Les Lauriers du lac de Constance: Chronique d'une collaboration

by Marie Chaix

It is 1936, and Albert B. is one of the first French citizens to join the Fascist party. During the war, he becomes a collaborator. It’s only a matter of time before he dons a German uniform himself.

Taking place in the limbo between the moment of Albert’s initial “fall” and his inevitable capture, following the Allied invasion of Mainau, The Laurels of Lake Constance is the story not only of Albert himself, but of his daughter, who must endure the paradox of loving a man whose beliefs and allegiances are nothing short of catastrophic. Beautifully translated by novelist Harry Mathews, The Laurels of Lake Constance is a profoundly moving story about both war and childhood, and their intersection in one household, conjured in all its details, be they beautiful or shameful: a resigned mother playing music, a father absent, an era frozen in a tragic fresco where novelistic detail mixes with history.

Genres: Fiction, French Literature, France, Literary Fiction, Literature, Novels, Historical Fiction

256 pages, Pocket Book

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Robin J · Rating 5 out of 5]

In clean, clear writing with brief, yet lovely, images, Chaix tells the story of her father, a man so determined to stop one evil--Communism--that he sinks into an even greater evil--Nazism--and eventually becomes a traitor to his own country. She contrasts her father's political folly with her mother's attempt to keep the family afloat during his long absences, including his 12 years in a French prison. I could not put this book down and found myself reading large sections to luxuriate in the beauty of the writing. Despite the emotional nature of the story, Chaix refuses to indulge in pathos yet still manages to convey to emotional core of her and her family's experiences. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, I definitely wish to read this in French, to get the texture. It is fascinating, though, how she weaves it all together. It is really autobiography, a memoir, even though much of it she has to re-imagine or re-invent. And I had not really understood the title properly until I finished it.

[Gilles Russeil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Naitre en 1942 ds 1 famille dt le père est engagé à 100 % ds la collaboration. Marie Chaix, 30 ans plus tard, en fit ce magnifique livre, récit littéraire et familial, où le regard de l'enfant rencontre l'histoire

[Chris Appel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book on the perils of collaborating with FPP during WWII

[Samuel Bellemin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Très bon livre qui narre la complexité de la situation de la France pendant la seconde guerre mondiale, une situation n’est jamais bien ou mal mais bien plus compliquée.

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vividly written. Marie was born in 1942, the fourth and last child of Alice and Albert Beugras. Her mother came from Alsace and had relatives in Germany. Albert was a brilliant engineer who sorely disappointed his father, a peasant turned self-made man, by giving up his job with Rhône-Poulenc to pursue a career in politics. Seduced by the lethally charismatic Jacques Doriot into assuming ever greater responsibilities within his fascist party, Albert found himself in a precarious position once Doriot was liquidated by his German allies in February 1945. Belatedly, Albert then helped the Americans and, according to Marie's account, was offered safe passage to the USA, but declined out of a sense of honor. Thereafter he was arrested, tried and condemned to life imprisonment. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Alice and his lawyer Tixier-Vignancour, he was freed in 1951, and had a third career selling French factories to his former arch-enemies, the Soviets. Subtitled "Chronique d'une collaboration", Les Lauriers is something between a memoir and a novel. A lot of the events in the book happened before Marie was born, or before she could remember anything. The narration is spliced with passages in Albert's voice, presumably taken (whole?) from his diaries and notebooks. Marie expresses anger against her father, who neglected his family in favor of a mission which was widely seen, after the war, as a criminal enterprise. Yet she does not seem to question his integrity and the book doesn't challenge his version of events, which is that all he ever wanted to do was fight Communism and help Doriot take power in France once the Germans were kicked out. The question of Albert's anti-semitism is not broached once. What Marie describes in great detail is her own family tragedy: the death of her elder brother Jean, who chose to follow his father in Germany in 1944 and died in the bombing of Ulm; the hectic and penurious life after the Normandy landings forced them to seek refuge in Suresnes with Alice's sister Mathilde; the shame of being branded a collaborator's daughter long before she could understand what it was her father was guilty of. However, their tribulations were mitigated by the extraordinary devotion of their housekeeper Juliette, to whom the book is dedicated. Even if Alice had to sell her jewelry and take a job to make ends meet, throughout it all she had somebody to lean on.

[Mike Polizzi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meticulous and engrossing- a daughter's reclamation of her father's war years working as a partisan combating Bolshevism in France, as a Nazi collaborator, and as an almost complete absence from her life. There is a startling lack of feeling, which is necessary in some ways, but in others makes the action in the book feel schematic and expository. When the book shifts perspectives, it succeeds in showing that the defining events of her life happened prior to birth. Her father and her grandfather read as the only fully rendered characters within the book, the rest are cast in their shadows, trying to deal with the fall out of their choices. There's a lot left unexplored by the end, mentioned maybe, but passed over at 30,000 feet that keeps the reclamation from feeling complete.