Edmond Fleg

Edmond Fleg (born November 26, 1874 in Geneva , † October 15, 1963 in Paris ; real name Edmond Flegenheimer ) was a French writer of Swiss origin.

biography

Fleg was a cousin of the architect Julien Flegenheimer . After studying in Geneva, Fleg moved to Paris to the École normal supérieure and after graduating worked as a theater critic in Paris. In 1914 he registered for the Foreign Legion .

He dealt critically with his Jewish religion and addressed the history of Judaism in all of his literary work. One of his most famous texts is Pourquoi je suis juif ( Why I am a Jew ). His novel L'enfant prophète brought Judaism back to an entire generation of assimilated Jews in a gripping way and was for a long time something like the catechism of the French Jewish scouts .

During the German occupation, Fleg initially stayed in Beauvallon in the Italian-occupied part of Provence and was later brought to safety by the Resistance . The lectures with which he educated young Jews threatened during the occupation about the beauties of their religion appeared in 1946 under the title Le Chant nouveau , and he described his experiences during the occupation in 1949 in Nous de l'Espérance .

After the war, Fleg played a key role in the rapprochement between the Christian denominations and Judaism in France. Although he was twice in Israel - the first time in 1932 with his friend Marc Chagall - at the end of his life he was reserved about Zionism , which he had actively followed from its very beginning. As already stated in Pourquoi je suis juif and in L'enfant prophéte , he was of the opinion that the Jews should be integrated into the countries in which they were born as citizens of equal status , actively or passively practicing their religion. Although he was Swiss by birth and only became a French citizen in 1921 because of his service in the Foreign Legion, he saw himself as a Frenchman completely and passionately.

When he died in 1963, Fleg left behind an imposing estate, which among other things contained correspondence with the most famous French writers between 1890 and 1963. A few days after his wife Madeleine, who had conscientiously organized the estate, died in 1973, all documents, letters and photographs by unknown thieves were stolen from the Flegs' apartment on Quai aux Fleurs 1 in Paris and have not appeared since.

Fleg's son Maurice fell in Flanders in June 1940 , his son Daniel (* 1912) suffered from depression and committed suicide in 1939. Daniel Flegs Journal was published in 1941 in a heavily censored version in Avignon by Edmond Fleg as Journal de Daniel and was republished in Paris in 1959 with a foreword by François Mauriac .

Works

• Macbeth (opera). Music (1910) Ernest Bloch
• Oedipe . Tragédie lyrique (opera). Music (1910–1931): George Enescu . Premiere 1936
• Anthology juive (1923)
• L'enfant prophète (1926; German new edition Das Prophetenkind 2005)
• Pourquoi je suis juif essay (1929)
• Le juif de pape play (1925)
• La maison de bon dieu play (1920)
• Et nous vivrons ... (Geneva, 1943)
• Le chant nouveau (1946)
• Moses (1948)
• Nous de l'Espérance (1949)
• Correspondance d'Edmond Fleg pendant l'affaire Dreyfus , edited by André E. Elbaz, Paris 1976

literature

• Odile Roussel: Un itinéraire spirituel: Edmond Fleg . La Pensée Universelle, Paris 1978
• Charles Linsmayer : Dreaming brightly between Geneva, Paris and an imaginary Jerusalem. An Approach to the Life and Work of Edmond Fleg . In: Das Prophetenkind , pp. 161–240. Huber, Frauenfeld 2005, ISBN 3-7193-1367-0

Web links

• Literature by and about Edmond Fleg in the catalog of the German National Library
• Betty Halpern-Guedj: Fleg, Edmond. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .