Celestin Lainé

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Célestin Lainé ( pseudonyms : Ab Arzel , Allbrogat , An Henaff , Neven Henaff , CL Kerjean , Riwallon Urien ; * 1908 in Nantes , † 1983 ) was a militant Breton nationalist who worked with the German occupiers during the Second World War .

Life

Breton autonomism (1930–1939)

Monument to the annexation of Brittany to France, Hôtel de Ville in Rennes , which was destroyed in 1932 with the participation of Lainé

Lainé went to school in Ploudalmézeau , Département Finistère and attended the École Centrale from 1929 , where he trained as a chemical engineer . He became a reserve officer in the army. Since the early 1930s, Lainé increasingly appeared as a Breton nationalist. He wanted a Breton army because only this, in his opinion, would guarantee the desired national independence of Brittany.

At the end of 1930, Lainé and Guillaume Berthou founded the underground organization Gwenn-ha-Du ( “white and black” , based on the Breton national colors ), which was looking for “ direct action ” based on the Irish IRA . Numerous bomb attacks have been attributed to this splinter group, one of which destroyed the monument to the annexation of Brittany to France in 1932 on the town hall square of Rennes . A milk can filled with nitroglycerin by Lainé is said to have served as an explosive device .

In 1936, Lainé put together the Kadervenn (also called Service Spécial ) from a dozen like-minded people , a paramilitary force modeled on the IRA. The group held in 1937 first in the Monts d'Arrée , then from 1938 in the Landes de Lanvaux from recruit training and exercises.

Although Lainé was always suspected of being the leader of the Gwenn ha Du , this could never be proven by the judiciary. On June 29, 1938, the first trial of the Third French Republic against Breton autonomists came before the criminal chamber of the Rennes court for a series of anti-French graffiti . Lainé, who was among the defendants, refused to answer the judges in French. He had his lawyers read a statement in which he demanded the strictest punishment for himself in order to become a martyr for the coming Republic of Brittany. The court eventually sentenced him to several months in prison.

In 1939 Lainé is said to have stayed temporarily in Germany, where support was promised. On the night of August 8th to 9th, 1939, the fishing boat Gwalarn smuggled a load of weapons to the Breton coast, where it was taken over by the Service spéciale and then hidden from the French authorities. After the declaration of war, Lainé was drafted into the army and arrested on the French northern front at the end of October. Because he had written in a letter that the French army would lose to the German armed forces , a military court sentenced him to 4 years imprisonment and imprisoned in Clairvaux.

Collaboration (1940-1945)

Lainé was freed from custody by German troops in June 1940 and renamed the cadaver " Lu Brezhon " (Breton Army). At the beginning of July 1940 he was a founding member of the Comité National Breton (CNB) in Pontivy alongside Olier Mordrel and François Debauvais . Attempts by Lainés to requisition a standing quarters for the Lu Brezhon with the tacit tolerance of the German occupation troops failed both in Pontivy and later in Gouézec , Département Finistère, due to the palpable resistance of the local population. When he was called to order by the leader of the Parti national breton (PNB) , Olier Mordrel, because of his unauthorized behavior, Lainé refused to obey and was expelled from the party. Lainé initially withdrew and began secretly collecting weapons and explosives with his closest confidante and reorganizing the Lu Brezhon . In 1941 Lainé was charged with the military training of the members of the Bagadou Stourm , a paramilitary group led by the sculptor and Breton nationalist Yann Goulet , which also provided the security service for the PNB . When Lainé increasingly tried to take control of the Bagadou Stourm himself , there was a break with Goulet and Raymond Delaporte , Mordrel's successor , in 1942 . Since Lainé was increasingly opposed to the wait-and-see policy under Delaporte, in November 1943 he founded the Bezen Kadoudal , a volunteer force made up of separatist Bretons who were ready to fight in German uniform not only against France but also against other enemies of the German Reich. The PNB under Delaporte distanced itself from this approach.

In December 1943, Lainé renamed the Bezen Kadoudal to Bezen Perrot . At the end of 1943, this group (sometimes referred to as the Perrot Militia , Perrot Group , The Breton Weapons Association of the SS or The Breton SS ) comprised 66 people. These were subordinate to the security service of the Reichsführer SS and guarded the Gestapo offices in Rennes and the prisoners there. The Bezen Perrot also took part in actions against the Maquis in Brittany, in particular against groups of the FFI and the FTP, and was involved in torture of prisoners. With the beginning of the Allied invasion at the beginning of June 1944, there was increasing desertion from the militia. From August 1, the remaining members of the Bezen gathered in Rennes and made their way east together with a group of Gestapo members and other Breton nationalists and separatists. On the way, they shot dead members of the Resistance . Lainé reached Oedsbach near Oberkirch in Baden via Alsace in October 1944 with the remains of the Bezen Perrot . There the men were awarded SS ranks and badges, Lainé himself was appointed SS-Untersturmführer . The head of the south-west control center of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) , Lainé's old friend Hermann Bickler , tried to reactivate the group for re-deployment in French territory. In view of the constantly advancing allies, however, this eventually withdrew to Tübingen . From there, Lainé and his management staff fled to Marburg in April 1945 , where Leo Weisgerber and Friedrich Hielscher provided them with shelter and forged papers.

Exile in Ireland (1946–1983)

Lainé lived underground in Germany for a while before he finally managed to escape to Ireland . Lainé was sentenced to death in absentia by the Cour de Justice established in Rennes in 1944 , which was confirmed again in 1951 by the Tribunal Permanent des Forces Armées in Paris . Although he was long wanted by the French secret services, he lived undisturbed in the Republic of Ireland until his death. According to his will, Lainé's ashes were scattered in 1988 by veterans des Bezen Perrot and young Breton nationalists on the battlefield of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier , Ille-et-Vilaine . In the final phase of the Guerrefolle in 1488, the Breton army and its English, Gascogni, German and Spanish allies were defeated by the army of the French King Charles VIII .

Lainés political ideology

Despite the close proximity to German National Socialism , Célestin Lainé also had very individual political ideas that were shaped by romantic ideas about Celticism and neo-pagan esotericism . Despite his role as a high priest of the “Celtic race”, he was also able to maintain a short-term love affair with a Japanese student in Germany. In comparison to the behavior of other Breton nationalists, his actions and alliances were often poorly considered. From his beginnings, beginning with the bombing of the memorial to the annexation of Brittany to France in Rennes in 1932, he showed a predilection for dramatic action and a strong propensity for the use of force. His extreme positions and self-centeredness put him in an outsider position within the PNB since 1940.

Compared to Jean Pierre Le Mat , Lainé mentioned two motives for his commitment on the part of the German occupiers in the 1970s: on the one hand, he cited his violent anti-French feelings, which would have prompted him in the 1950s, the Việt Minh against France to support. On the other hand, he wanted his decision to create a deep rift between France and Brittany, a historical precedent . This took this unforgivable act.

Olier Mordrel, the co-founder of the Parti autonomiste breton, wrote of Lainé: "He was a strange man, the prophet of a Celtic religion of its own, in which Nordic racism was combined with Nietzsche's will to power , not without a touch of romantic druidism ."

Publications

Under the name CL Kerjean :

  • Mentoniez: traité de géométrie en breton ,. Gwalarn, Brest 1934.

Under the name Neven Henaff :

  • George Ohsawa, Neven Henaff, Jacques de Langre: But I Love Fruits . George Ohsawa Macrobiotic, 1982, ISBN 0-916508-32-3 . (macrobiotic treatise)

under the name Célestin Lainé-Kerjean :

  • Le Calendrier Celtique . Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie (ZCP), Volume 23 (1943), pp. 249-284.

literature

  • Harold M. Evans; William O. Thomas: Y Geiriadur Newydd. The New Welsh Dictionary . Llyfrau'r Dryw, Llandybie 1953.
  • Olier Mordrel: Breiz Atao ou histoire et actualité du nationalisme breton . Editions Alain Moreau, Paris 1973.
  • Philippe Aziz: Histoire secrète de la gestapo française en Bretagne. 2 vols., Éditions Famot, Geneva 1975.
  • Alan Heusaff : Neven Henaff, Activist and Druid . Obituary for Lainé in: Carn - A Link Between Celtic Countries . H. 45, Spring 1984, pp. 10-11.
  • Pierre-Jakez Hélias: Dictionnaire Breton . Garnier, Paris 1986, ISBN 2-7370-0253-2 .
  • Kristian Hamon: Les nationalistes bretons sous l'occupation . To Here, Ar Releg-Kerhuon 2001, ISBN 2-86843-224-7 .
  • Kristian Hamon: Le Bezen Perrot: 1944, des nationalistes bretons sous l'uniforme allemand . Yoran Embanner, Fouesnant 2004, ISBN 2-9521446-1-3 .
  • Georges Cadiou: L'hermine et la croix gammée. Le mouvement breton et la collaboration . Éditions Apogée, Rennes 2006, ISBN 2-84398-239-1 .
  • Henri Poisson; Jean Pierre Le Mat: Histoire de Bretagne . COOP Breizh, Nantes 2007, ISBN 978-2-84346-091-3 .
  • Pierre-Philippe Lambert, Gérard Le Marec: Les Français sous le casque allemand . Grancher, Paris 2009, ISBN 978-2-7339-1098-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georges Cadiou: L'hermine et la croix gammée. Le mouvement breton et la collaboration . Éditions Apogée, Rennes 2006, ISBN 2-84398-239-1 , p. 377.
  2. ↑ See his article "Nos deux bases, Irlande et Prusse" (analogously: Our two bases: Ireland and Prussia ) in Stur n ° 9, April 1937.
  3. ↑ Photograph of the Executive Committee of the CNB (= Comité National Breton ) with, among others, Olier Mordrel, François Debauvais and Célestin Lainé (last checked on December 4, 2010)
  4. ^ Philippe Aziz: Histoire secrète de la gestapo française en Bretagne. 2 vols., Éditions Famot, Geneva 1975.
  5. ^ Pierre-Philippe Lambert, Gérard Le Marec: Les Français sous le casque allemand . Grancher, Paris 2009, ISBN 978-2-7339-1098-6 , pp. 235-236.
  6. ^ Daniel Leach: Bezen Perrot: The Breton nationalist unit of the SS, 1943-5 . In: Milwaukee Center for Celtic Studies, University of Wisconsin, Vol. 4: Nationalism (2008).
  7. ↑ Cathal O'Shannon: Nazis In Ireland (Part 2 of 5) and Nazis In Ireland (Part 3 of 5)
  8. ^ Henri Poisson; Jean Pierre Le Mat: Histoire de Bretagne . COOP Breizh, Nantes 2007, ISBN 978-2-84346-091-3 .
  9. ^ Olier Mordrel: Breiz Atao ou histoire et actualité du nationalisme breton . Editions Alain Moreau, Paris 1973.
  10. ↑ Table of contents of the Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie (ZCP) ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Last checked on December 24, 2015).  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / celtologica.eu

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personal data
SURNAME Lainé, Celestin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION militant Breton nationalist
DATE OF BIRTH 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Nantes
DATE OF DEATH 1983