Robert Brasillach

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Robert Brasillach (1938)

Robert Brasillach (  [ ʁɔbɛʁ bʁazijak ] ) (born March 31, 1909 in Perpignan ; † February 6, 1945 in Arcueil ) was an influential French writer , journalist and film critic who collaborated with the German occupying forces in France during the Second World War , which is why he arrested and executed in the purges after the liberation of France . Please click to listen!Play

Biography and activity until 1940

Brasillach grew up in Perpignan in the eastern French Pyrenees in a Catalan family as the son of a lieutenant in the French colonial army. As early as 1914, his father was killed in fighting in the French colony of Morocco . Robert Brasillach graduated with distinction from the elite university ENS and soon made a name for himself as a literary and film critic in magazines such as Action Francaise and Nouvelle Revue Française .

Brasillach was considered one of France's great literary talents in the 1930s . Early on, Brasillach was active on the right-wing political spectrum for a Christian, anti-liberal, authoritarian nationalism against the republic as well as against the English, the Germans and above all against the Jews . He sympathized with the storming of parliament by the French right in February 1934. Italian fascism and German National Socialism impressed him, as did many young intellectuals in France, but also important and influential writers such as Charles Maurras (member of the Académie française since 1936 ), Maurice Barrès and Léon Daudet , son of Alphonse Daudet , Louis-Ferdinand Céline , Pierre Drieu la Rochelle and Henri Béraud . In his novel Les Sept Couleurs he raved about the Nazi party rally , which he had attended in 1934, and the handsome boy under swastika flags. He was also fascinated by Leni Riefenstahl's films by his own admission . However, in 1935 he described Hitler's Mein Kampf as “the masterpiece of angry cretinism ”.

In the 1930s, Brasillach wrote the novels Das Kind der Nacht (French: L'Enfant de la nuit ), Der Funkendieb (French: Le Voleur d'étincelles ), But Us Loves Paris (French: Le Marchand d'oiseaux ou le Méridien de Paris ) and For a lifetime (French: Comme le temps passe ). In the novel The Seven Colors (French: Les Sept Couleurs ) published in 1937 , which takes place in Paris , Florence , Nuremberg and Spain , and in two other stories, he glorified the Spanish Falangists and General Franco's army , the story Les Cadets de l'Alcazar he wrote in honor of Colonel José Moscardó . In 1935 he and Maurice Bardèche published the well-known Histoire du cinéma (Eng .: "History of the cinema"). Together with Bardèche, Brasillach wrote a history of the war in Spain ( Histoire de la guerre d'Espagne , 1939) in which the authors defended the rebellion of the troops under Franco and attacked the left-wing popular front. In several articles he sharply attacked André Malraux , who was involved in the war on the Republican side .

From 1937 to 1943 he was editor-in-chief of the anti-Semitic magazine Je suis partout (German: “I am everywhere”), in which he ran slanderous campaigns against political opponents and agitation against the Jews and, in individual cases, called for the murder of unpopular people. “We have to get rid of the Jews once and for all and are not allowed to keep any children” he wrote in Je suis partout .

Activity during the Vichy regime and the German occupation

After taking part in the war as a lieutenant in the French army, he was taken prisoner by Germany in 1940, and from September 1940 to March 1941 in the Soest officers' camp . In June 1941 he was dismissed so that he could take over the post of "General Commissioner for Film" in the Vichy administration . He also continued to manage the editor-in-chief of Je suis partout , which is now the most influential publication for French-friendly intellectuals. He was in close contact with the German ambassador to France Otto Abetz , the sculptor and architect Arno Breker , the writer and philosopher Ernst Jünger and the director of the German Institute in Paris Karl Epting . He had a homosexual relationship with the censor of the German occupying power Karl Heinz Bremer .

He collaborated by denouncing former members of the government, resistance fighters and hidden Jews with full names and addresses in his magazine “Je suis partout” . In 1941, his autobiography was published under the title Notre Avant-Guerre ( Eng : “Our Pre-war period ").

In October 1941, Brasillach took part in the Weimar Poets' Meeting with six other French writers ( Abel Bonnard , Jacques Chardonne , Pierre Drieu La Rochelle , Roman Fernandez , André Fraigneau , Marcel Jouhandeau ) at the invitation of Hanns Johst , the chairman of the Reichsschrifttumskammer , at which they founded the European Writers' Association with other writers from countries in the German sphere of influence willing to collaborate . Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels , who initiated the meeting, gave the assembled writers a dinner, which Brasillach also attended.

Goebbels and Johst organized this association of collaborating writers, which was generously sponsored by the Reich Ministry of Propaganda, but which remained largely uninfluenced in all of the countries occupied by Germany until the end of 1945.

Brasillach (second from left, with glasses) with Fernand de Brinon (center) in 1943 during the reburial of the victims of the Katyn massacre

In addition to his work as publisher and editor-in-chief of Je suis partout , he wrote even more fanatical German-friendly articles for other publications, such as the magazine Révolution nationale , and continued to work as a writer. His anti-Semitism also became more radical: on September 25, 1942, he wrote: "You have to throw out all of the Jews and not spare the children."

In May 1943, in his capacity as President of the "French Volunteer Legion against Bolshevism" ( Ligue des Volontaires Français contre le Bolchévisme ), he was a member of a delegation of the Vichy government, led by State Secretary Fernand de Brinon , which controlled the areas of the Soviet Union occupied by the Wehrmacht toured. The purpose of the trip was to inspect the French volunteer division "Charlemagne" . The delegation was accompanied by officers from the German garrison in Paris, including the literary censor Gerhard Heller . On the route was the Katyn forest , in which the mass graves with the murdered Polish officers had been uncovered.

Even before leaving, Brasillach wrote in an editorial that if the Soviet Union won the war against the Germans, the French intelligentsia would also face a "Katyn". In Katyn, Brasillach reported on his impressions of Katyn for the German-controlled Radio Paris . In his newspaper he also published a long report on Katyn, in which he emphasized the Soviet perpetrators.

Arrest, trial and execution

After the Allied invasion of Normandy and the subsequent advance to Paris Brasillach sat in complete disregard of the reality from it, of the highest representatives of the Vichy regime and the collaboration , including Louis-Ferdinand Céline , according Sigmaringen to flee.

After the Allies took Paris (August 25, 1944), he initially hid in an attic. His mother was arrested in September 1944, and he volunteered to go to justice in mid-September 1944. He was convinced that he had done a great job for France. The new French government under General de Gaulle, however, took immediate harsh action against the officials of the Vichy regime and the collaboration: The first death sentence was against the editor of the anti-Semitic and collaborationist magazine Aujourd'hui (English: "today"), Georges Suarez , fell in October 1944 and carried out on November 9, 1944. Also in 1944 the trial of the political director (1928–1943) of the anti-Semitic magazine Gringoire , Henri Béraud , took place. He was charged with treason sentenced to death, but General de Gaulle to life imprisonment pardoned.

As a consequence, Brasillach was immediately arrested and imprisoned in Fresnes Prison, where he awaited his trial, which took place in January 1945. Its defender was Jacques Isorni , the defender of Marshal Pétain . The public prosecutor's office accused him of promoting the loss of French sovereignty by campaigning for a reorganization of Europe under German dominance and of spreading lies by the German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, naming his reports on Katyn. Brasillach wrote in a statement on his Katyn reports: "We wanted to see Katyn, we saw it and said what we saw." On January 19, 1945, Brasillach was sentenced to death for treason and espionage and on February 6 Executed in Fort de Montrouge in Arcueil in 1945 . General de Gaulle rejected a petition for clemency, although some well-known and politically uncompromised writers ( Jean Anouilh , Marcel Aymé , Jean-Louis Barrault , Albert Camus , Paul Claudel , Jean Cocteau , Colette , Roland Dorgelès , Arthur Honegger , François Mauriac , Daniel-Rops , Jean Schlumberger , Jean Paulhan , Paul Valéry , Maurice de Vlaminck and other intellectuals) had campaigned for Brasillach. “In the field of literature, too, talent obliges us to take responsibility,” said de Gaulle, explaining the decision.

His grave is in the Cimetière de Charonne cemetery in Paris . Every year on the anniversary of Brasillach's death (February 6), the Cercle franco-Hispanique , a group of friends of French right-wing extremists and Spanish supporters of Falange and Franquism , lays a wreath at his grave.

While in custody, in addition to poetry, he wrote the Lettre à un soldat de la classe 60 , an anti-Bolshevik text in the form of a fictional letter to a four-year-old boy who would be conscripted in 1960. In this text he tries indirectly to justify his actions. The text also shows how far away from political reality the enthusiastic intellectual Brasillach is.

Reception after 1945 until today

Soon after the execution of Brasilach, legends began to emerge on the part of the political right. In particular, Brazil's defense attorney, Jacques Isorni , portrayed him as a great writer who was practically murdered by a court allegedly dominated by communists - in reality only one of the jury was a communist, the prosecutor was even a friend of Isorni.

The attempt to put the crimes of Robert Brasillach into perspective was made primarily by Brasillach's brother-in-law, Maurice Bardèche , literature professor and editor of the magazine Défense de l'Occident . He became the protagonist of historical revisionism and neo-fascism . His claim that Brasillach was "killed" solely because he was the editor of the collaborationist and anti-Semitic magazine Je suis partout is as legendary as his statement that he only became politically active because his brother-in-law was sentenced to death: Maurice Bardèche already wrote in the 1930s in Je suis partout . As early as 1947, he vehemently justified the collaboration to François Mauriac . His writings before and after 1945 are characterized by unusually radical racism and anti-Semitism. In 1948 he published a book in which he denied the crimes of the National Socialists. Maurice Bardèche was in very close contact with Paul Rassinier , the most famous French protagonist of revisionism and the "Auschwitz lie" in its French form of negationism , for whose works he acted as editor and for whom he gave the funeral speech in 1967.

Since the end of the 1940s, the political right tried to stylize Robert Brasillach as a martyr. In 1946 the remnants of the "Action française" organized around the magazine Aspects de la France founded by Pierre Boutang . In the course of the Algerian war around 1960, the political right in France gained further popularity and intensified the creation of legends around Brasillach. Robert Brasillach was and is a leading figure for his cult of youth and strength, his rejection of democracy and for the Front National (FN), founded in 1972, with a regular 10-20% vote its racism, which claims the inequality of people. The specific crimes of Robert Brasillach, for which he was convicted, are regularly not mentioned by the right-wing extremists . Even the death of Maurice Bardèche in 1998 did not slow down the tendency towards apologetics by Robert Brasillach: The widow Bardèche and sister of Robert Brasillach now sees her brother fully rehabilitated (2002).

In Poland, the national-conservative press presented the condemnation of Brasilach as revenge by left-wing forces for reporting on Katyn.

Works (selection)

Robert Brasillach's novella Die Kadetten des Alcázar has been available in German since 2017 , published by Jungeuropa Verlag, Dresden. Henri Massis is co-author of the work, written in 1936.
The following literary works translated into German between the 1930s and 1960s can be obtained from antiquarian booksellers:

  • For a lifetime (German 1948) (first published in German translation in 1938)
  • Paris loves us (German 1948) (1962 also published as dtv-TB)
  • Present Virgil (German 1962)
  • Greetings for Marie-Ange (German 1954)

In French (first edition)

  • Presence de Virgile , 1931
  • Le Voleur d'étincelles , 1932
  • L'Enfant de la nuit , 1934
  • Histoire du cinéma , 1935 (with his brother-in-law Maurice Bardèche )
  • Le Procès de Jeanne d'Arc , 1941
  • Portraits , 1935
  • Le Marchand d'oiseaux ou le Méridien de Paris , 1936
  • Comme le temps passe , 1937
  • Pierre Corneille , 1937
  • Les Sept Couleurs , 1939
  • Notre avant-guerre , 1941
  • La Conquérante , 1943
  • Les Quatre Jeudis , 1944
  • Lettre à un soldat de la classe 60. Les Frères ennemis. Dialogue tragique , 1946
  • Poèmes de Fresnes , 1949
  • Anthologie de la poésie grecque , 1950
  • La Reine de Césarée , théâtre (drama), 1954
  • Bérénice (drama), 1954
  • Journal d'un homme occupé , 1955
  • Les Captifs , 1974
    • Oeuvres complètes Ed. Bardèche, 12 vols. (In chronological order) Au Club de l'honnête homme, Paris, 1963 - 1966. - In volume 12: Foreword on Br. By Henri Massis ; and writings in newspapers of the collaboration that led to his conviction (denunciation of hidden Jews to the Gestapo)
    • Further limited club editions with the publishers Anvers and Bruxelles

Secondary literature

Web links

Commons : Robert Brasillach  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

proof

  1. ^ Philippe d'Hugues: Brasillach . Paris 2005, p. 28.
  2. ^ Philippe d'Hugues: Brasillach . Paris 2005, p. 27.
  3. ↑ a b Elisabeth Edl: In the gloomy light of memory. Epilogue , in: Patrick Modiano : Place de l'Etoile . Hanser, Munich 2010, p. 175f
  4. ↑ a b Mechtild Brand: Blocked away: POW in Oflag VI A Soest . Essen: Klartext, 2014 ISBN 978-3-8375-0942-7 , pp. 159–162; P. 242
  5. ^ Philippe d'Hugues: Brasillach . Paris 2005, p. 33.
  6. ^ Frank-Rutger Hausmann, Collaborating Intellectuals in Weimar, in: Europa in Weimar . Edited by H. Th. Seemann. Göttingen 2008, p. 403.
  7. ↑ literally: il faut se séparer des juifs en bloc et ne pas garder les petits. For a discussion of this sentence, see the French Wikipédia under its name article.
  8. ↑ Fernand De Brinon visit to the SS Charlemagne Division, 1943 weekly report on the trip
  9. ↑ Bagatelles sur un massacre , in: Je suis partout , April 30, 1943, p. 1.
  10. ↑ Massacre de Katyn - Emission de Radio (1943) avec Brasillach Chaîne de Archives Radio
  11. ↑ J'ai vu les fosses de Katyn , in: Je suis partout , July 9, 1943, pp. 1-9.
  12. ^ " L'action anti-russe qui se conjugue avec un soutien sans réserve donné à l'initiative allemande de la Légion Française, cette action étant présentée comme susceptible de redonner à la France sa position dans le nouvel ordre européen de telle variety que Brasillach ne craint pas de dire que désormais l'Allemagne a associé la France à son œuvre comme 'puissance souveraine.' ” , quoted from: Jacques Isorni: Le procès de Robert Brasillach. Paris 1946, p. 40.
  13. ↑ " Nous voulions voir Katyn, nous l'avons vu et nous avons dit What We Have vu. “, Quoted from: Barbara Berzel: French literature under the sign of collaboration and fascism. Tübingen 2012, p. 193.
  14. ↑ e.g. Arcana , 2.1999; Mówią wieki , 4.2013; Do Rzeczy , 46/2013; Rzeczpospolita , January 10, 2014.
  15. ↑ To: RB, Une génération dans l'orage. Notre avant-guerre; Six heures a perdre; Journal d'un homme occupé - also on RB passim in all 3 volumes. Readable online in excerpts, e.g. B. Google Book Search. Volume 3 contains the index of names and the entire literature for all three volumes, with 1517 titles online and 1676 in print.
personal data
SURNAME Brasillach, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer, journalist and film critic
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Perpignan
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1945
Place of death Arcueil