Jean Giraudoux

Jean (Hyppolyte) Giraudoux (* 29. October 1882 in Bell AC strike Vienne; † 31. January 1944 in Paris) was a French writer and career diplomat, who were very important particularly for the development of the French theatre of intermediate wartime.

Giraudoux buildup as a son of a small official in southwestFrench towns. Owing to a talented scholarship it could visit the High School in Châteauroux, afterwards the Vorbereitungsklassen of the renowned Paris Lycée Lakanal (where the well-known Germanist Charles ANDLER its interest in Germany woke) and finally the elite school for the teaching profession fan, the École normal Supérieure, which it locked 1905 in the subject German as best its class. A longer Germany stay than house teachers followed at a rich French family in Munich.

Afterwards Giraudoux applied however not, as actually planned, for the permission to the Gymnasialprofessor, but went themselves as a French lector to the Harvard University into the USA. After its return 1907 it gave the potenzielle Gymnasialkarriere up finally and lived in Paris badly and quite on its feather/spring. In particular it wrote narrations, which appeared collected 1909 as Provinciales and brought it first acknowledgment. 1910 he became a little loaded private secretary of the Zeitungsmagnaten Bruneau Varilla and published narrations and literature criticisms in its newspaper Le Matin.

After it had begun to be interested owing to its proximity to the journalism in politics, it applied 1911 for the diplomatic service and to the training took up itself. 1914 he became a soldier. It was wounded several times and distinguished for bravery before the enemy. 1917 it published its war diary as Lettres pour une ombre (=Briefe für/an a shade). He spent the last war months as military teachers in Portugal, which had explained rapidly still Germany the war and its army modernized.

From there back, and published Giraudoux terminated its first novel, Simon le pathétique. In the next 20 years it led a double life as a diplomat (whereby he could work however usually on the Quai d'Orsay, in the State Department,) and as writers (first predominantly with novels, which are read however today hardly more).

1928 it converted its novel Siegfried playing in Germany et le Limousin of 1922 to a piece, which was produced as Siegfried of the well-known director Louis Jouvet and as a signal for reconciliation between Germans and Frenchman large success had. Jouvet animated now Giraudoux to further pieces, which actually followed in series: 1929 Amphitryon 38, a cheerful piece around the generation of the Herkules by the Jupiter masked as Amphitryon; 1931 Judith; 1933 Intermezzo; 1935 La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu (the Trojan war does not find), a comedyful beginning, itself however increasingly verdüsterndes piece, that the fears of war of many Frenchmen in view of Hitler armament and the increasing destabilization of Europe finished (and that, after it should originally end optimistically, pessimistically goes out); 1936 is reflected 1937 Électre, a piece, into the political polarization of France after the choice victory of the people front of the summer (and inkarniert in that the intransigente Électre the dogma-table-compromiseless communists, whom far Obstruktion operates, even if the native country is attacked from the outside); 1939 Ondine, a fairy taleful, sad piece, which seems to reflect the fears and displacement desires of many Frenchmen briefly before outbreak of the Second World War.

After beginning of war Giraudoux was appointed “commissaire général à l'Information”, a kind propaganda Minister; he withdrew himself however after the German attack, “lightning all and”, in May 1940 and the establishment of the Pétain - regimes in June more and more into the private. In the relative normality, which, despite the German crew, prevailed from autumn 1940 to approximately at the end of of 1943 in France, it published a collection of lectures and Essais and wrote it further pieces: Sodome et Gomorrhe, L' Apollon de Bellac, La Folle de Chaillot (=die crazy people of CH.) and Pour Lucrèce (=für Lukrezia). The latter was even specified 1943, while La Folle de Chaillot, a bitter melancholische satire came on driving the speculators and Geschäftemacher in occupied Paris, only postum 1945 on the stage.

At the beginning of of 1944 died Giraudoux at a food poisoning. While its novel work attained only moderate validity also during its lifetimes, was long extremely successful its theatre two to three decades. It worked later dramatists particularly because of its language, those in an unmistakable mixture joke and sense of low, banality and poetry united and, e.g. Jean Anouilh affected, strongly.

works

• Simon German walter Boehlich, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1961

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