The fall of Paris (Ehrenburg)
The Fall of Paris (Russian Падение Парижа , Padenije Parischa ) is a novel that the Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg wrote from August 1940 to January 1942 and which appeared in the March 1941 issue and in the March and April 1942 issues of the Moscow literary magazine Snamja .
Volk und Welt held the rights to the translation into German since 1977; however, the first translations into German appeared in Zurich in 1945 and in Berlin in 1947 (by two publishers). The novel has been translated from Russian into more than twenty languages, including Latvian ( Parīzes krišana , 1941), English ( Fall of Paris , 1942), French ( Chute de Paris , 1944), Polish ( Upadek Paryża , 1946), Chinese (巴黎 的 陷落 , 1947), Slovak ( Pád Paríža , 1949), Turkish ( Paris düşerken , 1975) and Vietnamese ( Pari sụp đỏ̂: tiẻ̂u thuyé̂t , 1979).
background
Ilja Ehrenburg knows Paris inside out. From 1908 to 1917 - fled from the Ochrana - he had to spend in exile in Paris. At the time the novel was set, he was a correspondent for Izvestia in the Seine metropolis. In this prose work by Ilja Ehrenburg, the time before the campaign in the West comes to life again. More precisely, the reader gets an insight into Paris from 1935 to July 14, 1940 . There the radical socialist Édouard Daladier plays a role in the novel. In addition, Paul Tessat is drawn as a character from a novel with features by the same politician. Ilja Ehrenburg uses this trick for a second pairing of figures. What is meant is the socialist French Prime Minister Léon Blum and the fictional French politician Auguste Viard.
overview
When Ilja Ehrenburg asks his character Lucien in the last of the three parts of the novel, “What did you do in the year thirty-six?” And thus points to the failed policy of the Popular Front government and the subsequent disastrous appeasement course of this same République Française , the novel appears in parts as flat communist propaganda. If, however, passages that all the French communists in the novel of those prewar years consistently portray as virtuoso are overlooked, the reader, who looks down from the pedestal of the 21st century, can understand why the Wehrmacht was able to walk into the Open City of Paris in 1940 : the French did not want to fight like in the First World War . He never wanted to fight again at all. Of course, quite a few French also bravely resisted the Germans . A possible answer to why this struggle was unsuccessful in the period up to 1940 can be found in reading a novel.
action
Until November 1936
The 32-year-old painter André Corneau, son of a farmer from Normandy , has his studio in the Rue du Cherche-Midi. He meets his schoolmates Pierre Dubois, Lucien Tessat and the 30-year-old actress Jeanette Lambert in this old Parisian street in the Cafe "Zum smoking Hund". The 32-year-old novelist Lucien - author of "In private" - had previously at a meeting in the Maison de la Culture of the threat of war , that of Hitler , speaking goes out and was stopped by a heckler: Mr. Paul Tessat, the father of the speaker, got " eighty thousand from the fraudster Stavisky ". André has no ear for the talk of his friends, but falls in love with Jeanette; admires her eyes.
The engineer Pierre Dubois builds engines for bombers at the Seine plant and tells his friend Lucien about the 29-year-old communist Michaud who works there as a mechanic. For the sharp-tongued fanatic and good worker Michaud, who served in the Navy, the factory owner - that is, the powerful financier Jules Dessère - is a capitalist who makes money on the war. Michaud's hobby is architecture. The worker attends relevant lectures given by Professor Mâle .
The around 50-year-old unmarried, childless engineer Dessère, son of an Angers café owner , had graduated from a technical college and works behind the scenes; appoints and overthrows ministers. The humble Pierre Dubois, one of the best engineers at the Seine works, asks the oligarch for a favor. Dubois' bride, the teacher Agnès Legendre, was dismissed from school because of "anti-patriotic upbringing". Actually, Dessère is a person of soul. A call to his friend, the 58-year-old MP for the Popular Front Paul Dessat, is enough. The teacher can continue teaching.
The enterprising MP Paul Dessat gets into trouble with the press after his son Lucien's lecture against militarism. That is not enough. Lucien, who has long since ceased to write novels, but has sunk into a “talented pamphleteer whom the communists applaud”, always asks his father for money. This time it's five thousand francs. The father pays. Lucien needs the money for an abortion. His girlfriend Jeanette Lambert is pregnant. The actress had given herself to Lucien, who had confessed his love to her, not out of reciprocity, but in high spirits. As a consolation, the long-suffering MP Paul Dessat has the only daughter Denise, a hardworking girl who studies Romanesque architecture. Denise meets Michaud after a lecture at Mâle on buildings in Poitiers .
Both Denise and Michaud attend an election rally. The 65-year-old Auguste Viard from Châlons speaks for the Popular Front . Then the communist Legreux appears.
Paul Tessat, an enemy of Viard, is re-elected - with the help of a substantial injection of money from Dessère. Agnès calls Paul Tessat, who helped her in the lost office, a scoundrel.
When there was a strike at the Seine plant, the chairman of the Dessère board of directors had the upper hand in the dispute with strike leader Michaud, but made concessions. Pierre Dubois is on strike as an engineer in the ranks of the eighteen thousand workers. Dessère is still laughing about it.
Jeanette, who has not yet recovered from the intervention, appears before the strikers at the plant. The actress admits to Pierre that she broke up with Lucien.
After the election, there is no longer any money that Lucien constantly demands from his father. But Paul Tessat places the son as a diplomat in the service of the helpless Blum and the lazy Viard in Spain. Lucien, free of all financial worries in Spain, is bored as Vice Consul in Salamanca .
As an opponent of the French communists, Breteuil, also supported by Dessère, had distinguished itself in the election. The Lorraine native , who comes from poor Catholic backgrounds, is mistaken for a humorless German in the Parisian salons. On the one hand, he loves his five-year-old son more than anything. On the other hand, the boy has to be hardened with cold water. Shortly afterwards the little one dies of pneumonia. As the head of the “faithful” - that is a fascist group - Breteuil helps Dessère from ambush in the fight against the strikers in the Seine plant. During the confrontation, the "faithful" shoot a young boy. Strike leader Michaud refuses to be provoked. The attackers are displaced with water jets from fire brigade syringes.
At a demonstration on July 14, 1936, Viard shakes hands with member of the socialist party Pierre Dubois in recognition of his participation in the strike. Pierre's wife Agnès disagrees. The teacher considers her husband's fight to be quixotic.
When Hitler sent planes to the Spanish putschists , Michaud called on the Popular Front government at a rally: “Give Spain planes!” After the meeting, he asked Pierre, an aircraft specialist, for help. When Pierre wants to send eleven A68 bombers to Barcelona, Viard, who pleads for non-interference, calls in the chief of the secret police. The transfer is prevented.
Lucien Tessat classifies his turn to the communists as stupidity and becomes a liaison between the Falangists and Breteuil. Suddenly Lucien is no longer the prodigal son for his father. But Breteuil wins Lucien as an informant. The son scouts out the confidential papers on his father's desk.
Denise leaves her hated father's house, lives alone furnished and takes a badly paid job as a packer in the Gnome Works. Michaud goes to Spain and fights against General Franco as a lieutenant in the Paris Commune battalion near Madrid . In mid-November 1936 the general's advance on the capital stagnated.
Viard owns a collection of fine paintings. When the German invaders approached in 1940 (see below “September 1939 to July 1940”), the first concern of the politician will be the fate of his pictures. In this context, a visit by Viard to the studio of the painter André Corneau is worth mentioning. The painter does not provide the picture on which the collector reflects. Viard leaves, offended.
1938 to September 1939
The Parisians took note of the invasion of the Wehrmacht in Austria in March 1938 "indifferently and disturbed". Breteuil, who is now being financed by the industrialist Montigny, keeps silent about his “cooperation with Germany”. He finds the internationalism of Blum and Viard disgusting. Breteuil draws Proudhon a Marx before. Lucien, who - returned to Paris - frequented the Montigny house, called his father a washcloth. Joséphine Montigny is very interested in the unwilling diplomat. Lucien does not show such interest in the young lady. Instead, he falls in love with Mouche. This is Madame Marie Grandel. Grandel is a confidante of Breteuil. The circle around Breteuil demands that Paul Tessat must break with the communists, Laval must be sent to Mussolini and the government must recognize General Franco.
Paul Tessat learns from the director of the secret police that his daughter Denise is leading a meager existence and is active in a communist committee. The worried father notices that the son Lucien has stolen a letter from his desk with explosive content to Monsieur Grandel. According to reports from Breteuil's circles, Grandel is a German spy and communicates with a certain Kielmann.
Viard's betrayal mentioned above broke engineer Pierre Dubois, but he continues to support the workers of the Seine works. He does not listen to his wife Agnès, who is looking after their one-year-old son Doudou. The lonely painter André envies his friend Pierre because he has a wife and child.
In August 1938 a Sudeten German named Henlein was spoken of in Paris . There is talk of Chamberlain in September . Benesch , it is said, insists on the inviolability of Czechoslovakia . Breteuil wants to persuade Paul Tessat that Czechoslovakia is an aircraft carrier from Moscow. For Breteuil, Benesch is a Bolshevik . Tessat has lunch with Dessère. The latter calls Chamberlain an old man and sees Breteuil as the Gauleiter of Paris and the surrounding area. Because for Breteuil the "defense of our western civilization against the Bolsheviks" is in the foreground.
The Parisians curse the Czechs , who are worse than the Bulgarians , and call Chamberlain an angel of peace. France, on the other hand, has capable military personnel - above all the honest Pétain . However, Colonel de Gaulle snuck into the military commission . And concerning the Germans - Hitler is dismissed as a madman. But at least Viard turned pale at his speech. Dessère wants to "defend happy France against young, hungry and contentious peoples". All exaltations become obsolete when a message about the Munich Agreement reaches Paris: “There will be no war!” Daladier, returning to Paris from Munich, goes to the Arc de Triomphe and lays a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier . The Popular Front is to be buried at the Congress of Radicals in Marseille. Paul Dessat turns against Breteuil, who wants to force an imported regime on the French. Tessat received the applause of the delegates when he spoke out in favor of an “authoritarian republic”. Daladier has to defend himself: "Munich was not a surrender!"
Mouche breaks up with Lucien. The wealthy widow Jenny, daughter of a Methodist from Kentucky , falls in love with Lucien. Although the love is not reciprocated, Lucien, who is a year younger, takes a lot of Jenny's money. And again Lucien Tessat admits something stupid: turning to the vile failure Breteuil was a mistake. Breteuil, however, trumps; calls on Paul Tessat to ban the Communist Party . Lucien's sick mother asks the son to make up with the father. Lucien doesn't want to know anything about the unscrupulous trader. The infantry soldier Lucien Tessat is called up.
At the beginning of October 1938, Denise answered a long letter from Michaud in Spain. She learns of the death of her mother, Amélie Tessat, from the newspaper. Denise and the father buried their mother in the Père Lachaise cemetery and parted without reconciliation. Lucien had watched the funeral from afar. The father now only has his lover, the luscious, beautiful Paulette. In November, the communist Denise was arrested by the police as she paid homage to the declining Spanish Popular Front government in front of striking Parisian workers from the Gnome Works . Minister Tessat frees his daughter from police custody. Denise still has to go to jail for a month with other workers. The deeply unhappy father becomes a communist hater.
In December 1938, Ribbentrop visited Paris. Minister Tessat sees an opportunity to save France in a conversation with Viard. The Germans could perhaps turn east. Tessat is again looking for proximity to Breteuil; launches articles in the newspapers about the weakness of the Red Army and Russia's inexhaustible raw material reserves.
In March 1939 , Michaud and his battalion took on the last stand. A tank advance by the enemy is repelled one last time. After the defeat, the French civil war refugees gather in Perpignan and are reviled as deserters by the French.
Dessère befriends the actress Jeanette Lambert; drives her to his country house in his brisk automobile. She surrenders to him, but rejects his request. Despite her newest relationship, Jeanette loves the painter André Corneau. Dessère cannot find rest; reads a telegram: " German troops in Prague ".
In the early autumn of 1939 Denise and Michaud found themselves in Paris. The French are mobilizing .
September 1939 to July 1940
Michaud, the engineer Pierre Dubois and the painter André Corneau are drafted. André comes to Poitiers. Before Lucien moves in in September, he collects a few thousand from Jenny. His father continues to seek proximity to Breteuil, because he believes that he can come to an agreement with Hitler. Paul Tessat proposes the traitor Grandel as head of the French arms industry. Dessère is annoyed by the intriguer's appointment. Tessat says no, because Dessère has been unlucky lately. Dessère complains to Grandel: The armaments industry is short of workers after the mobilization. Grandel defends himself unobjectively: Dessère gave excessive financial support to the Popular Front at the time.
The communist Legreux is sent to a concentration camp near Briançon . He was held in the camp until May 1940. Legreux blows himself up in an ammunition depot. Paul Tessat, who believes he is a successor to Clemenceau , whistles at Breteuil when the communist MP wants to be shot.
Pierre Dubois had been sent to the front as a sergeant in a company of Breton peasants. Wounded in the groin after being detonated by shrapnel, he dies. Michaud had come to Brest as a member of the Navy and was deported to an infantry regiment in Arras as a troublemaker . When he was given a two-day Paris vacation in January, he was finally able to meet up with Denise again after four months. She works in an illegal print shop disguised as a fashion studio on the Boulevard Malesherbes.
Out of consideration for his father, Lucien is used as a paramedic in a hospital. At his own request, he is transferred to the front. In Belgium, Lucien searches in vain for death in the fight against the Germans; fights on the beach until he runs out of hand grenades, throws himself into the sea and rescues himself on an English cutter. Michaud's regiment is transferred to Le Havre . In the late winter of 1940 the soldiers feared being involved in the Soviet-Finnish war and protested. A couple of rioters, including Michaud, are said to be shot to deter.
At the end of May, the Germans occupied Holland and Belgium , took Marche there and their armored spearheads reached Paliseul .
Montigny's family is on their way to Biarritz when French soldiers fleeing are seen in the eastern suburbs of Paris. On May 16, German tanks headed for Laon . Paul Tessat urges his lover Paulette to leave for Lyon . Dessère appears in Tessat's office and demands that his friend defend Paris - "street by street". That cannot be done with Tessat. The minister wants to move to the Loire and then to Algiers . Dessère has nothing more to say to this politician and is leaving. In the middle of preparations for the trip, Reynaud calls Tessat : The Germans turn to Saint-Quentin , Amiens and Péronne ; apparently want to go to London . Tessat sees himself - when he thinks of Daladier and Reynaud - surrounded by fools. The clever Tessat wants to come to an understanding with Moscow. He is talked out of it. Because with someone like Tessat, who arrests workers, Moscow will hardly come to an agreement. In his distress, Tessat asks Denise to come to her. She appears with the knowledge of her party, saves her father and is only ready to negotiate after the father has released the 34,000 communists incarcerated in prisons. After the failed attempt to communicate, Tessat thinks: 'Lucien was a scoundrel, but he was more human.'
Michaud cheers up the soldiers at his side. The battalion under Commander Fabre holds a small town in Picardy . The German tanks can't get through at this point.
On the run from the Germans in the direction of the Loire, Jeanette meets Lambert shortly before the river Lucien Tessat. After a conversation everyone goes their own way. Jeanette is killed in a German air raid outdoors. Lucien's 87th Line Regiment no longer exists. So he got to the Limousin as a tramp and made the young maid Jeanne Prélisse happy there. Of course he is fed by the beautiful one. Happiness doesn't last long. Knocking on the door in search of bread, Lucien is shot with a hunting rifle by an old farmer.
Paul Tessat goes to Tours with the cabinet . Reynaud telegraphs to Roosevelt for assistance. On June 14th, the Germans marched into Paris. “What a misfortune!” Shouts Paul Dessat from the barber chair in Tours. Reynaud resigns. Tessat congratulates Reynaud's successor, Pétain. Tours is defended. When the Germans then bomb the city, the government moves to Clermont-Ferrand . Tessat is staying in Royat . Other cabinet members choose Vichy , Mont-Dore or La Bourboule as their homes. Dessère travels by car, calls Tessat a bug whose house has burned down, takes his car up a hill into the meadows and shoots himself in the great outdoors with a heavy revolver.
Breteuil is disappointed with the Germans. The latter deny entry to millions of starving homeless refugees from the unoccupied to the occupied zone of France.
Agnès takes on three young men in Paris who want to fight the Germans from London. For this, the mother of little Doudou is arrested and interrogated by the Germans. Although Agnès was separated from her son, she remains steadfast; goes to death.
Denise is hiding in the southwest of Paris; prints leaflets near the Porte de Versailles. Michaud knocks down a post, gets civilian clothes and finds the mistress.
On the evening of July 14, 1940, the painter André Corneau went to his street in Paris, Rue du Cherche-Midi and wistfully thinks back to the time when Jeanette smiled at him there. At that moment, the residents are driven into the houses with the shouting "curfew!"
Self-testimony
"How did I fail? ... I showed people who were completely absorbed in the political struggle, be it the communists Michaud and Denise, be it the fascist Breteuil ... Obviously I have ... succumbed to a certain simplification. Other heroes, on the other hand, seem natural - the actress Jeanette, the… capitalist Dessère, the naive engineer Pierre, the commercial political master Tessat, the artist André and… the sentimental cynic Lucien. "
reception
- In 1976, Schröder called the novel a "contemporary documentary parable".
Web links
- Full text
- Entry at fantlab.ru (Russian)
Used edition
- Ilja Ehrenburg: The Fall of Paris. Novel. Translated from the Russian by Ingeborg Schröder. With an afterword by Ralf Schröder . Volk und Welt, Berlin 1988 (3rd edition, ISBN 3-353-00270-7 )
Remarks
- ↑ Ilja Ehrenburg does not depict this advance of the Wehrmacht as a walk. For example, two French officers are shot at Charleville. The air force bombed. Splinters tear off a seven-year-old's legs. A wounded Frenchman dies (Edition used, p. 420).
- ↑ General Picard in December 1938 on Breteuil: "The [French] officers do not want to fight." (Edition used, p. 319, 21. Zvo)
- ↑ Gnome built aircraft engines in Paris in 1938.
- ↑ While the opportunist Paul Dessat condemned his son's act in 1938, at the end of the novel, in the early summer of 1940, the smart boy had prevented a bitter war against the Germans with his theft.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Russian Знамя, The banner
- ↑ see edition used from 1953, p. 4, below
- ^ In the translation by Hans Ruoff in the Aufbau-Verlag and in the translation by E. Sabel in the SWA-Verlag
- ↑ Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, p. 569, 13. Zvu and p. 574, 6. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 396, 6th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 10, 3rd Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 111, 13. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 145, 6th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 247, 7. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 236, middle
- ↑ Edition used, p. 258, 7th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 261, 12. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 286, 14th Zvu
- ↑ edition used, p. 358, 13. Zvo
- ↑ edition used, p. 542, 19. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 445, 2nd Zvu
- ↑ Schröder quotes Ehrenburg in the afterword of the edition used, p. 575, 4th Zvo
- ↑ Schröder in the afterword of the edition used, p. 575, 2nd Zvu