Claude Tillier

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Claude Tillier

Claude Tillier (born April 11, 1801 in Clamecy in the Nièvre department , † October 12, 1844 in Nevers ) was a French journalist and writer . His main work Mein Unkel Benjamin , a sharp-tongued picaresque novel , has seen numerous editions and translations.

life and work

The son of a Burgundian locksmith was able to attend the Lycée von Bourges with the help of a scholarship . After a brief teaching activity, he did "reluctantly compulsory military service" from 1822 to 1827. In this context he took part in an expedition to Spain in 1823. When he returned to Clamecy demobilized, he married and tried his hand at running a private school and as municipal school principal. Quarrels with the authorities, which even brought him a brief detention, and the reactionary consequences of the July Revolution led him to found the weekly newspaper L'Indépendant in 1831 . When he was shipwrecked with this, for financial reasons, he began in 1840 for the Nevers newspaperL'Association to work. From 1841 to 1843 he edited this controversial paper - until it also perished due to a demand for a fine for defamation. The last months of his life - he died of consumption the following year - Tillier worked as a “free pamphleteer”, as Gsteiger reports. However, he couldn't make a living from his subscribers; he also gave private lessons.

From March 1842, Mein Unkel Benjamin , a humorous-satirical genre picture, appeared initially in sequels in the Association . The Parisian publisher Coquebert brought out a first book edition in 1843. The book has seen numerous editions and translations to this day. The first German translation was done by the democratically minded Swabian Ludwig Pfau in 1866. The anarchist Benjamin Tucker made an American translation . Manfred Gsteiger gives more on the history of its impact .

Although Tillier has explicitly set the episodes about the Epicurean country doctor in the "happy" times of his own grandfather, he doesn't gloss over anything. His book is teeming with attacks on injustice, bigotry, and hypocrisy. When Meyers Lexikon speaks of a "coarse, humorous village novel" in 1929, however, it fails to recognize the polished style and wealth of the book. It is a treasure trove for startling metaphors and profound aphorisms. With these features, too, it is reminiscent of Thoreau's classic Walden from 1854, which Tillier could not have known well. Incidentally, both works had to wait several decades for their due recognition.

Motifs from My Uncle Benjamin were filmed under this title in France by Édouard Molinaro in 1969 and in Georgia under the title The Banquet of the Rose in the same year .

Schools in Clamecy, Nevers and Cosne-Cours-sur-Loire and Rue Claude Tillier in Paris were named after Tillier .

After winning a duel with the sword, Uncle Benjamin spoke among other things:

As for post-fame, not everyone can get it, I admit, but the difficulty lies in the fact that it can no longer be enjoyed. Find me a banker who will advance immortality, and from tomorrow I will seek immortality!

Works

  • Mon oncle Benjamin (My Onkel Benjamin), newspaper novel, 1842, numerous later book editions, in German most recently by Haffmans Verlag, Zurich 1991, with illustrations by Almut Gernhardt
  • Belle-Plante and Cornelius (Schönblatt and Cornelius), 1843, newspaper novel, several later book editions, in German first Stuttgart 1924
  • Mr. Paillet's walking stick: Claude Tillier (1801 - 1844); Pamphlets (selection), short stories , translated and presented by Klaus Bernarding , Frankfurt / Main 1993

literature

  • Gaston Gautier: Claude Tillier instituteur (1828-1841) , Vallière publishing house 1903
  • Max Cornicelius: Claude Tillier , monograph, Halle ad Saale 1910
  • L. Marx: Tillier , dissertation, Heidelberg 1915
  • Francis P. O'Hara: Tillier , dissertation, Paris 1935
  • Manfred Gsteiger : "A splendid French author" , epilogue in the Manesse edition of Uncle Benjamin from 1972, pages 419–446
  • Claude Tillier: 1801 - 1844 , exhibition catalog, Société Académique du Nivernais, Nevers, 2001

Film adaptations

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manfred Gsteiger in his epilogue to the Uncle Benjamin edition, Zurich 1972, page 423
  2. ^ Gsteiger, Zurich 1972, page 428
  3. ↑ My Uncle Benjamin , Zurich 1972, page 18
  4. ↑ 7th edition, Volume 11
  5. ↑ On page 330 of the 1972 edition of Manesse, Uncle Benjamin remarks that rudeness is the weapon of those who do not know how to use the flexible stick of wit.
  6. ↑ In the Brockhaus Encyclopedia one searches in vain for Tillier in 1993 (Volume 22 of the 19th edition). He is also not represented in Kindler's New Literature Lexicon , Munich 1988 edition.
  7. ↑ Mein Unkel Benjamin , Zurich 1972, page 378. The double s (instead of ß) are in the book. Translation: Trude Fein .
personal data
SURNAME Tillier, Claude
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French author
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1801
PLACE OF BIRTH Clamecy
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1844
Place of death Nevers