Who remembers the long face of René Rémond (1918-2007), familiar during years of the small screen on the night of elections? Charles Mercier, who devoted his thesis to this Christian intellectual, publishes his biography. This review by Guillaume Cuchet, professor of contemporary history, is part of a partnership with the journal Études.
René Rémond deserves the title of "historian of the present" as evidenced by this biography of Charles Mercier soberly titled "René Rémond" and chronicled in the journal of contemporary culture Études by Guillaume Cuchet, professor of contemporary history at the Université Paris- is Creteil.
This good biography of René Rémond (1918-2007) will be read with interest, which illuminates the prodigious career of the one who was, in the intellectual, political and media landscape of the second half of the 20th century, a real institution all by himself.
Multiple talents
We all know it, we are a little amazed by his multiple talents: great historian, great teacher, great administrator (in Nanterre, Sciences Po, at the Conference of University Presidents), great lecturer, big university boss (on estimated at a hundred the number of his doctoral students in the early 1970s), media man, expert with political and religious decision-makers (from the Touvier report in 1992 to the Stasi commission in 2003), all made possible by a capacity for work phenomenal and without ever departing from a good sobriety.
Influence of Catholic Action
Not only does he know how to do everything, or almost (he did not have the gift of languages), but there is in him an astonishing mutual fertilization of all these experiences. The book emphasizes the influence of Catholic Action and Christian Youth Youth (JEC) in its journey. No doubt one would have sometimes liked to know more about one's spirituality or personal political positions.
An extraordinarily complete man
The rare sum of these exceptional gifts made him an extraordinarily complete man, and therefore precious and sought after, to the point of having incarnated for thirty years, on television, on election night, the "memory of the Republic" (fifth the name, it is true), which for a French Catholic born in 1918 was not the least of the ironies of history.
Rene Remond or rallying made man, in a way, even if, at the end, the feeling that Catholicism was abused in the media had somewhat darkened.