Der falsche Belgier

The Spanish Civil War raged from 1936 to 1939, with Stalinists, Trotskyists and anarcho-syndicalists uniting in an alliance with anti-fascist democrats and republicans - the Red Terror was rampant. On the other side, monarchists, nationalists, Catholic traditionalists and national syndicalist Falangists fight in an equally unequal alliance. The world watches the spectacle of ideological war and bloody retribution with both fascination and repulsion. The French writer Pierre Drieu la Rochelle (1893-1945) did not just want to watch: He travelled to Spain, wanting to take sides, on the ground: writing in the melee. As a committed intellectual and opponent of Ernest Hemingway, Drieu reported for the French media. After his return home, he reworked what had happened in literary form and unfolded his inflamed panorama of pan-European solidarity and identity against the backdrop of the Spanish conflict. "The False Belgian" is the unique result of this passion - Drieu's legacy as a young, true European.