Gustave Téry

Gustave Téry

Gustave Téry (* 1870 in Lamballe , † 1928 in Paris ) was a French journalist and playwright .

Live and act

Gustave Téry studied at the École normal supérieure in the Rue d'Ulm and successfully passed the recruitment test (agrégation) for teachers at state high schools (lycées). He initially worked for seven years as a philosophy teacher in Laval , Roanne and Laon before turning to journalism around 1900. During this time he was a Dreyfusian , wrote satires against the Catholic Church , among other things . At first he worked as a journalist for Marguerite Durand's feminist newspaper La Fronde . A legal battle over a campaign against the Le Matin newspaper resulted in his dismissal from school. After working as an editor for Le Journal and Le Matin as well as L'Action , he and a colleague founded the magazine L'Œuvre in 1904 , which initially appeared monthly, then weekly and from 1915 daily.

The tabloid magazine was originally close to the moderate left radical socialists and represented the position of pacifism. From this point of view she commented on Parisian political and social life; in his contributions, for example, Téry attacked Aristide Bruant and Léon Daudet . According to the Curie biographer Susann Quinn , Téry's originally liberal views have changed and he has become, among other things, an anti-Semite who warned of the “Jewish enemy”.

In the November 23, 1911 edition of L'Œuvre , he published excerpts from the private correspondence between Marie Curie and Paul Langevin , which Langevin's wife Jeanne had leaked to the newspapers. He wrote: “One trembles at the thought that there would be no more French science if this nasty student had not come from Poland to be there when the discovery of radium. […] There are still enough patriots who are not too blinded to see the invasion of Kanaks as a national plague ”. He said of Langevin: “This man, although a professor at the Collège de France, is nothing but a booze and a vile coward”, whereupon he challenged him to a duel, which increased the scandal. When the opponents started the duel on November 16, 1911, there was no exchange of fire because Téry did not aim at Langevin and Langevin did not want to shoot someone who obviously did not intend to use his weapon.

Téry held out his pacifist position, however, because contrary to the prohibition by the censors he published the war-critical novel The Fire by Henri Barbusse in 1916 . Téry also promoted the establishment of the League of Nations . In January 1919 he was challenged again to a duel, this time it was about a dispute with a journalist colleague about the coverage of the peace negotiations after the First World War in Paris.

In 1923 Téry published the anthology L'école des garçonnes , the title of which was a reference to Molière's comedy L'école des femmes . From November 6, 1922 to March 4, 1923, it contained polemics in L'Œuvre in which Téry opposed pornographic and offensive elements in contemporary literature, particularly in the two works La Garçonne by Victor Margueritte (1866–1942) and L , published in 1922 'Entremetteuse by Léon Daudet , turned and called for these books to be banned.

In addition to his journalistic activities, Téry wrote several dramas such as Les fruits défendus or Les bons apôtres , which were performed in the Odeon Theater.

Gustave Téry was married to the journalist and writer Andrée Viollis (1870–1950). The journalist and writer Simone Téry (1897–1967) was his daughter. A school is named after him in his hometown.

Works (selection)

• Les cordicoles . E. Cornély: Paris 1902, online
• Polémiques et dossiers: Monsieur Gustave Téry . In: Cahiers de la Quinzaine . No. 7, Volume 3, Paris 1902, online
• Pour la pairie .
• Jean Jaurès . F. Juven, Paris 1907, online
• Les Divorcés Peints par eux-mêmes .
• Le Bottin de la Defamation . Paris 1918
• Allemands chez nous . In: L'Œuvre : Paris 1918, online
• L'école des garçonnes . In: L'Œuvre : Paris 1923, online

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Susan Quinn: Marie Curie. A biography . Pp. 377-378.
2. ↑ Interview by Gustave Téry with Octave Mirbeau in L'Action of April 20, 1903 (facsimile, French)
3. ^ Fund «L'Oeuvre». ( Memento of the original from October 24, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ Two New newspapers in Paris; Gustave Tery Has Daily and Le Canard Enchaine Satirizes Clemenceau. In: New York Times . September 12, 1915. (English)
5. ^ ^{A b} Pierre Radvanyi: The Curies. A dynasty of Nobel Prize winners. In: Spectrum of Science - Biography. 2/2003, Spektrum der Wissenschaft Verlagsgesellschaft, Heidelberg 2003, p. 44.
6. ^ Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie: Marie Curie . Greenwood Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0-313-32529-4 , p. 95.
7. ↑ Le Duel D'Hier. In: Le Petit Journal. November 26, 1911, p. 2. (online) (accessed May 19, 2009)
8. ↑ Le Feu. published by Gustave Téry. In: L'Œuvre. (online, English) ( Memento of the original dated February 12, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ^ Peace Conference Duel Threatened; Paris Journalist Challenges a Colleague Over Publicity Dispute. In: New York Times . January 19, 1919. (online)
10. ↑ Julia Drost: La Garçonne: Changes in a literary figure . Wallstein Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-89244-681-4 , p. 118
11. ↑ Angela Kershaw: Simone Téry (1897-1967): writing the history of the present in inter-war France. March 1, 2007, In: Feminist Review. 85, doi : 10.1057 / palgrave.fr.9400316 , pp. 8-20.