Marga d'Andurain

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Marga d'Andurain (born May 29, 1893 in Bayonne ; † November 5, 1948 in the Bay of Tangier ), born Jeanne Amélie Marguerite Clérisse , was a French adventurer who spent almost a decade of her life in the Middle East, especially in Palmyra and during this time tried unsuccessfully to be the first Western woman to get to Mecca .

She came into the focus of the European and American press public when she was arrested in Nice at the end of 1946 on charges of poisoning her godson and nephew, and then two years later when she was on her yacht in the Bay of Tangier was murdered. During this time, she was given striking terms to describe her life in the Middle East: “Imitator of the Brinvilliers”, “Spy and double agent” who “ puts Mata Hari in the shade”, “Amazon of the desert”, “Ex-Queen of Palmyra ”,“ Adventurer of the 20 Crimes ”,“ Poisoner ”. It was expected in vain that after her arrest she would be held responsible for a number of deaths in her vicinity for which she had not yet been proven.

Life

Marga Clérisse, the daughter of Maxime Clérisse, magistrate and judge in Bayonne, and Marie Diriart, married at the age of 17 on February 13, 1911 in Bayonne, 12 years older than Pierre d'Andurain, The wedding was followed by a month-long journey through Spain and North Africa, until financial reasons called for a return home. In 1912 the couple traveled to Argentina to start breeding horses, which was given up when Pierre enlisted in the army after the outbreak of World War I, from which he was later released due to illness. After the war, several attempts were made (in particular Margas) to establish an existence in France, then in 1925 - Marga had inherited through the death of her father - the couple and their two sons (Jean-Pierre, * 1911, and Jacques, * 1916) made a decision ) to leave the country again.

The family landed in Alexandria in November 1925 and settled in Cairo , where Marga opened a beauty center for wealthy Europeans and Egyptians after the couple had acquired the title of count, which accompanied them during their stay in the Arab countries and served them professionally and to reach the highest social circles. A trip two years later from British-ruled Egypt via Haifa , Jerusalem and the Dead Sea to French-ruled Syria and there to Damascus and Palmyra, which Marga made with an acquaintance, as well as Colonel WF Sinclair, an employee of the British Army Intelligence Service in Haifa , led to suspicions that Marga was a British spy (as well as Sinclair's lover), whom she never got rid of. This trip led Marga d'Andurain to move with her family to Palmyra, initially to make a new attempt at breeding horses, but then to take over the only civil building in Palmyra, a hotel built by Fernando de Aranda, to which they named the Hotel Zenobie : their clientele consisted mainly of archaeologists and less of tourists. Shortly after moving, Marga divorced, but continued to live with Pierre.

Five years later, in the spring of 1933, Marga developed the idea of ​​being the first European to travel to Mecca, with a Mehari from her area, Soleiman el Dekmari as the Islamic husband, who in this way was at her own expense and for a fee at the end of the company could return home. She converted to Islam and entered into a marriage of convenience with Soleiman (whom she referred to as "le mari passeport") and traveled with him via Beirut and Port Said on a pilgrim ship to the Arabian Peninsula. However, she only got as far as Jeddah , since she was required to wait two years after converting to Islam before visiting Mecca. When Soleiman traveled on alone, Marga was in a harem brought (to the sub-governor of Jeddah), as the only place where a woman could stop without a male escort in honor and safety. She saw her project fail and she managed to get in touch with the French consul, who explained to her that there was nothing he could do for her, since she had given up her French citizenship in favor of her husband by marrying. Only if she was a widow could one negotiate to bring her back to her family in France.

Soleiman died shortly after his return, accusing witnesses of having been poisoned by his wife with drugs he had been taking since the beginning of the pilgrimage. Marga was then sent to prison on April 21, 1933. No poison was found, an autopsy was not performed. However, Soleiman's accusations were not enough for the court, and Marga was released after 63 days and allowed to leave the country.

She traveled to Bayonne and then stayed at the Hôtel du Rocher in Biarritz for two weeks in mid-August . In May 1934 a series of articles she wrote appeared in the newspaper Le Courrier de Bayonne under the title "Mektoub", in the Intransigeant under the title "Sous le voile de l'Islam".

After returning to the Middle East, she remarried to her first husband on December 5, 1936 in Beirut. He was killed a good three weeks later, on December 28, 1936 in Palmyra with 17 knife wounds, the motive remaining unclear and no perpetrator being identified. Almost immediately after that, she left the Middle East forever.

During the Second World War she lived in Paris and, like many others, got into financial difficulties, which she tried to resolve through black market deals. Her son Jacques had joined the Resistance , with which she came into contact when on August 21, 1941 a weapon she owned was used in the assassination attempt in the Métro Barbès. When she received threats from gangsters Bonny and Lafont, who led the Gestapo's French auxiliaries, she fled to Algiers in late 1943, where she was taken in by Emmanuel and Grace d'Astier de la Vigerie . On February 2, 1945, her older son Jean-Pierre committed suicide in Wittenheim .

After the war she settled in Nice, where she was arrested in November 1945 on charges of poisoning her 26-year-old nephew and godson, Raymond Clérisse: he had written on the back of a metro ticket: “The praline that Marga gave me, tasted strange. ”In January she was released on bail and thereafter no longer bothered by the judiciary.

In 1948, together with Corsican smugglers, she came into possession of the yacht Djeilan without being the owner, with which she wanted to trade gold from the Congo via the Tangier free trade zone, i.e. without any state influence. There she finally disappeared from board on November 5, 1948 in the Bay of Malabata, her body was never found. One of her employees, Hans Abel (who pretended to be Italian and called Poncini), and his friend Helene Kuntz, were found guilty of the murder. Hans Abel was sentenced to 20 years and released after ten years for good conduct, Helene Kuntz to one year in prison.

literature

  • "Their friendship was called - Death", Der Spiegel 1/1947, January 4th 1947
  • Life Magazine, Jan. 27, 1947, pp. 115-118
  • Marga d'Andurain, Le Mari Passport , Paris, Froissart, 1947 ( online )
  • Julie d'Andurain, Marga d'Andurain, une occidentale d'avant garde en Orient , thesis, Paris-I-Sorbonne, 1996.
  • Jacques d'Andurain, Drôle de mère , In Libro Veritas, 2007 ( online )
  • Cristina Morató, La Mata Hari Vasca , El País Semanal, March 15, 2009 ( online )
  • Cristina Morató, Cautiva en Arabia , De Bolsillo, 2010 ( ISBN 978-84-9908-197-7 ).
  • Julie d'Andurain, Marga d'Andurain (1893-1948), une occidentale d'avant garde en Orient , January 18, 2012 ( online )

Fiction

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Drôle de mère , pp. 395-397
  2. ↑ "eMule de Brinvilliers?" (France-Soir, December 25, 1946), based on the poisoner Madame de Brinvilliers (1630-1676)
  3. ↑ "espionne et agent double" (Franc-Shooter, December 26, 1946)
  4. ^ "Éclipse ... Mata Hari", La Presse, December 31, 1946
  5. ↑ "amazone des sables" (La Presse, December 31, 1946)
  6. ^ "Ex-rein de Palmyre" (Le Parisien Libéré, December 26, 1946)
  7. ↑ "aventuriére aux vingt crimes" (L'Aurore, December 26, 1946)
  8. ↑ "empoinneuse" (L'Aurore, December 25, 1946)
  9. ↑ Also in Morató (2009): “Espía, amante de Larence de Arabia, aventurera” - “Spy, lover of Lawrence of Arabia , adventurer”, and later in the text: “En la recepción del hotel Zenobia, donde antaño se habían alojado ilustres huéspedes […] el encargado me habló de su antigua propietaria, una valley "condesa Margot, que hacia 1916, durante la revuelta arabe, había sido secretaria personal y espía al servicio de Lawrence de Arabia". - "At the reception of the Hotel Zenobia [...] the manager told me about its previous owner, a certain" Countess Margot "who was personal secretary and spy in the service of Lawrence of Arabia during the Arab revolt in 1916." This claim is chronologically impossible, since Marga d'Andurain spent 1916 in Bayonne, where she was expecting her second child. Even without the reference to 1916, the story remains implausible: Lawrence of Arabia left the Middle East in 1921, Marga d'Andurain only decided to move to Cairo in 1925.
  10. ↑ Maxime Ernest Clérisse (1841-1925), Marie Diriart (1858-1931)
  11. ↑ retours, s. swell
  12. ↑ Marie Joseph Édouard Pierre d'Andurain born September 12, 1881 in Lyon, son of Marie Joseph Édouard Jules d'Andurain (1842-1907) and Julie Marguerite Chanard de La Chaume (1859-1941)
  13. ↑ On November 13, 1911, the couple lived in Algeria (see retours)
  14. ↑ Pierre traveled in the summer. The couple lived in Buenos Aires on December 20, 1912 (see retours)
  15. ↑ In fact, however, after a refusal to order, which did not lead to a court martial because of the family's relationships
  16. ↑ On September 12, 1923, the couple lived in Paris (see retours). “… Her father [had] accepted the connection with some hesitation, because although the search for the title of nobility was a family education program on his part, he regretted the fact that his future son-in-law was 'without a job'. Marga soon discovered that this was not a passing anomaly, but a life plan. Because even if he had many qualities in the eyes of his young and stubborn wife - tall, very handsome man, affable, passionate rider - Pierre had difficulty imagining that it was necessary to work. For a man of his origin, there is something humiliating about making money. The couple began life by relying on the generosity of families, but very quickly it became necessary to face the obvious: it became necessary to invent a life in which the absence of work would allow 'his To maintain rank '. "(Julie d'Andurain, translated)
  17. ↑ in Tlemcen or Bayonne
  18. ↑ The reports of the French officers stationed in Palmyra on Marga and Sinclair were submitted to Georges Catroux (1877–1969), at the time Colonel and chief of intelligence in Beirut; a few months after this trip Sinclair died (Énard, p. 148)
  19. ↑ The two sons were given to private schools, Jacques later studied at the American University of Beirut , Jean-Pierre became an uncle in Indochina sent
  20. ↑ Fernando de Aranda (1876–1969), Spanish diplomat and architect, called el arquitecto de Damasco
  21. ↑ Relating to Zenobia , made around 270 from Palmyra over large parts of the Middle East
  22. ↑ On November 12, 1928 in Damascus (see retours)
  23. ↑ She took on the name Zeinab bent Mohamed El Mouladj (see retours)
  24. ↑ "He was sent to Mecca to request a special permit from King Abdelaziz ... Finally, Süleyman returns from Mecca without having received the special permission for his wife" (Énard, p. 151)
  25. ↑ "On May 30th, the Beirut daily newspaper L'Orient-Le Jour reported her death by hanging." (Énard p. 152)
  26. ↑ Gabriel Dardaud, Trente ans au bord du Nil, Paris, Lieu Commun, 1987, p 36
  27. ↑ Drôle de mère , p. 181, differently: retours, where a conviction for murder is noted
  28. ↑ Jacques d'Andurain states in Drôle de mère , p. 182ff, that on behalf of his mother, before she left for Jeddah, he obtained poison from a Beirut pharmacy, which was supposed to be used to kill a large dog, but also a Man could be killed - and even names the pharmacist: Pierre Gemayel , the later politician and father of two presidents of Lebanon
  29. ↑ On September 1, 1933, the prefect of the Basses-Pyrénées in Pau wrote to the sub-prefect in Bayonne: there was an intervention regarding Madame Clérisse - through the minister of the interior (at that time Camille Chautemps ). Marga had been convicted of murder by an Arab court, she was causing her family great inconvenience because of her presence, and she should be removed from the country. On September 11th, the Prefect replied to the Minister (more precisely: the Deuxième Bureau ) that Madame Clérisse had been staying at the Hôtel du Rocher from August 12th to 21st under the name d'Andurain from Bayonne , that her presence had not been noticed and apparently did not pose a threat to public calm; their presence only displeased the family, who had made representations to various personalities. (see returns)
  30. ↑ Drôle de mère , p. 157; the articles were published as a book in a revised form under the title "Le Mari Passeport" in 1947 (see sources)
  31. ↑ s. returns
  32. ↑ on the date of death s. returns
  33. ↑ Drôle de mère , p. 256ff, “stabbed to death” (Life Magazine, January 27, 1947, p. 115), but: “died of poisoning” (“Your friendship was called - death” in: Der Spiegel, 4 January 1947)
  34. ↑ "Although Marga and her son suspect a plot by French officers (and report it), in which all threads seem to come together, one assumes an act of revenge by the Süleymans family." (Énard p. 154)
  35. ↑ it acted with paintings, Persian rugs, antique furniture, jewelry, as well as the opium of German generals ( Drôle de mère , chapter "48 Le marché noir"), which in contact with the secret police brought
  36. ↑ Drôle de mère , pp. 313ff; as this only became known after the war, it had no consequences for them
  37. ^ Pierre Bonny (1895–1944), a former police officer, and Henri Chamberlin called Lafont (1902–1944), a professional criminal, see Carlingue
  38. ↑ At the end of January 1945 the German bridgehead Alsace still existed around Colmar , Neu-Breisach and Gebweiler , the front line on the southern front lay between Mulhouse (Allies) and Wittenheim (Wehrmacht). On February 1, the Allies advanced from the northwest on Colmar, which was occupied on February 3, while there was hardly any fighting on the southern front. This did not begin until February 4 and on February 6 led to the merger of the allied associations from the north-west and south and the splitting of the bridgehead into two bubbles (Gebweiler and Rhine-Rhône Canal ). On February 2, Wittenheim was in German hands, but the Allies were making rapid progress in the rear. (Source: War Diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht ) Jean-Pierre d'Ardurain was on the German side on the day of his suicide, most likely as a collaborator (nothing else can be imagined), and it must have been clear to him that his work for the Germans in It will soon come to an end that he will not be taken into account when retreating across the Rhine, so that he will then be at the mercy of his compatriots and have to reckon with his immediate execution. His war activity is not mentioned in his family's writings.
  39. ^ "La truffe que m'a donné Marga avait un drôle de goût." (L'Aurore, December 26, 1946) - "Candy which Marga gave me had a strange taste" ( Life Magazine January 27, 1947, p. 114 )
  40. ↑ "Marga d'Andurain a été mise en liberté provisiore." (Le Parisien Libéré, January 22, 1947)
  41. ↑ Jacques d'Andurain reports that shortly before her death, his mother confessed to him that he had been poisoned by Raymond Clérisses ( Drôle de mère , p. 385)
  42. ↑ The Djeilan was built by Colin Archer in Norway in 1900 . At the beginning of World War II it belonged to George Russell Clerk , who was British Ambassador to France from 1934 until his retirement in 1937, and who had to leave the ship in Nice in 1939; During the occupation of the southern zone by Germany in November 1942, the ship was carefully sunk and made afloat again at the end of the war; Buying the ship was out of the question at the time due to currency restrictions
  43. ↑ Julie d'Andurain is a historian, the daughter of Jacques d'Andurain and thus the granddaughter of Marga
personal data
SURNAME d'Andurain, Marga
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Andurain, Marga d '
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French adventurer
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Bayonne
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 1948
Place of death near Tangier