Henri Barbusse

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Henri Barbusse (born May 17, 1873 in Asnières-sur-Seine near Paris , † August 30, 1935 in Moscow ) was a French politician and writer .

Henri Barbusse

life and work

Origin and education

Barbusse came from a Protestant family from the Alès area who lived in the Cevennes . His talent as a writer showed up early on. His first work, the collection of poems Pleureuses , appeared in 1895. He studied French literature and after graduating got a job as a press officer in the French Ministry of the Interior. A short time later he married and became the son-in-law of Catulle Mendès . In 1902 Barbusse resigned his secure post and worked until 1904 as an employee in a publishing house and as a journalist, including for the newspapers Le Banquet and Petit Parisien . He made a name for himself as a pacifist. In 1908 his first erotic novel L'Enfer ( Hell ) was published.

Barbusse, who claimed that the war had brought him up (quote: “ not only its terribility, but also its significance as an imperialist war ”), was a soldier himself from the beginning of the First World War until August 1916, eleven months of which at the front . Although he had initially volunteered for military service , he later took an attitude critical of the war and was pacifist . In 1917 he founded the socialist war veterans' association ARAC (Association Républicaine des Anciens Combattants) with Paul Vaillant-Courier and others and published the socialist magazine Le monde to combat the war and its causes . He also founded the Clarté movement , a peace movement of democratic intellectuals, with Romain Rolland in 1919 ; it was joined by Georges Duhamel , Anatole France , Jules Romains and Heinrich Mann .

Success as a writer

His war diary Das Feuer , published in 1916 and translated into more than 60 languages ​​over the years, made him world famous and in the same year received the Prix ​​Goncourt , the most prestigious French literary prize. The fire, diary of a corporal body , is the most important forerunner of war by Ludwig Renn or in the west nothing new by Erich Maria Remarque .

Political writer

From 1919 Henri Barbusse was almost completely isolated, as authors like André Gide increasingly rejected him and the Action française had made him their opponent. In 1923 he joined the Communist Party ( Parti communiste français ). In his poem Jésus (1927) he declared Jesus Christ the founder of communism.

The result of a trip to the Balkans was the documentary report Les Bourreaux , in which Barbusse denounced the terror in the Balkans. With Connais-tu Thaelmann? (1934) he campaigned vehemently for Ernst Thälmann , who was arrested by the National Socialists on March 3, 1933.

A biography of Stalin - expected in vain by Maxim Gorki - appeared under the name of Barbusse, although it was written by Alfred Kurella . In 1937 it was indexed because of alleged errors. “ Monde ”, the Barbusses newspaper, was then also suspected of counterrevolutionary tendencies by the French Communist Party .

death

Although he was already visibly ill, Barbusse was the keynote speaker alongside Jan Petersen at the International Writers' Congress in Paris in June 1935 under the motto “In defense of culture”. He died at the age of 62 on August 30, 1935 in Moscow while traveling through the Soviet Union .

On February 1, 1933, he was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR .

Works (selection)

  • L'enfer (Bibliothèque Albin Michel; 52). Michel, Paris 1991, ISBN 2-226-05617-3 (first edition: Paris 1908).
    • German: Hell. Roman , translated by Max Hochdorf. Rascher, Zurich 1931 (first edition: Zurich 1919).
  • Le feu. Journal d'une escouade, roman . Flammarion, Paris 1988, ISBN 2-253-04741-4 (first edition: Paris 1916).
  • Les enchaînements . Flammarion, Paris 1925 (2 volumes).
    • German: The chain. Visionary novel . Neuer Deutscher Verlag, Berlin 1926 (2 parts in 1 volume).
  • Connais-tu Thaelmann ? Comité pour la liberation de Thaelmann et des antifascists allemands emprisonnés, Paris 1934.
  • Staline . Une monde nouveau vu à travers un homme . L'harmattan, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-296-01259-0 (first edition: Paris 1925).
    • German: Stalin. A new world , translated by Alfred Kurella. Éditions du Carrefour, Paris 1935.
  • Les suppliants . Bibliothèque-Charpentier, Paris 1903.
    • German: Die Schutzflehenden. The novel of a pre-war youth , translated by Stefan Zweig . Schwartzkopff, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-937738-38-X (first edition: Zurich 1932).
  • Lettres à sa femme. 1914-1917 . Buchet-Chastel, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-283-02238-X (first edition: Paris 1936).
    • German: Letters from the front to his wife 1914–1917 . 2nd, extended edition Reclam, Leipzig 1987, ISBN 3-379-00063-9 (translated by Eduard Zak ).
  • Faits diverse . Flammarion, Paris 1928.
    • German: facts , translated by Otto Flechsig . Publishing house of the Ministry for National Defense (GDR), Berlin 1957 (first edition: Berlin 1928).

literature

  • Jacques Duclos : Barbuses . Ed. Sociales, Paris 1946
  • Pierre Michel : Octave Mirbeau, Henri Barbusse et l'enfer . (PDF file; 448 kB)
  • Horst F. Müller: Studies and mishaps on Henri Barbusse and his reception in Germany , Peter Lang, Frankfurt 2010, 287 pages, ISBN 978-3-631-59887-0
  • Horst F. Müller: Henri Barbusse: 1873-1935; Bio bibliography; The works by and about Barbusse with special consideration of the reception in Germany , VDG, Weimar 2003, extent: XXXIV, 499 p .; 28 cm, ISBN 3-89739-323-9
  • Olaf Müller: The impossible novel. Anti-war literature in France , Stroemfeld, Basel 2006, ISBN 3-86109-175-5
  • Leo Spitzer : Studies on Henri Barbusse , Cohen, Bonn 1920
  • Annette Vidal: Henri Barbusse, Soldier of Peace , Verl. Volk und Welt, Berlin 1955

Web links

Commons : Henri Barbusse  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Wikisource: Henri Barbusse  - Sources and full texts (French)
Wikiquote: Henri Barbusse  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jan C. Behrends : The invented friendship. Propaganda for the Soviet Union in Poland and in the GDR , Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2006, p. 51 f. Footnote 12 , ISBN 3-412-23005-7 ; Annette Kabanov: Olʹga Michajlovna Frejdenberg (1890–1955). A Soviet scientist between canon and freedom , Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2002 ISBN 3-447-04607-4 , p. 81 .
  2. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724: Barbusse, Henri. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed November 30, 2019 (Russian).
personal data
SURNAME Barbusse, Henri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician and writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Asnières-sur-Seine
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1935
Place of death Moscow