Maigret and his nephew

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Maigret and his nephew (French: Maigret ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 19th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel originally planned by Simenon to conclude the series was written between June 1933 in Marsilly and January 1934 in Porquerolles and was published by Fayard in March 1934. It had previously been preprinted in 24 episodes from February 20 to March 15 of that year in the daily newspaper Le Jour . The first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1960 . In 1989 Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Ingrid Altrichter.

Commissioner Maigret is enjoying his retirement when a family matter calls him once more to Paris to investigate a case. His clumsy nephew, who followed in his uncle's footsteps with the criminal investigation department, is suspected of murder. Maigret learns that times have changed in his old office and that he cannot count on the support of his successor. The retired commissioner is investigating organized crime circles on his own to prove his nephew's innocence.

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Rue Fontaine (now Rue Pierre-Fontaine) in the 9th arrondissement of Paris

Maigret has been retired for around two years. His little house in Meung-sur-Loire is so remote that it is not even connected to the electricity grid. His nephew Philippe Lauer now works on the Quai des Orfèvres , the son of Madame Maigret's sister from Alsace , an awkward, burly red-haired man whom the inspector himself referred to the criminal police. It was precisely that nephew that woke Maigret one night and reported in dismay about a mishap he suffered while monitoring the Floria nightspot in rue Fontaine near Montmartre . Pepito Palestrino, the tenant of the restaurant, was shot dead within earshot. Philippe hurried to the scene of the crime, panicked and instinctively seized the weapon, which he got rid of by handing it to the dead man. When he fell headlong out of the pub, he also collided with a waiter who now accuses him of the crime.

Maigret accompanies his nephew to Paris, where he turns himself in and is taken into custody under public pressure. The return of the retired commissioner to the quai is proving to be unpleasant. His successor, Commissioner Amadieu, is anything but benevolent and lets him feel that his methods no longer count these days. His loyal inspector Lucas finds himself in a loyalty conflict, and for many of the young officers Maigret is just a myth from the past. Even in the circles of the Parisian underworld, in which Maigret is investigating on his own to prove the innocence of his nephew, the detective commissioner is no longer taken seriously. Even a prostitute by the name of Fernande thinks he's more of a provincial man on the wrong track than that she smells him the police officer, and lets herself be involved in his investigation.

The former commissioner soon realized that the motive for the murder was to be found in clashes in organized crime. Pepito was believed to have murdered a drug dealer named Barnabé. The mastermind behind everyone is Germain Cageot, known as the “notary”, who has excellent contacts in the highest circles of society and who also goes out and in on the Quai des Orfèvres. His gang meets regularly in the Tabac Fontaine in the immediate vicinity of the Floria . They include the bartender Julien, the almost deaf-mute brothel owner Colin, a handsome boy named Eugène Berniard, who steals Maigret Fernande, which gives Madame Maigret's otherwise loyal husband a slight pang of jealousy, and last but not least, the witness against Maigret's nephew, the waiter Joseph Audiat. When Maigret followed him on foot on the way home, Eugène carried out an attack on him in his car, but only drove to the waiter, whom the inspector was taking care of, although he was unable to make a statement. After winning the support of the head of the criminal police, Maigret succeeds in summoning the entire gang on the quay, but the responsible inspector, Amadieu, refuses to engage in the interrogations and the alibis of the self-confident gang do not seem to shake.

Only when Maigret's sister-in-law appears, with her simple, rural charm, does the discouraged inspector stand up again. He takes her out in Paris and promises to get her son out of prison the next day. In fact, with improvisation and his own method of empathizing with the milieu of those involved, which was so despised by his successor Amadieu, he succeeded in transferring Cageot. Maigret bluffs him with vague hints during a visit until he has learned to understand his counterpart and Cageot elicits a confession in front of a manipulated telephone on which Lucas is listening. What distinguishes the outwardly so staid "notary" is above all his fear: fear of women, fear of his own death as well as of killing others. That is why he needed henchmen for each of his deeds, whose complicity only threw him into new difficulties: When Barnabé demanded a higher share of the drug profits, he had him murdered by Pepito, when he became dangerous as a witness, Eugène eliminated him. When Maigret's nephew unexpectedly appeared on the scene, Cageot sent Audiat to meet him and staged the collision with the fugitive in order to cast suspicion on Philippe. After his confession, the police arrested Cageot, only Eugène managed to go into hiding with the help of the enamored Fernande. Maigret resumes his retirement in Meung and his nephew Philippe, much to the relief of Madame Lauer, returns to Alsace.

Emergence

Georges Simenon had originally planned to run out of the series of novels around his creation Maigret with the eighteenth volume L'Écluse N ° 1 , in order to continue developing on the path to "true" literature after Maigret with his non-Maigret novels . Already in this volume the commissioner submits a request for retirement, and the plot revolves again and again around the move to his retirement home in Meung on the Loire . It was only the great public demand that prompted Simenon to attach a nineteenth volume in which the retired detective intervenes once more in the police investigation. However, Simenon added a preface to the advance publication in Le Jour magazine , in which, according to Stanley G. Eskin, he "swore stone and leg this would be the last Maigret." Simenon's biographers Eskin and Patrick Marnham agree that the manuscript will be released in June 1933 was created, immediately after its predecessor L'Écluse N ° 1 was published, and Pierre Assouline also assumes the beginning of summer 1933. The novel under the simple title Maigret did not appear until the following year, and the date of completion is given as January 1934. It was only four years later that magazines published new short Maigret stories; readers had to wait until 1942 for the next Maigret in novel form.

interpretation

In Maigret and his nephew , the retired commissioner is, according to Stanley G. Eskin, "torn out of his garden" in order to conduct an investigation again as a private detective. Although his successor Amadieu considers Maigret's method of empathizing with the suspects' personality instead of looking for tangible evidence to be unsuitable for the hardened gang of criminals, Maigret proves him wrong. During his final visit to the head of the gang, Cageot bares his human face for a brief moment and enables Maigret to convict him. The end of the novel, in which Maigret even picks up the revolver and shoots at his opponent, stands for Eskin in the Anglo-American tradition of the hardboiled detective , which flashed up every now and then in Maigret's early novels.

According to the Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction, a special contrast arises between the “tenderly and lovingly drawn” details of Maigret's country life in his secluded house and the localities in Paris. These refer to some real locations. Josephine Baker's Club Chez Joséphine was located at 40 rue Fontaine , where Simenon often stayed during his affair with the famous dancer. And on Place Dauphine, where in the novel the regular brasserie of the police officers called Chope du Pont-Neuf is located, the restaurant Aux Trois Marchés was actually located . For Patrick Marnham, Maigret doesn't do much else throughout the novel than to sit in this brasserie and bar in Pigalle , keep your eyes open and indulge in alcohol, which Simenon later remarked that this was one of the reasons why he let Maigret drink so much because even at the time when the first Maigret novels were written he strongly attributed alcohol. In any case, Tilman Spreckelsen listed the consumption of beer, brandy, Pernod , rum, red wine, Armagnac , champagne and white wine and commented dryly: "It serves to establish the truth."

For Peter Foord, the turning point of the case is the appearance of Maigret's sister-in-law. In their presence, the retired commissioner loses the tension he has felt throughout the case and finally finds the clear thoughts with which he works out the trap in which his opponent is caught in the end. Madame Maigret's sister plays a role again and again in the Maigret series. However, she takes on a total of four different names in the course of the novels and stories. Various nieces and nephews of Maigrets also appear in some short stories. In the story Maigret et l'Inspecteur Malgracieux (German: Maigret und Inspektor Griesgram ), which was written in 1946, a nephew Maigrets works in the control center of the police and takes an emergency call. However, his name is "Daniel" here. In Maigret's memoirs , Maigret personally clarifies the further fate of Philippe to the readers by stating that his nephew “did not turn out to be as brilliant as he hoped to be” in the police service and that he ended up in his father-in-law's factory, one of them Soap manufacturers in Marseille .

reception

The New York Times Book Review summarized the novel in 1942: “[Maigret] has a lot to do with sitting around coffee shops before he is able to prove his case. None of this sounds very exciting, and it probably won't please those who crave violent action on either side, but for those interested in how a brain from the underworld works, it has a hard-to-define allure. "

Oliver Hahn read “one of the best Maigret stories”. He described: "Although it is already clear on page 40 who the culprit is, it becomes an extremely exciting story in which Simenon plays with the feelings of the various protagonists." For Tilman Spreckelsen, Simenon showed his hero in confrontation with his old office and the changes he finds there, "more emotional and unrestrained than in any previous novel" Stanley G. Eskin spoke of an "exciting and effective finale".

The novel was filmed twice within Maigret TV series. In 1970 Jean Richard played the commissioner, in 1972 Gino Cervi under the title Maigret in pensione .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Maigret . Fayard, Paris 1934 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and his nephew . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1960.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and his nephew . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1966.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and his nephew . Translation: Ingrid Altrichter. Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-21684-X .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and his nephew . Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 19. Translation: Ingrid Altrichter. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23819-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Maigret in the 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. 73.
  3. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , pp. 179-180, 244.
  4. ↑ a b c Maigret of the Month: Maigret (Maigret Returns) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  5. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret and his nephew . Diogenes, Zurich 2008, p. 164.
  6. ^ A b Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography , p. 179.
  7. ^ "[...] the details of the retirement cottage are so subtly and lovingly sketched that readers automatically make the comparison between the country life and the Paris [...]" In: Frank Northen Magill (ed.): Critical survey of mystery and detective fiction . Volume 4: Authors Pot - Z . Salem Press. Pasadena 1988, ISBN 0-89356-490-7 , p. 1485.
  8. ↑ Peter Foord: The site of "La Brasserie Dauphine" on the Maigret page by Steve Trussel.
  9. ↑ Patrick Marnham: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret. The life of Georges Simenon . Knaus, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-8135-2208-3 , pp. 192-193.
  10. ↑ a b Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret Marathon 19: Maigret and his nephew . On FAZ.net from August 16, 2008.
  11. ↑ Madame Maigret's Four Sisters on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  12. ↑ Works on the subject of Maigret's nephews on maigret.de.
  13. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret's Memoirs . All Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 35. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23835-8 , pp. 164–165.
  14. ↑ "He has to do a great deal of sitting in cafes before he is able to prove his case. All this does not sound very exciting, and It will probably not please those who demand violent action on every page, but for those who are interested in the workings of the underworld mind it has a fascination that is difficult to define. "In: The New York Times Book Review 1942.
  15. ↑ a b Maigret and his nephew on maigret.de.