Edmond Vermeil

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Edmond-Joachim Vermeil (born May 29, 1878 in Vevey , † April 14, 1964 in Paris ) was a French German scholar .

Life

As the son of a Protestant merchant, Edmond Vermeil attended elementary school in Congénies and the Lycée in Montpellier , and later in Nîmes . From 1904 to 1907 he worked as a lecturer at the University of Göttingen . Returned to France, he taught German language and culture at the École Alsacienne in Paris . In 1912 he did his doctorate under Charles Andler on the Catholic theologian Johann Adam Möhler . When the First World War broke out , he was drafted and from 1915 to 1917 he was in command of a machine gun battalion. After being wounded, he was transferred to the military foreign intelligence service and made studies at the French headquarters in Compiègne on the course of the front and the morale of the German troops. From 1919 to 1933 Vermeil taught German cultural history, first at the University of Strasbourg , then from 1933 at the Sorbonne . His students included Joseph Rovan and Alfred Grosser .

In the 1920s, Vermeil was keen to improve Franco-German relations on a private and academic level. He was a member of the Comité franco-allemand d'information et de documentation founded by the Luxembourg industrialist Émile Mayrisch . His publications during this time were intended to provide French politicians with a knowledge base about the neighboring country and help them make decisions. In addition, his publications encompass a wide range of musicians' biographies, socio-economic studies, literary studies, political-scientific analyzes and daily press evaluations to studies on the history of religion. He sympathized with the economic reorganization efforts of Walter Rathenau and the constitutional draft of the constitutional lawyer Hugo Preuss . When the Briand-Kellogg Pact was signed in Paris on August 27, 1928, Vermeil was the interpreter between Raymond Poincaré and the German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann .

At the invitation of several German universities, Vermeil traveled through Germany from January to May 1933 and was a direct witness of the National Socialists' seizure of power . He processed his impressions in a book in which he drew a historical line of development from Martin Luther via Bismarck to Hitler and ascribed a decisive part in the failure of the Weimar Republic to the authoritarian Protestantism of Prussian stamps. As a close observer of political developments in Germany and a good expert on the Conservative Revolution , Vermeil tried in vain in the late 1930s with his book Doctrinaires de la Révolution allemande (1938) to warn the leading political and intellectual circles of France of the danger posed by the sides of Nazi Germany threatened. Vermeil's second book L'Allemagne , published in 1940 . Essai d'explication described National Socialism as a radical anti-liberalism, driven by inexhaustible energy ("dynamisme illimité") and with the means of total mobilization in full peace, first Germany and then all of Europe would subordinate to its racist rule. Vermeil had to leave Paris immediately after the German troops marched in; his recently published work was confiscated and crushed by the occupiers and could only be published again after their withdrawal in 1945. Vermeil found contact with a resistance group in Montpellier and was finally able to flee to Great Britain in 1943, where he worked in London as an advisor to General de Gaulle . After the war he resumed teaching at the Sorbonne and in the late 1940s was a member of a committee that was supposed to shape the re-education policy in the French zone of occupation . In later years Vermeil belonged to the Comité français d'échanges avec l'Allemagne nouvelle founded by Emmanuel Mounier .

Publications

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst-Erich Metzner et al .: Searching for traces in linguistic and historical landscapes. Festschrift for Ernst Erich Metzner. LIT Verlag, Berlin-Hamburg-Münster 2003, p. 438. ISBN 3-8258-6565-7
  2. ^ Edmond Vermeil: La pensée religieuse de Ernst Troeltsch . Newly published by Hartmut Ruddies. Labor et Fides, Geneva 1990 ISBN 978-2-8309-0586-1 . P. 10; Katja Marmetschke: Expliquer ou comprendre l´Allemagne? Edmond Vermeil's and Robert Minder's approach to Germany in comparison. In: Albrecht Betz, Richard Faber (ed.): Culture, literature and science in Germany and France. On the 100th birthday of Robert Minder . Königshausen & Neumann , Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2925-9 . P. 82
  3. ↑ Katja Marmetschke: Expliquer ou comprendre l´Allemagne? Edmond Vermeil's and Robert Minder's approach to Germany in comparison. In: Albrecht Betz, Richard Faber (ed.): Culture, literature and science in Germany and France. On the 100th birthday of Robert Minder . Königshausen & Neumann , Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2925-9 , pp. 83-87
  4. ↑ Katja Marmetschke: Enemy observation and understanding. The Germanist Edmond Vermeil in Franco-German relations. Böhlau, Cologne 2008. ISBN 978-3-412-20184-5
  5. ^ Edmond Vermeil: L'Allemagne du Congrès de Vienne à la Révolution hitlérienne (1815-1933) . Éditions de Cluny, Paris 1934, pp. 11–34. Vermeil's thesis of the historical inevitability of developments in Germany brought him the accusation of national self-righteousness on the part of Golo Mann . Hans-Martin Gauger, Wolfgang Mertz: Golo Mann. Memories and thoughts. Part 2: Years of apprenticeship in France. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999. ISBN 3-10-047911-4 , pp. 89-90.
  6. ^ Edmond Vermeil: La pensée religieuse de Ernst Troeltsch . Newly published by Hartmut Ruddies. Labor et Fides, Geneva 1990 ISBN 978-2-8309-0586-1 . P. 11.
  7. ↑ Katja Marmetschke: Expliquer ou comprendre l´Allemagne? Edmond Vermeil's and Robert Minder's approach to Germany in comparison. In: Albrecht Betz, Richard Faber (ed.): Culture, literature and science in Germany and France. On the 100th birthday of Robert Minder . Königshausen & Neumann , Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2925-9 , p. 79.
  8. ^ Corine Defrance : Edmond Vermeil et la commission de rééducation du peuple allemand 1945-1946. In: Revue d`Allemagne. 28 (1996), No. 2, ISSN  0035-0974 pp. 207-223; Katja Marmetschke: Expliquer ou comprendre l´Allemagne? Edmond Vermeil's and Robert Minder's approach to Germany in comparison. In: Albrecht Betz, Richard Faber (ed.): Culture, literature and science in Germany and France. On the 100th birthday of Robert Minder . Königshausen & Neumann , Würzburg 2004, ISBN 3-8260-2925-9 , p. 80.
personal data
SURNAME Vermeil, Edmond
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vermeil, Edmond-Joachim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French German studies specialist
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Vevey
DATE OF DEATH April 14, 1964
Place of death Paris