Henry Bauër

Henry Bauër ( etching by Fernand Desmoulin, 1897)

Henri François Adolphe Bauër (born March 17, 1851 in Paris , † October 21, 1915 ibid), who exclusively used the name Henry Bauër in literary life , was a French journalist . As a 19-year-old he fought for the Paris Commune , including as an officer of the Commune troops in the bloody week of May, and was exiled to New Caledonia for a total of seven years after the uprising was put down . On his return he achieved an influential position as a theater critic and journalist in the Paris newspaper L'Écho de Paris . There he campaigned massively for newer literature, especially for naturalism . Among other things, he supported Émile Zola both in his literary ambitions and in the Dreyfus affair and was one of the few supporters of Alfred Jarry's drama King Ubu .

Life

Origin and youth

Bauër came from a love affair between Alexandre Dumas the Elder and Anna Bauër, a German Jew from Baden , the wife of the Austrian sales representative Karl-Anton Bauer (who wrote himself in France with the Trema -ë). The illegitimate child grew up alone with the mother after Antoine Bauër emigrated to Australia. Anna Bauër proved to be a successful businesswoman and was able to support her son financially throughout his life.

Henry Bauër attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris and then enrolled to study law and medicine, which he did not pursue with determination. He moved in the bohemian of the Latin Quarter , read Proudhon and joined increasingly revolutionary circles. In connection with the organization of or participation in public events, he came into conflict with the judiciary of the Second Empire several times . In the course of 1870 he was sentenced to several months in prison for various political activities (riot, holding public meetings without authorization, libel, etc.), but on the day the republic was proclaimed, September 4, 1870, Bauër was killed by one demonstrating crowd exempted.

After France declared war on Germany on July 19, 1870, Bauër volunteered for military service. Before he was called up, he joined the National Guard .

Fighters for the Commune

Portrait circa 1871, from the “Siege and Commune of Paris” collection of Northwestern University

After his participation in the demonstrations of October 31, 1870, Bauër was arrested again. In prison, he shared a cell with Gustave Flourens , a later leader of the Paris Commune, who impressed him greatly, as he reports in his memoir. National Guard units liberated him on the night of January 21st to 22nd, 1871. He then began to write for various revolutionary newspapers, in particular the Cri du Peuple published by Jules Vallès . For these contributions he chose the name "Henry Bauër" as his signature, which he kept throughout his life. In his articles, the nineteen-year-old criticized the surrender of the French armed forces and took sides with the forces of the working class, for example in the contribution Les jeunes (German: The Boys) of February 23, 1871:

“With all this shame and all these renegades, only one party has remained loyal to its fighting post: that is the party of the workers, that is the party of the disinherited, that is the party of the future. It must be ours for us who are twenty years old. "

At the time of the revolution of the Paris Commune of March 18, 1871, Bauër was a captain ("Capitaine") of the National Guard on the General Staff of Émile Eudes , on May 10 he was appointed Major of the Sixth Légion fédérée of the Commune, on May 22 he was appointed Chief of the General Staff of Dominique Régère . As an officer, he took part in the loss-making barricade fighting of the Semaine sanglante ("Blood Week"), especially in the Montparnasse district .

After the defeat of the Commune, Bauër fled the capital. On June 21, 1871, he was picked up Joinville-le-Pont and taken to the Orangery of Versailles , where the captured Communards were held. He was brought before a court martial , which sentenced him to exile on September 25 because of the officers' certificates he had found . An appeal procedure and a pardon from his mother were unsuccessful. On May 1, 1872, Bauër and 300 other Communards were taken on a ship to New Caledonia , the place of his exile.

In the penal colony

After a five-month journey, partly in a punishment cell with bread and water because he had refused to carry out an order, Bauër arrived in Nouméa and had to settle on the Ducos peninsula, where the French peninsula was located. He reported regularly about the privations in New Caledonia in letters to his mother, who was also suspected of having supported the Commune and was therefore expelled from France. In the following years she lived in Geneva and Lausanne and kept sending her son money for his living.

In New Caledonia, Bauër met numerous leading Communards. He soon developed a close friendship, especially with Louise Michel , which led to a lifelong exchange of letters. Bauër wrote reports for French newspapers about the New Caledonian Bagno and organized, often in collaboration with Louise Michel, numerous cultural events, including an evening with Kanakian music. He also wrote a drama: La révanche de Gaëtan , which was printed in 1879.

Despite Bauër's request to save herself this, Anna Bauër embarked for New Caledonia to visit him. She arrived in Nouméa in early 1875, rented a house and stayed there for 15 months until she was expelled by the governor of the penal colony.

On July 12, 1876, Bauër made a petition for clemency to the President of the French Republic Patrice de Mac-Mahon , but this was rejected in March 1877. After Mac-Mahon's resignation in January 1879, the French National Assembly decided a partial amnesty for acts related to the Commune, but Bauër's name was not on the list of amnesties. Anna Bauër now pulled out all the stops. In April 1879, in a letter to the new French President Jules Grévy , she asked again for the pardon of her son and enclosed letters of recommendation from Jules Favre , Lockroy (the son of the elder Lockroy ) and Victor Hugo . This time it was successful. On July 19, 1879, Bauër boarded the ship for France, where he arrived in October.

The contentious theater critic

Portrait around 1893/1894, from the Nadar studio

On March 24, 1880, the 29-year-old farmer married Pauline Lemariée, 13 years his junior, very much against his mother's wishes. Louis Blanc was one of the best man . On their honeymoon , the young couple attended the Bayreuth Festival - Bauër raved all his life about Richard Wagner's music theater, which was also reflected in his journalistic activities. In 1882 the first child of the Bauërs was born, Charles; 1888 the second son Gérard. Anna Bauër died in 1884.

In 1880 Bauër began to work again as a journalist. Initially he wrote for Le Réveil , whose staff included Paul Verlaine . There Alphonse Daudet noticed him and appointed him his successor as a theater critic. The paper soon died, but in 1884 the publisher of the Réveil Valentin Simond made a new, more successful attempt with larger funds: the daily newspaper L'Écho de Paris . Bauër stayed there until 1898, when he was one of the most influential theater critics in France. He regularly published a column on the title page of the paper; he reserved all the important premier reviews of the Parisian theaters; twice a week he wrote a "chronicle" of literary life in Paris.

The young naturalistic theater was particularly close to his heart. Bauer vehemently for the Théâtre Libre of André Antoine and the Theater de l'Oeuvre of Lugné-Poë one, helped authors like Octave Mirbeau breakthrough, the party seized by Émile Zola in the debate over his literary texts, but also in the Dreyfus Affair and, in his position as a critic, contributed a lot to the introduction of what he called the “hommes du nord” (people of the north) such as Henrik Ibsen , August Strindberg and Lev Tolstoy to France. But he also supported other young artists who cannot be attributed to naturalism. Bauër defended Oscar Wilde and his Salome against violent attacks aimed at the decadence of the work and the poet's homosexuality . In the theatrical scandal surrounding Alfred Jarry's King Ubu , he was the only notable critic to side with Jarry.

Bauër had a particular fondness for the actress Sarah Bernhardt , whose achievements he praised in many enthusiastic articles. There was also a passionate affair between the two that is said to have lasted seven years.

During his work at the Écho , Bauër also published a number of books. The novel Une comédienne (1889) and the collection of novels De la vie et du rêve (1896) were not very successful , while the strongly autobiographical novel Mémoires d'un jeune homme also attracted attention abroad (Marcel Cerf even reports a translation into Norwegian).

In the course of his critical career, Bauër made a substantial income. His family lived in a house in Le Vésinet , he was able to afford another house in Brittany and an apartment in Paris spread over two floors. However, since he was generous in spending money, both to promote theater projects and privately, he was not well off financially after he left the Écho .

Late years

Bauër's support for Zola and Dreyfus had already not harmonized with the political line of the Écho , which tended to be more conservative. The tensions increased with the dispute over King Ubu . Therefore, Bauër finally left the paper in 1898 and now wrote theater reviews, albeit with a much smaller range, for La Petite République , a socialist newspaper. Occasionally he continued to write in influential papers, for example in 1902 in Le Figaro he vehemently supported Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande .

A collection of his “Chronicles” for the Écho appeared in 1899 under the title Idée et Réalité . In addition, Bauër tried his hand at writing comedies. Sa maîtresse (written in 1900, printed in 1903) was performed at the Théâtre du Vaudeville , but only saw twelve performances. Chez les Bourgeois (printed in 1909) received little attention.

In 1915, Bauër fell ill and traveled to Évian-les-Bains on Lake Geneva to recover. However, his condition quickly deteriorated, so that his son Gérard took him to the hospital in Paris. He died there on October 21, 1915 at the age of 64. The ceremony took place on the Père Lachaise , the ashes of the cremated person were first brought to the family crypt in Chatou and, in 1963, at the instigation of Gérard Bauër, transferred to the Charonne cemetery, where a tombstone has since been commemorating Henry Bauër.

Personality and work

Bauër is described in contemporary literature as a "beau géant" (beautiful giant): a stout man over 1 meter 80 tall with a powerful mane of hair that turned gray at an early age and a strong complexion, who with increasing age began to look more and more like his biological father Alexandre Dumas should. He was considered quick-tempered, polemical, but very benevolent towards all young artists who somehow showed a "new profile". It is also reported that he never avoided a quarrel, no duel , but also no love affair.

Bauër's influence on the Parisian cultural scene is described as considerable; A contemporary report states that he was the exponent of progressive theater criticism and the great opponent of traditionalist critics, especially Francisque Sarcey and Jules Lemaître . Anyone who has attended an important dress rehearsal more than once will know his striking appearance from the first-tier box . His word was law, especially with artists. He also used this influence generously, among other things to influence the theater program (for example in the Théâtre libre) or to create roles he preferred for actresses.

In his work, his journalistic activity is considered to be the most important part, while his attempts at poetic writing were considered idealistic but theses-like and were not very successful. As a journalist, in his “Chronicles” and theater reviews he vehemently advocated equality for women , against discrimination against homosexuals and Jews, and for disarmament and pacifism .

Works

• La revanche du Gaëtan. Nouméa 1879, Locamus
• Une comédienne. Scenes de la vie de théâtre. Paris 1889, Charpentier. Online at Gallica
• Mémoires d'un jeune homme. Paris 1895, Charpentier. Online at Gallica
• De la vie et du rêve. Paris 1896, H. Simonis Empis
• Idée et réalité. Paris 1899, H. Simonis Empis. Online at Gallica
• Sa maîtresse. Comédie en 4 acts. Paris 1903, floor
• Chez les Bourgeois. Comédie en 4 acts. Paris 1909, floor

It should be noted that the international authority file VIAF merges several people under the corresponding ID number: in addition to Henri Bauër, the author of a Practical History of the Violin (New York 1911), Heinrich Bauer (1854–1915), and the editor of a composition by Johann Simon Mayr , Heinrich Bauer (1922–1987).

literature

• Marcel Cerf: Le Mousquetaire de la Plume. La vie d'un grand critique dramatique: Henry Bauër, fils naturel d'Alexandre Dumas, 1851–1915 . Académie d'Histoire, Paris 1975
• Angelo Mariani: Album Mariani. Portraits, biographies, autographes. Volume 3 . 1897 - with biography ( first page , second page ) and portrait and autograph Bauërs (etching by Fernand Desmoulin )
• Eugène Tardieu: Henri Bauer . Obituary in L'Écho de Paris , October 22, 1915 , p. 2
• Unsigned obituary in Le Figaro , October 22, 1915 , p. 3

Web links

• Literature by and about Henry Bauër in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)
• Notice de personne in the French National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ In: Cri du Peuple . Quoted from Cerf, p. 28. French original: "Devant toutes ces hontes et ces reniements, un seul parti est resté fidèle à son poste de combat: c'est le parti des travailleurs, c'est le parti des déhérités, c ' est le parti de l'avenir. Ce doit être le nôtre, à nous, qui avons vingt ans. "
2. ↑ For example in his column La Lumière du Nord (“The light from the north”), in: L'Écho de Paris , June 24, 1895, pp. 1–2, online at Gallica . Gonzalo J. Sanchez also quotes this passage from the column in his study of the pity culture in France at the turn of the century: Pity in Fin-de-Siècle French Culture. "Liberté, Egalité, Pitié". Westport 2004, Praeger, pp. 189f.
3. ↑ The enthusiastic premiere criticism can be read in Bauër's section Les premières représentations (German for example: “The premieres”), L'Écho de Paris, December 12, 1896, p. 3, online at Gallica .
4. ↑ Cerf, p. 94.
5. ^ Among other things, Robert A. Nye describes Bauër in his study on masculinity and codes of honor in modern France as a notorious duelist, cf. Robert A. Nye: Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France , Berkeley 1998, University of California Press, p. 123.
6. ^ Album Mariani, 1897; see. Web links.
7. ↑ As of June 7, 2020.