Montéhus
Encyclopedia
Gaston Mardochée Brunswick, better known by his pseudonym Montéhus, was a French singer-songwriter. He was born in Paris on 9 July 1872 and died in December 1952. He was the writer of such notable songs as Gloire au 17ème and La Butte Rouge.
He began to sing in public at the age of 12, in 1884, a decade before the beginning of the Dreyfus Affair
. He published his first song (Au camarade du 153ème) in1897. It was then that he adopted his pseudonym, easier to bear than his name in the context of strong antisemitism. In 1907, he published Gloire au 17ème in honour of the regiment of soldiers who refused to fire on a demonstration of wine growers in Béziers
.
. Montéhus was one of the singers of the red revolt, along with Jean-Baptiste Clément (1836–1903), writer of the song Le Temps des cerises
, Eugène Pottier (1816–1887), writer of L'Internationale, Jules Jouy (1855–1897), writer of V'là l'choléra qu'arrive, Les Anarchistes de Chicago, Pierre Dupont
(1821–1870), Le chant des ouvriers, Le chant du vote, Gaston Couté (1880–1911) Le gars qu'a mal tourné, etc.
In his lively, driven songs, Montéhus opposed war, capitalist exploitation, prostitution, poverty, religious hypocrisy, but also the income tax:
He also defended the cause of women in a remarkable way. La grève des Mères (The Mothers' Strike) was legally banned in 5 October and Montéhus condemned for "incitement to abortion".
; moreover, the latter made reference to this in his correspondence. In a letter to Lev Kamenev
, Lenin wrote: "Ah! If I could listen to Montéhus again!". At the time of his exile in France (between 1909 and 1912), Lenin gave a series of conferences in a room of either the Rive Gauche or Bobino (the places is uncertain). At Lenin's request, Montéhus sang in the first part to attract a sizable audience. The people who came to listen to the "humanitarian singer" were also invited to listen to the Bolshevik
activist after the intermission. The relations between art and politics prefigured the agitprop
(art in the service of political discourse and/or ideology) put in place in the USSR beginning in the 1920s.
(considered "too German") for a more academic style (considered "French"). It was then that Montéhus sang La Guerre finale, a grotesque détournement
of L'Internationale:
Similarly, in Lettre d'un Socialo (sung to the tune of L'air du Clairon by Paul Déroulède
), he explained that the time had come for La Marseillaise
, while waiting to be able to sing L'Internationale once again:
Montéhus was the image of the working people, who left en masse for the front contrary to the fears of the state adjutant who had overestimated the workers' commitment to pacifism.
In a song impregnated with the racism
of his time, entitled L'Arbi, Montéhus held xenophobic intentions:
Plus loin :
During these four years of war, he did not cease to compose warlike songs (La Dernière victime, La Voix des mourants, La Vision sanglante, Debout les Morts !, etc.), he would never be mobilised and thus never know the horrors of the front. On the other hand, on the stage of the Olympia, he was wounded in the head singing warlike songs. At the end of the war in 1918, for his good and loyal services, he received the Croix de Guerre
.
. He would attempt to redeem himself in 1923 by composing La Butte Rouge (The Red Mound), which makes reference to the Mound of Bapeaume, theatre of violent battles at the Somme during the offensive of the summer of 1916 (and not, contrary to a common error, the Paris Commune of 1871, strongly evoked in the work of de Montéhus). In this song, he takes on those responsible for the carnage:
and Léon Blum
.
en 1947. All but forgotten, supported only by his family, he died in 1952 in Paris.
Biography
He was the eldest child of 22 in an improverished working class family of Jewish descent.A Child of the Commune
Montéhus was born after the Paris Commune of 1871. According to him, his father Abraham Brunschwig had been among the rebels, but there is no source to verify this claim. Nevertheless, Montéhus was raised in a post-Commune context, which accounts for his commitment to left-wing politics. "Revolutionary jingoist" as he liked to present himself, he was close to the "wretched of the Earth" spoken of by Eugène Pottier in L'Internationale.He began to sing in public at the age of 12, in 1884, a decade before the beginning of the Dreyfus Affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
. He published his first song (Au camarade du 153ème) in1897. It was then that he adopted his pseudonym, easier to bear than his name in the context of strong antisemitism. In 1907, he published Gloire au 17ème in honour of the regiment of soldiers who refused to fire on a demonstration of wine growers in Béziers
Béziers
Béziers is a town in Languedoc in southern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the Hérault department. Béziers hosts the famous Feria de Béziers, centred around bullfighting, every August. A million visitors are attracted to the five-day event...
.
A Committed Singer
In the second half of the 19th century, the song was central to the popular culture. Books, expensive as they were, were not accessible to the working classes. When it contained a strong political element, the song could be a powerful tool of propagandaPropaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
. Montéhus was one of the singers of the red revolt, along with Jean-Baptiste Clément (1836–1903), writer of the song Le Temps des cerises
Le Temps des cerises
Le Temps des cerises is a song written in France in 1866, with words by Jean-Baptiste Clément and music by Antoine Renard. The song is strongly associated with the Paris Commune...
, Eugène Pottier (1816–1887), writer of L'Internationale, Jules Jouy (1855–1897), writer of V'là l'choléra qu'arrive, Les Anarchistes de Chicago, Pierre Dupont
Pierre Dupont
Pierre Dupont , French song-writer, the son of a blacksmith, was born in Lyon.His parents both died before he was five years old, and he was brought up in the country by his godfather, a village priest. He was educated at the seminary of L'Argentire, and was afterwards apprenticed to a notary at Lyon...
(1821–1870), Le chant des ouvriers, Le chant du vote, Gaston Couté (1880–1911) Le gars qu'a mal tourné, etc.
In his lively, driven songs, Montéhus opposed war, capitalist exploitation, prostitution, poverty, religious hypocrisy, but also the income tax:
- Au lieu d'imposer l'travailleur qui enrichit l'gouvernement
- Imposez plutôt les noceurs [les capitalistes] qui gaspillent tant d'argent.
He also defended the cause of women in a remarkable way. La grève des Mères (The Mothers' Strike) was legally banned in 5 October and Montéhus condemned for "incitement to abortion".
A Friend of Lenin
Montéhus maintained relations with Vladimir LeninVladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
; moreover, the latter made reference to this in his correspondence. In a letter to Lev Kamenev
Lev Kamenev
Lev Borisovich Kamenev , born Rozenfeld , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was briefly head of state of the new republic in 1917, and from 1923-24 the acting Premier in the last year of Lenin's life....
, Lenin wrote: "Ah! If I could listen to Montéhus again!". At the time of his exile in France (between 1909 and 1912), Lenin gave a series of conferences in a room of either the Rive Gauche or Bobino (the places is uncertain). At Lenin's request, Montéhus sang in the first part to attract a sizable audience. The people who came to listen to the "humanitarian singer" were also invited to listen to the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
activist after the intermission. The relations between art and politics prefigured the agitprop
Agitprop
Agitprop is derived from agitation and propaganda, and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message....
(art in the service of political discourse and/or ideology) put in place in the USSR beginning in the 1920s.
A Revolutionary Jingoist
During the First World War, Montéhus, like many others, underwent a radical change of political opinion. He made himself the zealous changer of the Union Sacrée and sang militarist songs. One may draw a comparison with the painting of Picasso, who in the same period renounced cubismCubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
(considered "too German") for a more academic style (considered "French"). It was then that Montéhus sang La Guerre finale, a grotesque détournement
Detournement
A détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International, and consist in "turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself." Détournement was prominently used to set up subversive political pranks, an influential tactic called situationist prank that was...
of L'Internationale:
- "Et maintenant tous à l'ouvrage
- Amis, on ne meurt qu'une fois !"
Similarly, in Lettre d'un Socialo (sung to the tune of L'air du Clairon by Paul Déroulède
Paul Déroulède
- Early life :Déroulède was born in Paris. He was published first as a poet in the magazine Revue nationale, with the pseudonym "Jean Rebel". In 1869 he produced, at the Théâtre Français, a one-act drama in verse named Juan Strenner.- Military career :...
), he explained that the time had come for La Marseillaise
La Marseillaise
"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. The song, originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin" was written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792. The French National Convention adopted it as the Republic's anthem in 1795...
, while waiting to be able to sing L'Internationale once again:
- Nous chantons La Marseillaise
- Car dans ces terribles jours
- On laisse L'Internationale
- Pour la victoire finale
- On la chantera au retour.
Montéhus was the image of the working people, who left en masse for the front contrary to the fears of the state adjutant who had overestimated the workers' commitment to pacifism.
In a song impregnated with the racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
of his time, entitled L'Arbi, Montéhus held xenophobic intentions:
- Moi li sait bien, toi pas voulu guerre
- Toi, li Français, c'est kif kif le bon Dieu.
Plus loin :
- Moi suis content voir Paris : J'suis content, c'est bézef bonno
- A couper cabêche aux sales Pruscots
- car eux, du tout, pas gentils
- As pas peur, as pas peur, Sidi
- Si Pruscots venir, moi coupe kiki.
During these four years of war, he did not cease to compose warlike songs (La Dernière victime, La Voix des mourants, La Vision sanglante, Debout les Morts !, etc.), he would never be mobilised and thus never know the horrors of the front. On the other hand, on the stage of the Olympia, he was wounded in the head singing warlike songs. At the end of the war in 1918, for his good and loyal services, he received the Croix de Guerre
Croix de guerre
The Croix de guerre is a military decoration of France. It was first created in 1915 and consists of a square-cross medal on two crossed swords, hanging from a ribbon with various degree pins. The decoration was awarded during World War I, again in World War II, and in other conflicts...
.
Disgrace
After the war, Montéhus faced a rather long period of disgrace. He ceased to enroll in the Popular FrontPopular 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...
. He would attempt to redeem himself in 1923 by composing La Butte Rouge (The Red Mound), which makes reference to the Mound of Bapeaume, theatre of violent battles at the Somme during the offensive of the summer of 1916 (and not, contrary to a common error, the Paris Commune of 1871, strongly evoked in the work of de Montéhus). In this song, he takes on those responsible for the carnage:
[...] car les bandits qui sont cause des guerres
n'en meurent jamais, on ne tue qu'les innocents.
Support for the Popular Front
During the 1930s, he was a member of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO). At the advent of the Popular Front, at the age of 64, Montéhus was again at the forefront with Le décor va changer, Vas-Y Léon !", Le Cri des grévistes, L'Espoir d'un gueux, songs in which he supported the Popular FrontPopular 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 Léon Blum
Léon Blum
André Léon Blum was a French politician, usually identified with the moderate left, and three times the Prime Minister of France.-First political experiences:...
.
Under the Vichy Regime
Montéhus was not sent to a concentration camp, but he was forced to wear the yellow star from 1942 until the Liberation of France. In 1944, he wrote the Chant des Gaullistes (Song of the Gaullists).After the Liberation
He received the Legion of Honour from Paul RamadierPaul Ramadier
Paul Ramadier was a prominent French politician of the Third and Fourth Republics. Mayor of Decazeville starting in 1919, he served as the first Prime Minister of the Fourth Republic in 1947. On 10 July 1940, he voted against the granting of the full powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain, who...
en 1947. All but forgotten, supported only by his family, he died in 1952 in Paris.
Gloire au 17ème – 1907
- Salut, salut à vous,
- Braves soldats du 17ème ;
- Salut, braves pioupious,
- Chacun vous admire et vous aime ;
- Salut, salut à vous,
- À votre geste magnifique ;
- Vous auriez, en tirant sur nous,
- Assassiné la République.
Lettres d'un socialo – 1914
- Certes cela est pénible
- Quand on a le cœur sensible
- De voir tomber les copains
- Mais quand on est sous les armes
- On n'doit pas verser de larmes
- On accepte le destin.
La Butte Rouge – 1919
- La Butt’ Rouge, c’est son nom, l’baptême s’fit un matin
- Où tous ceux qui montaient roulaient dans le ravin.
- Aujourd’hui y’a des vignes, il y pousse du raisin.
- Qui boira ce vin là, boira l’sang des copains.
External links
- Chansons de Montéhus (La Butte rouge, La jeune garde, Les mains blanche, ...)
- La Butte rouge