Maigret and the Minister

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Maigret and the Minister ( French Maigret chez le ministre ) is a detective novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 46th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was written from August 16 to 23, 1954 in Lakeville , Connecticut , and was published in the same year by the Paris publisher Presses de la Cité . In 1956, Kiepenheuer & Witsch published the first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. In 1978 the Diogenes Verlag brought out a new translation by Annerose Melter.

The Minister for Public Works asks Commissioner Maigret for help. A sensitive document that could spark a government crisis has been stolen from his office. As a result, he finds himself exposed to a press campaign with allegations of corruption , while some MPs are willing to sacrifice the minister in order to cover up their own dirty machinations. Only reluctantly Maigret enters the sphere of political intrigues and intrigues.

content

It's spring in Paris , where the press has only known one topic for weeks: the Clairfond disaster. A few years earlier, a prestige property was built in the Haute-Savoie department between Ugine and Megève , an elaborate, ultra-modern sanatorium . A month ago, when the snow melted, one wing of the building collapsed and 128 children were killed. Since then, the approval process of the controversial construction project, which was apparently under the massive influence of the contractor Arthur Nicoud, has been questioned. The main focus of public interest is on the Calame report . Julien Calame, a professor at the College for Road and Bridge Construction, who has since passed away, is said to have pointed out significant safety deficiencies in the planning, but his report was ignored during construction and has since disappeared without a trace. Since the disaster, the report has become a political issue that is being searched for from all sides.

Boulevard Pasteur in Paris

In the middle of the night, Auguste Point, the Minister for Public Works, calls Commissioner Maigret and asks him to come to his private apartment on Boulevard Pasteur . He, who has only recently been in office and has nothing to do with the approval of the construction project, suddenly became involved in the affair. Jules Piquemal, a security guard at the College of Roads and Bridges, discovered the Calame report in the professor's estate and personally delivered it to the minister. Knowing that the papers were politically explosive, Point kept them in his desk overnight, but when he was about to hand them over to Prime Minister Oscar Malterre, there was no trace of them. Shortly afterwards, speculations about the report and its appearance and disappearance began to appear in the press, suggesting insider knowledge. The allegations of wanting to conceal the critical report are directed against Auguste Point in particular, whereby it is additionally burdened by a gift from the building contractor Nicoud.

Despite all the reluctance Maigret feels for politicians in general, he recognizes a kindred spirit in Point and he promises the minister that he will solve the theft of the report. During the investigations that Maigret and his inspectors are conducting semi-officially on the Quai des Orfèvres , they repeatedly come across colleagues from the Sûreté nationale , who are obviously monitoring them on Malterre's direct behalf. But there also seem to be some ex-police officers involved in the case, who cover up traces on behalf of unknown backers. The loner Piquemal disappears without a trace after meeting a stranger. A letter in his boarding house leads Maigret on the trail of the scheming and power-hungry MP Joseph Mascoulin, who confidently demonstrates a modern copier to the commissioner, suggesting that he has a copy of the report.

Finally Maigret exposes the ex-Sûreté agent Eugène Benoît as the thief of the papers. In his little fishing hut in Seine-Port , he tracks down the missing Piquemal. Both were working on behalf of Mascoulin, Piquemal out of deluded idealism, Benoît simply for money. While Piquemal passed the report to the minister in good faith, Benoît Points bribed Jacques Fleury's office manager and promptly stole it again, since Mascoulin was not interested in the publication of the explosive information. He remains the secret profiteer of the intrigue because with his copy of the report he knows numerous high-ranking politicians in his hand, on whose protection he can count in future. And since Benoît refuses to deliver the man behind the knife, the corrupt MP cannot prove the embezzlement. Minister Point is relieved that his name has been washed away and that nothing stands in the way of his daughter's planned wedding. Tired of big politics, however, he decided to give up his post as soon as possible and return to the tranquil La Roche-sur-Yon in the Vendée department .

interpretation

Maigret and the Minister occupies a special position in the Maigret series: This time the commissioner and head of the homicide commission is not investigating a murder, but “only” the theft of a compromising report. In doing so, Maigret has to go into the “fundamentally corrupt nature of the sphere” of politics, which he later encounters again in Maigret, who defends himself . Oscillating between a sense of duty and disgust for the political milieu, it is difficult for the commissioner to empathize with the suspects as usual. The search for the minister's blackmailer also shows no sign of the characteristic sympathy for the perpetrator. According to Pierre Assouline , Simenon harbored a deep and growing distrust of politicians. Like the non-Maigret novel The President demonstrates to Maigret and the Minister the moral decay in the French Fourth Republic . The author made his character Maigret the mouthpiece of his own aversion to politics. In describing the revolver papers that follow the minister with disclosures, Simenon drew on experiences he had gained in his youth at the Brussels tabloid magazine La Nanèsse .

Tilman Spreckelsen refers to the speaking names of the characters: While Professor Calame's report causes calamities and nothing good can be expected from Messrs. Malterre and Piquemal, Minister Point proves to be an honest person who does not make any digression. In him the inspector sees his reflection, with which he connects the rural origins, the passion for simple dishes and drinks, the same type of honest wife and even the first name of his father "Évariste". For Murielle Wenger, Maigret becomes the fateful savior of the minister because he can understand his career from his youth. Last but not least, he found himself in a very similar situation when his personal integrity was called into question by unjustified accusations and he had to endure a punitive transfer to Luçon in the Vendée department . This episode refers - like the appearance of childhood friend Julien Chabot from Maigret is afraid - to an earlier novel in the series: Maigret in the Judge's House . While the commissioner felt helpless and at the mercy of himself at the time, this time he successfully combats the unjustified allegations. By working for his likeness Point, Maigret succeeds in exorcising her own unresolved past .

reception

Publishers Weekly summarized the novel: "Maigret, who prefers the rough world of criminals to the slippery machinations of politics, is nevertheless tempted to help a minister in the French cabinet", with the plot set against an "interesting Parisian background". According to The Library World , the commissioner hates getting involved in politics, but he is solving the case just in time to prevent a political scandal. The novel is "captivating and concise", Simenon's style is "laconic". The New York Times did notrecommend Maigret and the Minister for readers who wanted "turbulent action and thunderous climaxes." But the quality of the author is shown in a narrative that is both “reserved and extremely real”.

For Steve Trussel, Maigret and the Minister was an unusual Maigret novel, which was probably nobody's favorite novel because it lacked too many typical elements of the series and had no attractive characters. Detlef Richter saw it differently, praising Simenon's multi-layered characters such as the secretary who raved about her boss and the office manager who was in gambling debts. Even without a corpse, “the tension is guaranteed to the end. Another atmospheric crime thriller from the hand of the master. ” Frank Böhmert liked“ Simenon's economic yet sensitive style ”. He praised the "[f] a balanced figure constellation" and even drew parallels to the Wulff affair , which is why he generally recommended to federal presidents: "You would have read Simenon!"

The novel was filmed six times: in the British TV series with Rupert Davies (1962) and Michael Gambon (1993), in the Japanese TV series with Kinya Aikawa (1974), and in episodes in the French TV series with Jean Richard (1987) and Bruno Cremer (2002); In 1987 Armen Djigarkhanyan played Maigret in a Soviet film production. In 1957, Radio Bremen produced a radio play adaptation under the direction of Carl Nagel . The speakers included Heinz Klevenow , Wolfgang Golisch , Kurt Strehlen , Erwin Linder and Dagmar Altrichter .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Maigret chez le ministre . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1954 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the Minister . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1956.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the Minister . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1967.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the Minister . Translation: Annerose Melter. Diogenes, Zurich 1978, ISBN 3-257-20505-8 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the Minister . Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 46. Translation: Annerose Melter. Diogenes, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-257-23846-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1946 à 1967 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ↑ Maigret chez le ministre in the Maigret bibliography by Yves Martina.
  3. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions . In: Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , p. 69.
  4. ↑ a b c Maigret of the Month: Maigret chez le ministre (Maigret and the Calame Report) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  5. ↑ 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. 28.
  6. ↑ a b Read: Georges Simenon, Maigret and the Minister (F 1954) ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / frankboehmert.blogspot.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 Frank Böhmert's blog .
  7. ^ The New Yorker . Volume 45 Part 7, 1970, page 84.
  8. ↑ Pierre Assouline : Simenon, selon Assouline . In: Le Soir of February 12, 2003.
  9. ^ Francis Lacassin : Simenon: "La vie de chaque homme est un roman" . In: magazine littéraire N ° 417, February 2003, pp. 18–68.
  10. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 81.
  11. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret Marathon 46: The Minister . On FAZ.net from March 20, 2009.
  12. ↑ "Maigret, who prefers the rough world of the criminal to the silky machinations of politics, is Nevertheless drawn into helping a French Cabinet Minister [...] an interesting Parisian background". Quoted from: Publishers Weekly . Volume 196 Part 1, 1969, p. 55.
  13. ^ "Absorbing and concise [...] Simenon's laconic style". Quoted from: The Library World . Volumes 70–71, André Deutsch Verlag, 1968, p. 195.
  14. ↑ "tumultuous action and thunderous climaxes [...] low-key and intensely real" Quoted from: Criminals At Large . In: The New York Times of November 30, 1969.
  15. ^ Detlef Richter: Maigret and the Minister (Georges Simenon); Volume 46 on leser-welt.de.
  16. ↑ Maigret Films & TV on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  17. ↑ The Minister in the HörDat audio play database .