8
Le Corbusier’s new friends embraced many of the ideals central to Vichy thinking. Bucard’s Mouvement Franciste, which the World War I veteran had founded in 1933, was a royalist, far-right organization financed by Mussolini’s government. Its members wore a uniform of blue shirts and practiced the Roman salute.
Le Corbusier’s old friend François de Pierrefeu had introduced him to Bucard. De Pierrefeu was a construction engineer who in the 1920s became director of major hydraulic works, overseeing the building of dams in metropolitan France, Algeria, and Morocco. In Tangiers, he had become passionate about painting, sculpture, and architecture, and in 1932 had published the book Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. That same year, de Pierrefeu had joined Le Corbusier and Pierre Winter on the masthead of the periodical Plans. The following year, the three of them, together with Hubert Lagardelle, created Prélude, the publication of the Central Committee of Regionalist and Syndicalist Action. Throughout the thirties, de Pierrefeu was a technical and economic advisor to Le Corbusier on various plans for Algiers and Nemours; now, in the winter of 1940–1941, he took on the task, among others, of trying to help Le Corbusier do whatever it took to remake Algiers as they both desired. De Pierrefeu was working with zeal to advance Le Corbusier’s cause within the internecine structure of Pétain’s government; to have Bucard as a champion was a big step.
In the stadium at Vichy, August 31, 1941
Thanks to Pierre Winter, the other person to whom Le Corbusier’s mother referred in using the verb “collaborer,” Le Corbusier had inaugurated, in 1925, the headquarters of Le Faisceau with a slide lecture, prompting its founder, Georges Valois, to write:
Le Corbusier’s conceptions translate our deepest thoughts. Le Corbusier is quite simply a man of genius who has conceived, as no one before him, the Modern City.
I do not want to set forth his conceptions here. They are of incomparable grandeur. We must request him to discuss them for a public of several million. He is a formidable figure. Our comrades’ initial reaction to his slides was a moment of astonishment; then they understood and entered into a moment of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the word. Before the city of tomorrow—great, beautiful, rational and full of faith—they saw their own dream materialized.
I then said how his grand conceptions expressed the deepest thought of Fascism, of the Fascist revolution….
Now, Fascism is precisely this, a rational organization of the entire national life, conceived so that the individual initiative is multiplied by ten. Le Corbusier’s work expresses this with genius: this must be said and said again. It is prodigiously in advance of Baron Haussmann.
Upon seeing his slides of the city of tomorrow, it occurred to all our comrades that Fascism is not the act of rioters sacking a ministry—no, it is a great constructive revolution which will give the world the cities of Light, of Joy, of Peace from which poverty will be banished. We expressed to Monsieur Le Corbusier, along with our thanks, our profound admiration.33
Winter took Le Faisceau to a new level in 1928 when, as chief surgeon of the Faculté de Médecine in Paris, he had helped create the Parti Fasciste Révolutionnaire. He was a passionate believer in the Radiant City, which he saw as a means of realizing his political program and the fascist agenda of revolutionary changes in the fields of science and medicine.
There is a theory that, after the end of World War II, Le Corbusier destroyed a lot of the files relating to these connections that might now embarrass him. Even if documents concerning Winter are gone, certain facts still stand out. Winter was a true military hero of the type Le Corbusier admired. He had sustained various injuries in his service for the “forty-sixth battalion of Alpine hunters.” By 1930, he and Le Corbusier were close enough to write one another as “mon cher ami.” Winter had Le Corbusier become, at his behest, an active member of the Syndicat d’Initiative de Paris. That same year, when Le Corbusier represented France at CIAM, he counted on Winter to testify to the medical benefits of his views on “Air Sound Light.” As always, the request was made with evangelical urgency: “You will greatly assist the advance of modern times.”34
Through the period of Vichy, Le Corbusier and Pierre Winter maintained the closeness they had formed as neighbors at 24 rue Nungesser-et-Coli. Winter was a close colleague of de Pierrefeu’s and Giraudoux’s as well; they all had similar theories on “urbanism and biology.”
Le Corbusier was convinced that these associates and the other people in charge in Vichy would effect change that would benefit every aspect of French life. They would improve hygiene and sanitation. Their regulations concerning the production and labeling of alcoholic beverages, which the new regime instigated, were the sort of bold moves that improved human existence.
About those who stood to suffer rather than thrive with all the new laws and mandates, Le Corbusier had a rationale. From Ozon, where he had returned briefly to visit Yvonne at the start of October, he wrote his mother, “The Jews are going through a very bad time. I am sometimes contrite about it. But it does seem as if their blind thirst for money had corrupted the country.”35
On October 3, 1940, two days after Le Corbusier wrote these words, the Statute on Jews was passed. While making an exception for certain assimilated Jews from families that had lived in France for a long time, it prohibited most French Jews “from elective office, from the civil service, from teaching and journalism.”36 It established quotas in other professions as well.
The terms of the armistice demanded that German Jews who had fled to France return to Germany. This almost invariably guaranteed that they would be put to death. A decree passed the day after “the law of October 3rd” further sealed the fate of all Jews in France by requiring their internment in special camps. Then, on October 7, Algerian Jews were stripped of their French nationality.
In time, the Vichy government deported more than eighty thousand Jews. It confiscated Jewish property and sold the assets for its own benefit.
Nearly twenty-five years later, Le Corbusier gave the impression, in Corbusier Himself, that at the time he had been sensitive and prescient about such horrors. In truth, as long as he thought his own building program was at stake, he had ignored the plight of Vichy’s victims.
9
On British radio, Charles de Gaulle had summoned the French people to fight any form of Germanization. Brave individuals who opposed the occupying forces had started to publish the newspaper that gave their movement its name—Résistance—and to engage in guerrilla activities within the occupied zone. In the south, there were people making determined efforts to weaken the power structure in Vichy, and on other fronts there were men and women trying to circumvent Nazi authority and help people at risk escape. Le Corbusier evinced no interest in these rescue efforts and made no attempt to join the resistance; if he was to build or plan cities, his only possibility was to stay in Vichy.
Marie Jeanneret, too, acted as if there was no alternative. To be in Vichy was “all the same preferable to what a life must be in a city where people must beg for their wretched daily bread for hours on end; where so many restrictions are enforced; where freedom is abolished for the time being. Oh! who will restore to France all she has lost in the matter of material goods! But from another point of view, how much rubbish has been swept away.”37
She longed for her worthy son to be duly respected, high up in that new power structure, “recalled to the ‘ranks’ as an active, precious intelligence.” Now he would rise to the stature he deserved. “How proud of you I am, my great Le Corbu!” wrote Marie Charlotte Amélie Jeanneret-Perret.38 At last!
10
At the start of October, the war brought a new tragedy to the Jeanneret family. Albert’s wife, Lotti, had a son who had killed himself—after murdering his young wife, “whom he adored and who was to have a baby at Christmas.”39 He was a career officer, recently promoted in the army, who had completely lost the ability to cope.
Lotti’s son, unlike her two daughters, had apparently nev
er figured in her Paris life. While Lotti and Albert were, it seems, amicably separated, everyone was shattered. As if it needed to be said, Marie told Le Corbusier that not only was Lotti overwhelmed with grief but so were she and Albert. She provided an address for Lotti in Sweden, with instructions to Le Corbusier to write her a sympathy note.
Shortly after that horrific event, Yvonne’s health deteriorated to such an extent that Le Corbusier, back in Ozon, took her for a consultation with a new doctor near Lourdes. She was diagnosed with a treatable liver ailment. Le Corbusier told his mother that, after following the doctor’s orders for fifteen days, the volatile Yvonne had improved. He didn’t specify what those orders were, but alcohol was almost certainly the issue.
During this same autumn of 1940, Maréchal Pétain met with Hitler in Montoire-sur-le-Loir. On October 31, Pétain issued a public proclamation of support for the Führer: “It is with honor, and in order to maintain French unity…that in the framework of an activity which will create the European new order I today enter the road of collaboration.”40
Le Corbusier believed that collaboration could lead to good things. That same day, the architect wrote his mother, “One may presume, depending on events, that the Government will return to Paris. In that case my conduct is clear, I shall return as well.”41 Pierre Winter had already returned. To be in the French capital while it was under Hitler’s control now seemed not only possible but appealing.
Le Corbusier, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly convinced that a marvelous transformation of society might be under way—and that the resistance being encouraged from England was foolhardy, its adherents at risk:
Here is the great problem facing the French government. We are in the hands of a conqueror whose attitude could be devastating. If he is sincere in his promises, Hitler could crown his life by an overwhelming creation: the accommodation of Europe. This is a stake that may tempt him, rather than a preference for a fruitless vengeance. That is the unknown quantity. Personally I believe the outcome could be favorable. France, barring a criminal transplantation or a German invasion, is a mouthful not to be chewed, and if the problem consists of assigning each nation its role, getting rid of the banks, solving real—realistic—tasks, then the prognosis is good. It would mean the end of speeches from the tribunal, of endless meetings of committees, of parliamentary eloquence and sterility. Such a revolution will be made in the direction of order and not without consideration of human conditions.
Whatever the case, the die is cast. England fulminates, Her French radio broadcasts spit out floods of eloquence, which in all sincerity ring perfectly hollow to my ears, though dangerous when heard by those who permit themselves to be beguiled by rhetoric.42
The imploring voice he derided was de Gaulle’s.
TWO WEEKS AFTER Pétain announced his fealty to Hitler, Le Corbusier again begged his mother to take better care of herself. He warned her not to be frugal in spite of the realities of wartime, if it endangered her health. “No criminal economies!” the architect counseled, imploring the eighty-year-old to stop raking leaves—at least on days when it was too cold out.43 He also accused her of not heating the house adequately.
Urging Marie to spend whatever was necessary to stay warm, Le Corbusier allowed, “In these matters, I know that I am preaching in the desert. Yet you must make up your mind: A/to spend what you must for heating. B/realize how cold it is and leave your household in peace. Which is to say, act with common sense and with an understanding of the hierarchy of things. You are at fault in this matter, but my dear Maman, I fear you are incorrigible.” Le Corbusier’s real issue with her, however, was Albert: “Albert, less determined than I, more malleable, has been to a large degree molded by you, by your wishes, your desires, your ambitions. All this as a consequence of the noblest kind of love, of course. But who tells you—who gives you the right to tell yourself—that your points of view, your perceptions of happiness attached (alas) to the notion of ‘success,’ are accurate? For whom are we living? For the gallery or for the fulfillment of destinies that are anchored deep within ourselves?”44
Now wanting Marie to indulge his brother as a beleaguered genius, Le Corbusier lectured her for twelve pages on how she might better handle the eccentric composer—advising her to be less bothered by the lack of recognition for Albert’s music.
Edouard assumed a responsibility equal to hers: “As a boy, our Albert went to war with a violin under his arm, in order to become…a virtuoso: a debatable point of view. Reality frustrated this undertaking. Failure of the man, or of the program? The two must not be confused.”45 His mother needed to be realistic and stop acting as if her son was the equal of Bach, Beethoven, or Satie.
Nonetheless, Le Corbusier was concerned that his brother would not earn enough money.
Where is happiness? In inner wealth, on condition that external poverty does not spoil everything. For black poverty can do that.
On the other hand, this year 1940 is the point of inflection between a world dying and a world being born. Comparisons no longer have any legitimate application. Nothing is the same any longer. Even if success had enjoyed a material, a tangible means of manifesting itself: money—well, money today is damned, and will be even more so.46
Even if Albert had a regular job, it would not make a difference in such troubled times.
The younger son was at the pulpit: “Jesus, your great model, failed at each step of his life and by ordinary judgment deserved no better than the beggar’s lot, and he took that way to the end. Which constituted his mother’s enormous disappointment. It is probable that in his childhood he was promising. But the conclusion was that he did not keep his promises.” Both he and Albert, clearly, were in the same straits as Jesus: truthful creatures who might never gain their warranted recognition. The essential issue, Le Corbusier concluded, was self-respect: “It is our lot to be born and to die. And on the road between, not to be too ashamed of ourselves. If we are still entitled to respect ourselves, then we have defined happiness, our happiness.”47
11
Le Corbusier was out of the good favor he had attained by working in Vichy. Marie did not respond favorably to his diatribe on the need to understand Albert or to his repeated advice that she must recognize her relative good fortune in life. Again she complained about the house he had built for her and about his brother’s inability to help with its maintenance:
Albert and I manage to use this house, anything but solid and costing both money and effort. It is quite different from the tranquil life I lived alone for years at the lake. One must face the fact that Albert is a man, and like you little disposed to concern himself with the normal maintenance of a house!…
But I think you should understand, you intellectuals, that nowadays life is complicated, terribly complicated for the housewife.48
She was determined that Le Corbusier stop minimizing her hardships: “Restrictions rain down, it’s a kind of madness, and you have nothing to envy us for, because it is worse here than France! These days we need ration cards for everything.”49 And as always, there were problems with the heating system; the new furnace was not working properly.
She reiterated, however, her one source of hope: “Listening to French radio every day, we participate in the great adventure of the Reconstruction of a new France, and we marvel at everything good and fruitful being undertaken. We hope you will also have your position, in order to serve and be useful to our dear France!” And if Le Corbusier could dispense advice, so could she: “And you, dear boy, take care of your lungs, don’t let yourself get too cold and go run cross-country to warm your limbs and your blood.”50
At age fifty-three, Le Corbusier was still dealing with a mother who alternated between anger and maternal concern in rapid succession. She dispensed approval and disapproval like cannon fire.
IT WAS a particularly brutal winter. Le Corbusier wrote Marie with precise instructions on how to adjust the troublesome heating system so that she would be warm enough duri
ng the night. As for her advice on health: he proposed his own latest formula for avoiding colds. Albert should go to the lake, collect stones, heat them, wrap them in a light material, and put them in her bed. If she slept with the warm stones and a wool cap, she would ward off illness. With a watchmaker’s precision and the resolve of an engineer, Le Corbusier now added the detail that it is around 4:00 a.m. that the head becomes cold, which in turn causes illness.51
He was writing this from Vichy. The minister of the interior had summoned him from Ozon back to Pétain’s seat of power on November 25.
12
The minister, Marcel Peyrouton, had been appointed two months earlier. Le Corbusier had first met him in Algiers in 1932, when Peyrouton had a high government position there, and they had further discussed town planning when Peyrouton had been stationed in Tunisia. Now, Peyrouton appointed him as one of two experts on urbanism who would be responsible for all construction in the devastated regions of France.
Le Corbusier was in Vichy for only a few days, but he had three long conversations with Giraudoux. The playwright intended to ask Pétain and others in his cabinet to attend a public lecture, planned for December, on urbanism: Winter would speak on health, Le Corbusier on architectural technique, and he, Giraudoux, on civil spirit. Le Corbusier told Giraudoux he was sure that the government officials would be too preoccupied by other matters to sit still in an auditorium but said he would gladly return if the lecture became a reality.
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