Émile Bocquillon

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Émile Bocquillon (22 September 1868 – 8 April 1966) was a French schoolteacher, journalist and political activist.

Biography

Émile Bocquillon was born at the 2nd arrondissement of Paris. A public schoolteacher and principal until the 1920s, and later a journalist, Bocquillon was campaigning for patriotic education since the beginning of the 20th century —, in magazines, lectures and his many books. He made a name for himself in the 1900s when he denounced the pacifist and anti-militarist ideas of some of his fellow teachers, against the backdrop of Gustave Hervé's violent campaigns against the army.[1] In 1904, together with two Parisian school principals, Félix Comte and Théodoric Legrand, he founded the Union of Patriotic Lay Teachers,[2] and edited the periodicals L'École patriote (1904–1905), then L'Instituteur patriote in 1906, both of which were dedicated to defending the tradition of civic education that the syndicalist teachers were seeking to destroy. His positions fueled debates in the press and in Parliament.[3] He later contributed to the daily La République française.[4]

He then joined the French University Alliance[lower-alpha 1] (for the three basic teachings and vocational training), founded in July 1917 to provide moral support for the poilus and combat pacifist and defeatist propaganda; it distributed Germanophobic brochures and posters.[6] He was its director in the 1920s. In 1923, he took part in a congress chaired by the deputy Désiré Ferry, approving France's action in the Ruhr and asserting France's right to reparations for World War I, and was part of the nationalist delegation Ferry led to Raymond Poincaré.[7]

In 1920, he also joined Pierre Dufrenne's French School Association and contributed to its periodical, La Revue de l'école, where he was one of the administrators of the publishing company, along with Dufrenne, Legrand, Maurice Jeannard and Pierre Heinrich.[8][lower-alpha 2] He continued his fight against pacifists[9] and took part in an investigation by Georges Champenois, director of François Coty's daily L'Ami du peuple, into the "official sabotage of French history".[lower-alpha 3]

He went so far as to publish forgeries (an open letter from Raymond Poincaré, a circular from André Tardieu), with the complicity of his friend Charles Kula,[lower-alpha 4] founder and leader of the General Confederation of Taxpayers,[14] in order to "strike at chlorophormed opinion" and embarrass "trade unionists, defeatists, anti-patriots, freemasons".[15] In 1934, together with Charles Kula, he wrote a pamphlet on Hitler's Mein Kampf (Mein Kampf or the Book Forbidden to the French), in which, while expressing concern at the danger posed to France by Hitler and criticizing aspects of the National Socialist doctrine, he did not hesitate to agree with Hitler's anti-Jewish sentiment, stating that he agreed with two-thirds of the book.[16]

In 1935, he signed the Manifesto of French Intellectuals for the Defense of the West and Peace in Europe, which reflected his right-wing neo-Pacifism and his support for Fascist Italy. He gave lectures on education, for example at the Cercle Fustel de Coulanges and the Cercle Dupleix-Bonvalot in 1935; the lecture he gave at the latter circle with René Canat, a khâgne teacher at Louis-le-Grand and president of the Non-unionized Federation of High Schools, was chaired by General Maxime Weygand. They criticized the "Bolshevization of education" in both primary and secondary schools. From 1936 to 1939, he edited L'Instituteur national for the Center for National Action and Propaganda at School, directed by General René Madelin.[lower-alpha 5] In it, he implacably opposed Jean Zay, Minister of National Education and Fine Arts in the Popular Front government.[18]

During the German occupation of France, he continued his fight in the columns of the daily Le Matin, from August 1940 onwards, where he called for a purification of the education system,[19] — denouncing the dismissal of his friend Serge Jeanneret, "a vengeance of the lodges"[20] — and turned to anti-Semitism.[21] He also contributed to Le Petit Parisien[22] and Le Réveil des Français. He was awarded the Order of the Francisque (No. 2152).

His brochures were financed by Georges Brabant and other businessmen in 1943–1944. Bocquillon was blacklisted by the CNE after the war.[23]

A nonagenarian, he was a contributor to La Nation française in the 1960s.

Émile Bocquillon died in Le Vésinet at 97 years of age.

See also

Works

  • L'alcoolisme (1899; 1913; 1925)
  • Memento d'hygiène (1902)
  • La crise du patriotisme à l'école (1905; preface by René Goblet)[lower-alpha 6]
  • Étude expérimentale et comparée de l'action des différentes méthodes d'éducation physiques sur le développement corporel (1905)
  • Pour la patrie (1907; preface by Georges Duruy)
  • Cours normal d'antialcoolisme (1911; with Jacques Roubinovitch)
  • Izoulet et son œuvre philosophique (1929; 1943)
  • Pour le bonheur de nos enfants: la réforme de l'éducation nationale 91933; with Charles Kula)
  • La religion civique et la mission de la France: Mussolini, Hitler, Kou-Houng-Ming, Izoulet confrontés (1937; preface by Jean Izoulet)
  • Les bases sociales de la morale et les devoirs envers Dieu à l'école (1941; preface by Marcel Sivé)
  • L'éducation de la jeunesse et la révolution nationale (1943)
  • Recueil de pensées pour l'éducation de la jeunesse (1940; with Charles Kula)
  • Dieu et Patrie à l'école (1942)[lower-alpha 7]
  • Travail, conscience: lectures pour les jeunes, d'après Edmond About, Daniel de Foe, Jules Verne, Jean Izoulet, Jean Aicard, Sully Prudhomme, La Fontaine, Victor Hugo (1944)
  • Les solutions spirituelles du conflit Orient-Occident (1955)
  • Civisme et sur-civisme (1958)
  • J.J Rousseau ce méconnu (1962)
  • L'Âme cette inconnue (1966)

Notes

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The alliance was chaired by a woman, Jeanne Bohren, who taught at the Lycée Molière in Paris.[5]
  2. ↑ Heinrich and Dufrenne later joined the Cercle Fustel de Coulanges.
  3. ↑ "I have repeatedly pointed out the lamentable spirit that presides over the writing of our French history textbooks. I'm not just talking about the new textbooks, with their resolutely Communist leanings, and designed with the direct aim of preparing children for social war and treason — the word is not too strong — against their own homeland. I'm talking about all the textbooks which, though moderate in style, are more or less imbued with this morbid tendency to diminish France's role in its past, to cut our history in two: that of before and that of after the Revolution; the first having all the faults, all the defects, stupid in its external action, and only beginning to take shape, in the eyes of the universe and with regard to justice, since the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen!"[10]
  4. ↑ Kula was a former industrialist in the construction business who had set up pre-apprenticeship workshop-schools in 1905. He shared his friend's convictions: in 1929, he gave a lecture at the Anti-Marxist Institute on "the indispensable school reform in France"[11] and also responded to Georges Champenois' survey. The CGC published a periodical from 1928, which opposed the CGT and called for a "new recovery of the Marne".[12] Bocquillon contributed to this periodical, publishing the forgeries in question. In March 1934, he was deputy administrative secretary of the Federation of Taxpayers of the Paris Region, of which Kula was honorary president.[13]
  5. ↑ René Madelin (1868–1940), Major General since 1927, Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1929,[17] was the brother of historian and Vosges MP Louis Madelin (Jean-Michel Barreau mistakes him for his brother). He was also director of the monthly magazine La Belle France.
  6. ↑ Awarded the Montyon Prize in 1906 by the Académie française.[24] The death of Goblet, soon after the book was published, increased the general effect of his prefatory reflections.
  7. ↑ Awarded the Prix d'Académie in 1943 by the Académie française.[24]

Citations

  1. ↑ Loughlin, Michael B. (2015). From Revolutionary Theater to Reactionary Litanies: Gustave Hervé (1871-1944) at the Extremes of the French Third Republic. New York: Peter Lang.
  2. ↑ Amalvi, Christian (1979). "Les guerres des manuels autour de l'école primaire en France (1899-1914)," Revue Historique, Vol. CCLXII, No. 2 (532), pp. 359–98.
  3. ↑ "M. Emile Bocquillon," La Renaissance (26 juin 1915), p. 18.
  4. ↑ Annuaire de la presse française (1908), p. 522; "La crise du patriotisme," Journal de l'Orne (29 septembre 1906).
  5. ↑ "L'enseignement du patriotisme," L'Ouest-Eclair (6 décembre 1917), p. 1.
  6. ↑ "Les méfaits de l'Alliance universitaire française," Le Populaire (3 août 1919), p. 2; Recueil des actes administratifs de la préfecture du département de la Seine (novembre 1918), p. 684.
  7. ↑ "Le quatrième congrès national français," Le Rappel (13 juillet 1923), p. 4.
  8. ↑ "Pour l'École française," Le Figaro (9 août 1920), p. 1, 2; "La Revue de l'école," Moniteur de la papeterie (1er février 1922), p. 82.
  9. ↑ "Notre enseignement en proie à l'erreur," Le Gaulois (5 janvier 1929), p. 2; "L'école de la vigilance," Le Rappel (6 septembre 1927), p. 1; Benjamin, René (25 juillet 1927). "L'école laïque," Le Figaro, p. 1.
  10. ↑ Champenois, Georges (1930). Le sabotage officiel de l'Histoire de France. Paris: Éditions Bossard.
  11. ↑ "Cours et conférences," Le Figaro (20 mai 1929), p. 6.
  12. ↑ "La C.G.C.," L'Agent d'assurances (10 février 1928), p. 50.
  13. ↑ "Les contribuables de Paris," Journal des débats (27 mars 1934), p. 4.
  14. ↑ "Les contribuables remettent un mémorandum à M. Marchandeau," Journal des débats (26 juin 1932), p. 4.
  15. ↑ "M. Poincaré et l'antipatriotisme des instituteurs," L'Action française (20 août 1933), p. 1; "La CGC et les fonctionnaires," L'Œil de Paris pénètre partout (2 janvier 1932), p. 2.
  16. ↑ Vitkine, Antoine (2009). Mein Kampf, histoire d'un livre. Paris: Flammarion.
  17. ↑ Dossier de la Légion d'honneur de René Madelin, Archives Nationale.
  18. ↑ Barreau, Jean-Michel (1997). "Les “nationaux” et l'école dans l'entre-deux-guerres. Le “Vichy d'avant Vichy”," Quasimodo, No. 3/4, pp. 169–70.
  19. ↑ "C'est tout de suite qu'il faut épurer l'enseignement," Le Matin (7 décembre 1940), p. 1; "Désarmons les malfaiteurs de l'intelligence!," Le Matin (30 décembre 1940), p. 1.
  20. ↑ Bocquillon, Émile (31 mars 1941). "Ne confondons pas par vengeance bons et mauvais," Le Matin, p. 3.
  21. ↑ "Témoignage du milliardaire Henry Ford," Le Matin (9 janvier 1942), p. 1.
  22. ↑ For instance: "Echec à la Révolution nationale dans l'enseignement primaire," Le Petit Parisien (9 novembre 1942), p. 2; "L'âge du fer-blanc, école d'une élite," Le Petit Parisien (7 mars 1942), p. 2; "Un instituteur vous parle," Le Petit Parisien (28 septembre 1942), p. 2.
  23. ↑ Les Lettres françaises (16 septembre 1944), p. 1.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 "Émile Bocquillon," Académie française.

References

External links

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