Stéphane Hessel

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Stéphane Hessel (2012)

Stéphane Frédéric Hessel (born October 20, 1917 as Stefan Friedrich Kaspar Hessel in Berlin ; † February 27, 2013 in Paris ) was a French diplomat , poet , essayist and political activist . He fought for the Resistance and survived the Buchenwald concentration camp . After the Weimar city council Stéphane Hessel had refused honorary citizenship on his 95th birthday due to "lack of connection to Weimar", the city of Weimar opened the space in front of the new Bauhaus Museum to the public as Stéphane-Hessel-Platz on August 9, 2019 .

After his concentration camp imprisonment, Hessel became office manager of UN Vice-Secretary General Henri Laugier in 1946 . In this role he was present at meetings of the newly created UN Human Rights Commission . According to various media reports, he was involved in the drafting of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights , although he described himself as a passive witness to these events. In 1951, Hessel moved from the UN to the French Foreign Ministry . Then he worked for Pierre Mendès France and went to Vietnam for a few years after its fall. In 1962 he founded the Association for the Training of African and Malagasy Workers in France .

In 2010, Hessel's essay Outraged! , in which he harshly criticizes current political developments and calls for resistance . By the end of 2011, the plant in France had sold over two million copies. It has been translated into more than 40 languages. The protest movement in Spain against the consequences of the financial crisis , the corresponding Greek, French and Portuguese social protest movements as well as the Occupy movement all referred to him in part.

Life

Stéphane Hessel was born Stefan Friedrich Kaspar Hessel in Berlin in 1917. His parents were the German writer Franz Hessel , who came from an assimilated Jewish banking family, and the journalist Helen Grund , who came from a German Protestant family . His brother Ulrich was born in 1914. In 1924 the family moved to Paris, and Stéphane Hessel had been a French citizen since 1937.

At the beginning of the Second World War , Hessel fell into German captivity as an officer in the French army , but was able to flee to London via southern France, Morocco and Portugal. There he joined in May 1941 the French Resistance and was a glider sold in France. In July 1944 he was arrested by the Gestapo in Paris, tortured and deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp . Hessel, sentenced to death as a spy, only survived because Kapo Arthur Dietzsch provided him with the identity of a prisoner who had died shortly before. Under his name, Hessel was transferred to the Rottleberode satellite camp and later to Mittelbau-Dora , where u. a. the V2 rockets developed by Wernher von Braun were produced. In Buchenwald he met the writer Eugen Kogon , with whom he had a lifelong friendship. Hessel escaped on April 6, 1945 while being transported by train to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp .

After the end of the Second World War, Hessel became office manager of UN Vice Secretary General Henri Laugier in New York in 1946 . He was present at meetings of the newly created Human Rights Commission and also at the UN General Assemblies, but contrary to press reports to the contrary, he was neither a member of the commission nor was he involved in the declaration of human rights. He then drove forward decolonization on behalf of the UN and the French Foreign Ministry and mediated in conflicts.

Development aid , democracy and human rights are among the subjects that were particularly close to Hessel's heart and for which he fought to the end. In 1962 he founded the French Association for the Education of African and Malagasy workers ( Association de formation des travailleurs africains et malgaches , AFTAM), which campaigns for the rights of Africans, and he was a member of the French section of the National Human Rights Commission . He received the title of "Ambassadeur de France" from the French state.

After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , Hessel caused a stir when he co-founded the "Collegium international" to prevent war between civilizations. He also called on the government of Israel to adopt a different policy ("The fact that Jews can commit war crimes on their part is unbearable.") And joined the call for a boycott of Israeli products.

Stéphane Hessel's grave in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris

On the occasion of the upcoming Durban Review Conference in March 2009 , he spoke of progress in the implementation of the universal human rights declaration, as colonialism, totalitarianism or military regimes were coming to an end in several countries. At the same time, he warned against restrictions on freedom of speech and expression due to the risk of media monopolies, the overwhelming power of corporations and, in particular, the efforts of larger religions to prevent criticism of religion. He spoke out against a ban on religious defamation. The problems were to be solved through dialogue between the larger cultures and civilizations.

In his book Outrage! from 2010, which had already been printed more than 900,000 times by January 2011, speaks out in favor of reviving the values ​​of the Resistance . In the book, he also criticizes financial capitalism, the treatment of minorities such as the Roma or so-called illegal immigrants, pleads for non-violence and sees a solution to the conflict in the Middle East as being essential for pacifying further conflicts. In 2011 he was awarded the Prix ​​de l'Académie de Berlin .

Stéphane Hessel lived with his second wife Christiane Hessel-Chabry in Paris. He is buried on the Cimetière Montparnasse .

Position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Hessel has often emerged as a critic of the politics of the State of Israel, especially the military occupation and the construction of settlements in the Palestinian territories . On January 20, 2011, Hessel made a statement in the FAZ on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by comparing it with the German occupation of France at the end of a lengthy essay on the internal constitution of the concentration camps:

“The permeable German occupation policy still allowed an open cultural policy at the end of the war. In Paris you could perform pieces by Jean-Paul Sartre or hear Juliette Gréco . If I may dare to make a bold comparison as a victim, I assert that the German occupation was, if you compare it, for example, with the Israelis' occupation of Palestine today, a relatively harmless one, apart from exceptions such as arrests, internments and shootings apart from the robbery of art treasures. It was all terrible. But it was an occupation policy that wanted to have a positive effect and that is why it made work so difficult for us resistance fighters. "

Jonathan Hayoun, President of the Association of Jewish Students in France , contradicted this statement on July 11, 2012 in the Nouvel Observateur under the heading Hessel and the "harmless" German occupation. He criticized that Hessel spoke of a "suppleness" of the occupation that "wanted to have a positive effect" and was "quite harmless". For Hayoun, Hessel put both administrations on the same level; He would ignore the deportations of Jews and resists. The Jewish state is the enemy for Hessel. The totality of all Zionists is to be blamed for all evils; Nazism was not so bad when there was theater. Hessel replied in the same issue under the title: The “harmless” Nazi occupation: Criticizing Israel, is that anti-Semitism? He was at the core of his statements and threw Hayoun pretends to have misunderstood him: he had only compared the occupation of France by the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, this was not the crimes of National Socialism as a whole or a trivialization of the Holocaust to be confused . He also found his choice of words too excited in the distance: "My expressions were perhaps hasty, written down, too lightning-fast."

Fonts (selection)

  • German: Ô ma mémoire. Poems that are indispensable to me. Translated by Michael Kogon. Grupello, Düsseldorf 2010, ISBN 978-3-89978-124-3 .

Prices (selection)

literature

Interviews

Movie

  • The Diplomat - Stéphane Hessel , documentary about Hessel, Germany 1995, Starost Film Verleih & Vertrieb, 80 min.
  • Film review The Diplomat (English): Variety 1995
  • Outrage! Get involved! Stéphane Hessel , TV film, Germany 2017, homage for the 100th birthday, directors: Antje Starost and Hans Helmut Grotjahn, 52 min. Online until January 13, 2018 on Arte

Web links

Commons : Stéphane Hessel  - collection of images

Interviews

Television broadcasts

References and comments


personal data
SURNAME Hessel, Stéphane
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hessel, Stéphane Frédéric (full name); Hessel, Stefan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French resistance fighter, diplomat and author
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 2013
Place of death Paris
  1. ↑ On the death of Stéphane Hessel - happiness in resistance Der Tagesspiegel , February 27, 2013, accessed on September 21, 2018.
  2. ↑ Stéphane Hessel died at the age of 95 . ( Memento of the original from July 9, 2013 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Zeit Online , February 27, 2013, accessed February 27, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zeit.de
  3. ↑ Stefan Simons: On the death of Stéphane Hessels: A lifetime on the left . Spiegel Online , February 27, 2013
  4. ↑ https://www.thueringen24.de/weimar/article212132407/Nach-diesen-Personen-haben-die-Strassen-um-das-neue-Bauhausmuseum-benannt.html
  5. ↑ https://www.bauhaus100.de/programm/veranstaltungsdetails/1541/
  6. ↑ a b «  J'assistais aux séances et j'écoutais ce qu'on disait mais je n'ai pas rédigé la Déclaration. J'ai été témoin de cette période exceptionnelle, ajoute-t-il.  »(German:" I attended meetings and listened to the conversations, but I did not work on the declaration [of human rights of the UN] editorially. I was a witness of this extraordinary time, he adds. ") Hessel: La Déclaration des droits de l'homme, témoin de l'audace de l'époque. Center d'Actualités de l'ONU, 10 December 2008 un.org .
  7. ↑ Manfred Flügge : Stéphane Hessel, a happy rebel , Aufbau Verlag, Berlin, 2012, ISBN 978-3-351-02744-5 . See there foreword: Later star
  8. ^ "That is why I am so happy about what happens these days in Wall Street, because they're indeed very peaceful. They are not throwing any bombs or any stones, but they're there determined to see that their values ​​are to be respected. “ Democracy Now! on October 10, 2011: Stéphane Hessel on Occupy Wall Street: Find the Time for Outrage When Your Values ​​Are Not Respected. Retrieved October 23, 2011 .
  9. ↑ Indignados en la calle . In: El Pais , May 17, 2011 (Spanish). Retrieved on May 21, 2011: “El pasado domingo, las principales ciudades españolas fueron escenario de manifestaciones convocadas en la estela del panfleto publicado por el francés Stéphane Hessel, ¡Indignaos!” (In German: “Last Sunday were the most important Spanish cities The scene of demonstrations based on the French Stéphane Hessel's pamphlet 'Outrage!'. ")
  10. ^ Moritz Reininghaus: Diplomat of Life and Poetry. ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Jüdische Zeitung (Berlin) on j-zeit.de, January 2011; portrait @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.j-zeit.de
  11. ↑ a b c Julia Jüttner: The happy life artist. Spiegel Online , May 7, 2009.
  12. ↑ a b Robert Bosch Stiftung: Press release of October 5, 2011. Accessed June 10, 2012 .
  13. ↑ a b c Jürg Altwegg : bestseller outrage. In: FAZ , January 6, 2011, accessed on October 7, 2012.
  14. ↑ a b Stéphane Hessel: How I survived Buchenwald and other camps. In: FAZ , January 21, 2011, p. 35.
  15. ↑ "Three officers got away with their lives". In: Die Zeit , 1/1960.
  16. ↑ Eugen Kogon describes the fate of Hessel in Buchenwald in detail in the chapter "Execution of allied parachutists and secret agents." Of his book Der SS-Staat (paperback edition, Heyne-Sachbuch, ISBN 3-453-00671-2 , pp. 266-274).
  17. ↑ Manfred Flügge : Stéphane Hessel, a happy rebel , Aufbau Verlag, Berlin, 2012, ISBN 978-3-351-02744-5 . P. 107.
  18. ↑ lemonde.fr .
  19. ↑ Simon Bradley: Human rights lawyer Stéphane Hessel sees freedom of speech in danger. In Swissinfo , March 11, 2009 (interview).
  20. ↑ Jakob Augstein : Sarrazin debate: In the land of wickedness . Spiegel Online , January 13, 2011.
  21. ^ Political essay by 93-year-old tops Christmas bestseller list in France. In: The Guardian , December 26, 2010
  22. ↑ Stéphane Hessel receives the "Prix de l'Academie" . ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Zürcher Unterländer , Swiss dispatch agency on November 29, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zuonline.ch
  23. ↑ As the context shows, the last sentence is meant as follows: The type of “soft occupation” he claimed gave the French less motivation to openly or armed resistance against the Germans. How I survived Buchenwald and other camps . In: faz.net , January 20, 2011; Retrieved October 7, 2012
  24. ↑ Hayoun literally: suplesse; Hessel, on the other hand, who speaks perfect German, used the word “permeable”, see quote above
  25. ^ Hayoun: voulait agir positivement
  26. ^ Hayoun: relativement inoffensive
  27. ↑ Jonathan Hayoun: Stéphane Hessel et l'occupation nazie “inoffensive”: quel indigné est-il vraiment? In: Le Nouvel Observateur , July 11, 2012 (French).
  28. ↑ a b Stéphane Hessel: Occupation nazie “inoffensive”: critiquer Israël, est-ce de l'antisémitisme? In: Le Nouvel Observateur , July 11, 2012 (French).
  29. ↑ Stefan Simons: Enough indignant, now is action! Spiegel Online , March 9, 2011, accessed March 9, 2011 .
  30. ↑ UNESCO / Bilbao Prize - Laureates
  31. ↑ Press release Weimar Triangle (PDF)
  32. ↑ Best-selling author Hessel receives culture award . In: Saarbrücker Zeitung , January 25, 2012, Culture, p. B4
  33. ↑ Be embraced, phagocytes . In Paris, Stéphane Hessel is honored with the “Prix Mychkine” . In: Die Welt , February 1, 2012
  34. ↑ thueringen.de
  35. ↑ The diplomat at Starost Film, by Antje Starost , Hans Helmut Grotjahn, Manfred Flügge Germany 1995, 80 min