Jacques Deprat

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Jacques Deprat (born July 31, 1880 in Fontenay-aux-Roses , † March 7, 1935 in the Pyrenees ) was a French geologist, paleontologist and writer. Deprat is known for a forgery affair in which he was probably the victim of an intrigue. As a writer he had the pseudonym Herbert Wild .

Life

Deprat studied geology in Besançon and Paris at the Sorbonne , where he received his doctorate in 1904 under Alfred Lacroix on the geology of Euboea . He also studied the geology of Corsica and Sardinia . He had been a member of the French Geological Society since 1899. After completing his doctorate, he went to the geological exploration of Indochina (Service Geologique de l'Indochine, SGI) as head and moved with his family to Hanoi in 1909. His publications on the geology of Indochina in the treatises of the French Academy of Sciences and those of the SGI gave him a good reputation as a scientist. He received a prize from the French Geological Society and with the paleontologist of the SGI Henri Mansuy (who also became a well-known archaeologist and with the Deprat carried out his excursions to southern China (Yünnan)) the Prix Tchihatchef of the French Academy of Sciences.

In 1917 he was accused by his superior Honoré Lantenois (chief engineer of the Corps des Mines) and his colleague Mansuy of forging fossils - he should have smuggled trilobites from Bohemia into his collection of fossils from Indochina. The trilobites were very similar to those in Europe, a similarity that was thought to be impossible at the time (Deprat himself also considered this unlikely). Deprat saw himself as a victim of a plot, accused Mansuy of smuggling the fossils into the collections and refused to face an investigation. He was suspended in late 1917 and placed on the lowest pay grade. In 1918 and 1919 the case was tried in Paris by a commission of scientists headed by diplomat Emmanuel de Margerie, and the Deprat was unanimously found guilty. However, the composition of the commission was influenced by Lantenois and had only one real expert on the allegations to be investigated, but who did not want to commit himself, so the negotiations dragged on. Only when he suddenly died did the commission very quickly come to the judgment that was negative for Deprat. In November 1919 he was expelled from the French geological society, which ended his scientific career.

Deprat began a career as a writer. In 1926 his autobiographical key novel Les Chiens aboient (The Barking Dogs) appeared about the affair. With his novel Le Colosse endormi (The slumbering giant) he won the Grand Prix des Français d'Asie in 1931. Many more novels followed (published by Albin Michel), which have also been reprinted more recently. As a writer he lived in a place in the Pyrenees.

Deprat was a passionate skier and mountaineer and died in 1935 while climbing the Aiguiles d´Ansabère in the Pyrenees under circumstances suspiciously like those he described in one of his novels ( La Paroi de Glace , the ice wall , published posthumously in 1936).

However, his case was not forgotten. Among other things, the former president of the French geological society Michel Durand Delga rolled up the case and in 1991 Deprat was rehabilitated and officially re-admitted to the French geological society. In 1999 an English-language book by Roger Osborne appeared on the case.

Fonts

  • Herbert Wild: Les Chiens aboient , Albin Michel 1926, online
  • Herbert Wild: The slumbering giant , Th. Knaur, 1927 (French original: Le Colosse endormi , Albin Michel 1927)
  • Herbert Wild: Dans les replis de dragon. Nouvelles d´asie , Edition Kailash 1997 (first Albin Michel 1926)
  • Herbert Wild: L´Autre Race , Edition Kailash 1999 (first Albin Michel 1930)
  • Herbert Wild: Le Conquérant , Editions du Chevalier 1924
  • Herbert Wild: La Paroi de Glace , Editions de France 1936

literature

  • Roger Osborne The Deprat Affair — Ambition, Revenge and Deceit in French Indo-China , Jonathan Cape, London 1999
  • Heinrich Zankl forgers, swindlers, charlatans , Wiley / VCH 2003
  • Federico Di Trocchio The great fraud , rororo 1999
  • Richard Fortey Trilobite! , Harper Collins 2000

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ But already in 1927 the paleontologist Jacques Fromaget found similar trilobites in Indochina. Zankl forgers, swindlers, charlatans ; VCH, p. 234
  2. ^ Zankl Fälscher, Schwindler, Scharlatane , VCH, p. 233
  3. ^ A prize donated in 1906 by the General Administrator of Indochina, endowed with 25,000 francs in the 1930s
  4. ↑ Michel Durand-Delga L´affaire Deprat (pour la réhabilitation d'un géologue proscrit) , in Livre Eugène Wegmann , Mémoire hors-série de la Société Géologique de France, 1995, and L´affaire Deprat , Travaux du Comité Francais de l ´histoire de la Géologie, 3rd series, Volume 4, 1990
personal data
SURNAME Deprat, Jacques
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wild, Herbert (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French geologist, paleontologist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Fontenay-aux-Roses
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1935
Place of death Pyrenees