Jean Luchaire

Jean Louis Gabriel Luchaire (born July 21, 1901 in Siena , Italy , † February 22, 1946 in Fort Châtillon near Paris ) was a French journalist and newspaper publisher . During the German occupation of France , he played an important role in the collaboration's media policy .

Life

Jean Luchaire was the son of the Romanist and writer Julien Luchaire and his first wife Fernande Dauriac, a publisher. His sister Marguerite (* 1904) married the psychoanalyst Théodore Fraenkel in 1933 . His godfather was Horace Finaly, later General Manager of the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas .

In 1920 he married Françoise Besnard (1903–1998), with whom he had five children, including the actress Corinne (1921–1950) and the film actress Florence (1926–1982). He had numerous affairs, including with actresses such as Marie Bell , Mireille Balin , Yvette Lebon and Maud de Belleroche .

Early years

Jean Luchaire lived from 1908 until after the First World War in Italy, where he worked in Florence in cosmopolitan circles in the company of people such as André Gide and Valery Larbaud wrong. After the rise of fascism in Italy , he journalistically campaigned for a rapprochement between France and Germany in France, because he felt the Versailles Treaty was unjust for the German side. He supported Aristide Briand's foreign policy and in 1932 spoke out in favor of Léon Blum . In 1927 he founded the newspaper Notre temps , which represented a left, moderate pacifism .

In 1930 he made the acquaintance of Otto Abetz and made a friendship with him that would last until the end of his life. As a result, Notre temps employees took part in the Sohlberg meetings with Abetz in the Black Forest (summer 1930) and in a meeting in Rethel in the French Ardennes (August 1931) and in Mainz (March 1932). Even after the National Socialist seizure of power in January 1933, Luchaire was still convinced that a peaceful rapprochement between the two countries had to be the top priority. On March 26, 1933, he wrote in his newspaper: " Stresemann was more personable than Hitler, but Hitler is Germany."

Collaboration in World War II

The defeat of France in 1940 intensified the cooperation between Luchaire and Abetz, who had meanwhile become ambassador of the Third Reich in Paris. In November 1940, Luchaire founded the newspaper Les Nouveaux Temps ("The New Times") and worked closely with the Vichy regime . He now took a significant position in the Paris press and financially and ideologically controlled all press products in the capital.

Two days after the assassination of Resistance member Georges Mandel in July 1944, he and other collaborators signed a statement to Pétain directed against Pierre Laval, who was portrayed as undecided in the face of the Allied offensive in Normandy.

A few days before the liberation of Paris in August 1944, he fled with Marcel Déat and Fernand de Brinon to Sigmaringen , where Pétain had been taken on German orders. In Sigmaringen, Luchaire served as information commissioner for the government-in-exile of the Vichy regime and was also director of the short-lived newspaper La France and a radio program under the name Ici la France .

After the overthrow of the government in exile in April 1945 and the defeat of Germany , he unsuccessfully applied for political asylum in Liechtenstein and Switzerland for himself, his family and for Marcel Déat. In mid-May 1945 he was picked up by the Americans in Merano and transferred to France, where he was remanded in custody in Paris in Fresnes prison. After a trial in January 1946, he was, by the Supreme Court of France, despite a favorable testimony from Abetz for collaborating with the enemy sentenced to death and on 22 February 1946 at Fort Châtillon near Paris executed .

Simone Signoret describes Luchaire in a conversation with his daughter Corinne as "soft, weak, corrupt, beautiful and generous".

Fonts

• Les Rapports franco-italiens et la question yougoslave . Vita latina, Ligue latine de la jeunesse, Florence 1919.
• Problems du jour . A. Delpeuch, Paris 1924.
• Un plan de liquidation financière de la guerre. L'Évacuation rhénane par le règlement des réparations et des dettes interalliées . Paris [?] 1928.
• Une génération réaliste . Valois, Bibliothèque syndicaliste, Paris 1929.
• Les Anglais et nous. L'Action britannique contre la France jusqu'au December 13, 1940 . Editions du Livre moderne, Paris 1941.
• Partage du pouvoir, patrons et salariés . Editions Balzac, Paris 1943.
• De l'Union fédérale européenne à la Réforme de l'État français . 86 rue Claude-Bernard, Paris, undated.

literature

• Roland Ray: Approaching France in the Service of Hitler ?: Otto Abetz and the German French Policy 1930–1942. Oldenbourg Verlag 2000. Partial online view
• Martin Mauthner: Otto Abetz and His Paris Acolytes - French Writers Who Flirted with Fascism, 1930–1945. Sussex Academic Press 2016. ISBN 978-1-84519-784-1 .
• Cédric Meletta: Jean Luchaire: L'enfant perdu des années sombres . Editions Perrin, 2013. ISBN 978-2-262-04231-8 .
• Maud de Belleroche: Le Ballet des crabes . Filipacchi, 1975; Dualpha, 2002.

Web links

• Interview with Cédric Meletta, author of a biography about Jean Luchaire, accessed on September 14, 2017 (French)