Charles Maurras

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Charles Maurras (born April 20, 1868 in Martigues , † November 16, 1952 in Tours ) was a right-wing extremist French writer and political publicist .

Charles Maurras (left) with Maxime Real Del Sarte , founder of the Camelots du roi (1923)

Life and work

Severely hard of hearing since early childhood, Maurras grew up in a Catholic-conservative middle-class family. He graduated from a Catholic high school in Aix-en-Provence , received a solid classical education, but lost his faith at an early age. After the baccalauréat , he went to Paris in 1885 . Here he worked as a literary critic, poet, narrator and essayist, who wrote primarily for conservative and Catholic magazines. He made friends with the author Anatole France, who was a good 20 years older than him (who was still right-wing politically at the time, but was also an agnostic) and fell under the spell of the progressist philosophy of positivism .

In 1891 he joined the "école romane", which had been founded shortly before by some writers, including in particular Jean Moréas . This saw the roots of French culture in its Greco-Roman heritage and its purest expression in the French classical music of the 17th century, whereas it saw the supposedly Jewish-Germanic romanticism as a beginning and later symbolism as another cause of all evil for France looked at. A breeding ground for this was the revanchism that had been widespread in France since 1871 (lost Franco-German War ) . Literary expressions of this view were, for example, Maurras' collection of short stories Le Chemin du Paradis ( The Path to Paradise , 1895) or the collection of essays Les Amants de Venise (The Venetian Lovers, especially the romantic authors George Sand and Alfred de Musset , 1902).

By 1895 at the latest, he was politically on the side of the nationalist right and was a. in contact with the Boulangist MP and novelist Maurice Barrès .

In 1896, since he had been interested in the ideas of the French sports educator Pierre de Coubertin at an early age, he traveled to the first Olympic Games in Athens as a reporter for a French magazine .

In his politically intended books, brochures and articles, Maurras propagated the reintroduction of the monarchy and (although he was himself an agnostic) Catholicism as the state religion , with both hoping for a less centralized, but ideologically united, strong France that would give the up-and-coming German Empire should stand up economically, militarily and spiritually and morally.

When France was deeply divided in 1898 by the Dreyfus affair , the dispute over the misjudgment against Alfred Dreyfus , an officer who had been innocently sentenced to life in exile for spying on Germany, Maurras was one of the most active anti-Dreyfusards. In the figure of the Jewish spy, the ardent anti-Semite and Germanophobe saw his two enemy images united. He uncompromisingly opposed a revision of the judgment or an acquittal and joined the nationalist Comité d ' Action française founded by other anti-Dreyfusards . Maurras contributed significantly to its transformation into a tightly organized association, the Ligue d'Action française , which, under his aegis, subscribed to a monarchist, chauvinist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic ideology, integral nationalism . From 1899 the magazine La Revue de l'Action française , headed by Maurras and his like-minded comrade Léon Daudet , served as the organ of the “League” . A youth organization, the Camelots du roi , which was initially founded primarily to sell the magazine by street, soon made a name for itself through fights with politically left groups.

In 1908, the success of the magazine made it possible to convert it into a daily newspaper called L'Action française . Maurras had become one of the most important thought leaders of nationalist France.

After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he worked as a journalistic supporter of the Union sacrée between the right-wing parties and the socialists , which corresponded to the political truce of the parties in Germany.

In the interwar period , the Ligue de l'Action française was overtaken by other right-wing organizations, but Maurras retained great influence on right-wing intellectuals and right-wing politicians. Maurras criticized the Versailles Treaty of 1920 because it was too lenient towards defeated Germany, and in the period that followed he criticized the compromise policy of rapprochement that the moderate-left Foreign Minister Aristide Briand pursued from 1924. In 1925 he called in an open letter to kill Interior Minister Abraham Schrameck "like a dog" because he was of Jewish descent and had enforced the disarmament of the right-wing extremist "leagues", including the Action française security service. This earned him a suspended sentence . In December 1926, Pope Pius XI declared. Under the influence of Cardinals Enrico Gasparri and Carlo Confalonieri, Maurras' ideological positions were deemed incompatible with Catholicism and put his writings and Action française on the index because the church was only instrumentalized as a means for nationalist purposes. As a result, many devout followers of Maurras got into conflicts of loyalty. On March 8, 1927, the Pope even imposed the interdict on the AF members, which meant that they were excluded from receiving the sacraments .

In 1936, Maurras threatened Prime Minister Léon Blum , whom he had previously insulted because of his Jewish descent, with death. He was sentenced again, this time without parole. During his eight-month prison sentence, Maurras was elected a member of the Académie française, which was predominantly conservative at the time .

Having been the seizure of power by the Italian fascists Benito Mussolini had welcomed (1922), he sympathized during the Spanish Civil War and then with the Franco regime of General Franco . Despite his notorious anti-German hatred, Hitler's National Socialism also seemed interesting to him in many ways and, especially in its anti-Semitism, worth emulating. In relation to Germany he represented pacifist tendencies and praised the appeasement policy of Prime Minister Édouard Daladier . After France's defeat in June 1940 , he supported the new French head of state, Marshal Philippe Pétain, and his "Révolution nationale", which was largely inspired by his ideas. He also approved of Pétain's policy of collaboration with Nazi Germany.

After the liberation of France in 1944/45, Maurras was reviled as Pétain's intellectual foster father and declared a pro-German collaborator . He was arrested in September 1944, sentenced to life in prison on January 17, 1945, and suspended from his seat in the Académie française .

On March 19, 1952, he was pardoned on account of illness by President Vincent Auriol and transferred to the Saint-Grégoire clinic in Tours ( Saint-Symphorien district ). He died there on November 16, 1952. Shortly before his death, he returned to the piety of his childhood.

Posthumous

In Aix-en-Provence , a center for Maurras studies ('Center Charles Maurras') is dedicated to the author and his work.

On the occasion of his 150th birthday, Maurras should be mentioned in the official calendar of national honors (“Recueil des Commémorations nationales 2018”), which is published annually by the Ministry of Culture and Communication . In January 2018, there were voices against the mention of the anti-Semite Maurras. Thereupon Françoise Nyssen , Minister for Culture and Communication, had the already printed copies crushed. The reprint no longer contains an article about Maurras. Political discussions about memorial days have a long tradition in France.

Works

  • 1889 - Théodore Aubanel
  • 1891 - Jean Moréas
  • 1894 - Le Chemin du Paradis, mythes et fabliaux
  • 1896–1899 - Le voyage d'Athènes
  • 1898 - L'idée de decentralization
  • 1899 - Trois idées politiques: Chateaubriand , Michelet , Sainte-Beuve
  • 1900 - Enquête sur la monarchie
  • 1901 - Anthinéa: d'Athènes à Florence
  • 1902 - Les Amants de Venise, George Sand et Musset
  • 1905 - L'Avenir de l'intelligence
  • 1906 - Le Dilemme de Marc Sangnier
  • 1910 - Kiel and Tangier
  • 1912 - La Politique religieuse
  • 1914 - L'Action française et la religion catholique
  • 1915 - L'Étang de Berre
  • 1916 - Quand les Français ne s'aimaient pas
  • 1916–1918 - Les Conditions de la victoire , (four volumes)
  • 1921 - Tombeaux
  • 1922 - Inscriptions
  • 1923 - Poètes
  • 1924 - L'Allée des philosophes
  • 1925 - La Musique intérieure
  • 1925 - Barbarie et poésie
  • 1927 - Lorsque Hugo eut les cent ans
  • 1928 - Le prince des nuées
  • 1928 - Un débat sur le romantisme
  • 1928 - Vers un art intellectuel
  • 1928 - L'Anglais qui a connu la France
  • 1929 - Corps glorieux ou Vertu de la perfection
  • 1929 - Italian promenade
  • 1929 - Napoleon pour ou contre la France
  • 1930 - De Démos à César
  • 1930 - Corse et Provence
  • 1930 - Quatre nuits de Provence
  • 1931 - Triptyque de Paul Bourget
  • 1931 - Le Quadrilatère
  • 1931 - Au signe de Flore
  • 1932 - Heures immortelles
  • 1932–1933 - Dictionnaire politique et critique , (five volumes)
  • 1935 - Prologue d'un essai sur la critique
  • 1937 - Quatre poèmes d'Eurydice
  • 1937 - L'amitié de Platon
  • 1937 - Jacques Bainville et Paul Bourget
  • 1937 - Les vergers sur la mer
  • 1937 - Jeanne d'Arc, Louis XIV, Napoléon
  • 1937 - Devant l'Allemagne éternelle
  • 1937 - Mes idées politiques
  • 1937 - La Dentelle du Rempart
  • 1940 - Pages africaines
  • 1941 - Sous la muraille des cyprès
  • 1941 - Mistral
  • 1941 - La seule France
  • 1942 - De la colère à la justice
  • 1943 - Pour un réveil français
  • 1944 - Poésie et vérité
  • 1944 - Paysages mistraliens
  • 1944 - Le Pain et le Vin
  • 1945 - Au-devant de la nuit
  • 1945 - L'Allemagne et nous
  • 1947 - Les Deux Justices ou Notre J'accuse
  • 1948 - L'Ordre et le Désordre
  • 1948 - Maurice Barrès
  • 1948 - Une promotion de Judas
  • 1948 - Réponse à André Gide
  • 1949 - Au Grand Juge de France
  • 1949 - Le Cintre de Riom
  • 1950 - Mon jardin qui s'est souvenu
  • 1951 - Tragi-comédie de ma surdité
  • 1951 - Vérité, justice, patrie (together with Maurice Pujo )
  • 1952 - À mes vieux oliviers
  • 1952 - La Balance intérieure
  • 1952 - Le Beau Jeu des reviviscences
  • 1952 - Le Bienheureux Pie X , sauveur de la France
  • 1953 - Pascal puni (published posthumously)
  • 1958 - Lettres de prison (1944–1952) (published posthumously)
  • 1966 - Lettres passe-murailles, correspondance échangée avec Xavier Vallat (1950–1952) (published posthumously)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Samuel M. Osgood: French Royalism Since 1870 . Springer, 2nd edition 1970, p. 200 ( online )
  2. ↑ https://openlibrary.org/ . From 1960 to 1978 there were 68 issues of Cahiers Charles Maurras magazine.
  3. ↑ a b deutschlandfunk.de July 15, 2018 / Albrecht Betz : Again and again heated debates about memorial days in France
  4. ↑ see also francearchives.fr: Recueil des Commémorations nationales 2018
  5. ↑ lefigaro.fr January 27, 2018: Commémorations: Maurras fait polémique
  6. ↑ Le Figaro , January 29, 2018 (online: Françoise Nyssen retire la référence à Charles Maurras du livre des commémorations 2018 ).
personal data
SURNAME Maurras, Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and political publicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Martigues
DATE OF DEATH November 16, 1952
Place of death Tours