Maigret's first investigation

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Maigret's first investigation (French: La Première Enquête de Maigret ) is a detective novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is the 30th novel in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was written from September 22 to 30, 1948 and was published the following year by Presses de la Cité . The first German translation by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1962 . In 1978 Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Roswitha Plancherel-Walter.

The novel shows a young Jules Maigret as a secretary in the early days of his police service. A complaint by a flautist who calls a woman for help from the window of a house and then hears a shot leads to his first investigation. However, it turns out that the house belongs to an influential family and that there are circles who do not want what has happened. The young Maigret hopes that the case will help him move up to the headquarters of the Paris Criminal Police, but is on several occasions close to quitting his service.

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April 1913: Jules Maigret is 26 years old and has been married for five months. Four years ago he joined the French criminal police called La Sûreté . Protected by its director Xavier Guichard, he has already passed through numerous police stations in the short time. He has now been the commissariat secretary at the Saint-Georges police station for almost a year. His boss is Maxime Le Bret, who is considered the most elegant commissioner in Paris and likes to move in better circles.

View of the Rue Chaptal in Paris

On the evening of April 15, the Paris police are busy with a state visit, so Maigret receives the complaint from the young flautist Justin Minard. He claims to have heard a woman calling for help at the window in Rue Chaptal and then heard a shot. A servant denied him entry to the house and violently injured him. Maigret went to the scene of the event with the witness that evening, although he suspected that he could get into trouble with it, because the family of the late coffee mogul Balthazar resides there. Richard Gendreau-Balthazar, the son of the house, leads Maigret through all the rooms, but makes it clear that Le Bret is a friend of the house. So the next morning he quotes the overzealous young police officer in his office. Only when there are clear indications that Richard Maigret has acted out something does he let the secretary investigate without assistance and on his own.

In contrast to his later cases, the young Maigret is still uncertain in his investigations and, with his slight stature, cannot impress any of the respondents. In addition, the flautist Minard, who wants to evade his tyrannical wife, does not leave his side. At least Maigret learns that power in the Balthazar company is shared between brother Richard and sister Lise, the latter being the favorite of the grandfather and company founder. And he learns from Bob d'Anseval, a nobleman who has slipped into criminal circles, known only as "the Count", who makes his living doing all kinds of illegal business and is allegedly having an affair with Lise. Now he is missing, his driver Dédé is bragging about money, and when Maigret comes too close on his heels, he is hit on the head, which he only survives with a lot of luck and a severe headache.

Maigret is allowed to interrogate the arrested Dédé in the Quai des Orfèvres . For a moment at the destination of his wishes, at the headquarters of the Paris Criminal Police, Maigret realizes that Dédé has been prepared for his questioning and that Le Bret seems to be thwarting his secretary's investigation. After his investigations fail as expected, the case is taken out of his hands. Louis, the servant of the house, is arrested, but the official account states that he just shot a burglar. He is not convicted and the Gendreau-Balthazars are spared the scandal.

It is only when Dédé is released that he reveals the true background to the young Maigret, who is sympathetic to his naivete: it was not love that brought Lise into Bob's arms, but a clause in her grandfather's will, who came from a humble background and aspired to the nobility for his family . Richard, on the other hand, wanted to buy Bob Lise's lover so that he would have free power over the company behind her. That evening, Bob had Dédé drive him to the Gendreau-Balthazar's house to reject both plans. Presumably there was a fight between the two men, Lise panicked, called for help, wanted to shoot Richard and shot Bob in the process. When Maigret searched the house, the body had just been removed. Dédé's silence bought Richard for 50,000 francs.

Maxime Le Bret justifies himself to Maigret that he has a clear conscience and that Lise would never have been convicted anyway. As a result, the family could have been spared the scandal. Nevertheless, he would like to praise his young secretary as quickly as possible so that he no longer has to face him. When Maigret is called into the office of the head of the criminal investigation department, he learns that Xavier Guichard, whom Maigret admires like a father, suspects the real process. He, too, puts harm and benefit above truth. He promoted Maigret to inspector in the chief brigade on the Quai des Orfèvres. Maigret celebrates the promotion with the flautist, and at the end Madame Maigret makes him coffee.

Background to the character Maigret

Maigret's first investigation is one of the few novels in the series that gives precise dates. For example, the information on April 15, 1913, when Maigret was 26 years old, allows conclusions to be drawn about a year of birth of 1886/1887. However, this contradicts the other two novels, which assign a specific date to the plot: Maigret and the late Monsieur Gallet (1884/1885) and Maigret and the lonely man (1910). Various Maigret researchers have tried to smooth the contradicting information about Maigret's age in the course of the series into chronologies.

In addition to further specific data on Maigret's police career and his wedding to Madame Maigret, some typical motifs of the series are also introduced: In the police station of Saint-Georges Maigret discovered his love for the cast-iron stove, to which he remained true to in the Quai des Orfèvres, long ago the central heating is set up. Maigret also discovers two tools that will help him to hatch the truth behind a case in future cases: alcohol and illness. For the first time, while pondering his investigation, he experiences that mental “switching” that one day “should become so typical of him that one day it would make him a legendary figure on the Quai des Orfèvres.”

The term “fateful flicker” is also used for the first time, which describes Maigret's later activity better than that of a criminal investigation officer. The young Maigret sees himself in his secret career aspiration as “doctor and priest in one, a man who grasped the fate of another at first glance. [...] You would have gone to this man and asked him for advice, just as you would see a doctor. He would have been something of a 'tinker with fate' [...] because he could put himself in the lives of all people, in the shoes of all people. "

One storyline that is touched on at the end, however, remains open in the series. Thirty years after the events, Maigret meets Lise Gendreau again, who now bears the name of an Italian nobleman. She asks the inspector to look for her daughter, who has been kidnapped to England. Maigret would have "for the second time to protect the honor of the Balthazar family" in these investigations. However, there is no story in the Maigret series that tells of this rescue.

reception

Tilman Spreckelsen commented on his Maigret marathon : “This book draws its charm from the portrait of the commissioner as a young man, so far, so expectable. The fact that it is so pleasantly rebellious in itself (and right down to the secondary characters) shows what Simenon can do. ”For Thomas Narcejac , Simenon simply demonstrated his virtuosity in La Première Enquête de Maigret .

From Armin Arnold's point of view, La Première Enquête de Maigret was the inspiration for Friedrich Dürrenmatt's crime novel The Judge and His Executioner . In his investigation, he demonstrated numerous parallels between the novels, such as the fact that two investigating police officers are making the investigation of influential suspects difficult by their superiors. Dürrenmatt had transformed “la première enquête” Maigrets into “la dernière enquête” of his commissioner Bärlachs. Even Jean Lahougues novel La Doublure de Magrite based on Simenon's template. Michel Sirvent spoke of a hypertextual transformation.

The novel was filmed in 1963 as part of the Maigret television series with Rupert Davies . The German title was Maigret, giving Lapointe a chance . In 1992 Radio Bremen produced a radio play directed by Till Bergen . Uwe Müller spoke to Maigret . Evelyn Hamann took on the role of narrator.

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: La Première Enquête de Maigret . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1949 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret's first investigation . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1962.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret's first investigation . Translation: Hansjürgen Wille, Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1966.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret's first investigation . Translation: Roswitha Plancherel-Walter. Diogenes, Zurich 1978, ISBN 3-257-20501-5 .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret's first investigation . Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 30. Translation: Roswitha Plancherel-Walter. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23830-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1946 à 1967 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions . Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , p. 55.
  3. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret's first investigation . Diogenes, Zurich 2008, pp. 8, 13.
  4. ^ Jean Forest's Chronology of the ages of Maigret and Simenon .
  5. ^ David F. Drake: The Chronology of Maigret's Life and Career .
  6. ^ Maigret Biography from the work of Jacques Baudou .
  7. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret's first investigation . Diogenes, Zurich 2008, p. 8.
  8. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret's first investigation . Diogenes, Zurich 2008, p. 74.
  9. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret's first investigation . Diogenes, Zurich 2008, pp. 99-100.
  10. ↑ See section: Maigret of the Month: La Première Enquête de Maigret (Maigret's First Case) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  11. ^ Georges Simenon: Maigret's first investigation . Diogenes, Zurich 2008, p. 210.
  12. ↑ Madame Balthazar on maigret.de.
  13. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret-Marathon 30: Maigret's first investigation . On FAZ.net from November 8, 2008.
  14. ^ Thomas Narcejac : The Art of Simenon . Routledge & Kegan, London 1952, p. 125.
  15. ^ Armin Arnold: The sources of Dürrenmatt's crime novels . In: Gerhard P. Knapp, Gerd Labroisse: Facets. Studies for Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 60th birthday . Lang, Bern 1981, ISBN 3-261-04712-7 , pp. 158-162.
  16. ↑ Armin Arnold: Dürrenmatt as a narrator . In Armin Arnold (ed.): To Friedrich Dürrenmatt . Klett, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-12-397500-2 , p. 188.
  17. ^ Michel Sirvent, Reader-Investigators in the Post-Nouveau Roman: Lahougue, Peeters and Perec. In: Patricia Merivale (Ed.): Detecting texts: the metaphysical detective story from Poe to postmodernism . University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1999, ISBN 0-8122-1676-8 , p. 165.
  18. ↑ Maigret's first investigation on maigret.de.
  19. ↑ Maigret's first study in the HörDat audio game database .