Maurice Sachs

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Maurice Sachs (* 16th September 1906 in Paris ; † 14. April 1945 in Wittorferfeld ; actually Maurice Ettinghausen ) was a French writer , adventurer and collaborator in the era of National Socialism .

Life

youth

Maurice Sachs was born in Paris in 1906 as the son of the Jewish jeweler Herbert Ettinghausen. His mother, Andrée Sachs, was the daughter of George Sachs and his wife Alice, who was married to Jacques Bizet for the second time . Sachs' parents divorced in 1912. His childhood was marked by constant changes in caregivers, residences and boarding schools. In May 1923, his mother fled to London on alleged fraud. With that, Sachs was on his own at the age of 17. He joined Jean Cocteau and became his secretary. At Cocteau he met the charismatic theologian Jacques Maritain . Under his influence he converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1925 ; Cocteau became his godfather. He also dropped the name of his Jewish father and took his mother's maiden name. Sachs entered the St. Joseph des Carmes seminary in Paris on January 2, 1926 , but caused several affairs, so that he had to leave the institution again in November of the same year.

Stay in the USA

In September 1930 Sachs went to the USA. In 1932 he hosted a radio show for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). With the prospect of money and a political career, he converted again, this time to Protestantism , and on June 22, 1932 married Gwladys Matthews, the daughter of a priest of the Presbyterian Church . The marriage failed shortly and was divorced in January 1933. Sachs began trading in books and pictures, but a gallery he had opened soon ran into financial difficulties. He traveled through the United States as a speaker giving presentations on European economic issues. In the summer of 1933 he met the young Californian Henry Wibbels, with whom he entered into a relationship that was described as a great passion. With him he returned to France that same year.

In the Parisian cultural scene

On October 16, 1933, Sachs accepted a position as André Gide's secretary . Through Gide he was able to connect with numerous greats in French cultural life, such as Max Jacob and Coco Chanel . During a stay in Paris in 1932 he had already met the writer Violette Leduc , with whom he developed an intimate platonic relationship. Sachs became a respected, but not commercially successful, member of the French cultural scene. In 1935 he published his first novel Alias . He also attracted a certain amount of attention with the work Au temps du Boeuf sur le toit , published in 1939 .

In 1939, immediately after the start of the war , Sachs was drafted into military service and temporarily worked as an interpreter at a military academy in Caen . A few months later, on the basis of a medical certificate, he was discharged from the service. In May and June 1940 he worked for the radio station Radio Mondial in Paris and read speeches that were intended to induce the USA to enter the war. When the Germans occupied Paris in June 1940, he temporarily fled to Bordeaux , but soon returned. In July 1942, during the mass arrests of Jews in Paris , he worked for an organization that smuggled Jews willing to leave the country for cash. Sachs spent most of the autumn of 1942 with Violette Leduc in Anceins , a town in Lower Normandy , and in November he returned to Paris.

As a Gestapo spy in Hamburg

In November 1942, a week after his return to Paris, he registered with the German occupiers for voluntary work as a foreign worker in Hamburg . It remained unclear whether he had already relocated to Hamburg as a recruited Gestapo spy or whether he did not take up this position on site until 1943. In Hamburg, Sachs initially worked as a crane operator in the port for the Deutsche Werft and lived in a barracks warehouse in Finkenwerder . According to a report by a former shipyard worker from 1988, Sachs was involved in submitting secret submarine plans and materials on the condition of bunker systems to the British. According to the same report, Sachs was arrested by the Gestapo and released after a confession and used as an informant.

From May 1943, Sachs lived in a guesthouse on Alte Rabenstrasse in the expensive Rotherbaum district and apparently had better clothes and money. After Etienne Gueland and Henri Perrin, Sachs was employed by the Gestapo for a wage of 80 Reichsmarks per week and was listed under the number “G 117”. The two homosexual collaborators Philippe Monceau and Paul Martel lived in the same house. Monceau was a recruiter for the Légion des volontaires français contre le bolchévisme and tried to persuade French slave laborers in Hamburg to go to war in the east. Martel, in turn, was in the service of the Gestapo.

Sachs' task was initially to spy on the French living in Hamburg and to establish contact with the intellectual resistance groups operating in Hamburg. For this purpose he rented a cellar in the house of the art dealer Friedrich Huelsmann in Hohen Bleichen , set it up as a meeting place and organized discussions on ideological issues. The French succeeded in establishing closer contact with the White Rose resistance group in Hamburg around Heinz Kucharski , Margaretha Rothe and Reinhold Meyer . In August 1943 he took part in their discussions in the bookstore of the agency des Rauhen Haus on Jungfernstieg. The young people hoped to be able to contact the Resistance through him . In the Rauhen Haus agency, Sachs also got to know authors who were critical of the regime or who were more remote from the regime, such as Manfred Hausmann , Hans Erich Nossack and Egon Vietta . In autumn 1943 a wave of arrests began against members of the White Rose in Hamburg; Maurice Sachs was held responsible for some of the arrests and findings of the investigating Gestapo officers about the group's activities. Thus wrote Gueland and Perrin: "His masterpiece was the arrest of a number of members of the White Rose."

On November 16, 1943, Maurice Sachs was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the Fuhlsbüttel police prison . There, too, he continued to work as a spy and was brought together with several prisoners. Unaware of his betrayal, the prisoners continued to assume that he was a persecuted person like herself. Information from conversations between him and Heinz Kucharski, with whom he was sent on a transport, and Albert Suhr , with whom he was kept in a cell for six weeks, reached the Gestapo and entered the court files. In the case of John Gluck, he acted as agent provocateur , allegedly assisting him in an attempt to escape from the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp and at the same time betraying him to the Gestapo.

Sachs had the privilege of reading and writing while in prison; During this time he was working on the manuscript of Derrière cinq barreaux, published posthumously in 1952 .

His death

Sachs remained in Fuhlsbüttel as a protective prisoner until April 1945 . On April 12, 1945, he and 5000 prisoners were sent on a so-called death march to a reception center in Kiel-Hassee . He was shot dead on April 14, 1945 in Wittorferfeld near Neumünster by a Flemish SS man named Vouth. The registry office Gadeland , today Boostedt , recorded his death in a document. It is believed that he was buried in a cemetery in Neumünster. As evidence, the biographer Emmanuel Pollaud-Dulian gives the grave number with "Gc 54". It remained unclear whether the execution was due to an attempt to escape or whether "one wanted to get rid of him because he knew too much".

In a biography of Sachs in 1950, Philippe Monceau claimed that Sachs had been lynched by fellow prisoners at the end of the war and that his body had been thrown for the dogs to eat. Rumors also persisted until the early 1950s that Sachs had managed to escape from Germany.

Works

His best-known work Le Sabbat, souvenirs d'une jeunesse orageuse (1946), his autobiography, which lasted until 1939, was only published posthumously in German under the title Mein Leben ist ein Ärgernis , Bonn 1950. In 1967 the book was re-translated under the title The Sabbath translator was the politically dubious Herbert Schlueter . This was followed by Chronique joyeuse et scandaleuse (1948), La Chasse à courre (1949) and Derrière cinq barreaux (1952). These works are also shaped by autobiography.

  • The Decade of Illusion. Paris, 1918–1928 . Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1933
  • Alias , Gallimard, 1935
  • Maurice Thorez et la victoire communiste . Denoël & Steele, 1936
  • André Gide . Denoël & Steele, 1936
  • Honoré Daumier . Pierre Tisné, 1939
  • Au temps du Boeuf sur le Toit , Nouvelle Revue Critique, 1939
  • Le Sabbat, souvenirs d'une jeunesse orageuse , Corrêa 1946; German versions see above
  • Chronique joyeuse et scandaleuse , Corrêa 1948
  • La Chasse à courre , Gallimard, 1949
  • La Décade de l'illusion , Gallimard, 1950
  • Abracadabra , Gallimard, 1952
  • Derrière cinq barreaux , Gallimard, 1952
  • Tableau des moeurs de ce temps , Gallimard, 1954
  • Histoire de John Cooper d'Albany , Gallimard 1955
  • Le Voile de Véronique , roman de la tentation, Denoël, 1959

Biographies

Maurice Sachs in literature

Sachs has repeatedly been the subject of literary works: he is portrayed in detail by his Platonic partner Violette Leduc in her autobiography La Batarde (1964). In Hans Erich Nossack's novel Der Fall d'Arthez (1968), the character of René Schwab alias Sulkowski is clearly based on Sachs. In the same year, in his novel Place de l'Etoile (1968) , Patrick Modiano - along with other collaborators - made it an encoded subject of the narrative.

Maurice Sachs in the film

Different periods of his life are discussed in the following films: In Violette (France 2013, director: Martin Provost ) Sachs is played by Olivier Py , in the film Opium (France 2013, director: Arielle Dombasle ) the actor is Niels Schneider .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Emmanuel Pollaud-Dulian: Les Excentriques: Maurice Sachs , 1998, Chapter 2 , accessed December 27, 2010
  2. ↑ Emmanuel Pollaud-Dulian: Les Excentriques: Maurice Sachs , 1998, Chapter 6 , accessed December 27, 2010
  3. ↑ Emmanuel Pollaud-Dulian: Les Excentriques: Maurice Sachs , 1998, Chapter 7 , accessed December 27, 2010
  4. ↑ Emmanuel Pollaud-Dulian: Les Excentriques: Maurice Sachs , 1998, Chapter 9 , accessed December 27, 2010
  5. ↑ a b c Hanns Grössel : Sachs in Hamburg , 1967; printed in: Ursel Hochmuth : Candidates of Humanity. Documentation on the Hamburg White Rose on the occasion of Hans Leipelt's 50th birthday . Ed. Association of Antifascists and Persecuted Persons of the Nazi Regime Hamburg , 1971, p. 35 f.
  6. ↑ Pressing Halfway , Ben Witter , Die Zeit , 43, October 21, 1988, accessed 20 December 2010
  7. ↑ Etienne Gueland, Henri Perrin: Le Fin de Maurice Sachs ; Foreword in: Maurice Sachs: Derrière cinq barreau , Gallimard, Paris 1952, pp. 7–11, here p. 8. You referred to a corresponding ID which, like the script for the Derrière cinq barreau font , was found in the estate.
  8. ↑ Emmanuel Pollaud-Dulian: Les Excentriques: Maurice Sachs , 1998, ch. 10 , accessed December 27, 2010
  9. ↑ Ursel Hochmuth , Gertrud Meyer : Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance , p. 416 f.
  10. ↑ Etienne Gueland, Henri Perrin: Le Fin de Maurice Sachs , p.8
  11. ^ Albert Suhr: Encounters with Maurice Sachs, 1968; printed in: Ursel Hochmuth: Candidates of Humanity. Documentation on the Hamburg White Rose on the occasion of Hans Leipelt's 50th birthday , p. 42 ff.
  12. ^ Written testimony by John Gluck on the 2nd Fuhlsbüttel trial in September 1947 before the British military tribunal in Hamburg's Curiohaus, commented by Ursel Hochmuth, printed in: Ursel Hochmuth: Candidates of Humanity. Documentation on the Hamburg White Rose on the occasion of Hans Leipelt's 50th birthday , p. 39 f.
  13. ↑ Uwe Fentsahm: The "Evacuation March" from Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel to Kiel-Hassee (April 12-15, 1945) , pp. 86 ff. (PDF; 352 kB), accessed on December 27, 2010
  14. ↑ Emmanuel Pollaud-Dulian: Les Excentriques: Maurice Sachs , 1998, Chapter 11 , accessed December 27, 2010
  15. ^ Karl Ludwig Schneider: The end of a literary man and adventurer , 1951; in: Ursel Hochmuth (Ed.): Candidates of Humanity , p. 26
  16. ^ Philippe Monceau, André Du Dognon: Le dernier sabbat de Maurice Sachs: Hambourg 1943-1945 . Amiot-Dumont, Paris 1950.
personal data
SURNAME Sachs, Maurice
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ettinghausen, Maurice (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer, adventurer and collaborator in the time of National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH September 16, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH April 14, 1945
Place of death Wittorferfeld