Maigret in the judge's house

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Maigret in the Judge's House ( French La Maison du juge ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 21st of a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was completed on January 31, 1940 in Nieul-sur-Mer near La Rochelle and prepublished from April 27 to August 31, 1941 in 19 issues of the weekly Les Ondes . The book edition followed in 1942 together with Maigret and the cellar of the "Majestic" and Maigret loses an admirer in the anthology Maigret revient at Éditions Gallimard . The first German translation by Liselotte Julius was published by Diogenes Verlag in 1984 . A new translation by Thomas Bodmer was published by Kampa Verlag in 2018 .

Even Madame Maigret does not know exactly what her husband was guilty of in order to be transferred to Luçon in the Vendée department by the Paris criminal police . Without a job, Maigret is bored in the small village until a curious elderly couple claims to have discovered a body in the house of the retired justice of the peace , of all places . Full of anticipation for an investigation, the inspector goes to the alleged crime scene, where the judge actually drags a tightly tied bundle out of his house.

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Hotel de ville in Luçon

It is January 13th and Commissioner Maigret has been in Luçon in the Vendée for three months, where he was transferred due to internal quarrels during the merger of the Paris criminal police with the Sûreté nationale . Instead of his trusted assistants from the Quai des Orfèvres , the provincial inspector has to deal with the dumb inspector Méjat, which does not hurt, since there are no important investigations to be carried out anyway. Instead, Maigret spends his days bored in the local bar, watching the pool players. So he is immediately on the matter with enthusiasm when the curious old Adine Hulot, called Didine, and her husband, the cross-eyed customs officer Justin, want to have discovered a corpse that had been lying in the judge's house for days.

That night Maigret went to the small fishing village of L'Aiguillon-sur-Mer on the Atlantic coast and was just getting along when the retired justice of the peace Forlacroix dragged a tied sack out of his house to be thrown into the sea. When Maigret turns in the judge, he is extremely courteous and amiable, asks the guest into his house and declares that he does not know the body, which he only wanted to dispose of in order to avoid trouble. Maigret finds it difficult not to be taken with the hospitality of the judge and the atmosphere of his large, quiet house. Only the adult children of Forlacroix cause disaffection. Albert is a quick-tempered mussel fisherman who despises his father, and Lise is an extremely pretty, but at times mentally confused young girl, who is rumored to be ready to receive the young men of the village in her room. Her last lover, Marcel Airaud, also seems suspicious, also a mussel fisherman, who runs away shortly after the body is found.

Mussel beds in the port of L'Aiguillon-sur-Mer

After Maigret's persistent questioning, the judge finally admits murder, but it is an act that happened 15 years ago. Forlacroix surprised his wife Valentine Constantinesco with a lover whom he killed in a surge of jealousy. Since then his wife has lived separately from him in Nice , and when Albert learned that he was the biological son of a fisherman, he began to hate his supposed father. After his confession, Forlacroix is ​​sent to prison and Lise to a nursing home, from where Maigret learns that the young woman is pregnant. The judge still does not want to know the dead person in his house, and he actually turns out to be a stranger from Nantes : the psychiatrist Émile Janin, whose only connection to the small Atlantic village is an acquaintance with the missing Marcel. Maigret can track him down in Albert's fisherman's hut, and when the two young men face each other, the inspector manages to clarify the case.

After judge Forlacroix found out that his daughter was pregnant, he suddenly showed himself open to marrying her to the mussel seeker Marcel, whom he had never considered befitting of his class until then. The flattered Marcel agreed, but asked his friend Émile Janin to examine the mental state of his future wife beforehand. When the visiting psychiatrist discovered the pregnancy and his judgment on Lise's mental state was unfavorable, the irascible Albert, who was as concerned with family honor as he was, suspected that Marcel would withdraw his marriage promise, and he beat the psychiatrist in a fit of rage even before he informed his friend could. Albert managed to convince Marcel that his sister had committed the act in a psychological state of emergency. The naive mussel fisherman then went into hiding to raise suspicions and to protect his beloved Lise. Maigret lecture the young man that he had let himself be blinded by the judge's milieu, and Albert, just like his despised father, went to prison.

background

Simenon was familiar with the Vendée as a place of action. During the Second World War and the occupation of France, he lived with his family in the west of the country, partly in the Vendée and partly in neighboring Charante-Maritime . His residence was mainly north of La Rochelle in Marsilly and Nieul-sur-Mer . Simenon wrote the novel Maigret and the Maid in 1942 in La Faute-sur-Mer , which is in the immediate vicinity of the action location L'Aiguillon-sur-Mer. To this day, Simenon is extremely popular in the La Rochelle area. For example, in 1989 the Quai Georges-Simenon in the city's harbor was named after the author.

Maigret im Haus des Richters was written in early 1940 directly after Maigret and the cellars of the "Majestic" , Simenon's first Maigret novel after Maigret and his nephew, as well as the following break of around six years, in which the writer exclusively non-Maigret novels had written. The two novels are characterized by very different settings: Maigret and the cellars of the “Majestic” are set in a Paris luxury hotel, while Maigret in the judge's house is in a simple fishing village on the Atlantic coast. In the middle of the novel, his brief return from the Vendée to his native Paris seems almost unreal to the exiled commissioner.

Simenon remained very vague about the circumstances of the commissioner's transfer to Luçon. According to Peter Foord, the main aim of the author was to move his protagonist to a completely different place outside of his usual Parisian area of ​​responsibility. In a few later novels, Simenon took up the question of Maigret's banishment again and gave it various explanations. In Maigret and the Minister it is said that political circles were angry with the Commissioner, in Maigret and the lonely man, however, Maigret was "at war" with the inspector of the criminal investigation department.

interpretation

According to Stanley G. Eskin, Maigret in the judge's house is "a dark story of a retired, reclusive judge and his nymphomaniac daughter who is being courted by a young, naive clam catcher." The familiarity of the author with the “Simenon's shell country” ensures local color . The opening scene in which the judge struggles to dispose of the corpse almost reminds Peter Foord of a farce . Later, however, despite the limited number of people involved, the investigation turns out to be extremely difficult and frustrating, and the Commissioner is repeatedly faced with the question of how he should get ahead. According to Tilman Spreckelsen, it is always the old Didine who gives Maigret the impetus for further action. Although the reader and the inspector are repelled by the unpleasant gossip, their intrusiveness and curiosity, they prove to be extremely efficient in their snooping, so that they almost seem like "the inspector's dark twin".

For Thomas Narcejac there is great authenticity in the selection and design of the characters. Commissioner Maigret proves his calm, indulgent nature of the investigation, which occasionally digresses, but in which he can almost always bring about the incidents he needs, which leaves the reader with an impression of carelessness and lightheartedness. Often it is signs from nature or the environment that suggest the correct conclusions to the commissioner, for example when he feels in the judge's house that the atmosphere of luxury, distinction and secrecy is based on an unacknowledged, scandalous secret. In his investigation, Narcejac compares the commissioner to a compass needle, which is guided by the influences of the environment as if by a magnetic field.

reception

For Kirkus Reviews , Maigret in the judge's house consisted of "ideal family Maigret material" that was treated with "much more liveliness" than in later novels in the series. Because of its small size, the novel is "the perfect airport paperback". For Anatole Broyard in the New York Times , the book also came from “Georges Simenon's early, vital phase”. It rains a lot in history and one can watch Maigret extensively eating and drinking. In the end, the Commissioner resolved the case by encouraging the suspects to speak: “Like most of Simenon's novels, that sounds true. Get the French to talk and they will always blame themselves. "

The novel was filmed three times as part of TV series about Commissioner Maigret. Rupert Davies (Great Britain, 1963), Jean Richard (France, 1969) and Bruno Cremer (France, 1992) played the title role . Also in 1992, Fred C. Siebeck read an audio book for Schumm speaking books . Another reading by Walter Kreye was published by Audio Verlag in 2018 .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: La Maison du juge . In: Maigret revient . Éditions Gallimard, Paris 1942 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret in the judge's house . Translation: Liselotte Julius. Diogenes, Zurich 1984, ISBN 3-257-21238-0 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret in the judge's house . Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 21. Translation: Liselotte Julius. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23821-1 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret in the judge's house . Translation: Thomas Bodmer . Kampa, Zurich 2018, ISBN 978-3-311-13021-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1924 à 1945 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of the Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ↑ La maison du juge in the bibliography by Yves Martina.
  3. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions . Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , p. 59.
  4. ^ A b Maigret of the Month: La Maison du juge (Maigret in Exile) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  5. ↑ Maigret of the Month: Maigret chez le ministre (Maigret and the Calame Report) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  6. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret and the lonely man . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, p. 159.
  7. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 251.
  8. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret Marathon 21: In the judge's house . On FAZ.net from August 31, 2008.
  9. ^ Thomas Narcejac : The Art of Simenon . Routledge & Kegan, London 1952, pp. 123, 133-134.
  10. ^ "Ideal domestic Maigret materials, handled with far more liveliness than in later Simenons [...] the perfect airport paperback". In: Maigret In Exile by Georges Simenon on Kirkus Reviews .
  11. ^ "Georges Simenon's early, energetic period [...] Like most Simenon novels, it rings true. Get the French talking and they will implicate themselves everytime. ”In: Anatole Broyard : An Early Maigret . In: The New York Times, January 27, 1979.
  12. ↑ Maigrets Films & TV on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  13. ↑ Maigret in the judge's house on maigret.de.