Jean Ganeval

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Jean Ganeval

Jean Joseph Xavier Émile Ganeval (born December 24, 1894 in Brest, Finistère , † January 12, 1981 in Paris ) was a French général de corps d'armée and politician. From October 4, 1946 to September 30, 1950 he was in command of the French sector in Berlin .

Youth and First World War

Ganeval grew up as the son of the Général de brigade Marie François Adolphe Gabriel Ganeval, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the Expedition Corps for the Orient (Corps expéditionnaire d'Orient) , in various garrison towns. He attended the Collège Saint-Sigisbert and the Lycée Henri-Poincaré in Nancy , where he passed his Baccalauréat .

In 1914 Ganeval was admitted to the prestigious Saint-Cyr Military School . When the First World War broke out , he volunteered for the infantry , where he committed himself for eight years. He initially served in the 59 e  régiment d'infanterie in Pamiers and Foix . The army command promoted him to Sous-lieutenant in 1915 and to Lieutenant in 1916 . At the end of the war he was Capitaine and awarded the Croix de guerre and the Order of the Legion of Honor (Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur) .

Interwar period

From 1919 to 1920 Ganeval was a member of the French military mission in Berlin. From 1926 Ganeval was sent to work in the Deuxième Bureau in Syria , which was then under the French protectorate. He was involved in actions against the Druze , for which he received the War Cross for External Operations (Croix de guerre des Théâtres d'opérations extérieurs) . In 1928 he came to Worms to the staff of the 168 e  régiment d'infanterie (German: 168th Infantry Regiment), which took part in the occupation of the Rhineland . Then the regiment was converted into a fortress regiment and stationed in Thionville on the Maginot Line .

His next stop was the Baltic States , where he was military attaché from 1933 to 1937 . He then became the battalion commander appointed and was given command of a battalion of 39 e  régiment d'infantry in Rouen . In 1940 he became a military attaché in Finland and returned to France after the end of the Winter War . The Finnish defeat caused him not only an unexpected departure, but a certain anti-communism .

Upon his arrival in France, he experienced the end of the campaign in the west at 23 e  régiment d'infantry as a lieutenant-colonel (dt .: lieutenant colonel ) in Toulouse .

Resistance

From 1941 he became involved in the resistance group Combat and the espionage network Mithridate . This period of his life is influenced by the personality of De Gaulle and shaped his further military career and his political life. In October 1943 he was arrested and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp , which he could only leave after the liberation in 1945. His deeds earned him a third palm branch to the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance and he was promoted to Général de brigade .

1946–1950: French city commander in Berlin

The four allied city commanders in 1949: Bourne , Frank L. Howley , Alexander Kotikow , Ganeval

After the end of the Second World War , he resumed his military career and was initially deputy commander in chief of the French occupation army. On October 4, 1946, he became the commandant of the French sector in Berlin . Despite bad experiences in the German Buchenwald concentration camp, he did not come to Berlin as an avenger, but sought understanding and reconciliation with the population. Many Berliners remember him as a sensitive and understanding person. He enjoyed the respect of his Allied colleagues, which hardly helped the establishment of French positions in the Allied command .

Performing civil control tasks

When a controversy arose in 1950 with the French director Claude Lanzmann , who was then a lecturer at the newly founded Freie Universität Berlin (FU), Ganeval banned the seminar and the publication of the articles in the French sector. Lanzmann had in the then in East Berlin appearing Berliner Zeitung an article on the denazification published at the Free University, which he in his published 2009 autobiography lièvre Le de Patagonie (The Patagonian Hare) wrote: "The Free University was at that time a Hideout for Nazis , denazification, which was pretended to be the order of the day everywhere, was nothing but fun ”. He also attacked the rector of the FU, Edwin Redslob . Ganeval also banned Lanzmann's seminar on anti-Semitism . When the then Lord Mayor of Berlin, Otto Ostrowski , refused to dismiss the SED officials from the magistrate , his own parliamentary group put a motion of no confidence against him on April 11, 1947 , which was also approved by a majority. During this Ostrowski crisis, Ganeval campaigned for a rapid settlement of the conflict. He could not see any wrongdoing on the part of the mayor, but he accepted the democratic vote of the city council that pushed Ostrowski's electoral vote.

Ganeval's role during the Berlin blockade in 1948

Royal Air Force DC-47; in the background the transmission masts of the Berlin broadcasting company

Ganeval played a special role in the construction of the new airport in Berlin-Tegel at the time of the Berlin Airlift . With the consent of the French military government , a new airfield was built within 90 days from August 5, 1948, and officially opened at the beginning of December 1948. Here were located on the grounds of Tegel Prison two transmission towers of the station's Tegel in about 1,300 meters of runway that the under the control of the Soviet military administration stationary radio station Berliner Rundfunk served. Since the towers would allegedly endanger the flight operations, let her Ganeval on 16 December 1948 by French pioneers beyond what protests of the Soviet military administration provoked and other debates. When his Soviet colleague General Alexander Kotikov confronted him afterwards and asked: “How could you do that?”, He is said to have only laconically replied: “With dynamite, my best” (“Avec de la dynamite, mon cher” ). This action brought the French a certain prestige among the Berlin population, which they had not previously had, mainly because they did not take part in the airlift. The reason for this was the small number of transport aircraft of the French air force , which were also tied up in the Indochina War .

From November 10, 1945, the Soviet military administration in Germany had given the French the district of Stolpe-Süd in order to build a French military airfield there, but this was never realized. The commander-in-chief of the French occupation forces, Kœnig , offered the head of the SMAD General Sokolowski to return the unused area as compensation for the demolition. On December 21, 1948, the district was then reintegrated into the Soviet occupation zone .

General Ganeval Bridge over the Berlin-Spandauer Schifffahrtskanal

The founding of the Catholic School Salvator in Berlin-Waidmannslust received special support from Ganeval. The school's founder, Mater Luminosa Wimmer, was known to General Ganeval from private contacts, and he was impressed by her commitment to a fresh start in the school system. In the Allied Command, the establishment of private schools was viewed with skepticism, also by France, which advocated a democratically controlled school system. There were several reasons for opening the school of Mater Luminosa Wimmer: On the one hand, it was supposed to relieve the already overcrowded state institutions in Reinickendorf , on the other hand, Ganeval convinced the equipment and the qualifications of the teachers, most of whom had been banned from teaching during the Nazi regime. In September 1947, Wimmer finally received approval. On November 4th of the same year, classes began with 70 students.

Ganeval's tenure as city commander ended on September 30, 1950.

Honors for his work as French city commander

In 1950 he was awarded the Legion of Merit (Commander) by the American High Commissioner John McCloy . In Berlin, the General-Ganeval-Brücke , which leads the access road to Tegel Airport via the Berlin-Spandau shipping canal , is named after him.

Further military and political career

In 1950 Ganeval was promoted to Général de division (German: Major General ). From October 1, 1950, the army command appointed him High Commissioner in the Office for Military Security in Koblenz . On October 9, 1951, he headed the French delegation for the expert conference on the control of security in Germany in London . He later became chief of the personal staff under Defense Ministers Georges Bidault and René Pleven . In January 1954, Ganeval became head of the military general secretariat of President René Coty and in this capacity negotiated with the Entourage De Gaulles about his return in June 1958.

At the end of the Fourth Republic , Ganeval took his leave as a general in early 1959 and applied for the Senate as a candidate for the Gaullists (UNR) . He was elected on April 26, 1959, and was given a seat on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee . In this capacity he checked the defense budget twice, in 1963 and 1967. On May 3, 1961, he left his parliamentary group because of differences of opinion on General De Gaulle's Algeria policy. Ganeval kept his seat in the Senate as a non-attached member until he joined the Independent Republicans (Républicains indépendants) of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing on October 3, 1962 . Although he had supported the reforms and projects of the De Gaulle government's military legislation, his experience as an auditor made him more critical of both defense choices and national independence.

Therefore, Ganeval did not stand as a candidate for the new election on September 22, 1968. He, who had never found his home in politics, withdrew from all political activities, but remained geographically close. He died on January 12, 1981 in his Paris residence, on Boulevard Raspail, not far from the Senate. His funeral mass was celebrated in the Notre-Dame-des-Champs church near the Palais du Luxembourg , where the Senate is located.

Awards

literature

Web links

Commons : Jean Ganeval  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ordre de la Liberation (French)
  2. ↑ Claude Lanzmann: The Patagonian Hare. Memories. Rowohlt, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-498-03939-4 .
  3. ↑ We were just pumped out. More than stumble was lost . In: Der Spiegel . No. 52 , 1948 ( online ).
  4. ↑ Helmut Meschenmoser: SMA protests against demolition. Verkehrswerkstatt.de, December 29, 2005, accessed February 10, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Died - Jean Ganeval . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1981 ( online ).
  6. ↑ The Chronicle of Stolpe ( Memento of the original from March 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / stolpe.havelgau.de
  7. ^ Journal officiel da la République Française September 1951
personal data
SURNAME Ganeval, Jean
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ganeval, Jean Joseph Xavier Émile (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Général de corps d'armée and politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Brest, Finistère
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 1981
Place of death Paris