Gringoire (newspaper)
Encyclopedia
Gringoire was a political and literary weekly newspaper in France, founded in 1928 by Horace de Carbuccia (son-in-law of Jean Chiappe
, the prefect of police involved in the Stavisky Affair
), Georges Suarez
and Joseph Kessel
.
It was one of the great inter-war weekly French papers, following a formula started by Candide
, and taken up not only by Gringoire but also by the left-wing papers Vendredi and Marianne. The style involved according significant space to politics, having a high-quality literature page, having grand reportages and grand feuilletons (in this case with Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
and Francis Carco
), satirical cartoons (the main illustrator of Gringoire was Roger Roy), and a simple presentation.
, the principal trait of a paper called a macédoine, a term coined by Carbuccia himself. Marxism
and the left in general were its favourite targets. Initially, however, it was not a paper of the extreme-right; it was content to represent the right-wing fringe of the Union nationale led by Raymond Poincaré
, with a veteran-like style which it retained throughout.
After 6 February 1934, following the general trend toward radicalisation, Gringoire became antiparliamentarian. The influence of Action française
made itself felt. In October 1935, Gringoire declared itself against the international sanctions imposed on Italy
following its invasion of Abyssinia. For a long time the paper had showed itself favourable to Italian fascism
, as well as to the Salazar
regime in Portugal
. It also developed an increasingly marked Anglophobia
. Henri Béraud
, the paper's editor, published in the 11 October 1935 issue an article titled "Do we have to reduce England to slavery?". From 1930 the paper, at first Germanophobe and nationalist, slid towards a clear hostility to war, and even to any military intervention in Europe.
An example is the novelist Romain Gary
who published two novels in Gringoire: "The Storm" (15 February 1935) and "A Small Woman" (24 May 1935), under his real name Roman Kacew. When the journal, "having turned strongly to the right, then to the extreme-right" introduced fascist and anti-semitic
ideas, Gary stopped sending his writings despite the significant compensation he received, of 1000 francs
per 6-column page.
In his essay on W.B. Yeats, George Orwell cites the predominance of advertising by clairvoyants in Gringoire as an example of the affinity of mysticism with right-wing politics.
sympathisers. This view was tinged with anti-semitism and xenophobia
; the Jews
were accused of wanting war in order to overthrow the Nazi regime (which Gringoire did not explicitly endorse but refrained from criticising); they were also accused of spreading the red revolution from Moscow
. Jews were also the supreme agents of communism in France, and favoured immigration
, despised by Gringoire as a source of problems.
The Popular Front of France
and the Popular Front of Spain
were excoriated by Gringoire. André Tardieu
was the editorial writer from 1936 to 1939; when he had a stroke, Philippe Henriot
and Roland Dorgelès
joined the editorship.
In the 1930s, Gringoire was widely appreciated—to the same extent as Candide, L'Action française and Je suis partout
—in right-wing and extreme-right Romania
n circles. It sold excellently in Bucharest
.
Gringoire approved the Munich Accords, which provoked a fight between Tardieu (who opposed the accords) and Béraud (who was in favour). In spring 1939, Gringoire criticised the 1938 invasion
of Czechoslovakia
by Germany, and from July 1939 to May 1940, rallied to the politics of national defence. Its tone changed after the defeat; Gringoire, allying with the Vichy regime, fully approved the armistice and Philippe Pétain
's national revolution. However, while most of the journalists were ideologically collaborationists
, Carbuccia was, according to Pascal Ory
, in favour of strategic collaboration. He stopped the newspaper's circulation on 25 May 1944.
Among the paper's contributors was Irène Némirovsky
, a politically conservative ethnic Jew of Russia
n origin who had converted to Catholicism
. She was arrested by the French gendarmerie
and handed over to the Nazis. While Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
later attempted to have Robert Desnos
freed, no one from Gringoire intervened on Némirovsky's behalf.
Jean Chiappe
Jean Baptiste Pascal Eugène Chiappe was a high-ranking French civil servant.Chiappe was director of the Sûreté générale in the 1920s. He was subsequently given the post of Préfet de police in the 1930s, in which role he was very popular...
, the prefect of police involved in the Stavisky Affair
Stavisky Affair
The Stavisky Affair was a 1934 financial scandal generated by the actions of embezzler Alexandre Stavisky. It had political ramifications for the French Radical Socialist moderate government of the day...
), Georges Suarez
Georges Suarez
Georges Suarez was a French writer, essayist and journalist. Initially a pacifist, then a collaborator , he was also the biographer of Pétain and other figures of the Troisième République...
and Joseph Kessel
Joseph Kessel
Joseph Kessel was a French journalist and novelist.He was born in Villa Clara, Entre Ríos, Argentina, because of the constant journeys of his father, a Lithuanian doctor of Jewish origin. Joseph Kessel lived the first years of his childhood in Orenburg, Russia, before the family moved to France...
.
It was one of the great inter-war weekly French papers, following a formula started by Candide
Candide (newspaper)
-Blanquist Candide:Candide was a newspaper founded by Gustave Tridon and Auguste Blanqui on 3 May 1865. It appeared on Wednesday and Saturday every week, and cost 5 centimes...
, and taken up not only by Gringoire but also by the left-wing papers Vendredi and Marianne. The style involved according significant space to politics, having a high-quality literature page, having grand reportages and grand feuilletons (in this case with Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
Pierre Eugène Drieu La Rochelle was a French writer of novels, short stories and political essays, who lived and died in Paris...
and Francis Carco
Francis Carco
Francis Carco was a French author, born at Nouméa, New Caledonia. He was a poet, belonging to the Fantaisiste school, a novelist, a dramatist, and art critic for L'Homme libre and Gil Blas. During the War he became aviation pilot at Étampes, after studying at the aviation school there...
), satirical cartoons (the main illustrator of Gringoire was Roger Roy), and a simple presentation.
From the centre-right to right-wing nationalism
At the outset Gringoire was a pamphletPamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound booklet . It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths , or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple book...
, the principal trait of a paper called a macédoine, a term coined by Carbuccia himself. Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and the left in general were its favourite targets. Initially, however, it was not a paper of the extreme-right; it was content to represent the right-wing fringe of the Union nationale led by Raymond Poincaré
Raymond Poincaré
Raymond Poincaré was a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France on five separate occasions and as President of France from 1913 to 1920. Poincaré was a conservative leader primarily committed to political and social stability...
, with a veteran-like style which it retained throughout.
After 6 February 1934, following the general trend toward radicalisation, Gringoire became antiparliamentarian. The influence of Action française
Action Française
The Action Française , founded in 1898, is a French Monarchist counter-revolutionary movement and periodical founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois and whose principal ideologist was Charles Maurras...
made itself felt. In October 1935, Gringoire declared itself against the international sanctions imposed on Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
following its invasion of Abyssinia. For a long time the paper had showed itself favourable to Italian fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, as well as to the Salazar
António de Oliveira Salazar
António de Oliveira Salazar, GColIH, GCTE, GCSE served as the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. He also served as acting President of the Republic briefly in 1951. He founded and led the Estado Novo , the authoritarian, right-wing government that presided over and controlled Portugal...
regime in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
. It also developed an increasingly marked Anglophobia
Anglophobia
Anglophobia means hatred or fear of England or the English people. The term is sometimes used more loosely for general Anti-British sentiment...
. Henri Béraud
Henri Béraud
Henri Béraud was a French novelist and journalist.- Life :Henri Béraud was the son of a baker. In 1903 he began his work in journalism....
, the paper's editor, published in the 11 October 1935 issue an article titled "Do we have to reduce England to slavery?". From 1930 the paper, at first Germanophobe and nationalist, slid towards a clear hostility to war, and even to any military intervention in Europe.
An example is the novelist Romain Gary
Romain Gary
Romain Gary was a French diplomat, novelist, film director, World War II aviator. He is the only author to have won the Prix Goncourt twice .- Early life :Gary was born in Vilnius under the name Roman Kacew...
who published two novels in Gringoire: "The Storm" (15 February 1935) and "A Small Woman" (24 May 1935), under his real name Roman Kacew. When the journal, "having turned strongly to the right, then to the extreme-right" introduced fascist and anti-semitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
ideas, Gary stopped sending his writings despite the significant compensation he received, of 1000 francs
French franc
The franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...
per 6-column page.
In his essay on W.B. Yeats, George Orwell cites the predominance of advertising by clairvoyants in Gringoire as an example of the affinity of mysticism with right-wing politics.
From anti-militarism to Vichyism
From 1936 onwards, a second radicalisation took place, involving a convergence of anti-war views and a vitriolic hostility to the left. People who espoused war were deemed by extension communistCommunism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
sympathisers. This view was tinged with anti-semitism and xenophobia
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
; the Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
were accused of wanting war in order to overthrow the Nazi regime (which Gringoire did not explicitly endorse but refrained from criticising); they were also accused of spreading the red revolution from Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. Jews were also the supreme agents of communism in France, and favoured immigration
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
, despised by Gringoire as a source of problems.
The Popular Front of France
Popular Front (France)
The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...
and the Popular Front of Spain
Popular Front (Spain)
The Popular Front in Spain's Second Republic was an electoral coalition and pact signed in January 1936 by various left-wing political organisations, instigated by Manuel Azaña for the purpose of contesting that year's election....
were excoriated by Gringoire. André Tardieu
André Tardieu
André Pierre Gabriel Amédée Tardieu was three times Prime Minister of France and a dominant figure of French political life in 1929-1932.-Biography:...
was the editorial writer from 1936 to 1939; when he had a stroke, Philippe Henriot
Philippe Henriot
Philippe Henriot was a French politician.Moving to the far right after beginnings in Roman Catholic conservatism in the Republican Federation, Henriot was elected to the Third Republic's Chamber of Deputies for the Gironde département in 1932 and 1936...
and Roland Dorgelès
Roland Dorgelès
Roland Dorgelès , was a French novelist and a member of the Académie Goncourt.Born Roland Lecavelé , he spent his childhood in Paris....
joined the editorship.
In the 1930s, Gringoire was widely appreciated—to the same extent as Candide, L'Action française and Je suis partout
Je suis partout
Je suis partout was a French newspaper founded by Jean Fayard, first published on 29 November 1930. It was placed under the direction of Pierre Gaxotte until 1939...
—in right-wing and extreme-right Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n circles. It sold excellently in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
.
Gringoire approved the Munich Accords, which provoked a fight between Tardieu (who opposed the accords) and Béraud (who was in favour). In spring 1939, Gringoire criticised the 1938 invasion
German occupation of Czechoslovakia
German occupation of Czechoslovakia began with the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia's northern and western border regions, known collectively as the Sudetenland, under terms outlined by the Munich Agreement. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's pretext for this effort was the alleged privations suffered by...
of Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
by Germany, and from July 1939 to May 1940, rallied to the politics of national defence. Its tone changed after the defeat; Gringoire, allying with the Vichy regime, fully approved the armistice and Philippe Pétain
Philippe Pétain
Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...
's national revolution. However, while most of the journalists were ideologically collaborationists
Collaborationism
Collaborationism is cooperation with enemy forces against one's country. Legally, it may be considered as a form of treason. Collaborationism may be associated with criminal deeds in the service of the occupying power, which may include complicity with the occupying power in murder, persecutions,...
, Carbuccia was, according to Pascal Ory
Pascal Ory
Pascal Ory is a French historian. A student of René Rémond, he specialises in cultural and political history and has written on Fascism ever since his masters dissertation on the Greenshirts of Henri Dorgères. He is one of those who in the 1970s contributed to the better definition of cultural...
, in favour of strategic collaboration. He stopped the newspaper's circulation on 25 May 1944.
Among the paper's contributors was Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky was a French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz, Nazi Germany occupied Poland. She was killed by the Nazis for being classified as a Jew under the racial laws, which did not take into account her conversion to Roman Catholicism.-Biography:Irène Némirovsky was born in...
, a politically conservative ethnic Jew of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n origin who had converted to Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
. She was arrested by the French gendarmerie
Gendarmerie
A gendarmerie or gendarmery is a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations. Members of such a force are typically called "gendarmes". The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes a gendarme as "a soldier who is employed on police duties" and a "gendarmery, -erie" as...
and handed over to the Nazis. While Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
Pierre Drieu La Rochelle
Pierre Eugène Drieu La Rochelle was a French writer of novels, short stories and political essays, who lived and died in Paris...
later attempted to have Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos , was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.- Biography :...
freed, no one from Gringoire intervened on Némirovsky's behalf.
Principal sources
- Jacques Julliard and Michel WinockMichel WinockMichel Winock is a French historian, specializing in the French Republic, intellectual movements, anti-Semitism, nationalism and the far right movements of France. He is a professeur des universités in contemporary history at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and member of L'Histoire...
(dir.), Dictionnaire des intellectuels français, ed. du Seuil, 2002 - Pascal OryPascal OryPascal Ory is a French historian. A student of René Rémond, he specialises in cultural and political history and has written on Fascism ever since his masters dissertation on the Greenshirts of Henri Dorgères. He is one of those who in the 1970s contributed to the better definition of cultural...
, Les Collaborateurs, ed. du Seuil, « Points »-histoire, 1980 - Eugen Weber, L'Action française, ed. Fayard, 1985 et Hachette, coll. « Pluriel », 1990