Flora Tristan

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Flora Tristan

Flora Tristan (born April 7, 1803 in Paris , † November 14, 1844 in Bordeaux ) was a Peruvian- French writer , socialist and women's rights activist .

Life

The first three decades

Mariano Tristán y Moscoso, Flora Tristan's father, a wealthy Peruvian nobleman, died in 1807, leaving his wife Anne-Pierre Laisnay, a French woman, and their four-year-old daughter completely destitute. To escape poverty, Flora went, dedicated to 15 years in a Graveurwerkstatt had hired, in 1821 as a 18-year-old a marriage of convenience with their employer one, the lithographer and painter André Chazal. Chazal humiliated and abused his young wife. She left him four years later. According to the then valid Civil Code , this was considered adultery - a divorce was not possible. For five years, from 1825 to 1830, she was on the run from her husband and the judiciary. Two of their three children died, only their daughter Aline survived. In order to keep herself, her mother and her daughter afloat, she worked temporarily as a travel companion for wealthy families.

The Peru trip

In April 1833, on her 30th birthday, Flora Tristan traveled to Peru in the hope of support from her father's family and his legacy. She spent eight months on the estates of her father's wealthy and powerful relatives in Arequipa . But she left the world of the local elite behind her again and again, visited the slaves on the plantations and was indignant about the class and racial differences in Peruvian society and about the “egoism, cynicism and frivolity” of the “higher classes”. Her side was incomprehensible and embarrassing to her family. There was no longer any thought of regaining their inheritance. In July 1834 she embarked for France.

Returning to Paris, Flora Tristan published her travel impressions and notes in 1837 under the title “ Pérégrinations d'une paria ”. Her book is “the first critical study of the political, social and cultural realities of the non-European world from the perspective of a woman to be published in Western Europe”. She “oscillates between the ethnocentrism of the arrogant Parisian and the impetus of the social reformer”. The sensation that her travelogue caused is due not least to her clear presentation: “Emotional expressions alternate with historical-philosophical considerations and with descriptions of the situation, with tragedy and comedy often being closely related. At the same time it was the first travelogue written in French, in which the conditions in independent Peru were described, so that the Pérégrinations represented a pioneering work in this regard. "

The assassination

As soon as Chazal found out about Flora Tristan's return, he resumed her pursuit and kidnapped their daughter several times. The court awarded custody of Aline to the father. When she had to read in a smuggled letter from Aline that Chazal had touched her daughter "in an unspeakable way", Flora Tristan charged him with incest and obtained custody. Chazal then tried to murder Flora Tristan on September 4, 1838. She barely survived the gunshot wounds and suffered from their consequences for the rest of her life. The trial and sentencing of Chazal to deportation and 20 years of forced labor finally made her divorce possible.

Early socialist

She processed her experiences as a single, employed woman in her writings. On her travels she visited factories, ghettos, prisons and brothels and wrote travelogues and reports about them. In 1839 she visited English industrial cities. Her observations of the conditions of the English working class, Promenades dans Londres, ou l'aristocratie et les prolétaires anglais , she published as early as 1840, five years before Friedrich Engels ' Die Lage des Arbeitsclassen in England .

In late 1843 and through 1844, Flora Tristan traveled restlessly across France by stagecoach and ship, giving lectures to encourage workers to organize themselves into trade unions. She was convinced that the liberation of the working class and the emancipation of women could only be achieved together. She was subjected to constant repression and spying by the police; the conservative press ridiculed them.

In Bordeaux she collapsed from exhaustion and died shortly afterwards at the age of 41 on November 14, 1844 of typhus . Her grave is on the Cimetière de la Chartreuse in Bordeaux.

Flora Tristan was a contemporary of and connected in her beliefs to George Sand , Victor Hugo , Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier .

Flora Tristan was the grandmother of the painter Paul Gauguin . Her daughter Aline had married the journalist Clovis Gauguin. From this marriage Paul Gauguin emerged. From 1849 to 1855 Aline lived in Peru with her husband and son Paul.

Founder of religion

With the Saint-Simonist Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin , she stood up for free love . Together they founded the Mapa religion , where Enfantin saw herself as god Ma and Tristan embodied the goddess Pa .

Works

  • My trip to Peru. Journeys of a pariah , introduction and translator. Friedrich Wolfzettel. Societäts, Frankfurt 1983; again Insel, Frankfurt 2004, ISBN 3-458-34737-2 .
    • In Pérégrinations d'une paria (published in two volumes in 1837, in part already as a preprint in the Revue de Paris ), she describes her experiences and impressions in Peru as a woman traveling alone and a single mother. Reprint Maspéro, Paris 1980 (coll. La Découverte)
  • Méphis (1838), second edition under the title Maréquita l'Espagnole. Méphis (1844)
    • a romantic-sensitive, feminist-utopian novel about the love between the Andalusian Maréquita and her lover, the proletarian artist Méphis, and their mutual, liberating heart formation
  • In the Thicket of London or The Aristocracy and the Proletarians of England , ISP-Verl., Cologne, 1993, ISBN 3-929008-20-3 .
    • In her Promenades dans Londres, ou l'aristocratie et les prolétaires anglais (1840), she reports in a kind of political report on the situation of workers in English industrial cities. Based on this, L'Union Ouvrière was later created .
  • Workers union. Socialism and Feminism in the 19th Century , ISP-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-88332-128-1 .
    • In her main work, L'Union Ouvrière (1843), she analyzed her experiences in London and other industrial cities. She called on all workers to unite and fight together for their rights. She paid particular attention to the right to training - also and especially for women.
  • Le tour de France. État actuel de la classe ouvrière sous l'aspect moral, intellectuel, matériel. Éditions Tête de Feuilles , Paris 1973.
    • Diary of her (last) trip through France in 1843/1844 and of her efforts to set up local workers' associations

literature

  • Evelyne Bloch-Dano: Flora Tristan, la femme messie . Grasset, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-246-57561-3 .
  • Dagmar Calmer: The novel "Méphis" by Flora Tristan. Literary reflection of a woman's search for identity in the first half of the 19th century . Master's thesis, University of Osnabrück 1991
  • Máire Cross: The feminism of Flora Tristan . Berg, Oxford 1992, ISBN 0-85496-731-1 .
  • Ute Gerhard (ed.): Classics of feminist theory. Vol. 1: 1789-1919 . Ulrike Helmer Verlag, Königstein 2008, ISBN 978-3-89741-242-2 . In it pp. 50-62: Flora Tristan (1803-1844). French writer, feminist and socialist .
  • Florence Hervé (ed.): Flora Tristan or: The dream of feminist socialism . Dietz, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-320-02293-8 .
  • Susanne Knecht: Flora Tristan and Maria Graham, Lady Callcott. The second discovery of Latin America . EVA, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-434-50573-3
  • Gerhard Leo : Riot of a pariah. The adventurous life of Flora Tristan . Dietz, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-320-01568-0 .
  • María de las Nieves Pinillos Iglesias: Flora Tristán . Fundación Emmanuel Mounier, Madrid 2002. ISBN 84-95334-22-4 .
  • Jules-Louis Puech: La Vie et l'Œuvre de Flora Tristan . Rivière, Paris 1925 ( digitized, PDF ).
  • Berta Rahm: Flora Tristan . Ala Verlag, Zurich 1971, ISBN 3-85509-002-5 .
  • Luis Alberto Sánchez: Flora Tristán. Una mujer sola contra el mundo . Biblioteca Ayacucho, Caracas 1992
  • Mario Vargas Llosa : Paradise is elsewhere . Novel. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2004, ISBN 3-518-41600-6
  • Friedrich Wolfschrift: "Ce désir de vagabondage cosmopolite". Paths and development of the French travelogue in the 19th century. Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 1986, ISBN 3484502150 chap. 6.4., Pp. 139–146: Flora Tristan (on the Peru book); and passim

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Magnus Mörner: European travelogues as sources for the history of Latin America from the second half of the 18th century to 1870 . In: Antoni Mą̜czak, Jürgen Teuteberg (Hrsg.): Travel reports as sources of European cultural history . Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel 1982. ISBN 3-88373-031-9 . Pp. 281-314, here p. 301.
  2. ^ Pierre-Luc Abramson: Las utopías sociales en América Latina en el siglo XIX . Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City 1999. ISBN 968-16-5396-3 . P. 46.
  3. ^ Krystyna Exchange: Women in Peru. Your literary and cultural presence . Eberhard Verlag, Munich 1993. ISBN 3-926777-31-1 . Quote p. 127.
  4. ↑ Katharina Städtler: Literatura de viaje y género - Flora Tristán, Étienne de Sartiges y Johann Jakob von Tschudi en el Perú (1830-40) . In: Sonja Steckbauer, Günther Maihold (ed.): Literatura - Historia - Política. Articulando las relaciones entre Europa y América Latina . Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 2004. ISBN 3-86527-182-0 . Pp. 127-136. Quote p. 129.
  5. ↑ Inge Buisson : Women in Hispanoamerica in travel reports from European women , 1830-1853. In: Yearbook for the history of the state, economy and society of Latin America , Vol. 27 (1990), pp. 227-257, quotation p. 230.
  6. ↑ Susanne Knecht: Flora Tristan and Lady Callcott. The second discovery of Latin America . European Publishing House, Hamburg 2004. ISBN 3-434-50573-3 . P. 157.
  7. ↑ Catherine Nesci: Flora Tristan's Urban Odyssey . In: Journal of Urban History 27 (2001), pp. 709-722.
  8. ↑ Kristen Ghodsee : Why women have better sex under socialism and other arguments for economic independence . Suhrkamp Verlag 2019, p. 137.
  9. ↑ María de la Macarena Iribarne González: Flora Tristány la tradición del Feminismo Socialista. Dissertation at the University of Madrid 2009. p. 66. ( online )

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Tristan, Flora
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mascolo Tristan, Flora (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer, socialist and women's rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1803
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 1844
Place of death Bordeaux