The Ghosts of Sigmaringen

There seem to be two ways to write about Sigmaringen, the German town where an incapacitated Vichy government landed in September 1944... This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol23/iss1/4 The Ghosts of Sigmaringen Philip Watts University of Pittsburgh There seem to be two ways to write about Sigmaringen, the German town where an incapacitated Vichy government landed in September 1944. The first is to cast the town as the site of an operetta, a fantasy world in which the Vichy government is seen as nothing more than a spectacle, a parodic version of its former self. The second option consists in describing Sigmaringen as a ghost town, a phantasmal city with its haunted castle frequented, for a period of 8 months, by the shadows of the men who had ruled France for four years. Historians today, as well as eye-witnesses of the time, Vichy journalists in exile, and novelists, all turn to a language of operetta and ghosts to describe Sigmaringen. While these metaphoric systems tell of the demise of a regime, they also ask us to reflect on the forms the past takes when it revisits the present. Sigmaringen has a particular status among the sites of memory of the Second World War. As with Oradour-sur-Glanes or the Glieres Plateau, though perhaps to a lesser extent, the German town remains one of the memorable sites of France's war, remembered in historical studies and tour guides alike. It is invested with the will to remember that makes it a "presence of the past" in France's present, to retain Pierre Nora's phrase (20). At the same time, however, perhaps precisely because it is outside of France's borders and because it represents France's treasonous past, Sigmaringen remains today on the margins of the nation's collective memory; it has never become the site of an official, or even officious, commemoration. Sigmaringen remains between two worlds. It is both present and strangely absent, a transitional realm between France and Germany, between Main's reign and his demise, between the Occupation and the postwar period, between Vichy and the Vichy syndrome. Always men1 Watts: The Ghosts of Sigmaringen Published by New Prairie Press 28 STCL, Volume 23, No.1 (Winter, 1999) tioned in studies of the Occupation, Sigmaringen remains a reference in the appendices, a footnote in the last chapter of the war. From Petain's arrival on September 8, 1944 to April of the following year, Sigmaringen was the site of exile for some 2,000 French collaborators. Main was there, harbored in the castle of the Hohenzollern dynasty, as was Laval, though both considered themselves prisoners of the German authorities and both had desisted from their official government functions. Indeed, Main cut all ties with the German authorities and communicated only through his physician, Bertrand Menetrel. Fernand de Brinon was in Sigmaringen, and, alleging Petain's support, he became head of the French governmental commission whose putative role was to look after the approximately two million French men and women in Germany at the end of the war. Joseph Darnand, head of the Milice, held the position of Secretary of the Interior at Sigmaringen; Marcel Dem, editor of the collaborationist journal L'Oeuvre and founder of the Rassemblement national populaire party 'the National Popular Mobilization Party,' became Minister of Labor. The journalist Jean Luchaire was named Commissioner for Propaganda and Information, and under his direction, the French refugees published a daily paper, La France, from October 26 to April 7, and established a radio station that alternated programs on the Milice with musical recordings. Lucien Rebatet from Je suis partout was there, as were the pianist Lucienne Delforge, the actor Robert le Vigan, the Academician and ex-Minister of Education Abel Bonnard, and Louis-Ferdinand Celine, whose novel Castle to Castle is one of the richest chronicles of this "little bit of French history" (Celine, Romans 936).' In Sigmaringen, the French put together the last collaborationist government of the war. The town, however, was also an antechamber to the purge courts; with only a few exceptions, all of the major figures in exile were tried and convicted for treason upon their return to France. Seeking to render the atmosphere of despair and artifice in this community, historians have used the metaphor of the operetta to represent Vichy's last days. One of the most spirited accounts of this period was written by Henry Rousso, several years before he published The Vichy Syndrome. In Petain et la fin de la collaboration, Rousso outlines the intentions of the Germans in forcing Main and Laval to go into exile recalling the intrigues of the French politicians and highlighting their futile gesticulations and false hopes. The constant image through these descriptions is the stage: Petain's 2 Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature, Vol. 23, Iss. 1 [1999], Art. 4 http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol23/iss1/4 DOI: 10.4148/2334-4415.1453