Pierre Drieu la Rochelle

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Pierre Drieu la Rochelle in 1938

Pierre Eugène Drieu la Rochelle (born January 3, 1893 in Paris ; † March 16, 1945 ibid), also: Drieu La Rochelle , was a French writer . In the 1930s and during the Second World War , he was one of France's leading intellectuals. He is known to broader strata as the epitome of the dandy and because of his role during the collaboration with the German occupying powers.

Life

Drieu attended a Catholic boys' school, but was already a staunch atheist at 14. Friedrich Nietzsche served as his model .

After failing an important exam in his law degree, Drieu fell into a crisis. During this time he enlisted as a soldier in the First World War , during which he served in the infantry and artillery (including off Verdun and the Dardanelles), was wounded several times and became an adjutant (since September 16, 1918, German about sergeant major ) rise. He later processed the war experiences without illusions in his works (e.g. in the Comédie de Charleroi ). After the war, however, he got into a deep crisis of meaning. Since he had experienced the war positively in the first place, he came to a chauvinistic attitude to life, which he u. a. in his autobiographically inspired novel Gilles (German The Inadequate ).

Drieu la Rochelle worked for André Gide's literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Française ( NRF ) and was part of French surrealism . André Malraux , Louis Aragon and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry were among his friends. From 1917 to 1925 he was married to Colette Jéramec, a Jew; later he rescued her and her two children from the second marriage from the Drancy assembly camp from being transported to death camps. After that he had numerous affairs, u. a. with Victoria Ocampo and Christiane Renault, wife of the industrialist Louis Renault .

Drieu's writing style is characterized by a meticulous observation of human behavior. In the inter-war period he criticized the decadent life of the French upper class in his novels (e.g. in rêveuse bourgeoise , dt. Dreamy bourgeoisie). He was a close friend of Jacques Rigaut , whose suicide he set a literary memorial in the story The Irrlicht . Because of its haunting portrayal of human failure, this story is considered one of Drieu's most important works among literary scholars.

Course towards fascism

From 1925 he increasingly went his own way. The Antibourgeois changed his political preferences several times. He belonged temporarily to the conservative and anti-parliamentary Redressement Français , but at the beginning of the 1930s he belonged to the left-liberal Parti radical . From around 1934 he became a partisan of French fascism . In 1936 he joined the fascist Parti populaire français by Jacques Doriot in. During the German occupation he was committed to the Vichy regime . Drieu's fascism is individual. Although he is an anti-Semite , he protests against the racism of the German veneration of “Germanic blood”. What he is looking for is the way to a strong European union between the power blocs of New York and Moscow - to a kind of League of Nations of the fascists on the old continent.

He became a spokesman for the collaboration with the German National Socialists . The Nazis accepted him because like them he represented anti-Semitism and anti-communism . With the representative of the occupying forces, Gerhard Heller , who translated five of Drieu la Rochelle's works into German after the war, Drieu re- established the NRF in December 1940 at the Gallimard publishing house . Drieu was its editor-in-chief until the magazine with the July issue of 1943 was discontinued.

In 1941 and 1942, Drieu and other collaborationist authors attended the so-called European Poets 'Meeting in Weimar , which was organized by the European Writers' Association , a National Socialist propaganda organization conceived by Joseph Goebbels , under its then chairman Hans Carossa (who only took part in 1941) and its Secretary General Carl Rothe .

In his Récit secret (secret report), written in 1944/45, Drieu, disappointed by Hitler’s politics, confessed that fascism was a wrong path.

On March 16, 1945, La Rochelle, who was threatened with arrest and who “in all likelihood would not have escaped the death sentence”, committed suicide by gas - not without first wishing communism victory. The suicide was preceded by two further suicide attempts. The Récit secret contributed to a certain rehabilitation of Drieu in post-war France.

" Ernst Nolte wrote:" Drieu has perhaps most vividly embodied in himself the colorful, shimmering, intangible transitions elusive essence of French fascism. "

reception

As early as the 1970s, Drieu met with interest from the German New Right .

In 2012 there was a discussion in France when Drieu was included in the “Pantheon of French Literature”, the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade , albeit with only a partial edition . Despite his anti-Semitic attitude and his collaboration with National Socialism, his work is now counted as “patrimoine”, the national cultural heritage, in the French self-image.

Fonts

  • Interrogation. 1917.
  • Mesure de la France. 1922.
  • L'Homme couvert de femmes. 1925. German: The woman man. Translated by Gerhard Heller . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1972.
  • Le Jeune Européen. 1927.
  • Le feu follet. 1931. German: The will-o'-the-wisp . Translated by Gerhard Heller . Propylaea, Berlin 1968.
  • La Comédie de Charleroi. 1934. German: The Charleroi Comedy Translated by Andrea Spingler and Eva Moldenhauer . Manesse Verlag , Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-7175-2396-3 .
  • Socialisme fasciste. 1934.
  • Rêveuse bourgoisie. 1937. German: Dreamy bourgeoisie. Translated by Gerhard Heller . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1969.
  • Gilles. 1939. German: The inadequate. Translated by Gerhard Heller . Propylaea, Berlin 1966. New edition. Young Europe, Dresden 2016, ISBN 978-3-9817828-2-0 .
  • Notes for comprendre le siècle. 1941.
  • In the Invalides . In: Axel von Freytagh-Loringhoven , Joachim Moras (Ed.): European Review. 17th year 1941, issue 3. DVA, Stuttgart, Berlin.
  • L'Homme à cheval. 1943. German: The Bolivian dream. Translated by Friedrich Griese . Edition Maschke, Hohenheim 1981.
  • Les Chiens de paille. 1944, published 1964.
  • Mémoires de Dirk Raspe. 1944/1945, published 1966. German: The Memoirs of Dirk Raspe. Translated by Gerhard Heller . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1972.
  • Récit secret. 1944/1945, published 1951. German: Secret report.
  • Textes politiques 1919–1945. Présentation de Julien Hervier, Paris 2009.
  • Lettres d'un amour dèfunt - Correspondance 1929–1944. Pierre Drieu La Rochelle / Victoria Ocampo , Paris 2009.
  • Romans, récits, nouvelles. Edition publiée sous la direction de Jean-Francois Louette, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Gallimard, Paris, 2012.

Film adaptations

literature

  • Pierre Andreu, Frédéric Grover: Drieu La Rochelle. Hachette, Paris 1979, ISBN 2-01-004521-1
  • Marie Balvet: Itinéraire d'un intellectuel vers le fascisme. Drieu La Rochelle. Presses Univ. de France, Paris 1984, ISBN 2-13-038467-6
  • Dominique Desanti : Drieu La Rochelle. You dandy au nazi. Flammarion, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-08-066835-8
  • Marc Dambre (ed.): Drieu La Rochelle, écrivain et intellectuel. Actes du colloque international organisé par le Center de recherche “Etudes sur Nimier”, Sorbonne nouvelle, 9 and 10 December 1993. Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-87854-092-1
  • Martin Ebel: Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (1893-1945). Schäuble, Rheinfelden u. a. 1994. (= Roman Studies series; 60) ISBN 3-87718-770-6
  • Edoardo Fiore: Poeti armati. Drieu - Brasillach - Céline, 6 febbraio 1934 - 6 febbraio 1945. Ed. Settimo Sigillo, Rome 1999. (= minima; 3)
  • Julien Hervier: Deux individus contre l'histoire. Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Ernst Jünger. Klincksieck, Paris 1978, ISBN 2-252-02020-2
  • Hermann Hofer: Interpretations of literary texts of the collaboration. PDlR: "L'Homme à cheval" and "Les Chiens de paille". In: Karl Kohut (Ed.): Literature of the Resistance and Collaboration in France, Vol. 3, Texts and Interpretations. Narr, Tübingen 1984 ISBN 3-87808-910-4 pp. 156-162, as well as passim in all 3 volumes
  • Jacques Lecarme: Drieu La Rochelle ou le bal des maudits. Presses Univ. de France, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-13-049968-6
  • Solange Leibovici: Le sang et l'encre. Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, a psychobiography. Rodopi, Amsterdam a. a. 1994. (= Faux titre; 88) ISBN 90-5183-703-8
  • Jean-Marie Pérusat: Drieu la Rochelle ou le goût du malentendu. Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1977. (= European university publications; R.13; 54) ISBN 3-261-02352-X
  • Alfred Pfeil: The French war generation and fascism. PD la R. as a political writer. New Alsace-Lorraine, Strasbourg and Uni-Druck, Munich 1971, ISBN 3-87821-072-8 (Diss. Phil. Marburg 1968)
  • Daniele Rocca: Drieu La Rochelle. Aristocrazia, eurofascismo e stalinismo. Stylos, Aosta 2000 (= Mestiere di storico; 2) ISBN 88-87775-02-8
  • Frédéric Saumade: Drieu La Rochelle. L'homme en désordre. Berg International, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-911289-59-5
  • Maurizio Serra: Fratelli separati. Drieu-Aragon-Malraux. Il fascista, il comunista, l'avventuriero. Settecolori, Lamezia Terme (Catanzaro) 2006, ISBN 88-902367-0-1
  • Margarete Zimmermann : The literature of French fascism. Research on the work of Pierre Drieu La Rochelles, 1917-1942. Fink, Munich 1979. (= Freiburg writings on Romance philology; 37) ISBN 3-7705-1822-5
  • Destruction in the eye: to the "rediscovery" of Drieu . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1966, pp. 176-181 ( online ).

Web links

Commons : Pierre Drieu la Rochelle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Drieu is the actual family name; La Rochelle is a nickname given to one of his ancestors during the Napoleonic Wars.
  2. ↑ Dominique Desanti: Drieu La Rochelle: you dandy au nazi. Flammarion, Paris, 1992, ISBN 2-08-066835-8 .
  3. ^ Pierre Drieu la Rochelle: Romans, récits, nouvelles, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard 2012, p. LXIV.
  4. ↑ a b c Christoph Vormweg: The "List Otto". P. 22; accessed on August 22, 2015.
  5. ↑ Hanns Grössel : Not bribed - only responsible . In: Die Zeit , No. 33/1980.
  6. ^ Paul Léautaud: War Diary 1939-1945. Berenberg, Berlin, 2011, p. 164 ISBN 978-3-937834-42-9 .
  7. ↑ Ernst Nolte: Fascism in its epoch. Piper, Munich / Zurich, 2004, ISBN 3-492-20365-5 , p. 26.
  8. ↑ Cf. for example the brochure by Ernst Arndt: Pierre Drieu la Rochelle: A European between the fronts; Bibliography, short reports and messages (= Young Forum 1/76). Verlag German-European Studies, Hamburg, 1976, DNB 770460852 [without ISBN].
  9. ↑ Thomas Laux: The Ostracized One - A Provocation? Drieu la Rochelle has arrived at the “Bibliothèque de la Pléiade”. Neue Zürcher Zeitung , July 6, 2013.
  10. ↑ On the impossibility of giving one's courage meaning in FAZ of April 28, 2016, page 10.
personal data
SURNAME Drieu la Rochelle, Pierre
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Drieu La Rochelle, Pierre Eugène (full name); Drieu La Rochelle, Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French author
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH March 16, 1945
Place of death Paris