Robert Jacquinot de Besange

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jacquinot sculpture by Zhang Chongren

Robert Charles Joseph Emile Jacquinot de Besange (born March 15, 1878 in Saintes , Charente-Maritime Department , France, † September 10, 1946 in Berlin ) was a French Jesuit . During the Second Sino-Japanese War , in 1937, in negotiations with the Japanese, he established a protection zone for the civilian population in Shanghai . This protection zone became the model for the zone later set up by John Rabe in Nanjing .

biography

Jacquinot de Besange came from a noble family with roots in Lorraine. He was born in Saintes, but grew up in Brest in Brittany . In 1894 he joined the Catholic religious order Gesellschaft Jesu ( Societas Jesu ). Within the Order he received his training in Canterbury , Saint Helier , Paris , Salisbury , Hastings and Liverpool . In 1913 he was sent to the China mission of the French Jesuit Order in Shanghai . From 1914 to 1934 he led a congregation in the Hongkou district , taking the name 饶家驹 (Father Rao Jiaju) for his Chinese believers. In addition to his missionary activities, he taught as a professor of English language and literature at Aurora University , which was under the direction of the Order. He was also a major cleric in the Shanghai Volunteer Corps ( en ) , a paramilitary multinational volunteer force with police force in the Shanghai international concessions . In 1927 he was appointed a delegate of the Red Cross in China. In 1929 Jacquinot de Besange founded the "Association des Lieux de Genève" together with General Doctor George Saint-Paul, an organization that had set itself the goal of reaching international agreements on the creation of protection zones for civilians in times of war. The proposals of this organization formed the basis of resolutions that were adopted in 1934 at the 15th Conference of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Tokyo , but which were initially not included in the Geneva Conventions .

Jacquino de Besange gained first experience with the establishment of protection zones in 1931/32 during the Shanghai incident .

During the Second Sino-Japanese War , at the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, it became apparent that the fighting would lead to great casualties among the civilian population. Therefore, Jacquinot planned a protection zone that should encompass essential parts of the old town. In a kind of shuttle diplomacy, he negotiated the establishment of this zone with the Japanese Foreign Minister Hirota Kōki in Tokyo, with the Chinese Prime Minister Chiang Kai-shek in Chongqing and with the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, and finally obtained approval from all sides the project. He also succeeded in obtaining financial support from the US President for the running costs of $ 750,000. Around 300,000 people were able to survive in the protection zone, which existed until 1940. The protection zone became known as the "Jacquinotzone", a term that was also used in official documents of the International Red Cross.

In Nanking, the next target of the Japanese troops, the international committee under the leadership of John Rabe was informed by the German diplomat Georg Rosen about the developments around the Shanghai protection zone. Yale University's Yale Divinity School Library maintains an extensive archive on the Nanking massacre ; from the documents collected there it emerges that there was at least one telex contact between Rabe and Jacquinot.

Information board on the former French Allied cemetery (Berlin-Frohnau, Poloplatz)
Jacquinot's grave in the Berlin-Heiligensee cemetery

In June 1940, Jacquinot de Besange left China on the instructions of his order and returned to Europe. As a special ambassador for the Vatican, he took care of refugees and displaced persons. In 1944/45 he also tried to reach local agreements between the German Wehrmacht and the Allied forces in occupied France in order to reduce the effects of the war on the civilian population. Among other things, he negotiated with a captain Helmut Schwenn about the establishment of protection zones.

In December 1945 Jacquinot de Besange was appointed head of the "Vatican Delegations in Berlin for Aid to Refugees and Displaced Persons". He died of leukemia in 1946 in Berlin at the Hôpital Militaire Louis Pasteur (the former and later Humboldt Hospital , historical site on Teichstrasse). He was first buried in the French cemetery of honor in Berlin-Frohnau and after its dissolution was reburied in the "French department" of the state-owned cemetery in Berlin-Heiligensee .

After death

Memorial stone at the Berlin-Heiligensee cemetery

After his death, Jacquinot was largely forgotten outside of China. It was not until 1949 that a chapter was added to the Geneva Conventions that dealt with the protection of the civilian population in times of war. Reference was made explicitly to Jacquinot and its Shanghai protection zone.

In 1951 Schwenn, with whom Jacquinot had negotiated the protection of the civilian population during the war, initiated a founding committee for a German section of the "Lieux de Genève" with the support of the churches. Schwenn, who was an international lawyer in civil life, then tried in 1953 in a letter to Emil Sandström , the president of the League of Red Cross Societies , to obtain a joint signature of the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany under the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which in Germany for lack of state Sovereignty only applied indirectly through the signatures of the Allies. In this letter, Schwenn suggested specific protection zones for both parts of Germany.

Only the research of a Chinese employee (Jiang Yuchun) of the John Rabe Communication Center in Heidelberg in 2012 gave the impetus to find the grave of Jacquinot in the cemetery in Berlin-Heiligensee.

As part of the celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between France and the People's Republic of China, an international conference dedicated to the work of Jacquinot was held at Shanghai University.

In 2015 a bronze commemorative medal was minted in honor of Jacquinot.

On the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the events, a memorial stone was unveiled in December 2017 in the old city god temple of Shanghai, which honors Jacquinot's work.

Honors

Movie

The film Jacquinot: A Forgotten Hero by Polish film director Krzysztof Zanussi was screened at the 2009 Shanghai International Film Festival .

bibliography

  • Marcia R. Ristaino: The Jacquinot Safe Zone: wartime refugees in Shanghai . Stanford University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-8047-5793-5 (American English, limited preview in Google Book Search). (engl.)
  • Su, Zhiliang: Rao Jiaju yu zhan shi ping min bao hu = Robert Jacquinot de Besange - la protection civile pendant la guerre . Guilin: Guangxi shi fan da xue chu ban she, 2015, ISBN 978-7-5495-6523-8 , pp. 547 . (Chinese, with a French summary)
  • Robert Jacquinot de Besange: L'ordre international d'après Taparelli d'Azeglio . Ed. A. Pedone, 1939, p. 226 (French, cover in Google book search). (French)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Page about Jacquinot on the website of the Archdiocese of Berlin
  2. ↑ Jacquinot in a list de US State Department
  3. ↑ Protocols of the Council of the EKD 1953 in the Google book search
  4. ↑ a b c On the protection of civilians , Der Spiegel from April 1, 1953
  5. ^ Catholicism in China in the Google Book Search
  6. ↑ Priests honored for saving thousands. (engl.)
  7. ^ A b Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, August 12, 1949. (Eng.)
  8. ↑ Archive for Nanking Massacre (Engl.)
  9. ↑ December 2, 1937: Rabes asked Jacquinot for support in the arrangements with the Japanese (pdf, English)
       December 4, 1937: Jacquinot announced a direct response from the Japanese. (pdf, engl.)
  10. ↑ Text of the memorial stone
  11. ^ Negotiations with Schwenn about a protection zone in occupied France.
  12. ↑ "Louis Pasteur" French military hospital
  13. ↑ Protocols of the Council of the EKD 1951 in the Google book search
  14. ↑ Unveiling of the plaque for Jacquinot
  15. ^ 1ère conférence internationale consacrée à Robert Jacquinot de Besange. (French)
  16. ↑ Medals issued to commemorate French missionary who set up Jacquinot Safe Zone in Shanghai. (engl.)
  17. ↑ China Daily, December 15, 2017 (Eng.)
  18. ↑ Annual Report 1927 of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps .
  19. ↑ Jaquinot: A Forgotten Hero (USA) . In: Shanghai International Film Festival . May 17, 2009. Retrieved December 24, 2010.

annotation

  1. ↑ The sculpture was destroyed in the course of the Cultural Revolution . The photograph was saved from the Red Guards by Uncle Zhang Chongren's .
  2. ^ The successor organization to the Association Internationale des Lieux de Genève is the International Civil Defense Organization .
personal data
SURNAME Jacquinot de Besange, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jacquinot de Besange, Robert Charles Joseph Emile (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Jesuit and humanitarian benefactor in China
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Saintes , Charente-Maritime department , France
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 1946
Place of death Berlin