Georges Peignot manner of death World War I
Georges Louis Jean Baptiste Peignot (June 24, 1872 – September 28, 1915) was a French type designer, type founder, and manager of the G. Peignot & Fils foundry until his death in combat during World War I. Father of four children (including poet Colette Peignot called Laure), he hoisted the G. Peignot & Fils foundry among the most striking French typography companies of the twentieth century (an « elite house », according to a former French Prime Minister): in 17 years of practice, he created or launched prestigious fonts, including Grasset, Cochin, and Garamont.War, sacrifice, death (1915)
When World War is declared, Georges was mobilized as adjutant of artillery of the Territorial army (composed of men aged 34–49 years, considered too old and not enough trained to integrate an active frontline regiment nor reserve). He was assigned to the 23rd Battery of the 1st Artillery Regiment and stationed at Fort Cormeilles. On September 25, 1914, his closest younger brother, André Peignot, was killed. The shock was immense for Georges Peignot. He immediately requested to be placed on the front in the same regiment as his late brother, the 23rd Colonial Infantry Regiment. In March, he succeeded and was posted on the front line. Everything went fast: May 15, 1915, the youngest of his brothers, Rémy, was killed in the same Somme sector of the front. On July 25, Georges Peignot transmitted to his maternal cousin, Henri Menut, his power as manager of the company. September 28, 1915, north of Arras, between Souchez and Givenchy, Georges Peignot was struck by a bullet in the forehead « immediately after shouting to his troops: "En avant ! (Forward !)" », as Lucien Peignot reported (the fourth and last brother who will also lose his life June 29, 1916), and who had had time to conduct a long investigation to find his lost brother in the no man's land where he laid for a month. Georges Peignot, buried next to Rémy, is quoted in the order of the Division and awarded the Military Cross and Military Medal.In 1922, the National "Committee for Education and Fine Arts" proposes to honor the history of Peignot: all the genuine punches of the Foundry and the bronze Gustave Peignot's statue are carried in the building of the Imprimerie nationale, across the Gutenberg street. The Committee proposes that the extension of this street would be called "rue des Quatre-Frères-Peignot" (Four-Brothers-Peignot street) in memory of the four dead brothers.
The typographer Maximilien Vox acknowledges his debt to Georges Peignot, for whom he was « the first French typographer who did not think of his job as confined to supplying the printer with little pieces of metal ».The foundry's posterity was tainted by family maneuvers: after the war, Georges Peignot and four of his other brothers were dead (the eldest died of illness in 1913); the potential successors were the two girls or the mother. The latter managed in 1919 to impose his surviving children or their widows a 1 million capital increase, given to a competitor, the Deberny foundry, in financial difficulty… which was the property of Jane's husband. In 1923, under the pen of Mr. Pascaut, notary, a Deberny & Peignot company emerged, the result of the merger of Deberny (2.6 million francs capital, 1 million Peignot's family included) and G. Peignot et Fils briefly renamed "Peignot & Cie" (4.1 million francs). For the next half century, Deberny & Peignot struggled along, riding on its past glory, and went out in 1974, bloodlessly, due to automatic typographic machines and phototypesetting machines, and a haphazard management.
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