Stéphane Roussel

Stéphane Roussel (born October 25, 1902 in Vienna , Austria ; † April 24, 1999 in Paris , France ), born Stefanie Landeis , was a French journalist and author . She was France's first foreign correspondent and is considered the grande dame of French journalism. Before and after the Second World War , she mainly worked in Germany. She became known to a broader public through her frequent participation in the international morning pint with Werner Höfer on German television .

Life

family

Stefanie ("Steffi") Landeis was born during the Austro-Hungarian Empire as the second child of the businessman Karl (Charles) Landeis (* 1876) and his wife Friederike ("Fritzi"), née Schwarz. Her father worked for the French embassy in Vienna and later in Paris. Her older brother Robert was born in 1901, her younger sisters Hedi ("Heddy") in 1904 and Gertrud ("Gerti") in 1905. On November 20, 1908, at the age of six, Stefanie Landeis lost her mother, who was only 30 years old, who died of consumption .

From the late 1930s, Stefanie Landeis led a marriage of convenience, which she later described as failed, with a later French resistance fighter of the Resistance , through whom she received the family name Roussel, and later two civil partnerships without a marriage license. At the time of their marriage, she, who was of Jewish descent, converted to Catholicism and changed her German first name to the Francophone Stéphane. Her husband was later killed as a partisan .

education

Stefanie attended school in France, later she studied in Vienna and Paris and acquired the right to teach the French language. After completing her studies, she initially worked below her qualifications due to the effects of the global economic crisis . Her bilingualism was crucial for her career entry. Initially she was employed in what was then the largest artist agency in Berlin, where she learned the basics of her later work by acting as an interpreter for the international clientele. She described acrobats as her best teachers in this phase, who made it clear to her how crucial stamina is. Also, one should never let the difficulty of overcoming some challenges appear.

Professional career

From 1930 she worked as a secretary for the respected French daily Le Matin in their Berlin office. The moderate republican paper at the time was one of four large daily newspapers in France. Due to a serious illness of the Berlin correspondent, she took over the reporting to Paris for him and thus, although still a secretary, became de facto the first foreign correspondent in France, initially unofficially. After the editors in Paris had found out about it, they were given the provisional management of the Berlin correspondent's office. In addition, the articles have now been published under her name Stefanie Landeis. For a short time Philippe Barrès, the son of Maurice Barrès , the editor-in-chief of Le Matin and Paris-Soir , who died in 1923 , was appointed head of the Berlin correspondent's office. From 1934 until the office was closed in 1938, she officially became its head, which was an extraordinary position for a woman at the time. It was the most interesting position at this newspaper that one could have taken on. In this way she began an unplanned journalistic career and between 1930 and 1938 was one of only four female journalists in the Reich capital. As a woman, she was often intellectually underestimated by men and therefore often learned much more from them because they felt they had to explain in more detail.

According to his own statement, Landeis felt very quickly at home in Germany at the beginning of the 1930s. She was extremely sensitive to the differences between Germany and France, the moods in the population as well as the developments and tendencies in society, economy and politics as well as the systemic weaknesses of the Weimar Republic . The journalistic activity and the associated sensitive use of the word suited her very much. She was very passionate about her profession and the language. She viewed her task as that of a documentary contemporary witness, whose personal concern was to be postponed until the readers were informed. At the same time, she quickly developed a high affinity for her host country, Germany, and cultivated many friendships with Germans.

“ It (Germany) was a country with its downsides and problems - certainly - not exactly modern, and certainly not in politics. But it was open to ideas and guests like me. (...) Back then Berlin was like a kind of New York in Europe, much less closed than Paris. The doors in Berlin (were) wide open to a foreigner. The more incredible is the story of how all of this could overturn - overnight. (…) In one single night (January 30, 1933) the Weimar Republic went away as it lived: on tiptoe. (...) And this (open) Berlin, which my friends and I loved very much, was about to no longer exist. "

- Stéphane Roussel

In the 1930s, the young French foreign correspondent became an observer of the effects of the Great Depression, the brutal clashes between the political left and right, the rise of the National Socialists and the transfer of power to Adolf Hitler on January 30, 1933 initiated by Franz von Papen and Alfred Hugenberg .

In the ZDF television documentary The Plot by Peter Hartl and Klaus-Peter Wolf from 2009 about the last weeks before Hitler came to power, the events are told from Landeis' reflective point of view and in some cases re-enacted that they were in their recordings and in interviews has held. Senta Berger Landeis' alter ego speaks from the off .

“ Stéphane Roussel was an excellent expert on Germany and an eyewitness, a connoisseur of Berlin at the time. She was close to the events and people and at the same time, as a correspondent, had a sufficient observation distance. She had a very precise memory and an almost lyrical language. "

- after Peter Hartl, 2009

Berlin in the 1930s was considered by international correspondents to be one of the most desirable locations in the world. Between 1933 and 1940, however, more than a hundred foreign journalists are said to have been expelled from the country by the Nazi regime. Here played Walther Funk , and after him Otto Dietrich , state secretaries in the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP), a key role. Both operated in a conflict-ridden relationship with the Foreign Office (AA), which was responsible for passing on official government statements to the international press, while the RMVP was responsible for active propaganda abroad.

Many foreign journalists, diplomats and artists from the Reich capital met every evening in the Italian restaurant Die Taverne, run by Maria and Willy Lehmann and always well frequented, in Berlin's W 62 district ( Tiergarten ), at Kurfürstenstraße 124 at the corner of Courbièrestraße. Lehmann had been a producer during the silent film era. B. in films with Pola Negri , Lya de Putti and Fritz Rasp ( comedians , 1925). As a result, a lot of filmmakers knew him. The majority opinion of the guests in the restaurant was that the restaurant, decorated with many contemporary paintings, belonged to Victor de Kowa and Luise Ullrich . Actresses like Olga Chekhova , correspondents like Pierre J. Huss ( International News Service ), Louis Paul Lochner ( Associated Press ), William L. Shirer ( Universal News Service , later for CBS ), Sigrid Schultz ( Chicago Tribune ) or their friends went there like Martha Dodd , Mildred and Arvid Harnack , but also publishers like Donald Simon Klopfer (1902–1986), co-founder of the Random House publishing house , in and out. From 1935 onwards, the Gestapo heard more and more, as did foreign secret services. Other meeting places for international correspondents were the Alte Feuerwache at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and the Association of Foreign Press in Germany (VAP). Regarding her journalistic work during the Nazi era, Landeis noted at the time: “It happens that we meet somewhere in the zoo after midnight. The most frequent meeting point is the zoological garden - »behind the tiger cage« or »in front of the chimpanzees«. "

After the forced closure of the Berlin correspondents office of Le Matin in 1938, Landeis spent a few months in France, where she met and married her future husband. However, the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939 surprised her during a stay in England. Roussel therefore stayed there and signed a contract for her first book about Germany, which she did not complete. She later said she was happy about it; completion and publication would have been wrong. From her professional point of view, it would probably have been too emotional and not distant enough at the time.

After the occupation of France by the German Wehrmacht , Roussel, who actually wanted to be a war correspondent , came through Philippe Barrès to a group of French journalists around Pierre Comert (1880–1964), Charles and Georges Gombault and Louis Lévy . In London they published the French exile daily France , which was published there from June 1940 with British support and was socialist-oriented and took an anti- Gaullist stance. Roussel worked as a journalist on the exile paper, which appeared in the second half of August 1944 until the liberation of Paris .

Afterwards, Roussel stayed in London for private reasons and initially worked for Scoop , a division of Agence France-Presse . However, when the daily France Soir was founded in November 1944 , for whose London office several employees of the discontinued exile newspaper France worked, she became the second correspondent there.

When she got the chance to return to Germany in the post-war period, Roussel initially hesitated. The French daily France Soir then sent her to the federal capital Bonn as a foreign correspondent in the spring of 1951, as the successor to the sick Georges Kélber. She held this position until 1980, interrupted only by a brief phase in 1964/65, during which she headed the foreign policy department in the Paris editorial office. She was much more attracted to the activity of a correspondent.

By observing the politics of the new Federal Republic, dominated by Konrad Adenauer , she developed into an admirer of the Chancellor, who advocated a reconciliation with France. Conversely, the Chancellor, with whom Roussel had developed a very personal contact , was impressed by the French woman, always very elegantly dressed, who was able to set metropolitan accents in provincial Bonn with the fashion and Arpège perfume she wore. With turbans by Elsa Schiaparelli , she was widely noticed and became a topic of conversation.

Within three decades, Stéphane Roussel was a frequent guest of the international morning pint with Werner Höfer on German television and known to a broad German public. In these rounds of talks with journalists from different countries, which reached a large audience every Sunday at lunchtime, she tried to make France's politics more transparent for Germans. After a morning pint, she received a slip of paper: “Madame, you were great. With great respect, your devoted Herbert Wehner ”. In France she spent more than three decades trying to correct the image that the French had of the Germans. In 1962, Roussel and Per Sjögren assumed the office of chairman of the Association of Foreign Press in the Federal Republic of Germany. V. true.

retirement

In old age she processed her extensive notes and memories in various book publications, most of which were published in German.

Shortly before completing her work on the book Die Hügel von Berlin in the mid-1980s, she discovered that her entire body was covered with bruises. Doctors at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine discovered that her platelet system , which helps blood to clot, had collapsed. As a result, she was in danger of bleeding to death.

After her recovery, she processed the memory of her first night in the clinic with the poetic report Beyond the Night . Your Berlin novellas have strong autobiographical references to the 1930s.

“ … Poetic, painful and beautiful. Let someone else say that journalism cannot be literature. The carefulness of the language is exemplary. "

- Klaus Harpprecht

Shortly before her death, the director Peter Hartl had the opportunity to ask Roussel for a planned historical TV documentary from the reflective point of view of contemporary witnesses about the phase before, during and after Hitler came to power, which, according to Hartl, she said in an interview with Radio France Internationale, despite her advanced age, prepared with a high degree of professionalism and precision, even though it visibly exhausted and exhausted the 90-year-old.

Stéphane Roussel died in the French capital at the age of 96.

Works

• Germany - a madhouse , 1939/40 (unfinished, unpublished)
• Les collines de Berlin - Un regard sur l'Allemagne , Éditions Mazarine, Paris 1985, ISBN 2-86374-130-6 .
• The hills of Berlin , Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1989, ISBN 978-3499185816 .
• Beyond the Night , Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1990, ISBN 978-3498057213 .
• Near Death - Experiences Beyond the Night , Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1994, ISBN 978-3499196577 .
• Berlin novellas , Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1995, ISBN 978-3498057398 .

Audio

• Radio interview: Pascal Thibaut asks Peter Hartl about Stéphane Roussel , 6:48 min.

Videos

• Peter Hartl and Klaus-Peter Wolf: The Conspiracy , 1st episode of the three-part ZDF history series Die Machternahmung , first broadcast on March 10, 2009, voiceover for the reflections by Stéphane Roussel: Senta Berger 43:49 min., Accessed on 25. March 2017.
• Stéphane Roussel: False normality . Roussel comments on the question of participating in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, 1:12 min. (Interview: Peter Hartl), accessed on March 25, 2017.
• Stéphane Roussel: Less uniforms . Roussel comments on the apparent liberalization during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, 0:49 min. (Interview: Peter Hartl), accessed on March 25, 2017.
• The National Socialists celebrate the legend of their seizure of power . Roussel comments on the situation of the National Socialists at the end of 1932 / beginning of 1933, 3:22 min. On: focus.de, accessed on March 25, 2017.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Pascal Thibaut / Radio France Internationale: Stéphane Roussel - the French eye . From: rfi.fr, accessed March 25, 2017
2. ↑ The seizure of power ( Memento of the original from March 18, 2015 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. . Teaching material - worksheets. ZDF / Association of German History Teachers VGD, 2009, p. 5 (PDF file; 147 KB) 
3. ↑ Susanne Blume Berger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Manual Austrian authors of Jewish origin 18th to 20th century. Volume 3: S – Z, Register. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 1664.
4. ↑ Kerstin Pokorny: Stéphane Roussel: From Berlin via London to Bonn ( memento of the original from March 26, 2017 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: The French foreign correspondents in Bonn and Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer 1949-1963 . Inaugural dissertation, Philosophical Faculty of the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 2009. pp. 62–64. From: deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de, accessed on March 25, 2017 (PDF file; 2.6 MB) 
5. ↑ Nina Grunenberg: Five sheets from Berlin - A French journalist who became the German lawyer . In: Die Zeit, August 22, 1986. From: zeit.de, accessed on March 25, 2017
6. ↑ Peter Hartl and Klaus-Peter Wolf: The plot , 1st episode of the three-part ZDF history series Die Machternahmung, first broadcast March 10, 2009, 43:49 min. On: youtube.com, accessed on March 25, 2017
7. ↑ Jörg R. Mettke: The grace of the leader . In: Der Spiegel, Geschichte 5, September 25, 2012. p. 87. From: spiegel.de, accessed on March 25, 2017 (PDF file; 712 KB)
8. ↑ Your own concern can wait . In: Wortwechsel , with Christa Schulze-Rohr , Südwestfunk, October 24, 1986
9. ↑ Died: Stéphane Roussel . In: Der Spiegel, May 18, 1999. On: spiegel.de, accessed on March 25, 2017
10. ↑ Peter Hartl and Klaus-Peter Wolf: The plot , 1st episode of the three-part ZDF history series The Seizure of Power, first broadcast March 10, 2009, quotation components: from 1:07 min .; from 29:49 min .; from 39:13 min.
11. ↑ Florian Huber: Child, promise me that you will shoot yourself - The downfall of the little people in 1945 . Berlin-Verlag 2015, ISBN 978-3827012470
12. ↑ The seizure of power (1/3): The plot . From: phoenix.de, accessed on March 25, 2017
13. ↑ The seizure of power - Part 1: The plot ( memento of the original from March 27, 2016 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. . Teaching material for the three-part ZDF documentary series. Second German Television. On zdf.de, accessed on March 25, 2017 (PDF file; 4.2 MB) 
14. ↑ Radio interview: Pascal Thibaut asks Peter Hartl about Stéphane Roussel, 6:48 min . From: rfi.fr, accessed March 25, 2017
15. ^ Stefan Krings: Hitler's press chief Otto Dietrich (1897-1952) - A biography . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0633-2 . Cape. 7.4 Carrot and stick - dispute over control of the foreign press
16. ↑ Andrew Nagorski: Hitler country. American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power . Simon & Schuster, New York City 2012. ISBN 978-1439191002 , p. 132
17. ↑ Robert K. Baker: Reviewer: The Espionage Odyssey of Soviet General Vasily Zarubin , iUniverse 2015, ISBN 978-1491742426
18. ↑ Walther Kiaulehn: Berlin: fate of a cosmopolitan city . CH Beck 1958 / unchanged. Reprinted 1997. ISBN 978-3406416347 . P. 228
19. ↑ Oliver Hilmes: Berlin 1936. Sixteen days in August . Siedler Verlag 2016. ISBN 978-3641156862
20. ↑ Jörg R. Mettke: The grace of the leader . In: Der Spiegel, Geschichte 5, September 25, 2012. From: spiegel.de, accessed on March 25, 2017
21. ^ Stefan Krings: Hitler's press chief Otto Dietrich (1897-1952) - A biography . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0633-2 . Cape. 7.4 Carrot and stick - dispute over control of the foreign press
22. ↑ Kerstin Pokorny: Stéphane Roussel: From Berlin via London to Bonn ( memento of the original from March 26, 2017 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: The French foreign correspondents in Bonn and Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer 1949-1963 . Inaugural dissertation, Philosophical Faculty of the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 2009. pp. 62–64. From: deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de, accessed on March 25, 2017 (PDF file; 2.6 MB) 
23. ^ Matthias Wächter: The myth of Gaullism: Heidenkult, historical politics and ideology 1940-1958. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2006. ISBN 9783835300231 . P. 149
24. ↑ Julian Jackson: France. The Dark Years. 1940-1944 . Oxford University Press 2003, ISBN 978-0191622885 , Chapter 16 The Free French 1940-1942, subsection The National Committee
25. ↑ Frédéric Stephan: The concept of Europe in the German and French resistance to National Socialism 1933/40 to 1945 . Dissertation, Historical Institute of the University of Stuttgart, 2002, p. 92
26. ↑ Kerstin Pokorny: Stéphane Roussel: From Berlin via London to Bonn ( memento of the original from March 26, 2017 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: The French foreign correspondents in Bonn and Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer 1949-1963 . Inaugural dissertation, Philosophical Faculty of the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 2009. pp. 62–64. From: deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de, accessed on March 25, 2017 (PDF file; 2.6 MB) 
27. ↑ The business card. Diplomat of the pen. Stéphane Roussel . In: Rheinische Post, October 3, 1964
28. ↑ Norbert Seitz: When the Germans learned to argue . In: Der Tagesspiegel, November 13, 2003. From: Tagesspiegel.de, accessed on March 25, 2017
29. ↑ Stéphane Roussel . Who's Who - The People Lexicon. From: whoswho.de, accessed on March 25, 2017
30. ↑ Nina Grunenberg: Five sheets from Berlin - A French journalist who became the German lawyer . In: Die Zeit, August 22, 1986. From: zeit.de, accessed on March 25, 2017
31. ↑ Now already more than 100 years ... . History of the Association of Foreign Press in the Federal Republic of Germany V. At: vap-deutschland.org, accessed on March 25, 2017
32. ^ Stefanie Oswalt: Crisis mood . In: Friday, July 16, 2009. From: freitag.de, accessed on March 25, 2017
33. ↑ Jörg Thomann: suffering of the stenographer . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 14, 1995. From: faz.net, accessed on March 25, 2017
34. ^ Klaus Harpprecht: Torment of a Night, Words of a Night . In: Die Zeit, September 21, 1990. From: zeit.de, accessed on March 25, 2017