Léon Werth

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Léon Werth (around 1914)

Léon Werth (born February 17, 1878 in Remiremont , † December 13, 1955 in Paris ) was a French writer and art critic . Léon Werth knew how to portray the society of France of his time thoroughly and with extraordinary clarity without complacency. He is also known for his close friendship with the French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry .

Life

Léon Werth comes from an assimilated Jewish family. Being an excellent student, he won a philosophy prize at the Concours général , a national competition for high school students in France. He then became a student at the renowned Lycée Henri IV . Nevertheless, he dropped out of school to work as an editor for various magazines. He led an unsettled life and devoted himself to writing and the profession of art critic. He embodied a very independent and liberal mindset and criticized the church and clergy as well as the bourgeoisie . His novel "La maison blanche (The White Room)" was proposed for the Prix ​​Goncourt in 1913 . In 1914 he went to the First World War as a soldier, where he fought at the front for 15 months until he was wounded. This war marked him permanently and made him a staunch pacifist . He summarized his experiences in the pessimistic and mercilessly critical of the war story “Clavel Soldat” . After its publication in 1919, the work caused a scandal. In the period between the world wars, he railed against colonialism with a pointed pen ( Cochinchine , published 1928) by both criticizing the colonial enthusiasm of France at the time and accusing Stalin of imposture. He was also concerned about the emergence of National Socialism . In 1931 he made the acquaintance of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , from which a great friendship should develop. Saint-Exupéry dedicated his most famous work, " The Little Prince " to him. During the occupation of France in World War II , he lived in the French Jura . His 900-page diary covering the period from 1940 to the liberation was published in 1946 under the title " Déposition" ("witness statement"). A year after attending the trial of Petain , he published his critical notes on the time of the Vichy regime .

33 days

33 days (original title: 33 jours ) is a short story that was written a few weeks after the flight in 1940. Léon Werth tells of his escape from German-occupied Paris to the unoccupied southern zone of France. Then he traveled to his holiday home in Saint-Amour in the French Jura . He describes with great accuracy a time when, from his point of view, France became a “mattress warehouse”. In October 1940 he entrusted the manuscript to his friend Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , who passed it on to a publisher in New York, where it was lost. It was not rediscovered and published until 1992 by the publisher Viviane Hamy.

Works

  • 33 jours , written in June 1940. 1948. In German as
33 days - one report. With an afterword by Lothar Baier , Antje Kunstmann, Munich 1996. New edition 2016: With a foreword by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, afterword by Peter Stamm. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, ISBN 978-3-10-002506-7 .
  • Déposition, Journal 1940–1944 , first published in 1946, then in 1992. In German as When the time stood still. Diary 1940–1944 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2017, ISBN 978-3-10-397249-8 .
  • Clavel chez les majors . 1919.
  • la maison blanche . 1913. In German as The White Room . Stuttgart 1994.
  • Clavel soldier . 1919.
  • Cochinchine . 1926.
  • Le destin de Marco .
  • Le monde et la ville . 1922.
  • Impressions author le procès Pétain. Written in 1945, published in 1995.
  • Our friend Antoine de Saint-Exupéry . Rauch, Bad Salzig 1952. (Original French title: Saint-Exupéry, tel que je l'ai connu ).
  • Barracks 1900 . Written in 1951, published in French in 1993.
  • Voyages with a pipe . 1920.

The dedication in the foreword to the Little Prince

Léon Werth's name appears in the foreword of the Little Prince , which Antoine de Saint-Exupéry dedicated to him.

“ For Léon Werth.

I beg the children to forgive me if I dedicate this book to an adult. I have a prime excuse: this adult is my best friend in the whole world. I have a second excuse: this adult understands everything, even children's books. I have a third excuse: this adult lives in France and is hungry and cold. He desperately needs consolation. If all the excuses aren't enough, I will gladly dedicate this book to the child that adult was. All adults were children at first. (But only a few remember that.) So I correct my dedication:

For Léon Werth when he was a little boy. "
(New translation by Elisabeth Edl , Karl Rauch Verlag, 2010.)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 3sat.online: Book tip: “33 Days” by Léon Werth - reading recommendation from the spring 2016 book season. In: www.3sat.de. Retrieved April 3, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Former name for the south of Vietnam and parts of eastern Cambodia, between 1863 and 1954 mainly for the French colony of this name. Since the end of French colonial rule over Indochina in 1954, the name Cochinchina has been used less and less and is now out of use
  3. ^ Clairvoyant news from an occupied country , NZZ, December 9, 2017
  4. ↑ Review Ernst-Peter Wieckenberg, FAZ , September 28, 2016 under the title Auf der Flucht - Leon Werht's war records viewed October 2, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Werth, Leon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and art critic
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Remiremont
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1955
Place of death Paris