Maigret with the Flemish

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Maigret at the Flemish (French: Chez les Flamands ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 14th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about Detective Maigret . The novel was written in Cap d'Antibes in January 1932 and was published in March of the same year by the Paris publisher Fayard . The first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1964 . In 1980 Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Claus Sprick .

Commissioner Maigret is called to a small town near the Belgian border where a family of Flemish merchants is suspected of having murdered a young French woman. She was the lover of the son who, according to the clan's will, had long been promised to his cousin. In a climate of xenophobia and gloomy January weather, Maigret investigates privately to prove the innocence of the Flemings .

content

View from the Canal de la Meuse to Givet

A cousin of his wife asks Maigret to conduct a private investigation in Givet , a small town in the Ardennes near the Belgian border . The Flemish Peeters family lives there under the suspicion of the French population and operates a bar serving alcohol. The center of the family is Anna Peeters, a stocky, resolute young woman who picks up Maigret from the train station on January 20th. She still has two siblings: Maria, a teacher for the Ursulines in Namur , Belgium , and Joseph, who is studying law in Nancy . Although Joseph was engaged to his cousin Marguerite Van de Weert from a young age and she should marry according to the will of the entire family clan, he has an illegitimate child with Germaine Piedbœuf. When she disappears after she has come to the Peeters for her alimony, the whole town suspects the Flemish family.

Maigret, the "Commissioner from Paris", also opposes the hostility of the locals. Germaine's brother Gérard Piedbœuf in particular incites the villagers against the “Flemish friend” and supposedly willing helpers of the rich. Maigret is surprised to find that Anna was unhappily in love with Gérard Piedbœuf. But despite all the accusations, the harmony in the Peeters clan seems untroubled. The sisters and cousin adore the young Joseph and repeatedly play Solveig's song for him on the piano . But in the conversations with Maigret, Joseph doesn't seem so great, rather unsure and unsure whether his feelings are for Marguerite or Germaine. After the dead Germaine is found in the Meuse , Gustave Cassin, who is anchored with his tug , is targeted by the investigation . He is an alcoholic and a criminal offender with multiple convictions. To do this, he repeatedly lays false tracks, and the victim's coat and the murder weapon, a hammer, are found on board his ship.

River Houille in Givet

When the suspect leaves, the case is solved for Inspector Machère, the local investigator. Only Maigret is drawn to the Flemish house again and again, where he harasses the Peeters family until Anna confesses to him what he has long known: She killed Germaine with a hammer when they visited. The act had been prepared for a long time to free her brother from associating with the girl, but it was triggered by a disparaging remark by Germaines about Anna's relationship with Gérard. Her siblings helped Anna move the body aside. The money they offered Cassin comes from the cousin so that Cassin goes into hiding and arouses suspicion. But while Maria falls ill in the monastery because of her feelings of fear and guilt and Joseph looks resignedly to the future that has been predetermined for him, Anna continues to maintain her composure even with the confession. For Maigret, the whole story is cheap, mean and commonplace at the same time. He leaves the Flemings to their fate and justifies his departure by saying that he is not on duty in Givet.

A year later, the hiding place Cassin is still being searched for, and Maigret meets Anna again. She has aged noticeably, lives in a home for single women in Paris and works as a secretary. Maria died before she could consecrate herself as a nun in the monastery. Joseph married Marguerite, but his marriage is unhappy, he drinks and has given up his legal practice. Anna cries and angrily blames Maigret for the fate of her family. But then she suppresses her emotional outburst and fulfills her professional duties.

interpretation

According to Bill Alder, Simenon demonstrates the conflict between two social classes among the Flemings in Maigret : on the one hand there is the petty bourgeoisie embodied by the Peeters family , on the other the proletariat of the Piedbœufs. Despite the economic recession of the early 1930s, the Peeters have acquired a certain wealth as the owners of a small shop , whereby the accusation of illegal smuggling is repeatedly in the room. The education of the children Joseph and Maria as well as the predetermined marriage of the son with his cousin show the ambition of social advancement . In contrast are the poor training and poor working conditions of the piedbœufs, their low chance of getting up, the resulting loss of motivation and the escape into distractions such as Gérard's game of billiards and Germaine's love affairs. The two young women Marguerite and Germaine in particular embody the life of their respective classes in an ideal-typical way, and the choice between them is of grave importance for Joseph's own social position.

The second main topic is the different origins and nationalities of the two families. Despite their low social status, the piedbœufs are French integrated into the community, while the Flemish peeters are always regarded as strangers and outsiders. The French inspector Machère in particular is guided by his racist prejudices against the Flemings, which he does not see as his own peers, but as enemies. The resentments of the French boatmen, on the other hand, are primarily based on economic reasons, for them the Flemings are unwelcome competitors. Both positions are united by Gérard Piedbœuf, who throws slogans around in the pub like: “You could almost believe that it is a crime to be French in France! Especially if you are also poor… ”Opposed to these nationalistic stereotypes is Maigret's more nuanced view of people, who are more oriented towards personal qualities than their origins or social status. Nevertheless, the message of tolerance that the book sends through the inspector's point of view is thwarted for Bill Alder by Simenon's use of a race term , which also outwardly seeks to distinguish the Flemish class from that of the French.

In his investigations, the Commissioner is treated very differently by the various social classes, which is based on fundamentally different attitudes towards the police. The Peeters family, whom Maigret has summoned from Paris in defense, expects the Commissioner to protect the existing social order and thus also to protect their own privileged social position. The Piedbœufs, on the other hand, are full of skepticism and distrust of the police, who would always take the side of the money, and so they only expect Maigret to wash away the guilty. In fact, the fear turns out to be justified in the end, and Maigret leaves the murderer unscathed. For Bill Alder, the novel is one of the most blatant examples of how Commissioner Maigret, through his role as an impartial law enforcement officer, rises to become a moral judge. For him, Anna's moral qualities count, not least a form of class solidarity with the petty bourgeoisie, more than solving the case.

Edvard Grieg and Henrik Ibsen on a postcard from 1905

Solveig's song from the Peer Gynt suite , which the women of the Peeters family play for brother Joseph over and over again, serves as the leitmotif in Maigret among the Flemings : “My lovely fiancé, of course, you will be mine.” Edvard Grieg composed the song for Henrik Ibsen’s drama Peer Gynt . In terms of content, Simenon's novel draws a parallel to the drama: How Peer Gynt is saved by the love of his mother and his beloved, who admire him as a hero, the female members of the Peeters family heroize Joseph, who is actually not at all heroic. Joachim Campe even sees the relationships within the Peeters family as "veritable entanglements of an incestuous nature". And Tilman Spreckelsen describes: “The seething behind the facade is an obsession of the inspector [...]. In this book, Grieg can be the catalyst for the eruption. "

background

In 1929, Georges Simenon bought a fishing trawler named Ostrogoth , with which he sailed the coasts of Belgium and the Netherlands the following year. It was on this trip that Simenon first designed the character Maigret. In the spring of 1929, the trip also took him to two cities that form the backdrop for the novel Maigret among the Flemings : Givet and Namur . Simenon processed numerous local locations in the novel, but changed the names. During the investigation, Maigret recalls a case that took him to the Netherlands, where the same oppressive atmosphere prevailed. Simenon is alluding to the novel Maigret and the crime in Holland , which had appeared a year earlier.

The writer's own family also served as a source of inspiration. His mother's sister, Marie Croissant, ran a shop in Liège for river boatmen on the Meuse. Simenon described the atmosphere of the building in his autobiographical novel Family Tree : “After all, the unique, the wondrous smell of this house, in which there is nothing uninteresting, where everything is extraordinary, everything is unusual, as if it had taken many years to design it . Is the smell of genever dominating ? Is it the tastier smell of the food? Everything is sold here, everything is in the shop […] ”As in the Peeters family, there were three children with the croissants: Joséphine, Maria and Joseph. Maria worked as a teacher, and Joseph had a child with a local. The non-Maigret novel Chez Krull from 1939 took up the model of the Croissant family and their grocer again. The motif of a woman dominating the family and her withdrawn, worldly husband, modeled on his aunt and uncle, can be found in numerous works by Simenon.

The conflict between the French natives and the Flemish Peeters family is reminiscent of the Flemish-Walloon conflict in Simenon's native Belgium. His own family also reflected this tension: the Simenons of the paternal line were originally Flemish, but had assimilated as Walloons for generations and claimed a direct descent from French Bretons . Simenon's mother, on the other hand, came from a Dutch-German connection and felt her life in Liège as a foreigner who did not speak French fluently. Both the father, son of a hatter and insurance agent, and the mother, saleswoman and landlady of furnished rooms, belonged to the petty bourgeoisie, which is also represented by the Peeters family. According to Bill Alder, Maigret's proverbial sympathy for the "little people" is mostly reserved for people of Simenon's own family origin and less for the proletariat.

reception

The women's magazine Annabelle summarized Maigret with the Flemings : "In the usual manner, the grumpy thinker Maigret nests in the world of those affected, catches a cold and closes both eyes in the end." Michael Schweizer described in the commune : "The Inspector walks around in the rain, sits down in bars, goes to the Maas, talks to as many people as possible. Without much detours he finds out what has happened. ”This is typical of Maigret as an“ atmospheric man ”who feels how the stories are in the air. The perpetrators were only too happy to confide in the inspector, as they were often just "one step too far into a common drama". According to Tilman Spreckelsen, “earthly justice” is sought in vain in this case. If you apply legal standards. "

According to Klaus N. Frick , Maigret is “a multi-layered novel that works with short descriptions and short dialogues” among the Flemish people . There are “impressive accounts of the life of ordinary people”, and the novel, which is also a plea against national thought patterns, shows “how well Simenon could write and characterize. Very well done! ”For Jean Améry , Chez Les Flamands was one of“ some of the masterpieces ”in Simenon's work. Kirkus Reviews found two more "heroic deeds" of Commissioner Maigrets in the anthology, which also contained Maigret and the small country pub , whose idiosyncratic methods turned out to be first class in solving the cases.

Chez Les Flamands was filmed three times: in the TV series with Rupert Davies (Great Britain, 1963), Jean Richard (France, 1976) and Bruno Cremer (France, 1992). In 1994 the Éditions Claude Lefrancq published a comic adaptation by Odile Reynaud and Frank Brichau , which the Ehapa Verlag translated into German. In 1998 Edgar M. Böhlke read the novel for Steinbach speaking books as an audio book. Buchkultur praised the “older, but excellent recording”, which is full of local flavor: “The listener thinks he can smell the smells in the Flemish house, believes he is walking with Maigret along the draughty quay along the Meuse and seeing the barges that due to flooding. ” Walter Kreye read another audio book version for Audio Verlag in 2018 .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Chez Les Flamands . Fayard, Paris 1932 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret with the Flemish . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1964.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret with the Flemish . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1971.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret with the Flemish . Translation: Claus Sprick. Diogenes, Zurich 1980, ISBN 3-257-20718-2 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret with the Flemish . Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 14. Translation: Claus Sprick. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23814-3 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret with the Flemish . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau, Bärbel Brands. Kampa, Zurich 2018, ISBN 978-3-311-13014-7 .

literature

  • Bill Alder: Maigret, Simenon and France: Social Dimensions of the Novels and Stories . McFarland, Jefferson 2013, ISBN 978-0-7864-7054-9 , pp. 70-81, 101-102.
  • Michel Lemoine, Michel Carly: Les Chemins Belges de Simenon . Editions du Céfal, Liège 2003, ISBN 2-87130-127-1 , pp. 61–72.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chez les Flamands in the Simenon bibliography by Yves Martina.
  2. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions . Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , p. 52.
  3. ↑ Bill Alder: Maigret, Simenon and France: Social Dimensions of the Novels and Stories , pp. 75-78.
  4. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret with the Flemish . Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23814-3 , p. 80.
  5. ↑ Bill Alder: Maigret, Simenon and France: Social Dimensions of the Novels and Stories , pp. 78-80, 102.
  6. ^ Bill Alder: Maigret, Simenon and France: Social Dimensions of the Novels and Stories , pp. 78, 81.
  7. ↑ a b c Maigret of the Month: Chez les Flamands (The Flemish Shop) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  8. ^ Joachim Campe: The stabilized conflict. Aesthetic technology and its addressee in a novel by Simenon . In: Anton Kaes, Bernhard Zimmermann (Ed.): Literature for many. Studies of trivial literature and mass communication in the 19th and 20th centuries. Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht, Göttingen 1975, ISBN 3-525-21002-7 , p. 162.
  9. ^ A b Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret Marathon 14: With the Flemings . On FAZ.net from July 11, 2008.
  10. ↑ See the chapter Chez les Flamands, de Givet à Namur . In: Michel Lemoine, Michel Carly: Les Chemins Belges de Simenon , pp. 61–72.
  11. ^ Georges Simenon: Family Tree. Pedigree . Diogenes, Zurich 1984, ISBN 3-257-21217-8 , p. 100.
  12. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , p. 18.
  13. ↑ Connection to France? on maigret.de.
  14. ^ Fenton Bresler: Georges Simenon. In search of the "naked" person . Ernst Kabel, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-921909-93-7 , pp. 26-28.
  15. ^ Bill Alder: Maigret, Simenon and France: Social Dimensions of the Novels and Stories , p. 101.
  16. ↑ Quoted from: Maigret bei den Flamen ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.diogenes.de 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. at Diogenes Verlag.
  17. ↑ Michal Schweizer: Ten good crime novels ( Memento of the original from February 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.oeko-net.de 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. . In: Kommune 6/2012, p. 244 (PDF file; 169 kB).
  18. ↑ On the border to the neighbors in Klaus N. Frick's blog .
  19. ↑ Jean Améry : The hardworking life of Georges Simenon . In: Claudia Schmölders , Christian Strich (Ed.): About Simenon . Diogenes, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-257-20499-X , p. 108.
  20. ^ "Two more exploits of the French detective [...]. Maigret's individual methods prove top ranking in solving two mysteries ”. Quoted from: Maigret to the Rescue by Simenon . In: Kirkus Reviews of January 4, 1940.
  21. ↑ Maigret with the Flemish at maigret.de.
  22. ↑ tape Dessinées: Éditions Claude Lefrancq on the Maigret page of Steve Trussell.
  23. ↑ Buchkultur , editions 85–90, p. 56.