Nationality French Name Robert Aron | Role Writer Education Lycee Condorcet | |
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Born May 25, 1898Le Vesinet, Yvelines, France ( 1898-05-25 ) Books A Boy Named Jesus, The Jewish Jesus | ||
Robert Aron (1898–1975) was a French historian and writer who authored a number of books on politics and European history.
Early life and career
Robert Aron was born in Le Vésinet on 25 May 1898 to an upper-class Jewish family from eastern France. He attended the Lycée Condorcet and served in the French Army during World War I. He was wounded in action in 1918.
Receiving a degree in literature after the war, he joined the Éditions Gallimard publishing house where he was briefly secretary to Gaston Gallimard. He also worked as a film critic for the magazine La Revue du Cinéma, and wrote about politics in the foreign service for the Revue des Deux Mondes. His interest in post-war avant-garde literature and art and its most modern and provocative expressions was the impetus behind the creation, together with Antonin Artaud and Roger Vitrac, of the Théâtre Alfred Jarry.
Although he was somewhat disappointed by his early experiences, his life took a new turn as he became reacquainted with a fellow, former student of the Lycée Condorcet, Arnaud Dandieu, in 1927. Their work together in political and philosophical research spawned three works in the early 1930s: Décadence de la Nation Française (1931), Le Cancer Américain (1931) and La Révolution Nécessaire (1933). These works constituted the principal theoretical base on which he created the group l'Ordre Nouveau (The New Order) in 1930, which with Esprit represented one of the most original expressions of the Nonconformist Movement during the 1930s. Closely collaborating with Dandieu until his death in 1933, Aron took a very active part in all of the activities of l'Ordre Nouveau until its end in 1938. Thereafter, Aron's activities and viewpoints would be influenced by these experiences.
In 1940, the advent of World War II interrupted his editorial work at the Nouvelle Revue Française, a literary magazine. In 1941 he was arrested in one of the Nazis' first anti-semitic operations and held in the Mérignac camp near Bordeaux. After being released, he was not allowed to travel to Paris and instead moved to Lyon, where he became involved, through his friend Jean Rigaut, in preparations for the American embarkments in North Africa.
Soon after he was able to escape to Algiers, thanks to Jean Jardin, a former contributor to l'Ordre Nouveau, and at the time director of Pierre Laval's cabinet. In Algiers, Robert Aron became a part of one of the first administrative teams of General Giraud and then General Charles de Gaulle. With Lucie Faure and Jean Amrouche he founded a new literary review, La Nef ("The Nave"), for which he would continue writing until 1952. In 1944–1945, he contributed to the creation of the "Federation" Movement and would remain an active supporter of the French Federalist Movement until his death by regularly collaborating in the monthly publication Le XXe siècle Fédéraliste, and participating in initiatives to create a federation of European States.
Aron took up editorial duties again after the Liberation of France, most notably at the publishing houses Librairie Académique Perrin and later, Éditions Fayard. In 1950, he undertook an important work of historical research on contemporary French history, writing the following works: Histoire de Vichy (1956, "History of Vichy"), which, translated into English, was termed a "neglected but pivotal book" by Nicholas Birns, Histoire de la Libération (1959, "History of the Liberation"), translated into English as 'De Gaulle Before Paris' (trans. Humphrey Hare, Putnam 1962) and Histoire de l'Epuration (1967–1975, "History of the Purification").
An agnostic during the 1930s, Aron returned to his Jewish faith after 1945 and participated in formal Jewish-Christian dialogue. His book "The God of the Beginnings" (New York: Morrow, 1966) explores the origins of religion and its development in the traditions of the Old Testament (e.g., Abraham, Moses, the Sinai Covenant). He also wrote books about Jesus's identity as a Jew, including Jesus of Nazareth: The Hidden Years (New York: Morrow, 1962), and The Jewish Jesus (New York Maryknoll, 1971) In 1974, he was elected a member of the Académie française (number 650) but he died suddenly the night before his public acceptance ceremony on 19 April 1975.
His final work, Léopold III ou le choix impossible (Leopold III or the Impossible Choice), looked at this history of the Belgian monarch Leopold III and the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940 and was published posthumously in 1977.