Maigret fights for a man's head

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Maigret fights for the head of a man (French: La Tête d'un homme ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It was written in Paris in the winter of 1930/1931 and is part of the first series of 19 novels of the 75 novels and 28 short stories series about the detective Maigret . The novel was published by Fayard in 1931 . The first German translation was published in 1935 by the Schlesische Verlagsanstalt under the title Alpdruck . In 1958 the novel appeared in the Maigret series by Kiepenheuer & Witsch as Maigret Risks His Position in Isolde Kolbenhoff's translation. In 1979 the Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Roswitha Plancherel under the title Maigret fights for a man's head .

Maigret faked the escape of a death sentence from prison because he is convinced of his innocence. When this becomes public, the examining magistrate fears the scandal, but for Maigret a man's head is definitely worth a scandal. But after the escaped man manages to go into hiding, Maigret also comes under pressure. He sets himself an ultimatum: in 10 days he wants to find the murderer or resign.

content

North facade of La Santé prison

On the night of July 7th to 8th, the American diplomatic widow Mrs. Henderson and her maid are murdered by a total of 18 stab wounds. The footprints and fingerprints at the crime scene lead Maigret on the trail of the 27-year-old Joseph Heurtin, the messenger boy of a florist who remains silent and is quickly sentenced to death due to a large number of incriminating evidence. Only Maigret has doubts about the alleged sequence of events. Heurtin has no relationship whatsoever with the two victims and has not stolen anything. In addition, it hardly seems possible to cover the distance from the crime scene in Saint-Cloud to the suspect's room on Rue Monsieur-le-Prince in such a short time. For Maigret, Heurtin is crazy or innocent, and he suspects an accomplice in the background, whom Heurtin covers with his silence.

On October 15, Maigret, in the presence of the investigating magistrate Coméliau and the prison director Gassier, staged an escape of the death row inmate from the high-security section of the La Santé prison and had him pursued by his inspectors. But the bogus release was made public the very next day, and the Sifflet newspaper published details from an anonymous letter that could only have come from an initiated person . Heurtin becomes aware of his observation, switches off Inspector Dufour and goes into hiding. Maigret, now under pressure, promises to find the murderer in ten days, otherwise he will resign.

Examination of the anonymous letter reveals that it must have been written in the Parisian brasserie La Coupole on Boulevard Montparnasse. There Mrs. Henderson's nephew, William Crosby, goes in and out with his wife and his lover, the Swede Edna Reichberg. Crosby inherited more than 15 million francs through the death of his aunt. But in the café, a young man with red curly hair and a mocking smile attracts Maigret's attention: the 25-year-old Czech medical student Johann Radek. He comes up on the Henderson case on his own initiative, obviously has background information and starts a game with the inspector, whom he does not trust to solve the case because he is assuming the wrong assumption. Maigret stays calm and calls the young boor, who hits the bill one evening and throws around money from Crosby's possession the next, just a “garden gnome”. Even when Heurtin reappears, hugs the La Coupole and peers into the brasserie, Maigret makes no move to arrest the fugitive.

Two incidents occur in quick succession: Heurtin, rejected by his family, tries to commit suicide. And when Maigret visits the crime scene again, he chases Crosby there, who flees from him until he shoots himself in a room with no way out. Maigret continues to stick to Radek. For several days he silently follows the young man, whose main occupation is to embarrass other people and make fun of the inspector. Radek leads him on the trail of Mrs. Crosby, who behaves suspiciously and also visits the Villa Henderson. But now the events no longer run as expected from Radek: Mrs. Crosby leaves the house safe and sound, in which instead of a corpse the living Edna Reichberg steps out of the cupboard. When Radek realizes that he has lost control of what is happening, he tries to shoot himself, but his revolver is not loaded and Maigret overpowers him.

The La Coupole in Paris at night

After the game is lost, the player Radek turns out to be a good loser. He willingly reveals the missing background to the commissioner. The young Czech, who always considered himself a genius, but was very poor and terminally ill, grew into a hatred of society that was finally directed against Crosby, whose splendid life he saw every day at La Coupole . When the indebted Crosby said lightly that he would give 100,000 francs to anyone who kills his rich aunt, Radek took him at his word, had Crosby send him the house key anonymously and carried out the crime. He presented Heurtin to the police as the perpetrator, whom he hired for an alleged break-in into an empty house. Radek was not concerned with 100,000 francs, but with the power to play fate for other people. He foresaw Crosby's growing fear of his anonymous confidante, which in the end drove him to suicide. And in the end Radek also tried to lure Crosby's wife and lover into the Villa Henderson in order to incite them there to the point of mutual murder. But Maigret, who had long since seen through Radek's urge to see himself, caught the letters to the two women in good time and exchanged Radek's pistol. The performance in the Villa Henderson was only staged to finally lure Radek out of his reserve. Three months later, in January on frozen ground, Radek also messed up his last big performance in front of Maigret's eyes when he slipped and fell on the way to the scaffold .

background

The locations of Simenone's novels often followed the places that Simenon had traveled in his life, but mostly with a time lag. Simenon himself admitted: “I can't write about the place where I currently live.” What is striking about the Maigret series, for example, is that the novels were preferred to be set in Paris at a time when Simenon himself had long since left France and lived in the USA and later in Switzerland. La Tête d'un homme , on the other hand, was one of the rare novels that Simenon actually wrote “on site”. In March 1931 he stayed at the Hôtel Aiglon on Boulevard Raspail in Montparnasse . The surroundings include some of the locations that later appeared in the novel, in particular the large brasserie La Coupole with the attached Bar Americain , where Maigret meets his opponent Radek for the first time.

According to Pierre Assouline , the character of Radek was inspired by the Russian emigrant Ilya Ehrenburg , with whom Simenon was friends. During his time in Paris, Ehrenburg became a prototype of the foreign intellectual in exile and, like Simenon, was a regular at La Coupole . Simenon chose the name Radek after Karl Radek , the former member of the Central Committee of the CPSU , who was later expelled and banned as a supporter of Trotsky .

interpretation

According to Robert Champigny, Maigret Fighting for a Man's Head is one of those novels in which the inspector's opponent is easy to identify both for Maigret himself and for the reader. The tension arises less from the question of what happened than from the question of what will happen. The resolution of the case does not result from criminological conclusions, but is a consequence of Maigret's empathy and his physical presence, with which he penetrates the suspect's world and acts as a catalyst there . In this the novel is related to the first novel Maigret and Pietr the Latvian , in which there is hardly any doubt about the identity of the murderer from the start. Gavin Lambert refers in particular to the first eye contact between the murderer and the detective via mirror, a look in which the detective recognizes the typical attitude of a criminal who wants to brag about his deeds and seeks recognition. Maigret is not interested in criminal evidence, but rather moral evidence, which is not in the evidence but in the character of the perpetrator, and can only be achieved through his act of empathy. For Josef Quack, this “moral proof” has less of a strictly moral than a psychological and anthropological meaning.

Josef Quack sees Maigret fighting for the head of a man in a series of novels in which Simenon raises the question of evil , similar to Maigret and the Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien or My Friend Maigret . In the figure of Radek, Simenon draws the "portrait of a consistently active nihilist ". At the end of the case, Maigret describes: “A man murdered, and for no specific reason, but simply for the sake of murder ... I would almost say for pleasure.” The perpetrator's mentality is outside the civil order: “His inner demeanor withdraws to all of our usual ideas. ”Although social and psychological reasons are given for Radek's development, it is ultimately not a result of determinism , but remains an active decision that calls into question the elementary values ​​of humanism . Stanley G. Eskin sees Radek as a kind of Raskolnikoff . Simenon often takes up the theme of the stranger in his work - often in the form of an Eastern European - who slips away from his familiar surroundings into crime.

According to Dominique Meyer-Bolzinger, Radek is a negative image of Maigret. Both dropped out of medical school due to financial difficulties. Both are characterized by a great knowledge of the human soul and its diagnostic ability. However, only Radek became a criminal out of these conditions. Similarly, Patrick Marnham describes comparable knowledge of human weaknesses and motives in both characters, but in the end Maigret turns out to be the stronger. And in the fifth volume of the Maigret series, a perpetrator is executed for the first time because there are no mitigating circumstances for a Maigret who has “gotten off the wrong track” - not least as the image of his author Simenon.

reception

La Tête d'un homme was voted the best detective novel of the year in France in 1931, the year it was published. In 2008, the Diogenes Verlag described the novel as a "classic among the Maigret novels". According to François Bondy , La Tête d'un homme is a book “that all Simenon fans particularly appreciate”, and Oliver Hahn called the story on maigret.de “one of the best”. For Tilman Spreckelsen , Maigret fighting for a man's head was "really particularly exciting", and he praised "how Maigret builds the cliché trap, and when it snaps shut (the wicked rich, the good-hearted poor), it is empty". The Ostthüringer Zeitung described the novel as “a masterpiece of psychological density”, with Friedhelm Ptok reading the “unforgettable final scene with flying colors”.

In May 1935, Friedrich Glauser made his publisher Friedrich Witz aware of Simenon's novels, particularly L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre and La Tête d'un homme , which he would like to translate into German. Although the planned translation failed , according to Walter Obschlager , Glauser took over “content, atmospheric, and even linguistic elements” from La Tête d'un homme in his first crime novel, Schlumpf Erwin Mord .

The novel was filmed a total of eight times. The first film adaptation was originally intended to be directed by Simenon himself. For the role of Maigret he had intended Pierre Renoir , who had previously appeared in the first Maigret film La nuit du carrefour . As his opponent Radek, he chose the Russian Valéry Inkijinoff . Due to financial problems, however, Simenon was pushed out of the project. The film La tête d'un homme , released in 1933, had nothing to do with Simenon's original script. Inkijinoff was still involved, but the role of Maigret was taken on by Harry Baur , directed by the veteran Julien Duvivier . After the disappointment that he had not been able to create "his" film, Simenon withdrew completely from the film business and offered no film rights to his works for the next seven years.

Under the title The Man on the Eiffel Tower (German: The man from the Eiffel Tower ), the novel was filmed for a second time in the USA in 1949. Charles Laughton played Maigret, Franchot Tone took on the role of Radek and Burgess Meredith simultaneously played Heurtin and directed. This version also dealt freely with Simenon's original and designed a chase in the Eiffel Tower as the dramatic highlight of the film. Fenton Bresler spoke of a “somewhat strange American film version”, since the Eiffel Tower is not even mentioned in the novel. In 1992, a television film starring Vladimir Samoilov as Maigret, directed by Nikolai Ilyinsky, was produced in Russia. In addition, films were made within the TV series with Rupert Davies (1962), Gino Cervi (1965), Bruno Cremer (1994) and twice in the series with Jean Richard (1967 and 1982). In 2006, Diogenes Verlag published a reading by Friedhelm Ptok as an audio book.

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: La Tete d'un homme. Fayard, Paris 1931 (first edition).
  • Georg Simenon: nightmare. Schlesische Verlagsanstalt, Berlin 1935.
  • Georges Simenon: To a man's head. Translation: M. Konrad. Rudolf Hans Hammer, Vienna 1949.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret is risking his position. Translation: Isolde Kolbenhoff. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1958.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret is risking his position. Translation: Isolde Kolbenhoff. Heyne, Munich 1966.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret fights for a man's head. Translation: Roswitha Plancherel. Diogenes, Zurich 1979, ISBN 3-257-20714-X .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret fights for a man's head. All Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 5. Translation: Roswitha Plancherel. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23805-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions. Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , p. 65.
  2. ^ Nicole Geeraert: Georges Simenon. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1991, ISBN 3-499-50471-5 , p. 66.
  3. ↑ Maigret of the Month: Maigret à Vichy (Maigret in Vichy, Maigret Takes the Waters) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  4. ↑ a b c d Maigret of the Month: La Tête d'un Homme (A Battle of Nerves) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  5. ^ Robert Champigny: What will have happened. A philosophical and technical essay on mystery stories. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1977, ISBN 0-253-36515-5 , pp. 38. 97.
  6. ^ Gavin Lambert: The Dangerous Edge. Grossmann, New York 1976, ISBN 0-670-25581-5 , pp. 177, 180.
  7. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-8260-2014-6 , p. 38.
  8. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret fights for a man's head. Diogenes, Zurich 2006, reading by Friedhelm Ptok, ISBN 3-257-80041-X , Chapter 11, Track 1.
  9. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene. Pp. 58-59, 61.
  10. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography. Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 164.
  11. ↑ Dominique Meyer-Bolzinger: Une méthode clinique dans l'enquête policière: Holmes, Poirot, Maigret . Éditions du Céfal, Brussels 2003, ISBN 2-87130-131-X , p. 100.
  12. ↑ Patrick Marnham: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret. The life of Georges Simenon. Knaus, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-8135-2208-3 , p. 200.
  13. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography. P. 168.
  14. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret fights for a man's head ( Memento of the original from September 17, 2011 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. on the website of the Diogenes publishing house. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.diogenes.ch
  15. ^ François Bondy : The Miracle Simenon. A Balzac of our day? In: Claudia Schmölders, Christian Strich (Ed.): About Simenon. Diogenes, Zurich 1988, ISBN 3-257-20499-X , p. 72.
  16. ↑ Maigret fights for a man's head on maigret.de.
  17. ↑ Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret Marathon 5: Fight for the head of a man . On FAZ.net on May 9, 2008.
  18. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret fights for a man's head. Audiobook ( memento of the original from September 23, 2015 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. on the website of the Diogenes publishing house. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.diogenes.ch
  19. ^ Walter Obschlager: Afterword. In: Friedrich Glauser: Smurf Erwin Murder. Sergeant Studer . Limmat, Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-85791-241-3 , p. 201.
  20. ^ Fenton Bresler: Georges Simenon. In search of the "naked" person. Ernst Kabel, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-921909-93-7 , p. 328.
  21. ↑ Maigret Films & TV on Steve Trussel's website.