Armand Gatti

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Armand Gatti , actually Dante Sauveur Gatti , (born January 26, 1924 in Monaco , † April 6, 2017 in Saint-Mandé ) was a French writer and theater and film director . He was best known for his dramas.

life and work

Gatti came from an Italian-Russian family of partly Jewish origin and was the son of Laetitia Luzona, a cleaning lady, and Auguste Reinier Gatti, a street sweeper. When Armand was 15 years old, his father died as a result of injuries sustained by police officers while working against strikers. In 1941 he graduated from high school. From 1942 he lived with other young men in the French underground . The GMR "Groupe mobile de réserve" of the Vichy regime arrested Gatti. He was sentenced to death; because of his age (17), the sentence was commuted to forced labor.

Gatti was deported to Hamburg in 1943, where he lived in a forced labor camp at the ship chandler and ship carpenter's company Lindemann. In Hamburg there was "Lindemann", mostly called "John Lindemann" or "John M. Lindemann", a so-called "civil workers camp" or "residential camp" on the Veddel , one of the numerous forced labor camps in the city. He succeeded through courage and happy circumstances the flight back to the south of France (in the Corrèze ), mostly on foot. The Resistance sent him from there to England to train as a paratrooper . He was involved in the liberation of the Netherlands through Operation Market Garden in Arnhem . After the war he first worked as a court journalist for the Parisien Libéré , later he traveled extensively as a reporter for various renowned newspapers. In addition to dramas, he also wrote scripts .

Joseph Long sums up his work as follows:

Both “Tatenberg” and “Le Cigogne” refer to the history and experiences of contemporaries in the 20th century. In Gatti's work we find the same themes over and over again ...: The parallel world of the camps, whether in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia or elsewhere; Loss of location, destruction; and behind these events the broader issues of identity, survival, human dignity; and the need to find a language to express the unspeakable.

Gatti himself writes about his forced labor in northern Germany:

This doggedness, this endless task: that was my way of returning to the concentration camp. ... Later I tried to drive out the memory by writing 'The second existence of the Tatenberg camp'.

In dialogue with Marc Kravetz, Gatti explains:

I entered the world of the concave (as a pioneer of this world, as he will find out). It has become a kind of dress for me. Sometimes I have the feeling - also because the wind from the Baltic Sea never stopped - that I never took it off. Sometimes this dress makes itself independent. It goes on a trip around the world in a single night; and that is always a concentration camp night.

In 1961 he was still feeling anxious when in Moscow there was talk of his fellow sufferer Vladimir in the diving bell:

The bell clung heavily over me in those days when I was digging in the sand at the bottom of the Baltic Sea with a triangular shovel.

In the foreword to "Tatenberg", Gatti writes about his dramaturgy and dealing with memory :

Following its course (sc. That of memory) leads to: paving a path that runs parallel to visible reality, but which only makes references to it by chance. More precisely: the visible reality became a foil, a cinema screen, on which memories cast shadows. The shadows were (then) set in motion by one's own remembered thoughts. But when the projection device is rotated, the shadows move away from the screen and continue their play on the walls or the doors (of the cinema).

Marc Kravetz summarized Gatti's path as follows:

The story begins in an ice-cold hole in the Berbeyrolle (Corrèze) bush in the winter of 1942, with a lonely dialogue between a young partisan without weapons and the god of the infinite. ... The story begins in a concentration camp, with Linderman's inmate number 17173, and on the escape route from captivity, which a young man travels on foot and (who), without knowing it, found his way back to Hölderlin.

Gatti criticizes Alain Resnais' film Nacht und Nebel in solidarity with the depiction of difficult-to-bear scenes from the time when the concentration camps were liberated by the Allies (e.g. of the bulldozers that pushed piles of corpses) in the imagery:

I am not only concerned that it is a falsely typified picture of annihilation, because [...] the truth of annihilation consists precisely in the non-existence of such images. All traces had to be covered in the logic of the National Socialist extermination process. Everything was neat and strictly regulated. The images… express an aspect of the camp's cruelty, albeit a real one, an aspect that is not at the heart of the extermination process. The really unacceptable thing about these bulldozers is that they deny all victims exactly what the Nazis did not want them to do, namely a burial. They are only bodies, 'figures'. What memory can there be for the descendants of those so layered men and women? Everything is lost in the uniformity and anonymity of horror.

In 2010 there was a discussion about whether Gatti's detailed statements about his forced stay in the Reich are historically viable. It was sparked in France by the term “deportee”, a person who in this country is legally precisely defined and given legal privileges. Gatti then made it clear that he was not an inmate of the Neuengamme concentration camp.

Works

Dramas

  • Le Seuil
  • La Vie de Churchill , 1954
  • Envoyé spécial dans la cage aux fauves , 1955
  • Chine , 1956
  • Le Poisson noir , 1957 (German: The Black Fish ; also in Theater im S. Fischer Verlag Volume 1, 1962)
  • Sibérie, O + l'infini , 1958
  • L'Enfant-rat and Le Voyage du Grand Tchou , 1960 (the 1st title reissued in 1997)
  • La Vie imaginaire de l'éboueur Auguste G. ( Eng . The imaginary life of the street sweeper Auguste G. ), La Seconde existence du camp de Tatenberg (Eng. The second existence of the Tatenberg camp ), Chroniques d'une planète provisoire (Eng. Reports from a makeshift planet ), 1962
  • Chant public devant deux chaises électriques , 1964, 1966 German. Public chant in front of two electric chairs
  • V comme Viêt Nam , 1967 (German V for Vietnam )
  • Les Treize Soleils de la rue Saint-Blaise , 1968
  • La Naissance , 1968
  • La Passion du général Franco , 1968 (German General Franco's suffering )
  • Journal d'un guérillero , 1968 (German small handbook of urban guerilla )
  • Un homme seul , 1969 (Eng. The battle of the seven days and seven nights )
  • Les hauts plateaux , German Hochland Verl. D. Authors 1969
  • Machine excavation for entry into the plan defrichement de la Colonne d'invasion Che Guevara. German machine with which the “Che Guevara Brigade” begins to open up new land. ibid. 1970
  • Rose blanche. German white rose. ibid. 1970
  • Rosa collective , 1973 (German Rosa Kollektiv published by authors 1974)
  • Half of Heaven and Us ( La Moitié du ciel et nous ), 1975
  • La Passion du général Franco par les émigrés eux-mêmes and La Tribu des Carcana en guerre contre quoi? , 1975
  • Larch
  • Le Crapaud-buffle , 1959
  • L'Éther vague
  • Il tuo nome era Letizia (Ton nom était joie) , 1987
  • Le Chant d'amour des alphabets d'Auschwitz , 1992 (modified version Adam quoi?, Marseille 1993, with many co-authors)
  • La Journée d'une infirmière ou: Pourquoi les animaux domestiques? , Series: Petit manuel de la guérilla urbaine. Verdier 1993
  • Notre tranchée de chaque jour , 1996
  • La Part en trop , 1997
  • La Parole errante , 1999
  • De l'anarchie comme battement d'ailes : I, 2000; II, 2001; III, 2002; IV, 2003,
  • Le couteau-toast d'Evariste Galois , 2006
  • Le Bombardement de Berlin , 2009
  • Ce que chantent les arbres de Montreuil and Mort-Ouvrier , 2009

Poems

  • Les cinq noms de resistance de Georges Guingouin. (Long poem) excerpt (French)

Movies

  • L'Enclos , 1960; Prize for the best review by the DFJW and the TV 5-Monde Paris channel - Le prix de la meilleure critique. Cannes 1961; as DVD by Doriane / Clavis 2003
  • El Otro Cristobal , 1962; in the competition in Cannes (shortlist) 1963
  • The crossing over the Ebro (Le Passage de l'Ebre) , 1969
  • Le Lion, sa cage et ses ailes , 1975-1977
  • La Première Lettre , 1977-1979
  • Nous étions tous des noms d'arbres , 1981–1982
  • Ton nom était joie , 1987

literature

  • Dorothy Knowles: Armand Gatti in the Theater - Wild Duck Against the Wind , The Athlone Press, London 1989, ISBN 0-485-11364-3
  • Philippe Tancelin (ed.): Salut Armand Gatti - Théâtre Sûr Paroles , L'Éther Vague, Toulouse 1989, ISBN 2-904620-26-5
  • Joseph Long: Armand Gatti: Three Plays. Sheffield Academic Press - Continuum Internat., Sheffield 2000, ISBN 1-84127-120-9
  • Heinz Neumann-Riegner: The principle of life. Power, Resistance and Memory in the Work of Armand Gattis (= Treatises on Language and Literature , Volume 62, ISSN  0178-8515 ), Romanistischer Verlag, Bonn 1993, ISBN 3-86143-010-X ISSN  0178-8515 (Dissertation University of Regensburg 1992, L, 610 pages with graphics, 21 cm, table of contents ).
  • John Ireland: History, utopia and the concentration camp in Gatti's early plays. in Claude Schumacher Ed .: Staging the Holocaust. The Shoah in drama and performance. Cambridge UP 1989, ISBN 0-521-62415-0 , p. 184 ff. (Chapter 11)
    • Dorothy Knowles: AG and the silence of the 1059 days of Auschwitz. in ibid. pp. 203-215 (chap. 12)
  • Peter-Jürgen Klein: Theater for the audience, theater with the audience. Armand Gatti's dramas as a means to initiate human behavior (= Humanitas. Studies in Romance Studies ). Athenaion, Wiesbaden 1975, ISBN 3-7997-0259-8 (dissertation University of Cologne 1974, 300 pages, 23 cm).
  • Patricia Fasching: The complex theater of Armand Gatti. For the analysis of two socially critical pieces. Dipl.Arb. at the chair Moser, Univ. Innsbruck 1993
  • Armand Gatti , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 03/1994 of January 10, 1994, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Brigitte Salino: Mort d'Armand Gatti, figure du théâtre du XXe siècle. In: Le Monde (online). April 6, 2017, accessed April 6, 2017 (French).
  2. ↑ see his drama Auguste G.
  3. ↑ Since other people of the same age were immediately executed, the pardon is more related to Gatti's Italian citizenship. Vichy was careful not to alienate the Italians, who at the time still occupied a small part of France and were Nazi allies.
  4. ↑ in literature also written "Linderman", "Lintermann" or "Lindermann". This is possibly a wrong transfer of what has been heard, or a consequence of the fact that the company name was written in Fraktur at that time, whereby an inexperienced person can easily mistake the first arc of the m for an r, see: Old flag top left and lettering . Gatti's camp number was 17.173 (according to other sources: 171 173), it appears in the variant 173.173 in Tatenberg (English barrel p. 81).
  5. ↑ Belongs to a whole conglomerate of labor camps under the common signature "Forced Labor Camp 79", currently five companies are known, including one belonging to the Blohm and Voss group, which was active in the construction of underground submarine bunkers. Gatti remembers visiting Lindemann for four days and nights during a bombing of Hamburg; these heavy bombardments took place from July 25-30, 1943. Tatenberg station was on the route from Neuengamme concentration camp to Veddel by Marschlandbahn ; In 1942, the city of Hamburg, as the owner, had specially created a siding for fast access to and exit from the concentration camp. Gatti had, according to his information, from Lindemann on the Baltic Sea, u. a. in a diving bell , working underwater, with a shovel on the seabed. He states "north of Rostock ".
  6. ↑ an accident with the diving bell had distracted the Germans. Since Gatti knew that he wouldn’t live much longer anyway, because of the pressure difference he was already bleeding from his nose and ears , he preferred to risk fleeing with a shovel on his shoulder, as if he were going to work.
  7. ↑ on the symbolic content of his life reports from 1944, see the later comment on the discussion in 2010. In the Rostock area, as far as Peenemünde, there was no known underwater work with diving bells to date; but in the Kiel Fjord during the construction of the submarine bunker. It should then read "north of Lübeck"
  8. ↑ Parachute troops played a crucial role in connecting Resistance forces inside and outside France, especially from England, to supply the Maquis with medicines, information and weapons.
  9. ^ Siegfried Kienzle, Otto CA zur Nedden (ed.): Reclams actor . Stuttgart 1993, pp. 1020f.
  10. ↑ Long, p. 19. Translated from the English.
  11. ↑ the exact location of Gatti's places of forced labor is still pending
  12. ↑ He is referring to the fact that he worked on 2 forerunners every day for 7 years, they did not appear.
  13. ↑ From the French. Longer version: Je travaillais toujours sur mon livre, le même dont le titre avait changé en cours de route. Au debut cela s'intitulait “La Traque des assis”, maintenant “Bas relief pour un décapité.” Sur le mur de ma chambre j'avais épinglé tous mes personnages et dessiné avec des fils de laine des différents couleurs leurs itinéraires, leurs destins , leur références minérales, végétales, cosmiques… Je t'ai dit: quarante-neuf versions. J'y travaillais chaque nuit. Je ne pensais qu'à ça. Pendant sept ans. Je ne l'abandonnais que lors des reportages, mais dès mon rétour je me précipitais à la table… Cette acharnement, cette tâche sans fin… c'était ma manière de retourner dans la camp de concentration… Plus tard j'ai essayé d ' exorciser le souvenir en écrivant ‹La deuxième existence du camp de Tatenberg›. in Marc Kravetz & Gatti: L'aventure de la parole errante. Patrice Thierry-L'Ether Vague, Toulouse 1987, again Verdier, Lagrasse 1991 ISBN 2-904620-10-9 , p. 18; first in Liberation 16. – 22. juillet 1979 in 7 issues.
  14. ↑ means a working diving bell from the inside, see the picture here
  15. ↑ Note by Kravetz
  16. ↑ namely the concave
  17. ↑ an allusion to the "Univers concentrationnaire" by David Rousset
  18. ^ Gatti & Kravetz: L'aventure de la "Parole errante". Multilogues.- Patrice Thierry, L'Éther vague, Toulouse 1987, p. 75. Translated from d. Franz.
  19. ↑ ibid. P. 78. From the Franz.
  20. ↑ French edition 1962, p. 243, own translation from the French - Somewhat different: German edition Henschelverlag Berlin 1970, trans. Eugen Helmlé
  21. ↑ Corell, Holocaust as a Challenge for the Film ( Memento of the original from April 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 3.6 MB); also with Arno Gisinger: online (PDF; 134 kB) Gatti's text from: La sépulture et le propre de l'homme. Program booklet for Adam quoi? , Marseille 1993 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.transcript-verlag.de
  22. ↑ Le passé du poète Armand Gatti fait débat - Liberation ( French ) liberation.fr. Retrieved on October 23, 2011.
    Presumably, Gatti's statements about his year 1944 include many stories from other deportees, under whatever “legal title” and by which of the many Nazi organizations they were abducted; Furthermore, there is of course a natural forgetting and repressing, he was just 18 years old and was threatened with death. He will have structured his statements from such a mixture. The most likely sequence at present is as follows: Gatti was given the option of immediate execution or participation in the STO program by the Vichyists in Provence ; the Nazis transported him to Hamburg, he lived with Lindemann, who had a small concentration camp known to the court called (civil) labor camp on the Veddel. He met many other forced laborers and prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp in the vicinity of this ship supplier. Tatenberg ”drove past to Hamburg for forced use. He also picked up stories about the life-threatening work in diving bells that were open at the bottom; Companies from this trade were part of the “Civil Workers Camp 79” complex. According to the likelihood and possibility, his escape from Hamburg can best be imagined by ship with the help of sympathetic sailors; an escape on foot across northern Germany at a time when the Nazi controls were still in full effect, by a young man who spoke little German, is not very likely. The Nazis and the population relentlessly hunted down suspected young deserters in 1944. The flight he reported "through the woods" awakens memories of the Provencal maquis who had socialized him; the picture paints an emotional and philosophical contrast to the world of the "concave" of diving bells, caves and camps. Gatti's sparse remarks on his biography in 1944 are primarily to be seen as products of poetic freedom. And why, on the basis of legal stipulations of the French state, the term deportation should not be used for his forced transfer to Hamburg, will hardly be understood by non-French. Ultimately, the proportion of historical facts in his stories can only be ascertained through further research.
  23. ↑ on the events that led to the death of his father at the hands of the police, as well as his life before. German also in “ Theater heute ”, No. 11, Nov. 1963, pp. 61ff., In the arrangement for the Theâtre de la Cité, newly furnished for the Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer
  24. ↑ These two and the other pieces in the anthology published by Henschelverlag Berlin 1970, namely: Franco; Vietnam; Singing; Battle. - In the reference article Hamburg-Tatenberg more details about his fictional combination of Tatenberg near Hamburg and the “Totenberg” in Austria in the Mauthausen concentration camp . German-language premiere: Städtische Bühnen in Essen as the opening of the game year 1964/65.
  25. ↑ On a fictional planet, Jews are murdered by figures like Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann
  26. ^ Review in German: Das Theater und die Revolution . In: Die Zeit , No. 29/1969
  27. ↑ History of the edition: in German for the first time Why Pets? published by the authors in 1970; again in Frauke Rother (ed.): Political pieces from France. as Why Pets? Or a nurse's day . People and World, Berlin 1975; in French as a single print first in 1993; however in the arrangement of Claire Flohr: Véronique, la vie commence à 5 h. 30. already 1986, theater text, without ISBN
  28. ↑ German version: The shack . Comment by the provider: “In the Tannenberg concentration camp, a 'Kapo' chased two prisoners at one another while supervising the quarry in the spring of 1944 and promised the survivor freedom. Although this impressed the SS-Obersturmbannführer who was watching, the Kapo was executed for destroying 'German work material'. The following day the French Jew David and the German communist Karl are ordered to fight. ”Distributed by the Bavarian State Media Services, Munich / Würzburg, 16 mm film, order no. 6315108, b / w 95 min., From 16 J.
  29. ^ A very detailed book, edited by Frank-Rutger Hausmann, with a description of all pieces, several bibliographies and registers
  30. ↑ in Vienna University Library available
  31. ↑ Here the term «Selmaire» invented by Gatti for its dramatic principle, for example in German the "perspective" (a viewer on a scene) and the reflection in the consciousness of the viewer, is explained
personal data
SURNAME Gatti, Armand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and director
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Monaco
DATE OF DEATH April 6, 2017
Place of death Saint-Mandé