novel. Beck- und Glückler Verlag, Freiburg 1990. (Translation Una Pfau, French original: Le pharaon 1988)
  • Racism . Athenäum Verlag , Frankfurt a. M. 1987 (first German edition, translation by Udo Rennert, French original: Le racisme. Description, définition, traitement Gallimard, Paris 1982.)
  • The colonizer and the colonized: two portraits . With a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre and an afterword by the author to the German edition. Syndikat Verlag , Frankfurt / M., 1980 (French original: Portrait du colonisé. Précédé du Portrait du colonisateur 1957)
  • Juifs et Arabes . Éditions Gallimard, Paris 1974 (Collection Idées; 320)
  • The pillar of salt . Novel. Kiepenheuer & Witsch , Cologne, Berlin 1963, 1st edition (German first edition, translation by Gerhard M. Neumann, French original: La Statue de sel 1953)
  • Portrait du colonisé; précédé du portrait du colonisateur . Corrêa: Buchet / Chastel, Paris 1957

Awards

literature

  • Albert Memmi, Guy Dugas: Journal de guerre 1939-1943; suivi de Journal d'un travailleur forcé et autres textes de circonstance . CNRS éditions, Paris 2019.
  • Clara Lévy: Ecritures de l'identité. Écrivains juifs après la shoah. PUF, Paris 1998 ISBN 2130496865 (readable online; also via Georges Perec , Romain Gary , Edmond Jabès and Albert Cohen ) pp. 183–201. In Franz.
  • Clara Lévy: Pillar of Salt. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 5: Pr-Sy. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2014, ISBN 978-3-476-02505-0 , pp. 311-315.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albert Memmi, écrivain et essayiste, est mort. In: lemonde.fr. May 24, 2020, accessed on May 24, 2020 (French).
  2. ↑ a b Claude Sitbon: Albert Memmi - un regard biographique . Entry from November 18, 2013 on www.kefisrael.com (French)
  3. ↑ a b c Beate Wolfsteiner: Investigations on the French-Jewish novel after the Second World War . Max Niemeyer Verlag , Tübingen 2003. pp. 282–286 ( online )
  4. ^ Catalog général de la Bibliothèque nationale de France: bibliographic evidence
  5. ^ Sibylle Kroll: Albert Memmi - thought leader of decolonization died. Retrieved May 30, 2020 .
  6. ↑ - Encyclopédie Universalis (fr)
  7. ^ Albert Memmi: Racism . 1992, Frankfurt a. M., p. 164; quoted on the website of the association humanrights.ch - Menschenrechte Schweiz
  8. ^ GRA Foundation against Racism and Anti-Semitism : Racism - What is racism . on www.gra.ch
  9. ^ Rudolf Leiprecht : Racisms (not only) among young people. Contributions to research on racism and the prevention of racism . Oldenburg (Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg) working papers IBKM No.9, 2005 , pp. 12-13 ISSN  1438-7794
  10. ↑ Prof. Stefan Gaitanides University of Applied Sciences Cologne, teaching material ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 45 kB)
  11. ↑ Forum Menschenrechte e. V. (Ed.): Memorandum against racism and racial discrimination. Berlin 2010 (2nd edition) ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 97 kB)
  12. ↑ a b SUDOC : bibliographical evidence
  13. ↑ - Albert Memmi: Portrait du décolonisé arabo-musulman et de quelques autres;. Accessed May 30, 2020 (German).
  14. ^ Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples (MRAP): Edito - Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples. Retrieved May 30, 2020 (French).
  15. ↑ Dominic Johnson: Obituary for Albert Memmi: Europe and its neighbors . In: The daily newspaper: taz . May 27, 2020, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed May 30, 2020]).
  16. ^ SUDOC : bibliographical evidence
  17. ↑ DNB : bibliographic evidence
  18. ↑ DNB : bibliographic evidence
  19. ↑ DNB : bibliographic evidence
  20. ^ SUDOC : bibliographical evidence
  21. ↑ DNB : bibliographic evidence
  22. ^ SUDOC : bibliographical evidence
  23. ↑ a b c Albert Memmi: Racism . Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1987, p. [2]
  24. ^ SUDOC : bibliographical evidence
personal data
SURNAME Memmi, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer, essayist and sociologist of Tunisian origin
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Tunis , French. Colony of Tunisia
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 2020
Place of death Paris