Olier Mordrel

Olier Mordrel (born April 29, 1901 in Paris under the name Olivier Mordrelle ; † October 25, 1985 in Léchiagat, Finistère ), was an architect , writer and militant Breton nationalist who worked with the German occupiers during the Second World War . He wrote numerous works and articles under numerous pseudonyms such as Jean de La Bénelais , Er Gédour , Ab Calvez , Ap-Calvez , Arvester , Otto Mohri and Olivier Launay .

Life

Youth in Paris

Mordrelle was born the son of a general of the French colonial troops, who came from Saint-Malo , and a Corsican in Paris , where he also spent most of his childhood and learned the Breton language.

The Breton autonomist (1919–1939)

Mordrelle joined the regionalist group Breiz Atao in 1919 and became president of the Unvaniez Yaouankiz Breiz (Union de la jeunesse de Bretagne) in 1922 . After studying at the art school ( École des Beaux-Arts ), he worked as an architect in Quimper for more than 10 years from 1925 . In the thirties he took part in the attempts of young, Breton nationalist architects to establish a modern Breton architectural style under the influence of Art Déco and Le Corbusier . In Quimper, Mordrel built the Ty Kodaks Art Deco department store .

Art Deco department store Ty Kodaks. 33-35, Boulevard Amiral-de-Kerguelen at F-29000 Quimper. Built in 1933.

Together with the Breton nationalist writer Roparz Hemon , Mordrelle founded Gwalarn , which initially appeared as a literary supplement to the autonomist magazine Breiz Atao , and from the 7th edition onwards as an independent literary magazine. In this publication, the swastika appears for the first time , as a pagan and pre-Christian symbol above the column with party news. At the 1st Inter-Celtic Congress in Dublin in 1925, Mordrelle was a member of the Breton delegation under the name Olier Mordrel . In 1927, the Unvaniez Yaouankiz Breiz became the Parti autonomiste breton (PAB; 1927–1931). Mordrel was first its vice-president, then later its propaganda secretary .

As the successor organization to the PAB, which collapsed after several election failures in 1931, François Debauvais and Olier Mordrel founded the Parti national breton (PNB) in early 1932 . While Debauvais was more concerned with the organizational structure of the party, Mordrel was in favor of the ideological considerations and political statements that appeared primarily in the first Breton-autonomist, then Breton-nationalist Breiz Atao . He tried to express his enthusiasm for neo-paganism and fascism in his own publications, since in contributions to the Breiz Atao he had to take into account politically different currents and especially Catholic sensibilities. In 1933 Mordrel published the political program SAGA in Breiz Atao under the pseudonym A. Calvez , which he later declared to be the starting point of a Breton National Socialism .

In 1934 Mordrel founded the magazine Stur ( Das Steuerrad ), which also used the swastika as a symbol. In this magazine he defended the position of a Celtic nationalism and justified in 1938 in a vision of the future (Vision d'avenir) the brutality of the master peoples necessary to maintain this nationalism , which he equated with the Nordic peoples.

In 1936 Mordrel founded the Bulletin des minorités nationales de France (later renamed Peuples et Frontières ; published 1937–1939). This magazine promised its readers “revelations” about the situation in Brittany and the main European national minorities. However, special attention was paid to the minorities in France : the Alsatian autonomist Hermann Bickler represented Alsace in his own column and increasingly advocated National Socialist ideology . For Flanders and Corsica had its own categories and managers. There are various indications that Mordrel had had contacts with German intelligence services since 1936.

On December 14, 1938, Mordrel and François Debauvais were sentenced to one year suspended prison sentence for " violation of national unity " ( atteinte à l'unité de la nation ). From July 1938 to July 1939 Mordrel was general secretary and editor of Breiz Atao , who was then dissolved by the Daladier government in October 1939 as part of its nationwide measures against separatist groups because of his political statements and his connections to German officials .

The collaborator (1939–1945)

Even before France declared war on Germany in September 1939, Mordrel traveled to Germany with his wife, François and Anna Debauvais to avoid his imminent arrest. The refugees finally reached Berlin via Belgium , where, with the support of Gerhard von Tevenar, despite their French citizenship , they were given stateless papers and comfortable living and working opportunities. In October 1939, Mordrel and Debauvais issued a manifesto ( diskleriadur ) to the Bretons, stating Amsterdam as the place of publication for camouflage and in which they condemned France's declaration of war. The two founders of the PNB also sent several war letters ( Lizer Brezel ) to their supporters who stayed behind, in which they reminded that a real Breton must not die for France, Brittany's eternal enemy . Mordrel campaigned among his German contacts for independence for Brittany after a German victory and described himself as the head of a Breton government . On the recommendation of Mordrel and Debauvais, Breton prisoners of war were drawn together in Luckenwalde in order to win recruits for a Breton liberation army. However, these efforts were rarely crowned with success.

In May 1940, François Debauvais and Mordrel were sentenced to death by the military tribunal in Rennes for violating the external security of the French state and the integrity of its territory, for continuing and promoting a prohibited group and for inciting military members to desert and treason in absentia sentenced. On July 1, 1940, Mordrel returned to Brittany in the wake of the German invasion. There he became leader of the PNB and editor of the magazine L'Heure bretonne , which pursued a pro-German and anti-British line. In agreement with Werner Best , with whom he had had numerous conversations, he called for the formation of a Breton state independent of France and allied with Germany and regularly attacked the Vichy regime and its regional representatives in journalistic terms . Tensions arose in relation to Célestin Lainé , especially after the action of the Service Spécial in Gouézec in October 1940. When the Reich government in Berlin registered the low support of the PNB in ​​the Breton population, it finally withdrew its support and increasingly relied on Mordrel the Vichy regime. In the party there was then under the leadership of Raymond Delaporte and with the support of Célestin Lainé to a "palace revolution" against Mordrel's leadership. This also corresponded to the wishes of the German occupation, whose intentions ran counter to a Breton party that was independent of Germany and hostile to Vichy. On December 2, 1940, Mordrel resigned from both the party leadership and the leadership of l'Heure Bretonne . On December 8, 1940, Raymond Delaporte was his successor. As a result, the PNB's political line was less clearly separatist but also less oriented towards collaboration with the German occupation than before.

Mordrel was initially assigned to Stuttgart as his place of residence from December , and then to Berlin from mid-January 1941. Professor Leo Weisgerber offered him a position as a lecturer in Celtic at the University of Bonn , which Mordrel refused, and finally managed to return to Paris on May 6, 1941. Mordrel finally received permission to settle in the Mayenne department . From there he resumed contact with old autonomist friends and finally, with the consent of the Germans, moved to Rennes on September 16, 1941.

In 1942 Mordrel was encouraged and authorized to re-publish his magazine Stur . In 1943 he met regularly with Louis-Ferdinand Céline in Rennes and worked for the German propaganda broadcaster Radio Paris .

Exile and Return (1944–1972)

When the Allied troops approached , Mordrel fled to Germany on August 13, 1944 , where he was still negotiating with Jacques Doriot on February 16, 1945 about Breton independence within the framework of a future French federation based on the Swiss model . After the collapse of the Nazi state, Mordrel continued his escape. In June 1946, Mordrel was sentenced to death in absentia by a French court. After going through Brazil and Argentina , he finally settled in Spain . From his Spanish exile he published under the pseudonym Brython in the (French-speaking) Breton autonomist magazine Ar Vro (1954–1974). In 1972 he returned to France, was working under the pseudonym Otto Mohr (one of his pseudonyms from 1940) for the right-wing journal La Bretagne réelle and published several books, including Waffen SS d'Occident . In the 1980s Mordrel co-founded Kelc'h Maksen Wledig (after the Western Roman Emperor Maximus ), a circle in the tradition of the extreme right wing of Breton nationalistism. While Mordrel supported the socialist candidate François Mitterrand in the presidential election in 1981 , he sympathized at the same time with the ideas of GRECE , the theoretical circle around Alain de Benoist , which is assigned to the New Right . Mordrel died in 1985.

Mordrel's son is the French writer and editor Tristan Mordrelle (pseudonym: André Chelain ), who represents historical revisionist and negationist positions.

The writer (1972–1985)

In addition to his political activities, Olier Mordrel has worked as a writer in both Breton and French. In the 1920s he began to formulate his vision of “Brittany proper”, which he based on his studies of the persistence of a Celtic feeling.

After his return from exile, Olier Mordrel combined his political engagement during the previous 25 years and Breton nationalism with Celtic poetry and art history in his main work, Breiz Atao . He describes his career in detail, provides a very personal view of his political engagement and deals in detail with the criticism of other Breton nationalists (including Anna Youennou, the widow of François Debauvais , who Mordrel in her husband's biography as a very haughty, authoritarian, condescending and opportunistic personality). The contrasting representations of the relationship between Mordrel and Debauvais give an idea of ​​the increasingly deteriorating relationship between the two men. In Breiz Atao, Mordrel does not give any reasons for his very personal proximity to National Socialist ideology, but rather cites general motives such as opportunism, extraordinary circumstances and a certain affinity. Due to a particular Breton sensibility, he tries to differentiate the approach of the PNB from Italian fascism and German National Socialism and rejects the idea of ​​a “Breton copy” of foreign models.

In L'essence de la Bretagne (1977) he describes the disappearance of traditional society, the loss of orientation in the present and the need to gather all energies in order to awaken Brittany and its essence to new life. Through his literary essays , Mordrel tried in the last years of his life to influence the younger generations of Breton nationalists by proposing a political order like the one in La Voie Bretonne (1975). In Le Mythe de l'Hexagone and L'idée bretonne (both published in 1981) he tried to further develop the Breton nationalist doctrine of Breiz Atao from the 20s. He writes poems in Breton and translations, and in La littérature en Bretagne and Les hommes dieux (1979) he tries to trace and describe the expression of the Celtic soul in Breton writers. In 1983 he published an atlas of Brittany under the title La Bretagne , which reflects his views on the social and geographical situation of the Breton peninsula.

Spiritual legacy

Although Mordrel was ignored or attacked for a long time in the post-war period because of his proximity to fascism and National Socialism, he is still considered the main ideologue of Breton nationalism and his ideas are still alive today on the right wing of Breton nationalism. In his publications of the post-war period, Mordrel avoids going into the years of collaboration with the German occupying power. The right-wing extremist Breton party Adsav, founded in 2000, makes strong reference to Mordrel's ideology and held a memorial service at his grave in 2005 to mark the 20th anniversary of his death.

Publications

• Kanenn hini Langenau . Ti-Moulerez Kenwerzel Breiz Kenwerzel Breiz, Roazon (= Rennes ) [1932]. (Breton translation of The Way of Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke )
• Pensées d'un Nationaliste Breton . Nouvelles éditions bretonnes, Rennes 1933 (first published in Breiz Atao between 1921 and 1927 under the pseudonym J. La Bénelais)
• Celtisme et christianisme . Cahiers de la Bretagne réelle, Merdrignac 1969
• La subversion chrétienne (Celtisme et christianisme II) . Cahiers de la Bretagne réelle, Merdrignac 1972.
• The terrorisme religieux: la grande substitution ou l'inversion des valeurs (Celtisme et christianisme III) . Cahiers de la Bretagne réelle, Merdrignac 1978
• Certaine religion étrangère avec une étrange et malfaisante doctrine (Celtisme et christianisme IV) . Cahiers de la Bretagne réelle, Merdrignac 1979.
• Breiz Atao ou histoire et actualité du nationalisme breton . Editions Alain Moreau, Paris 1973.
• La voie Bretonne , Nature et Bretagne, Quimper 1975
• L'essence de la Bretagne . Éditions Kelenn, Paris 1977
• Les hommes-dieux, récits de mythologie celtique . Copernic, Paris 1979
• L'Idée Bretonne . Editions Albatros, Paris 1981
• Le mythe de l'hexagone . Picollec, Paris 1981
• La Bretagne , Nathan, Paris 1983

literature

• Alain Deniel: Le mouvement breton . Édition Maspéro, Paris 1976. ISBN 270710826X .
• Daniel Le Couëdic: Les architectes et l'idée bretonne 1904-1945. D'un renouveau des arts à la renaissance d'une identité . Société d´Histoire et d´Archéologie de Bretagne, Rennes 1995. ISBN 2-9505895-2-9 .
• Daniel Le Couëdic, Jean-Yves Veilard: Ar Seiz Breur, la création bretonne entre tradition et modernité, 1923-1947 . Terre de brume-Musée de Bretagne, Rennes 2000. ISBN 2911434714 .
• Joachim Lerchenmueller: ›Keltischer Sprengstoff‹ A study of the history of science on German Celtology from 1900 to 1945 . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1997. ISBN 3-484-38024-1 .
• Georges Cadiou: L'hermine et la croix gammée. Le mouvement breton et la collaboration . Éditions Apogée, Rennes 2006. ISBN 2-84398-239-1 .

Web links

• Stubborn. Revue d`Études 1934-1939 / 1942-1943 . Texts (in French) and photos (also by Olier Mordrel; last checked on November 20, 2010)
• Brittany from the perspective of the autonomist Olier Mordrel (1941) (PDF; 201 kB). Texts from the files of the SS - Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe with comments by Gerd Simon , Tübingen (both links last checked on November 14, 2010)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The list is not complete, s. Cadiou 2006 , p. 377.
2. ↑ Daniel Le Couëdic , 1995
3. ^ Breiz Atao , No. 74, February 1925.
4. ↑ The Swastika in Breiz Atao and Gwalarn in the 1920s  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ Alain Déniel, 1976
6. ↑ Stur , n ° 1-2, June 1942, p. 5: " [...] en 1933, [...] nous avons déclenché, dans notre vieux" Breiz Atao ", la campagne SAGA for a Breton national socialism. "
7. ↑ Stur , n ° 12, 01-03 (1938), pp. 25-26.
8. ↑ The contact persons for the Breton Autonomists are Dr. Hans Otto Wagner , Special Leader in the Foreign Office, Abwehr II, of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) and Gerhard von Tevenar , who had been managing director of the German Society for Celtological Studies (DGKS) since 1936 , a sub-organization of the German Ahnenerbe Research Association . The sources of these early contacts are considered poor
9. ↑ Joachim Lerchenmueller: ›Keltischer Sprengstoff‹ A study of the history of science on German Celtology from 1900 to 1945 . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1997. ISBN 3-484-38024-1 , pp. 384-389 and p. 395.
10. ↑ Georges Cadiou: L'hermine et la croix gammée. Le mouvement breton et la collaboration . Éditions Apogée, Rennes 2006. ISBN 2-84398-239-1 , p. 80.
11. ↑ Anna Youenou: Fransez Debauvais de Breiz-Atao et les siens: les mémoires du chef breton commentées par sa femme . Youenou-Debauvais, Rennes, n.d. (1974-1983). Vol. 3, pp. 29-38.
12. ↑ Georges Cadiou: L'hermine et la croix gammée. Le mouvement breton et la collaboration . Éditions Apogée, Rennes 2006. ISBN 2-84398-239-1 , pp. 11-18.
13. ↑ «atteinte à la securité extérieure de l'État et à l'intégrité du territoire, maintien ou recrutement d'un groupe dissous, provocation de militaires à la désertion et à la trahison»
14. ^ Place of publication Rennes; 201 issues between July 1940 and June 1944; Cadiou 2006, pp. 102-107 and 115-123.
15. ↑ In this magazine published since 1954 u. a. the Belgian collaborator Léon Degrelle and Roeland Raes , the founder of the Vlaams Blok .
16. ^ Jean-Yves Camus & René Monzat: Les Droites nationales et radicales en France . Presses universitaires de Lyon, Lyon 1992. ISBN 2729704167 .
17. ↑ Anna Youennou-Debauvais, 1974-1983