Hubert Beuve-Méry

Hubert Beuve-Méry (born January 5, 1902 in Paris , † August 6, 1989 in Fontainebleau ) was a French journalist and founding editor of the newspaper Le Monde .

Life

Beuve-Méry came from a humble background and had a difficult childhood due to the First World War . Nevertheless, he was able to attend high school and study law. He gained his first journalistic experiences in the newspaper Les Nouvelles RELIGIEUSES , a Catholic and conservative sheet, and experienced in 1925 its first political experience when he participated in demonstrations of the monarchist-nationalist organization you Camelot roi participated, against the appointment of pacifists Georges Scelle on the law school of the University of Paris protested. In 1925 he briefly became a member of Le Faisceau , the first fascist party in France.

After receiving his doctorate, he taught as a lawyer at the Institut français de Prague , where he also became a technical advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the First Czechoslovak Republic . There he observed the increasing dangers of militarism in Europe and also became a correspondent for several Parisian daily newspapers, including Le Temps , the official daily of the French Foreign Ministry . In 1938 he left the editorial office to protest against the abandonment of Czechoslovakia .

After France surrendered to the German Wehrmacht, Hubert Beuve-Méry supported the collaboration government under General Philippe Pétain and its policy of the " National Revolution ". 1940-1941 he was director of studies at the École des cadres d'Uriage in the thermal spa town of Uriage-les-Bains near Grenoble , a training center for future executives within the meaning of the Vichy regime .

After Pierre Laval closed school in December 1942, Beuve-Méry changed sides with some of his colleagues and joined the Resistance . From 1943 to 1944 he was a lieutenant in the Forces françaises de l'intérieur and participated in the liberation of the Tarn department together with fighters from the Maquis . Beuve-Méry is one of the examples that Simon Epstein describes in his book on the Paradoxe français : representatives of the nationalist right who were involved in the Resistance, while a number of left-wing anti-fascists, anti-racists and pacifists from the interwar period were among the ranks belonged to the collaboration.

In 1944, after the Allies landed in Normandy , Beuve-Méry wrote that the USA and its materialism were “a real danger to France”, testifying to the widespread anti-Americanism among French intellectuals in the post-war period.

In October 1944 he became editor-in-chief of the Catholic weekly newspaper Temps présent before he was commissioned by General de Gaulle to publish a quality newspaper to replace Le Temps . This is how the newspaper Le Monde came into being, the first edition of which appeared on December 18, 1944 and whose director Beuve-Méry remained until 1969. He had now turned to the political left and was a constant critic of Gaullism in his editorials, which he wrote under the pseudonym Sirius .

In 1972 he was honored with the Golden Pen of Freedom Award , an award for journalists from the World Newspaper Association. In 1954 he also founded the weekly Le Monde diplomatique .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Simon Epstein: Un paradoxe français, Paris 2008.