It would not be hard, for with a higher position Le Corbusier intended to live in Vichy on a more permanent basis.
MARCEL PEYROUTON was a colleague of dubious merit. Just after he had been appointed minister, he had become so concerned about the Jewish “problem” that he developed a scheme to send two thousand Jews to Madagascar; the enterprise was halted in part because the Ministry of Finance deemed it too expensive.
In 1943, Charles de Gaulle had Peyrouton arrested; after the war, he was put on trial. On that occasion, Pétain’s former minister declared, “I did not pose questions. I repeat: I am a Republican, I am not anti-Republican. I am an agent, a functionary.”52 It was in that capacity that Peyrouton had summoned Le Corbusier.
13
Le Corbusier had to wait in Ozon for a while until his new position in Vichy was formalized. He continued to admire his wife’s comportment in exile. Yvonne rose early, kept their simple accommodations impeccably clean, filled their room with flowers, sewed broderies, and made them feel at home in a setting that otherwise would have seemed alien. He told his mother he was impressed
by her never abandoned discipline to be always impeccably right about herself however varying and unexpected. While I get myself copiously criticized for my careless outfits, my wrinkled trousers and my slovenly hair. The daily round has the effect of leaving my body free and my mind cheerful. Which is a great thing.
She also takes her medicines with an impeccable discipline, follows her diet, and has given up her apéritifs. This girl who seems so free and capricious is actually quite methodical: everything is done, everything undertaken according to rule with songs along the way.53
THEN, SHORTLY BEFORE the year was out, Le Corbusier got his marching orders. Just after New Year’s, he and Yvonne went to Vichy together. It was another arduous journey from Ozon, this time by car. Because of exceptional snow and ice that blocked the roads around Limoges for ten days, what should have taken a couple of days required fourteen. Regardless, when they arrived in Vichy in mid-January, Le Corbusier was delighted to be there.
Although the cold weather intensified her ailments, Yvonne was courageous as always. She stayed at her husband’s side, making their meager repasts as nice as possible while he struggled to secure his new post. Le Corbusier had difficulties because the Vichy regime considered him Swiss rather than French, in spite of his change of citizenship. Nonetheless, used to the presence of foes, he braced himself. Shortly after arriving, he wrote his mother,
I’m doing my duty: the impossible. I’m holding fast. Sympathy shown on all sides. But there’s a snake coiled around every doorknob.
Yet there must be no abdicating. This is the hour of events, when sides are taken, consequences revealed.54
Le Corbusier decided that, if all went as he hoped, he would stay in Vichy indefinitely, while installing Yvonne back at Vézelay. Marie again encouraged him: “My fond hope is that you’ll resume your march on Vichy and that you’re presently in top form in all respects…. All of us listen tonight at 6:45 to Radio Français and its appeals to the goodwill of every French citizen. The testimonials of affection, of unanimous respect for Maréchal Pétain are very moving, and we’d like him to know of our great admiration for the endless task he has undertaken, which is surely bearing fruit already. We pray God will preserve him for many years more and allow him to see his fatherly work for our beloved France triumph over all obstacles.”55
14
By the end of January, Le Corbusier had realized his mother’s fondest hopes. The nomination that had initially been cast aside because he was the son of a Swiss father had now been accepted, and he had formally become a consultant to the government official responsible for establishing the new guidelines and regulations for construction and urbanism throughout France. He reported with unabashed pride, “My role is to orient these things so that I can provide them with the New Spirit. I am regarded as a gentleman.”56
Not that the power struggles were over. Le Corbusier claimed to his mother that his aesthetic foes were so entrenched that he was tempted to quit even before he started; traditional architecture was still the preference in the devastated regions. Le Corbusier assured Marie he knew it was his obligation to forget his pride and persevere.
Le Corbusier was heartened when the students at the local Ecole des Beaux-Arts invited him to their studios; it indicated a new acceptance of his approach. Things began to go so well in Vichy that he and Yvonne decided, for the time being, to abandon the idea of her returning to Vézelay or Paris. They could afford to have her remain in the spa town now that Le Corbusier was receiving a modest salary and free lodging; he considered himself part of the establishment there.
Yvonne, however, disliked her long days in the hotel room alone except for Pinceau. She had a terrible cold at the end of January and was suffering from an unsuccessful operation an oculist had performed on her blocked tear duct.57 Le Corbusier began to waver—maybe they should repair to the villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin where he had painted his murals, or even to Vézelay or Paris. He imagined resuming painting in one of those other locations. But “Duty” was the deciding factor.
Pétain fired Peyrouton on February 9 in order to appease the Germans by replacing him with someone more clearly committed to collaboration. But even the downfall of one of his closest champions was not enough to discourage Le Corbusier. On February 17, he wrote his mother that he was an “initiator of profound action. I cannot be deterred from the path I follow.”58
IF YVONNE had to spend her life in a hotel room, at least it was in one of the best places, the Albert Premier. At lunchtime, she and Le Corbusier ate in a restaurant where there was only one menu, but they were happy with it. For supper, they often had a picnic on their beds—there was no alternative during the nightly blackouts—but they did not mind. Yvonne was unwilling to go to the cinema at night, for fear of leaving Pinceau alone in the room, barking. Le Corbusier took advantage of the situation to read a lot.
Le Corbusier’s mother, meanwhile, was again complaining about the humidity in the walls and difficulties because of the flat roof of La Petite Maison, especially in a wet winter. While excoriating Edouard for the dampness in the house, she made his brother the embodiment of perfection: “And then there is Albert, a real sunbeam, content with his lot, free and at home in his snug little house.”59
Marie expressed concern about Yvonne in the throes of menopause: “But it is sad to think of poor Yvonne and her health problems. I hope she can be patient, for the years preceding or following a fiftieth birthday are more or less good years for all women (without exception).”60 In fact, Yvonne was doing better. By March, she and Le Corbusier had moved to Queen’s Hotel—an even nicer accommodation with a view of the park. Yvonne’s tear duct was operated on again and this time was successfully cured. She was taking the spa waters under a doctor’s supervision and feeling generally healthier than she had in a long time.
Le Corbusier spoke on the state radio station on March 19, with kudos afterward, and he sold a painting to de Montmollin. Everything was looking up; he could gaze out the window and see buds on some of the trees. The willows were already green, and the plum trees were covered with white blossoms. By the end of the month, elated, he wrote his mother, “My undertaking is acknowledged and favored in the highest offices of the land.” With Giraudoux as part of the team, he felt on his way to “a total victory.”61
Moreover, he had a backup plan. Le Corbusier had been asked to give a monthlong course at a Buenos Aires university for two hundred thousand francs—with two guaranteed building projects. His loyalty to the new France was not so complete that he would decline to leave if necessary: “If Vichy were suddenly to collapse, it would be Argentina without delay.”62
15
On March 29, 1941, Le Corbusier had an interview with an official high up in the Vichy government—“the one who has the power to regulate all construction in France.” Le Corbusier’s dream had come true. “To our amazement, h
e declares his eagerness to use our organization and to regard it as his organ of inspiration,” he wrote.63
Le Corbusier then told his mother it was “Le M. lui-même” who looked him in the eyes and said that the architect would be supported by every available resource within the government.64 “Le M. lui-même” was in all likelihood Pétain himself. Le Corbusier had not used his name, but “Le M.” was a way of referring to “Le Maréchal”—indeed “the one” with the power Le Corbusier attributed to his interviewer.
Le Corbusier used one of his ultimate expressions of joy: “The horizon is clear.”65 At last he would achieve what he had been trying to do for twenty years. His incessant vigilance was bearing fruit; important work and great buildings were imminent. Everything would now happen as he hoped. André Boll, the press officer of the new committee, would make sure the whole country learned, through newspapers and radio, about the latest building plans. The necessary laws and regulations would follow. The rejections, the waiting, the problems of December and January were behind him, and the future would now be as he hoped, even if it included inevitable challenges.
Le Corbusier concluded this encomium to his mother, “Everything is just beginning. Proofs will have to be given. Difficult days lie ahead.”66 Nothing excited him more than a worthy battle.
16
That spring, Le Corbusier developed an idea for small buildings that he termed “Les Murondins.” (In French, mur means wall, and rondins are circles of wood or debris.) He wrote a thirty-six-page book, comprising sketches and text dedicated to this idea of a universal form with many applications.67 It called for rudimentary adobe dwellings, related to Mesopotamian architecture and befitting nomads.
First, a simple trench was excavated and filled with concrete to prevent moisture from rising. Then, blocks measuring twenty by twenty by forty centimeters, composed of sand, gravel, lime, and mud that had hardened in the sun, were assembled as slabs, framed in timber. The slabs were made to stand like walls and placed at right angles to brace one another. A roof was made of branches and logs of uniform length culled from the forest at the side of the road; if there were no trees around, bituminous paper and turf or corrugated iron could be used. With the Vichy government behind him, he believed that this form of housing, inexpensive and viable in a range of settings, would quickly proliferate.
“THE SKY HAS TURNED BLUE. The trees green,” he wrote his mother on April 22; it was not just a report on the weather.68
She wrote back bursting with “the happiness of knowing you are happy, understood, and involved in this magnificent restoration of men and things which is now in the air almost everywhere, and particularly in French territories.” But he must not forget the flaws of the house he had built for her: “Repairs cannot be made in this constant wet weather, and nothing is happening in the little house. Everything remains to be done.”69 She was, she reported, losing an abnormal amount of weight in spite of eating a lot; perhaps it was the fault of his architecture.
17
On May 27, 1941, Maréchal Pétain signed the law that officially put Le Corbusier in charge of the creation of the “committee studying problems of habitation and construction.”70 Two days later, the declaration was published in the state journal.
Then, like the regimes Le Corbusier had encountered first in La Chauxde-Fonds and then in Geneva and Moscow, Vichy had in its ranks individuals who effectively opposed him. A man Le Corbusier identified only as “the director in charge of general construction and production” maintained that he would under no circumstances work with the architect.71
Le Corbusier had one key supporter, however. “Our president is a noble prince who places the respect for human values above all else. It was precisely when he had been asked for a measure of abandonment that he showed his allegiance to us,” Le Corbusier wrote to his mother. The forces against him still had to be reckoned with, but, assuming that “notre président” referred to Pétain, the Maréchal’s backing heartened him to believe that now he was in the right place at the right time. “The enemy is ignorance itself—a phantom: everything which does not exist, from which one makes a mountain…but if, at last, we can be established where we have prepared a place, the work will be firmly based on thirty years of meditation.”72
DAY AFTER DAY, Le Corbusier walked through the formal gardens of Vichy and passed the grand hotels and elaborate spa buildings where, since Roman times, people had drunk the local springwater to cure their livers, stomachs, intestines, and kidneys. Trying in that bizarre setting to gain support for his commission and goals, he periodically met with members of Pétain’s team.
Again, he and Yvonne moved. Having had to go to an inferior establishment, they now returned to Queen’s Hotel, where the music from the birds in the park outside their windows struck him as exotic. On his walks with Pinceau, “day after day, I have seen the buds and the leaves and the flowers, everything created, orchestrated by a talented gardener who has specialized in rare species. How beautiful the trees are!”73 All was for the best again.
18
Le Corbusier had to create a lengthy document in accordance with the regulations of the Vichy government. It proved his qualifications to serve.
Entitled “Request for a waiver according to the law of July 17th 1940,” it was an elaborate c.v. that distorted the facts at will, particularly in its emphasis on Le Corbusier’s Frenchness. The architect gave his name as “LE CORBUSIER (Charles-Edouard).” He came “from a family of French origin, proscribed during the wars of religion.” He stressed his French naturalization and all the important official positions and honors he had had in France, Sweden, Britain, the USSR, and Czechoslovakia. In 1927, he won the “first prize in the construction competition for the Palace of the League of Nations”—but he failed to mention that it was never built. Le Corbusier declared that in 1934 he was “called to Rome by a decree of Mussolini in order to discuss theses of urbanism and architecture for union delegates.”74 He cited his work in the field of urban development in Moscow, Brazil, Smyrna, Chile, Algeria, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, and Amsterdam, from 1928 to 1939—without pointing out that nothing ever came of any of these projects.
Le Corbusier’s self-promotion includes a list of publications, translations, reviews, and work as an editor. In a summation of his career, he wrote: “Has never had political involvements, but was alternately accused, as necessity commanded, of communism and fascism.”75
THE VERY SAME DAY that Le Corbusier completed this document that would allow him to work with the new French government, the second Statute on Jews, the law of June 2, 1941, was passed. Its contents helped realize the goals of Admiral Darlan and others high up in the Vichy regime. Now all people considered Jewish were forbidden to work in banking, the stock market, journalism, publishing, or teaching, except at the lowest levels. Five days later, Jews started to be required to wear a yellow star. The following month, “the law of July 22nd for economic organization” dispossessed Jews of their furniture, their apartments, and most other worldly goods and forbade them to go out between 8:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. It also prohibited them from owning bicycles or telephones, entering public places, or changing residences.
Just as the second statute was going into effect, Le Corbusier wrote his mother that within a week he would know whether everything would happen as he hoped. With all the political turmoil in France, he was still managing to publish, and he was optimistic that his work was moving ahead.
Marie Jeanneret-Perret, as given to dark moods as her son, was now ebullient, even if the horrors of war meant that former allies were now enemies: “I have regained my spirits, thanks to my beloved son…. Yet there are other enormities that are of the order of the day, unfortunately! The French soldiers in Syria at war with their former brothers in arms and fellow citizens. My God, what will happen to them all…. Edouard’s wonderful, detailed letter, received on Saturday, June 7th, brings us up to date with the situation of Vichy’s good soldiers. We think of them with ardent love
and constant sympathy as we hope for a happy outcome. We can do no less for the new France! Courage, hope, faith!!”76
19
Two weeks after saying he might head to Buenos Aires if Pétain’s government did not employ him as he hoped, Le Corbusier took a six-hour flight from Vichy to Algiers. It was a mission he deemed of critical importance, a harbinger of the ultimate victory of his ideas. And he was undertaking it on behalf of the new regime.
In Algiers, he ate better than he had in ages, writing his mother that there were entire legs of lamb. Everything felt like a holiday. He returned to Vichy feeling reassured that his great urban plan in North Africa was still alive. The architect then learned that he was being sent on a mission to Switzerland; accorded a rare visa for the trip, it meant he could see his mother.
Then setbacks came. The trip was postponed. François Lehideux, Minister of Industrial Production, rejected Le Corbusier’s role on the new habitation committee. The weather in Vichy was horrible that summer, with cold winds and heavy rains. Rather than taking an August holiday, he and Yvonne waited it out at Queen’s Hotel, with Le Corbusier one day imagining expatriation in Argentina and the next day believing Algiers would be his to do and he was about to take the promised journey to Vevey.
At least he was still in his mother’s good graces. She wrote him from the side of Lac Leman,
Stretched out on my chaise-longue I read with the profoundest inner peace, your beautiful and magnificent work on the reconstruction of Paris, the destiny of Paris.
How clear it all is, so limpidly expressed! I am overcome with admiration and so proud of my great son.77
Marie Jeanneret was even happier when Le Corbusier finally made it to Switzerland during the first week of September. His journey back to Vichy took fourteen hours by train, with a long delay as the Germans, whom he referred to as “Les Fritz,” questioned him “aggressively,” but at least he had seen his mother again.
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