André Germain

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André Benedict Henri Germain , pseudonym Loïs Cendré , (born August 12, 1882 - September 15, 1971 ) was a French journalist, essayist, poet and writer. He became known, among other things, through the novel Mephisto by Klaus Mann , in which he appears in the figure of Pierre Larue .

Life

Germain was the son of a banker who had made considerable fortune as the founder of the Crédit Lyonnais banking house . As heir to the family fortune, Germain owned several million francs as well as a famous villa above Florence, to which in later years he mainly invited German artists and intellectuals. Germain experienced an early influence from his parents' cultural salon in Paris, a typical “ Belle Epoque ” salon with a strong political influence. At a young age Germain married a daughter of Alphonse Daudet . The marriage, which is said to have been "gruesome", was annulled after fourteen months on January 16, 1908 .

From an early age, Germain placed the various aspects of art and culture, but above all literature, at the center of his interest. Even before the First World War, he became a well-known personality on the cultural stage of his home country and later also in Germany - for which he developed a special weakness - as well as in the rest of Europe as a dandy and author of poems and texts with feuilletonistic and cultural content.

After the First World War, André Germain was co-editor of the magazine Revue Européenne under Edmond Jaloux . At the time he was living in a splendid Hôtel particulier in Paris behind the City Hall , with a view of the Notre Dame Cathedral .

Since the 1920s, Germain, who spoke excellent German, often spent long periods of time in Berlin and other larger German cities. In the early 1930s he harbored recognizable sympathies for the National Socialist ideology and the Nazi state. He wrote a book with the title "Hitler or Moscow?" (French: Hitler ou Moscou? ), In which he indicated that, given the choice, he was more in favor of the former option. During the Vichy regime in France, Germain kept a clear distance from the representatives of the occupying power.

In Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, Germain met with numerous important exponents of the cultural life of the time, for example with the writers Gerhart Hauptmann , Ernst Jünger , Kurt Tucholsky , Bertolt Brecht and especially with the siblings Klaus and Erika Mann . He also had closer ties to Carl Schmitt and Harro Schulze-Boysen , who in 1931 traveled with him for a while as his private secretary through France. The relationship with Klaus Mann was particularly serious in terms of literary history: After a long period of friendship, the two men fell apart as a result of personal taunts - Germain called Mann, after he had turned to him for money, without further ado as "Narcissus of the swamp", for which he retaliated by mocking Germain as "the latest craze for Crédit Lyonnais". Germain's closeness to and sympathy for the National Socialists - from 1933 to 1938/1939 in Berlin on a social level he was very close with the political leaders of the Nazi state and with the representatives of the National Socialist cultural scene - Mann took the opportunity, Germain also came under literary fire to take: For his novel Mephisto , he chose Germain as a model for one of the rather negatively drawn characters of this work, which was designed as a parable of the panorama of theater and cultural life in the early Nazi state. Specifically, Germain appears there in a poorly coded form as a French diplomat and salon lion who seeks to be close to the National Socialists and ingratiate himself with them.

reviews

Visually, Germain is described as "a man who is slender in appearance and not very steadfast". Georg Zivier called him “immensely homosexual” and “in love with the entire Hitler Youth”.

His reputation among the cultural greats of his time was mixed: for Hugo von Hofmannsthal , for example, he was “the cerebral homunculus from Paris”. Nicolaus Sombart remembered Germain: “He is one of those legendary figures of old Europe that everyone has met once in his life, of whom everyone has heard. He was kind of ageless, like Cagliostro. "

In the research literature he is inserted into the panorama of his time of activity with formulas such as “a restless wandering art lover” or “an original spirit and esthete who possessed his keen power of observation”.

Works (selection)

  • Cœurs inutiles. 1906.
  • La cousine et l'ami. 1907.
  • Poèmes voilés. (Loïs Cendré) 1912.
  • Le double face. (Loïs Cendré) (1913).
  • Poèmes pour pâques et sept dessins par celui qui aime l'amour. (Loïs Cendré) 1915.
  • Les flammes and les voiles. (Loïs Cendré) 1915.
  • Portraits of Paris. 1918.
  • Chants dans la brume. (1918, 1923).
  • Têtes et fantômes. 1923.
  • De Proust à Dada. 1924.
  • Chez nos voisins. 1927.
  • La révolution espagnole: en vingt-cinq tableaux. 1931.
  • Hitler ou Moscou? 1933.
  • Egisto Paolo Fabbri in Memoriam. 1934.
  • The way to understanding: the political situation in France and its impact on Germany. 1935.
  • Goethe et Bettina . 1939.
  • Maria Popesco : amoureuse et criminelle? 1947.
  • Le mort dans le cresson. 1956.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ André Germain (French) on idref.fr
  2. ^ Georg Zivier: Romanesque Café. Berlin 1965, p. 87.
  3. ^ Nicolaus Sombart : Youth in Berlin, 1933-1943. A report. 1984, p. 108.
  4. ↑ Hans Thomas Hakl : The hidden spirit of Eranos. 2001, p. 36.
  5. ↑ on Friedrich Sieburg , Karl Epting , Johannes Stoye, André Germain, Alphonse de Châteaubriant , Bertrand de Jouvenel . The now unknown Stoye (1900–1948) wrote the book “France between Fear and Hope” in 1938, published by Felix Meiner, Leipzig, against the Popular Front government. Content: space as fate; The soil and its productive forces; The people; France becomes a great power; Cardinals; Tyranny; Revolutions; Glory and decline; French being; France 1914-1933; February 6, 1934. Front Populaire; Blum's deeds; France's colonial problem; Worries at home; French foreign policy
personal data
SURNAME Germain, André
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Germain, André Benedict Henri; Loïs Cendré (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French journalist, essayist, poet and writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1882
DATE OF DEATH 15th September 1971