Robert Antelme

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Robert Antelme (born January 5, 1917 in Sartène , Corsica, † October 26, 1990 in Paris ) was a French writer .

Life

Antelme was married to Marguerite Duras . Arrested as a Resistance fighter by the Germans in June 1944, imprisoned in the Fresnes Gestapo prison , then deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp and the Gandersheim subcamp , he ended up on one of the so-called death marches towards the end of the war . On the journey in the freight car to Dachau without water or food, he saw the death of many comrades. He observes the total exhaustion and collapse of surviving concentration camp inmates, the group formation, the dehumanization promoted by the Nazis through hunger and dirt, hatred and solidarity.

Back in France since May 1945, Antelme wrote his book Das Menschengeschlecht in 1947 . It depicts life and death in the concentration camp and on the transport. It is one of the first books written shortly after the crimes and is one of the standard autobiographical works on industrial mass extermination. Not only is the description of the horror very moving, the style of language also gives an impression of the German death machine.

When Antelme returned to France - the survivors had meanwhile been nursed a bit by the American liberators of the camp - he still weighed 35 kg. Contrary to expectations, he survived. The horror of the German concentration camp experience caused him, together with his then wife Marguerite Duras (divorced from her: 1947) and the writer Dionys Mascolo , to identify strongly with Jews, although none of them were any. Duras' son, Jean Mascolo, said that it was not until late that he discovered that he was not a Jew, as the remarks at home always went in such a direction. In this the trio differed significantly from the rest of the French Resistance, whose participants reluctantly took notice of the extermination of the Jews (and Vichy's participation in it) until well into the 1970s , as did the rest of French society. Typically a disparaging remark in the Communist Party organ L'Humanité: the Jews had shown a “passivity of the racially persecuted”, in contrast to the alleged heroism of the political Resistance.

Another peculiarity they shared with a great many intellectuals of the post-war period was joining and working in the Communist Party. In the upper-class 6th arrondissement “ Rive Gauche ”, however, the only female proletarian in the CP cell was the porter of Duras' house. When the PCF aligned itself more and more closely with the Soviet Union with the Cold War, these intellectuals got into a conflict with their striving for freedom. The CP leadership therefore founded its own writers' association, subordinate directly to the Central Committee, in order to keep them away from the proletarians and to keep their "harmful influence" low. When the trio ridiculed the Communist Party leadership on a cheerful evening and this was brought up by informers, all three were excluded (1949). For a long time, however, they saw themselves as communists.

The tensions between Antelme and his former wife Duras increased as she processed his suffering into literature. Her experiences in the concentration camp and the psychological and physical breakdown following his return, then his re-blossoming, were first described in the magazine Les Sorcières (1970s), then in Der Pain (German for the first time 1986).

Robert Antelme died in 1990.

Street sign in Paris

reception

In France, because of its high literary quality, Antelme's book enjoys a similar popularity as in Italy the books Primo Levi's Se questo è un uomo (German title: "Is that a man?") From 1947 and La tregua (German title: "Die Atempause") ) from 1963. The entry in Kindler's New Literature Lexicon attests L'espèce humaine probably the most shocking French description of German concentration camp horrors , which "gained their suggestive power from the direct representation of those who had just been overcome" and only barely survived That own existence relates to constantly questioned experiences.

Leslie Kaplan , writer of a younger generation, refers to Antelme and expressly mentions his lasting impression on her writing in an interview with Marguerite Duras under the title Die Fabrik in an appendix to her prose piece Excess .

Works

  • L'espèce humaine. 1949.
    • Übers. Eugen Helmlé : The human race. FRG edition, 1987.
    • New edition: Diaphanes Verlag, Zurich 2016, ISBN 978-3-03734-632-7 .
    • Übers. Roland Schacht : The human species. GDR edition 1949. Number no. further translations, among others into English, Czech and Dutch.
  • Textes inédits sur L'espèce humaine. Essais et témoignages. Gallimard, Paris 1996, ISBN 2-07-074614-3 .
  • Revenge?. The theft of bread . Diaphanes Verlag, Zurich 2016, ISBN 978-3-03734-894-9 .

literature

  • Further biographical information in the literature on Marguerite Duras : La Douleur , dt. The pain.

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Rössig in: KNNL. Munich 1988.
  2. ↑ ibid.
  3. ↑ Leslie Kaplan, Der Excess , Manholt, Bremen 1988, p. 110.
  4. ^ Two early texts by RA Le genre humaine jamais abandonné from the magazine Les Vivants . Cahiers publiés par des prisonniers et déportés. Furthermore, numerous statements about him and his work, for example by Maurice Blanchot , Leslie Kaplan , Jean-Pierre Faye , Jean-Luc Nancy . In Franz.
personal data
SURNAME Antelme, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French author
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Sartène , Corsica
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1990
Place of death Paris , France