Violet Morris

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Violette Morris as a Swimmer (1920)
Morris at the wheel of her racing car (1922)

Violette Paule Emilie Marie Morris , also Violette Gouraud-Morris (born April 18, 1893 in Paris ; † April 26, 1944 near Épaignes , Normandy ), was a French athlete and alleged collaborator with the German occupiers in France during World War II . She was shot dead by members of the Resistance in 1944 .

biography

Youth and athletic careers

Violette Morris was born the youngest of six sisters. Her parents were Elizabeth Sakini, who came from an upper-class Arab family in Jerusalem , and Baron Pierre Jacques Morris, a retired cavalry officer . She attended a convent school in Huy, Belgium . Physical education was given there by British nuns who were active as amateur athletes and who noticed Violette Morris' talent for sport. In 1914 she entered into a - presumably arranged - marriage with Cyprien Gouraud, which divorced in 1923.

From the age of 15, Morris trained in a boxing club . When this was closed with the outbreak of the First World War and converted into a center for the Red Cross, she volunteered at the front. She worked as an ambulance driver and courier and was known for her courage. In the summer of 1916 she fell ill with pleurisy and did not return to the front after spending several months in a hospital . Her parents died in 1918, leaving their daughters with a considerable inheritance.

Morris was of a very strong and masculine appearance, she weighed 68 kilograms and 1.66 meters tall: "Although her rather plump figure did not suggest, she was incredibly fast," wrote Thomas Karny in a portrait in the Wiener Zeitung in 2019 , in which he also suggested that Morris was transgender . She practiced numerous sports: discus throwing , shot put , water polo in the national team when there was still no women's team, boxing - often against men, against whom she also won - and played in two Paris soccer teams : from 1917 to 1919 for Fémina Sport Paris , for Olympique Paris from 1920 to 1926 and for the French national team . She rode road and track bike races as well as car races , rode , played tennis, and swam . She was ambitious and successful in all sports. Her motto was: "Ce qu'un homme fait, Violette peut le faire!" (“What a man can do, Violette can do as well.”) In total, she won 20 national titles, around ten medals in national and international competitions, took part in more than 150 athletics competitions and competed in more than 200 football matches.

Violette Morris was a well-known figure in the Parisian artist and bohemian scene , was friends with Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais and appeared with Josephine Baker on; Baker played the piano and Violette Morris sang Fleur d'amour , a popular Mistinguett song . She is said to have had a love affair with Baker and left her for actress Yvonne de Bray .

In 1919 Violette Morris became a member of the Fédération Française des sports féminins (FFSF) and won gold in the shot put and javelin at the Monte Carlo Games in 1921 - a replacement event for the first time for the Olympic Games, from which women were largely excluded at the time. At the Women's World Games in Paris in 1922 she won silver in the shot put and two years later at the Women's Olympiad in London gold in the shot put and javelin throw.

In 1928, the FFSF Morris refused to renew her sports license because of her "lifestyle", which is why she was unable to compete in the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam : she ignored the role regulations, wore (forbidden) pants, rode a motorcycle, was a chain smoker and was an openly lesbian - a garçonne . In addition, she had both breasts amputated - according to her own statement, in order to fit better behind the steering wheel of her racing car. Morris lost a lawsuit she had filed against the FFSF, which referred to an 1800 decree banning women from wearing pants (and was not repealed until 2013).

This decision led Morris to bitterness and hatred of their homeland:

«Nous vivons dans un pays […] governé par des phraseurs, des magouilleurs et des trouillards. Ce pays de petites gens n'est pas digne de ses aînés, pas digne de survivre. Un jour, sa décadence l'amènera au rang d'esclave, mais moi, si je suis toujours là, je ne ferai pas partie des esclaves. »

“We live in a country that is ruled by gossips, swindlers and cowards. This land of the common people is not worthy of its firstborn, it is not worth surviving. One day its decadence will bring it into the position of a slave, but I, if I am still around, I will not be a slave. "

- Violette Morris

Collaboration with the Germans

After 1928, Morris went into business for himself with an auto parts business and built racing cars together with her employees . In 1935 the German journalist Gertrude Hannecker, a former rival in car races, is said to have contacted her in order to recruit her as a spy for the German security service . Violette Morris had access to vehicles and gasoline through her company , knew people all over France and had experience in the war, which made her interesting for the SD. Morris is said to have driven through France and collected information about the locations of the French army, especially the Maginot Line , the defense system along the Franco-German border, and France's most modern tank, the Somua S-35 . She now lived on her houseboat La Mouette on the Seine and made a living by taking tennis and driving lessons as well as black market trafficking . On December 26, 1937, she shot a man on the boat in supposed self-defense, but was released a few days in prison.

After the occupation of France by the German Wehrmacht , Violette Morris is said to have continued to work for the Germans, especially for the commander of the security police in Paris, Helmut Bone . Resistance fighter Robert Benoist , a former racing car driver and Le Mans champion from 1937, described her as the “Gestapo hyena”. Above all, it should hinder the work of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British intelligence unit. For this she is said to have been sentenced to death by the Maquis , the French resistance movement.

However, proven facts of a collaboration by Morris are only available for black market deals, help with the confiscation of gasoline for the German army, taking over the driver's job for Christian Sarton du Jonchay , the Secretary General of the Pétain government and running an Air Force workshop on Pershing Boulevard.

On April 26, 1944, while driving on the road from Lieurey to Épaignes in Normandy, she and five other inmates, including two children, were shot by members of a local resistance group after they had to stop because of a deliberate breakdown. There are speculations that the attack was not directed against her, but against the family from Beuzeville (married couple, two children and son-in-law), who sat in the car with her and maintained friendly contacts with the German occupiers. One daughter survived the attack because she had taken the train for lack of space. Morris's body was buried in an unmarked communal grave, presumably in the cemetery at Le Pin in Calvados .

According to the historian Raymond Ruffin , Morris is said to have been Hitler's guest of honor at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin . With their support, a group of British racing drivers who worked for the SOE were allegedly eliminated in 1943 , including William Grover-Williams and Robert Benoist ; both were murdered in concentration camps . The French historian Marie-Josèphe Bonnet doubts this visit to Berlin, as well as the suspicion of being an agent and Morris was personally present during interrogations by French auxiliaries of the Gestapo and participated in torture. She was accused of working for the Gestapo, "but the files on this subject are empty, there is nothing". The author thinks she was a suitable scapegoat, especially given her pre-war comments. The French author Gérard de Cortanze takes the view that Morris had no ties to the Gestapo. In his book Histoire secrète du sport from 2019 he comes to the conclusion: "The truth about Violette Morris has yet to be clarified."

literature

  • Raymond Ruffin: La Diablesse. La Véritable histoire de Violette Morris. Pygmalion-Gérard Watelet, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-85704-290-6 .
  • Raymond Ruffin: Violette Morris - la Hyène de la gestap . Cherche midi, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-7491-0224-3 (French).
  • Marie-Josèphe Bonnet: Violette Morris - Histoire d'une scandaleuse . Paris 2011, ISBN 978-2-262-03557-0 (French).
  • Javi Rey, Bertrand Galic, Kris: Violette Morris. À abattre par tous moyens. tape 1 (2018) and 2 (2019). Futuropolis (French, Bande Dessinée , dossier historique de Marie-Jo Bonnet).
  • Gérard de Cortanze: Femme qui court . Albin Michel, 2019, ISBN 978-2-226-40021-5 (French, novel).

Web links

Commons : Violette Morris  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Violette Morris, parcours d'une scandaleuse. In: gallica.bnf.fr. Retrieved April 22, 2020 (French).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Doris Hermanns: Violette Morris. In: fembio.org. Retrieved April 21, 2020 (English).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h Thomas Karny : The moving biography of Violette Morris. In: wienerzeitung.at. April 27, 2019, accessed April 22, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Sporting champion, feminist icon, Nazi spy? The extraordinary life of Violette Morris. In: Haaretz.com. June 14, 2015, accessed April 21, 2020 .
  5. ^ Sports results from Violette Gouraud-Morris. In: laberezina.com. Retrieved April 22, 2020 (French).
  6. ↑ Now official: Women in Paris are allowed to wear pants . In: The world . February 5, 2013 ( welt.de [accessed June 24, 2020]).
  7. ↑ Quoted from Christine Bard: La championne Violette Morris perd son procès en 1930. musea.fr.
  8. ^ Marie-Josèphe Bonnet: Violette Morris, histoire d'une scandaleuse. Place des éditeurs, 2011, ISBN 2-262-03597-0 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  9. ↑ Penser la violence des femmes. La Découverte, 2017, ISBN 2-7071-9692-4 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  10. ^ A b Marie-Christine Pénin: Morris Violette. In: tombes-sepultures.com. June 21, 2018, accessed April 23, 2020 . A little later, on June 6, 1944, the family of a German-friendly café owner from Beuzeville was also killed by the Resistance.
  11. ^ "On l'a accusé d'être gestapiste, mais les dossiers sont vides à ce sujet-là, il n'y a rien." Marie-Josèphe Bonnet, in: Tatiana Chadenat: Violette Morris, la diablesse du stade , France Culture , February 20, 2019
  12. ^ "La vérité sur Violette Morris reste à établier." In: Gérard de Cortanze: Histoire secrète du sport , La Découverte, 2019, ISBN 978-2-348-04246-1 ( Google Books )
personal data
SURNAME Morris, Violette
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gouraud-Morris, Violette (married name); Morris, Violette Paule Emilie Marie (full maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French athlete and collaborator
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 1944
Place of death near Épaignes , Normandy