Ignace Lepp

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Ignace Lepp ( John Robert Lepp ; born October 26, 1909 in Orajõe , Pärnu County , Estonia ; † May 29, 1966 near Paris ) was a French priest , psychotherapist and non-fiction author.

Life

Lepp was born on a Baltic ship on which his father was the captain. The grandfather was also a seaman and (later) a shipowner . Lepp lived on this ship with his father, mother and brother up to the age of 5; the family was Protestant , but not practicing: My parents were Protestants , but on my father's side for centuries (..., it) nobody seemed to take their denomination seriously. During the First World War , the father was drafted into the Navy and died in 1916. After that, the family lived in France. At the age of 15, after reading The Mother of Maxim Gorky, he became a member of the French Communist Party . This work made a great impression on him, as he emphasizes in his autobiographical book From Marx to Christ .

For many years he was an atheist and a Marxist . He had separated from his family in anger and earned a meager living as a doorman for communist books and a journalist. He devoted most of his labor to various Communist Party organizations; he also attended high school.

In October 1925 he and a delegation visited the celebrations for the eighth anniversary of the October Revolution and, in addition to Moscow, the cities of Kiev and Leningrad as well as the Crimea . A visit to Yasnaya Polyana (Tula) , the birthplace and residence of Leo Tolstoy , was also possible.

In the years that followed, Lepp frequently visited the Soviet Union and worked - in addition to studying philosophy - also in setting up communist organizations abroad, within the framework of the International Red Aid (in France, Secours Rouge International ). He now held high positions in the party, felt himself to be a professional revolutionary, and wrote Marxist brochures - sometimes under a pseudonym and in Esperanto . At that time he was one of the best-known Marxist intellectuals in France, even if he later described the literary production of those years as very mediocre novels and theses-dramas .

Lepp became general secretary of an international association of intellectual revolutionaries and worked on the preparation of the First International Congress of Writers . He was in close contact with Henri Barbusse , who influenced him greatly, Romain Rolland , Heinrich Mann , Stefan Zweig , Miguel de Unamuno , Dos Passos , Upton Sinclair and others.

The establishment of communist organizations abroad (Germany, Poland, Romania) was not without danger. In May 1932, an arrest in Saxony led to only a short and comparatively pleasant detention in a fortress , but in autumn 1932 in Thuringia it led to six weeks of imprisonment and expulsion from the country . Another arrest in 1933 led to a death sentence in Germany for subversive activity . Two days before the execution, he was able to flee to Moscow with the help of sympathizers.

Although Lepp got a position as a philosophy professor in Tbilisi in the Soviet Union , he was allegedly due to the poverty of the people, the pressure of the five-year plans , the forced collectivization of agriculture , the opulent life of the party bosses , the actions of the GPU and the NKVD against kulaks Saboteurs and deviants disillusioned. He felt a great disappointment when Joseph Stalin denied the International and proclaimed a new patriotism . He used an invitation to the 1936 World Peace Congress in London to leave the USSR and returned to France.

After his disenchantment, Lepp felt empty inside and spent a lot of time in artist clubs without finding a stable partnership or new purpose in life. Soon, however, he radically changed his mind. Here, too, books played an important role. After reading Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz , he discovered the realization of his socialist ideals in early Christianity.

In the following time he read his way through a multitude of Catholic, Protestant and critical works, from Adolf von Harnack to Louis Duchesne , from Alfred Loisy to Ernest Renan . He also attended events of the various denominations. Finally, on August 14, 1937, after long conversations with a Jesuit, he converted to Catholicism .

Thereupon Lepp wanted to join the Jesuits, but the general of the order advised him to learn more about the Catholic community for at least three years. Trips to various religious orders and monasteries, such as the Franciscans in Antwerp, the Benedictines in the Maredsous Abbey , the Trappists of the Sainte-Marie du Désert Abbey in Languedoc and the Dominicans in Juvisy (where he met Joseph Folliet ) gave him insights into the various spiritualities and Christian Social Doctrine .

Eventually Lepp entered the Jesuit order and studied philosophy and Catholic theology in Lyon , including with Henri de Lubac , whom he held in high regard. On 29 June 1941 he was in the Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourviere in Lyon by Cardinal Pierre-Marie Gerlier for ordained priests . He then worked as a professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne .

Ignace Lepp went on numerous lecture tours and wrote numerous books on atheism, religion and psychology, since he was also a psychologist and psychoanalyst. Many of his widely read books have been translated into the most important European languages, as they dealt with questions of life in modern language. Like Michel Quoist and Louis Evely , he was considered a representative of progressive, cosmopolitan French Catholicism . He was friends with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin .

Works (selection)

  • From Marx to Christ. 1957 (autobiographical records)
  • Splinters and beams. From the annoyances of a Christian world. 1957 (diary excerpts 1941–1956)
  • Psychoanalysis of Modern Atheism. 1962
  • The New Earth: Teilhard de Chardin and Christianity in the Modern World. 1962
  • About a Christian humanism. 1967
  • Clarities and eclipses of the soul. 1968
  • Christian existential philosophy. 1968
  • The psychology of friendship.
  • The psychology of love.
  • Creative lifestyle.
  • The authentic existence.
  • About a Christian humanism. 1972

The German versions of the books were usually published in hardcover by Styria Verlag , and as paperback by Herder Verlag .

literature

  • Lawrence Thomas Reilly: Ignace Lepp: a moral appreciation. Laval, Quebec 1971.
  • Hjalmar Sundén : The religion and the roles. A Psychological Study of Piety. Töpelmann, Berlin 1966. (On Lepp's turn to communism and his conversion, pp. 211–213) (online)
  • Susanne Münch: About a Christian humanism. On the image of man in Ignace Lepp (1909–1966). Trier 2009. (Diploma thesis)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eesti kirjanike leksikon, Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 2000, pp. 285–286
  2. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. p. 18.
  3. ↑ Hjalmar Sundén, Religion and the Roles. A Psychological Study of Piety. Töpelmann, Berlin 1966. p. 211.
  4. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. p. 51.
  5. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. p. 22.
  6. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. pp. 25-30.
  7. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. pp. 76ff.
  8. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. pp. 105-146.
  9. ^ In France, but also in Germany and England.
  10. ↑ See library of the International Institute of Social History : La maja festo , Je la sojlo de milito imperialisma , Du teatraĵoj .
  11. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. p. 190.
  12. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. pp. 223-227.
  13. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. pp. 256-263.
  14. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. pp. 264-281.
  15. ^ The Congress (Peace Congress, not World Peace Congress in the strict sense) in 1936 took place in Cardiff.
  16. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. pp. 322-325.
  17. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. pp. 326-339.
  18. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. p. 353.
  19. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. pp. 357-367.
  20. ↑ Ignace Lepp: From Marx to Christ. Styria, Graz 1957. p. 373.
  21. ↑ Cf. Ignace Lepp: Meine Reisen zu den Deutschen - Tagebuchblätter from the years 1958 to 1960. Styria, Graz 1961.
  22. ^ Matthias Opis: The company history of Styria Medien AG (PDF; 1.1 MB) in communications from the Society for Book Research in Austria 2006-2, p. 99.
personal data
SURNAME Lepp, Ignace
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lepp, John Robert (baptismal name); Flamo, J. (pseudonym); Flamo, Jean (pseudonym); Leete, Uip (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French religious and author
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Orajõe , Pärnu County, Estonia
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1966
Place of death near Paris