Paul Jamin

Paul Jamin (born August 11, 1911 in Liège , † February 19, 1995 in Ixelles ) was a Belgian cartoonist . Friends of Hergé from a young age , he began his career as a draftsman with him. During the German occupation in World War II , Jamin worked for the occupation and collaborative press and as a propaganda spokesman on the radio, for which he was sentenced to death after the country was liberated . After being converted to life imprisonment, Jamin was released early and then returned to work as a cartoonist. Twice, shortly before the end of the war and after his release from prison, he worked briefly in Germany. Jamin was extremely productive throughout his life, and his work comprises a five-digit number of drawings.

Life

Jamin grew up with four siblings, his father was a chemist, his mother taught drawing at a school for future teachers. His cousin Georges Jamin was a sculptor. After the First World War , Jamin's parents built a farm in northern France. During this time, he went to school in Vervins , was an altar boy there and otherwise spent most of the time drawing.

However, Jamin's parents quickly gave up rural life and moved to Brussels , where they opened a drugstore. Jamin's talent was noticed at school and his parents abandoned their desire for him to become a lawyer. He attended the Institut Saint-Luc for a while , but did not enjoy the classical training, so he left it again.

At the age of 18, Jamin became friends with Georges Remi, later known as Hergé, while he was with the Boy Scouts. The latter worked for the newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle and convinced his friend to join the editorial team. Editor Norbert Wallez also recognized Jamin's talent, who from then on worked with Hergé on the children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième and above all wrote the Mot de l'oncle Jo , which he also illustrated himself while Hergé wrote his first Tim-and-Struppi stories there published. However, Jamin's occupations - he also worked on nudges and quilts - did not fill him up, and he dreamed of drawing political caricatures. This opportunity finally arose in 1936 when he moved with a significant part of the editorial staff of the Vingtième Siècle to the newspaper Le Pays réel founded by Léon Degrelle , which formed the mouthpiece of Rexism .

The political affairs that occurred at that time were gratefully received by Jamin, and an anthology of his drawings appeared, to which Degrelle wrote a foreword. Jamin also worked for the weekly Cassandre, edited by Paul Colin , and for L'Ouest , which was founded in 1939 by the later editor-in-chief of Le Soir , Raymond de Becker .

During the German occupation of Belgium, Jamin worked for the occupation organ Brussels newspaper as well as the collaborating Le Soir , Le Pays réel and the Flemish Volk en Staat, and during this time created more than 500 drawings that were generally equally remarkably executed as well as the ideological orientation of the Reflect occupying power. According to the Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline, the former was persuaded by Jamin as an intermediary to publish his drawings in the soir controlled by the Germans . On the propaganda broadcaster Radio Bruxelles , Jamin presented an imitation of patriotic programs on the BBC called Bavards, Bobards, Canards (babbler, swindler, newspaper ducks ), which was provided with the marching music of the films Laurel and Hardys as a signature melody. During these years he met the then very young Renée Meunier at the Rexist headquarters, who worked there as a secretary. Jamin was married at the time (the marriage had two children) and only lived with Meunier after the death of his wife in 1971.

Shortly before the liberation of Belgium Jamin went to Berlin and worked from there a. a. for L'Avenir newspaper and Toison d'Or publisher . In March 1945 the Belgian Council of War sentenced him to death in absentia and to pay the state five million Belgian francs. Jamin returned to Belgium after the German surrender and was arrested in Hasselt . The Military Court lowered the amount to be paid to 100,000 Belgian francs, but otherwise upheld the death sentence, which was commuted to life imprisonment in December 1946. While in prison, Jamin received moral support from his friend Hergé. At times he shared his cell with his brother Ernest, who was director of the Pays réel . Jamin was released early on Easter 1951.

Because of the legal situation in Belgium, it was theoretically not possible for Jamin to continue working in the old way. The Belgian government-in-exile wanted to use an article to prevent subversive publications, an intention that arose from the war situation, but which encouraged abuse after the war (the article of the law was then later rejected by the European Court of Human Rights ). Jamin first went back to Germany, where he drew a daily caricature for the Ruhr Nachrichten under the pseudonym "Peter Klipp". This job opportunity had arisen through his contact with the director of the newspaper, with whom he had known during the war in Brussels. He continued to closely follow the events in Belgium and also worked for Pan , which was founded in 1945 , which is why he traveled to his home country every 14 days. He also created advertising names for Martini and Cinzano , and drew under the pseudonym "de Kler" for the Flemish newspaper De Vlaamse Linie , which was also known as The Bulletin , Belqiue numéro 1 , L'événement , Impact , Le Métropole , Trends , De Standaard , Ciné-Revue and L'Éventail many other media followed.

In 1951, on the initiative of the new director of Pan, a long-term collaboration began, and under the pseudonym Alidor , his drawings became one of the trademarks. Almost 40 years later, Jamins and the editor-in-chief Henri Vellut broke with the paper because they did not agree with the personnel decision to let the young Stéphan Jourdain take over the management of the newspaper. They then left Pan and founded a new satirical newspaper with Père Ubu . In the past forty years, Jamin had made nearly 20,000 drawings.

In 1998, a limited edition of 500 copies was published by Stéphane Steeman with the collaboration of Jamin's partner Meunier, who managed his estate, published an homage to the friendship between Jamin and Hergé, Complices cités . In 2010, fifteen years after Jamin's death, Pan was bought by Père Ubu and merged with him to form the new title Ubu-Pan .

literature

• Pierre Stéphany: Le monde de Pan. Histoire drôle d'un drôle de journal 1945–2002. Editions Racine, Brussels 2002, ISBN 978-2-873-86267-1 , esp. Pp. 69-75.

Web links

• Portrait at Lambiek (English)
• Literature by and about Paul Jamin in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Geneviève Duchenne, Vincent Dujardin, Michel Dumoulin: Rey, Snoy, Spaak, fondateurs belges de l'Europe: actes du colloque organisé par la Fondation Paul-Henri Spaak et l'Institut historique belge de Rome, Belgisch Historisch Instituut te Rome , en collaboration with the Groupe d'études d'histoire de l'Europe contemporaine, les 10 et 11 may 2007 à l'Academia Belgica à Rome. Emile Bruylant, Brussels 2007, ISBN 978-2-8027-2498-8 , p. 270, footnote 25.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Pierre Stéphany: Le monde de Pan. Histoire drôle d'un drôle de journal 1945–2002. Editions Racine, Brussels 2002, ISBN 978-2-873-86267-1 , p. 69.
3. ↑ Pierre Stéphany: Le monde de Pan. Histoire drôle d'un drôle de journal 1945–2002. Editions Racine, Brussels 2002, ISBN 978-2-873-86267-1 , pp. 69-70.
4. ↑ Pierre Stéphany: Le monde de Pan. Histoire drôle d'un drôle de journal 1945–2002. Editions Racine, Brussels 2002, ISBN 978-2-873-86267-1 , pp. 70-71.
5. ↑ Pierre Stéphany: Le monde de Pan. Histoire drôle d'un drôle de journal 1945–2002. Editions Racine, Brussels 2002, ISBN 978-2-873-86267-1 , p. 71.
6. ↑ Pierre Stéphany: Le monde de Pan. Histoire drôle d'un drôle de journal 1945–2002. Editions Racine, Brussels 2002, ISBN 978-2-873-86267-1 , pp. 72-73.
7. ↑ Pierre Stéphany: Le monde de Pan. Histoire drôle d'un drôle de journal 1945–2002. Editions Racine, Brussels 2002, ISBN 978-2-873-86267-1 , pp. 73-74.
8. ↑ Pierre Stéphany: Le monde de Pan. Histoire drôle d'un drôle de journal 1945–2002. Editions Racine, Brussels 2002, ISBN 978-2-873-86267-1 , p. 74.
9. ↑ Pierre Stéphany: Le monde de Pan. Histoire drôle d'un drôle de journal 1945–2002. Editions Racine, Brussels 2002, ISBN 978-2-873-86267-1 , pp. 259-261.
10. ↑ Pierre Stéphany: Le monde de Pan. Histoire drôle d'un drôle de journal 1945–2002. Editions Racine, Brussels 2002, ISBN 978-2-873-86267-1 , p. 127.
11. ↑ Pierre Stéphany: Le monde de Pan. Histoire drôle d'un drôle de journal 1945–2002. Editions Racine, Brussels 2002, ISBN 978-2-873-86267-1 , p. 73 u. Footnote there.