Asylum

by Moriz Scheyer

  Grete had met Bernhard Schwarzwald, her first husband, during a year at a Pensionat–a finishing school–in Dresden, a favoured location for such purposes for those who could afford it. Bernhard was a brilliant and charismatic, but emotionally erratic, young doctor. The match was not–or would not have been–approved by Sigmund, and the couple in effect eloped, travelling in 1912 on a cruiser to Celebes (now Sulawesi) in the Dutch East Indies, where Bernhard had succeeded in getting a post as a doctor with the Dutch colonial authorities. Two years–and one child, Stefan–later, war intervened, and Bernhard felt it his patriotic duty to return and enlist. His active service, however, turned out to be brief. The couple lived for a short time at Jindřichův Hradec, where Konrad (my father) was born in 1917. Then, shortly after the War Sigmund set Bernhard up in practice, buying him a large property in open country, on the outskirts of Salzburg, which he ran as a sanatorium for sufferers from nervous disorders. Among the guests was Sigmund Freud’s wife Martha, who stayed at the sanatorium for a rest cure–and was briefly visited by the great man himself–in the summer of 1919.

  It was in this idyllic location that the family lived in the years immediately after the First World War; and my father’s memories of the period include meeting Stefan Zweig and his adoptive daughters: the famous author had retreated from mainstream Viennese literary society, living on a hill just outside the centre of Salzburg; within the small intellectual community of Salzburg, he and the Schwarzwalds had evidently made social contact. It seems likely that it was at Salzburg, too, and also through Zweig, that Grete met her second husband, Moriz, who was an old friend of the great author.

  The Singer family around 1920: Grete (standing, third from right) with her father (seated, centre), her seven siblings and two of their wives.

  Bernhard Schwarzwald had died suddenly, on a trip to Vienna, from a cause which at the time was described as a heart attack. My father was seven at the time; he understood later, from conversations with other relatives, that this was in fact a suicide–a suicide possibly connected with debts, or with a love affair, and almost certainly with the consequences of what would now be called a bipolar condition.

  With Grete’s remarriage came the move to Vienna, where Moriz Scheyer was a successful theatre and book reviewer, and eventually editor of the arts pages, for one of Vienna’s two main daily newspapers (the Neues Wiener Tagblatt). The contrasting characters emerge in my father’s account: Moriz, the respected but hypersensitive literary man, jealous of his privacy,18 liable to cut off contact with friends or colleagues at some perceived slight, never free of the feeling of ‘stage fright’ as he approached the weekly writing task for his paper; Grete, the confident and extrovert society lady, playing bridge with Alma Mahler and meeting family members in cafés for convivial gatherings which Moriz would strenuously avoid.

  My father recalled arguments between his mother and stepfather, and even an intervention of his own, as a teenager, advising them that if they made each other unhappy they should split up; but it seems impossible to judge whether the level of disharmony in the family was any more than ‘normal’. One episode caused a definite crisis, when Moriz conceived an infatuation for a minor opera singer–a drama which was brought to a head by Grete taking pills and then ringing to say goodbye. A doctor was called, and the immediate crisis averted.

  The circles in which Moriz Scheyer moved included the most distinguished musicians and writers of the time in Vienna: the Mahlers, Bruno Walter, Stefan Zweig, Arthur Schnitzler, as well as a host of literary figures less well-known today; to many he was a person worth cultivating, in view of his ability to place reviews in the paper.

  Grete in the early 1920s with her children, Konrad (left) and Stefan.

  From 1934, the Austrian government under Chancellor Schuschnigg was authoritarian, with a command economy and no real democracy, but it was desperate to avoid being taken over by the two more powerful–and fascist–neighbours, Germany and Italy. Political parties, including the National Socialists, were banned. The political culture, for liberal-leaning as well as for Jewish people, was unpleasant, but not threatening.

  Families like that of my father did not consider themselves as belonging to a distinct group, the Jews; they thought of themselves as Austrians who happened to be Jewish by faith–although the faith itself, even in the generation before my father, consisted only of a few minimal traditional observations. My father recalls having separate instruction in Hebrew at his school (actually a Catholic establishment, the Piaristengymnasium); and he had a bar mitzvah (‘you couldn’t do that to my grandfather–not have a bar mitzvah!’).

  Families like the Scheyers ‘had nothing to do with’ the orthodox, Hassidic community, regarding its visible display of separateness and traditional religious practice as liable to provoke ‘active’ anti-Semitism. ‘Passive’ anti-Semitism–manifested, for example, in the difficulty of Jewish people rising to higher ranks in the civil service or army–certainly already existed. But to the rise of Hitler and fascism there was a range of attitudes: supporters were not always ideological fanatics. Many were entranced by the ‘economic miracle’ which Hitler seemed to have conjured in Germany; a student acquaintance told my father: don’t worry about the anti-Semitism, that’s just to appeal to the masses, once they’re in power that will all be forgotten.

  The Anschluss, however, brought Hitler literally to the family’s door: on 14th March 1938 his cavalcade entered Vienna down the Mariahilferstrasse, the busy street, leading into the city from the south-west, on which the Scheyers lived. How urgent, or desperate, was the situation for a young Jewish student in Vienna in March 1938? He sought advice from his head of department, Hermann Mark;* wait until after the break, he was advised (Hitler’s invasion had coincided with a midterm holiday at the university): perhaps it will not be as bad as we fear. At the end of the break, Mark–who had one Jewish parent–had already been dismissed from his post. The acts of violence and humiliation started immediately, too: Jewish students who attempted to return to the university might be grabbed by party activists and forced to clean the streets; my father was ‘fortunate’ in suffering no worse personal humiliation than to be told to move from a park bench, now designated as not for Jews, where he was sitting with a girlfriend.

  While his parents made their way from Vienna to Paris in the way described in Moriz’s manuscript, my father found a route to Zurich–bizarrely enough, through Germany: he had learned from a cousin that it was still possible, in Leipzig, to acquire a visa for Switzerland by making an unscrutinised claim to be a ‘German businessman’. In Zurich, as a guest of family friends, he spent the summer writing letters in the attempt to be able to continue his studies at a university in Britain, and finally succeeded in doing so, at Glasgow.19

  Belvès, Rispals, Resistance

  The following section tells more about the characters encountered in Belvès in Moriz’s account: about the Rispal family, especially, but also about their and others’ Resistance activity in that region. It is based again partly on my father’s (and to a limited extent my own) recollections, and partly on those of Georges Rebière,* a schoolfriend and Resistance comrade of Jacques’, whom I met and interviewed in Belvès in 2008 (and who also wrote a personal memoir of the Resistance).

  Gabriel Rispal was a ‘larger-than-life’ character; a joker; a bon vivant; and a committed communist. A handyman and decorator, he was also an artist in his spare time, a peintre de dimanche, whose paintings hang in many a Belvès house–as indeed they did in my childhood home in Surrey. Hélène, also a committed communist, was by contrast the quiet one. Her generosity, and emotional attachment, were obvious to anyone who met her; her steely determination–the acts of courage and self-sacrifice–were rather, as also emerges from Moriz’s account, carried out by stealth.

  Jacques Rispal–Gabriel and Hélène’s son–was, as Moriz mentions, ‘talent-spotted’ by Pierre Vorms, and he went on, after the War, to have a considerable career as an actor, as well as
dramatic experiences as a political activist. In the small-town community of pre-war Belvès, Jacques (‘Jacquot’) and his friend Georges Rebière were part of a close-knit band of copains: their leisure activities included various kinds of musical and theatrical activity, on which the political and military turmoil of 1940 had an unexpected side effect.

  Les copains: Jacques Rispal and his friends in a pre-war theatrical production (Jacques is seated, right; on the left are Jean Despont and, standing, Liliane Despont), and in Belvès (Jacques on the bike, Georges Rebière second left).

  Pierre Vorms was a friend of Moriz’s from Paris: Jewish, but a French citizen, he was serving as an officer in a regiment which found itself retreating through Belvès after the débâcle. He decided to remain in Belvès rather than return to German-occupied Paris. In the Paris art world, Vorms ran a gallery supporting avant-garde artists, known especially for the work of the Flemish artist Frans Masereel. Now in Belvès, struck by the range of talents amongst the copains, Vorms suggested the formation of a theatrical troupe–the Cercle Théâtral de Belvès–with the charitable aim of raising money for French prisoners-of-war in Germany (at the time an enormous number).

  The performances seem to have consisted of song-and-dance numbers in the first half and a play in the second. Both Vorms and Jacquot played the piano, the latter also singing and acting; Georges specialised in the Clown; Gabriel painted the sets; prominent members were Jean and Liliane Despont, presumably son and daughter of the postmaster Antoine, who set up the clandestine telecommunications network. In retrospect the artistic significance of these productions must be the theatrical debut of Jacques Rispal. Rebière paints a vivid picture of him in grotesque drag, complete with a necklace of onions, as Marguérite in a spoof Faust.

  Of course, the Cercle Théâtral was destined for a fairly short career; other concerns soon became more pressing. Men like Vorms, Rebière and Rispal, after observing the events of 1940 with increasing horror–the débâcle, the Armistice, the according of absolute power to Pétain, the series of anti-Semitic edicts–were soon drawn to resistance, even though the organisation of ‘the Resistance’ as a coherent force, acknowledging de Gaulle as its head and liaising with London, took longer.

  At the same time, Jacquot’s generation soon had a more immediate worry: the chantiers de la jeunesse, military-style youth labour camps, set up in 1940 to replace national service. Rebière’s call-up came in 1942, Rispal’s the following year. Worse still: in June 1942, Prime Minister Laval offered a French labour force to assist in German factories depleted by the workers’ absence at the front (Germany would release prisoners of war in exchange). ‘La Relève’ was intended as a voluntary scheme; but lack of take-up meant that conscription was soon envisaged. By a law of February 1943, the ‘Service du travail obligatoire’ made possible the conscription of entire years of chantiers–those of 1940, 1941 and 1942, to begin with.

  The policy, ironically, gave a boost to the Resistance: réfractaires–men who went into hiding to avoid the call-up, with its attendant prospect of forced labour in Germany–frequently at the same time joined the Resistance. When Jacquot’s turn came, he, like others, gave his chantier the slip and joined a maquis–a Resistance cell hiding out in the country.

  On the specifics of Jacques Rispal’s Resistance activities, it is difficult to uncover any details beyond what emerges from Moriz’s account, until the summer of 1944. By then, the various Resistance groups operating within France were fused together in the FFI (Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur), run more like a conventional army, formed into units and given training with weapons, with the aim of engaging and delaying German tanks moving across France from the east towards Normandy, and whose activities were coordinated with those of the regular army in the liberation of France. Jacquot and Georges were now billeted together, and the latter has a fairly full account of this last stage–including, around this time, the loss of a number of friends from their circle. Their war ended in Bordeaux, where they had had the responsibility of liberating the city from the remaining German troops (and where, incidentally, Rebière describes Jacquot engaging in some less heroic escapades, ‘borrowing’ the colonel’s car for night-time activities and then leaving it in a ditch).

  Before this final stage, security dictated that Resistance members knew nothing of activities outside the assignments on which they were directly involved. Rebière tells us something of the structure of the Resistance at Belvès: his own father Jean apparently made up the first ‘trio’, alongside Georges Marty (a neighbour of the Rispals) and his brother, Jean. These three would then recruit three more, and so on. Gabriel Rispal appears in Rebière’s account on a number of occasions: arriving to warn someone of an impending arrest, for example, and picking up weapons from a British parachute drop. The ‘Carlos’ who so impressed Moriz–Charles Ordeig–also appears: he became head of a Main d’oeuvre immigrée, a Resistance group formed from immigrants.

  Jacquot’s official position in the organisation had, perhaps, been similar to that of Rebière: a member of the Forces Françaises Combattantes in the network of ‘Hilaire-Buckmaster’, whereby there was liaison between London and the overall head of the Armée Secrète for the southern Dordogne.

  It is difficult to know to what extent the rescue of my grandparents was part of an organised action, rather than a spontaneous act of personal heroism–as my father always portrayed it, and indeed as Moriz presents it in the book. In November 1942 Jacques Rispal was not yet in hiding; presumably, though, he was already involved in the Resistance. The provision of false documents for the train journey sounds like part of an organised Resistance activity; yet this too is presented by Moriz as a personal initiative carried out by René Mathieu (who did the same for several others). Moriz is very clear in representing the plan as being hatched entirely by Hélène, who then drew on favours from a range of friends, family and acquaintances to make it a reality. Perhaps one thing that the episode serves to demonstrate is how informal and improvised much Resistance activity was, especially when it came to the saving and concealing of refugees.

  Nor were the Scheyers the only refugees to live clandestinely in Belvès during the War and settle there afterwards. After the War, the Scheyers’ next-door neighbour at the Maisonette was a man called Elias Magaran, who had been a refugee involved in the Resistance in Belvès, and subsequently married there.

  The apparently shared idealism of the Resistance–although there were already political tensions within it–was quickly fractured after the War, when the same de Gaulle who had, at least nominally, led the Resistance struggle, headed a government attempting to preserve French colonial power in Indochina and Algeria by military force. Resistance veterans who opposed French colonialism–and in many cases became involved in the active campaign against it–were thus in a practical state of civil war with their ex-comrades-in-arms.

  Jacques the young actor: a publicity shot inscribed to Grete, Moriz and Sláva, around 1948.

  Virulently opposed to colonialism and to what he described as ‘Nazi methods being used, in my name, under the French flag’, against the Algerian people, Jacques Rispal was among a group–including a number of fairly prominent artists–who, in the 1950s, aligned themselves with the ‘terrorist’ Algerian independence movement, the FLN, headed by Francis Jeanson. Jacques’ involvement was active; and he was arrested and tried as a ‘bag-carrier’ (porteur de valises) for the movement, in a high-profile case in 1960. He served nearly three years in prison. The above quotation comes from a letter from Rispal to a former Resistance colonel, André Malraux, whom he had met during maquis activities in the Dordogne and who was now a government minister, and is printed in a book Rispal wrote about his trial and imprisonment.20 For Rispal–as for others in France at the time–the struggle for Algerian independence was quite simply a continuation of the wartime struggle.

  Rispal had been active on the Paris stage from the early 1950s, especially at the Théâtre de l’Atelier, where his av
ant-garde work included early productions of Pinter. His film career began in earnest somewhat later, after the above political drama. It is a career which in a way reflects the political tribulations of the period. Through the 1960s to the 1970s, Rispal played characters who in a variety of registers–by turns sombre, doom-laden, satirical, playful–reflect the themes of shattered idealism, moral ambiguity, conflict or nihilism of their authors’ films. In La Guerre est finie (1966), for example, Rispal is a melancholic loyalist in a communist group in Spain, very much on its last legs, very slowly beginning to realise that the Revolution is in fact not about to happen. There are cameos in Buñuel’s satirical La Voie lactée (1969) and Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972); and the Truffaut connoisseur may remember the eccentric upstairs neighbour in Domicile conjugal (1970), refusing to leave his house until Pétain is given an honourable burial at Verdun. In Louis Malle’s controversial Lacombe Lucien (1974), Jacquot plays a landlord exploiting the precarious situation of a Jewish tenant in wartime France. And it seems that the hesitant acceptance of a role in Costa-Gavras’ L’Aveu (1970)–a film dealing with torture in communist Czechoslovakia–represented a decisive rejection of Stalinism, on the part of Rispal as well as of others on the Left in France.

  In later years, Georges Rebière told me, he had often begged Jacquot to leave the pressures of his life in Paris and retire to Belvès to his true home and friends. This, indeed, he eventually did, to the same ‘maisonette’ of the Scheyers’ residence and my childhood holidays; though he died shortly afterwards.