Raoul Villain
Raoul Villain (born September 19, 1885 in Reims , † September 14, 1936 in Ibiza ) was the French nationalist who, on July 31, 1914 , in the course of the July crisis and immediately before the outbreak of the First World War, the socialist politician and war opponent Jean Jaurès murdered.
Life
After dropping out of school in his native town, Villain served a few months in the 94e regiment d'infanterie in Bar-le-Duc from 1906-1907 and was then postponed. 1911–1912 he worked for a few months as a deputy supervisor ( surveillant suppléant ) at the Collège Stanislas de Paris . Villain was initially a member of the Catholic organization Le Sillon under the direction of Marc Sangnier , until it was banned by Pope Pius X in 1910. He then joined the nationalist student group Ligue des jeunes amis de l'Alsace-Lorraine (“League of young Friends of Alsace-Lorraine ”). The " Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine " had been part of the German Empire since the Franco-German War in 1870/71 . In France there were revanchists who advocated or demanded the military reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine.
In June 1914, Villain enrolled at the École du Louvre to study archeology. In a police report he was described as "unstable, filled with religious mysticism". On the evening of July 31, 1914 , through the window of the “Café du Croissant” he shot and killed Jaurès, who was then considered a leading pacifist within the French left.
Villain sat over four and a half years, throughout the First World War , in custody . His trial began on March 24, 1919; on March 29, 1919 he was acquitted by a jury. Eleven of the jury voted for acquittal and one against. One of the jurors said: "If the war opponent Jaurès had prevailed, France would not have been able to win the war." The widow of the murdered Jean Jaurès had to bear the legal costs. The acquittal provoked protests and a letter to the editor from Anatole France was published in the newspaper L'Humanité .
Villain led an unsteady life since the 1920s. He was initially a croupier in Gdansk , then lived in Memel until 1926 and moved to the Spanish island of Ibiza in 1932 , where he was soon called "the madman of the port".
Villain was found murdered after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War . It is believed that Spanish Republicans killed him as a supposed Francoist spy .
Web links
- L'assassinat de Jaurès (French)
- Raoul Villain, 1885–1936 on cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr
Footnotes
- ↑ Le Matin (March 30, 1919, pp. 1 f.): Villain est acquitté
- ↑ a b www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/fr/raoul-villain
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Villain, Raoul |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French nationalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 19, 1885 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Reims |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 14, 1936 |
| Place of death | Ibiza |