Disappearance of Jean Daniel, great figure of French journalism

Text by: RFI Follow

Jean Daniel, founder of the Nouvel Observateur, which has become the Obs, died at 99, the weekly announced on Thursday on its website.

Publicity

A great left consciousness, Jean Daniel lived in harmony with Le Nouvel Observateur , which he founded in 1964 with Claude Perdriel and which he directed for a long time, a rare example of longevity in the French press.

Until a very advanced age, this dreaded and brilliant pen will have signed the editorial of the weekly, renamed L'Obs in 2014 and then sold to the group Le Monde. With his profile of an eagle, he had lost nothing of his beautiful appearance even if his figure of "commander" and his narcissism could sometimes annoy.

Jean Daniel, whom historian Pierre Nora called "the last figure of inspired journalism ", met all the great people of this world.

In 1963, it was in the middle of lunch, in Cuba, with Fidel Castro that he learned of the death of John F. Kennedy , with whom he had just had an interview. " Kennedy was an enemy we got used to. This is a very serious matter , "said the" Lider maximo "to him.

He was the friend of Pierre Mendès-France, Michel Foucault , François Mitterrand , with whom he had, like so many others, complicated relationships, or Albert Camus , despite their disagreement on the Algerian file.

Also a writer and essayist, he has signed around thirty books, since L'Erreur , a novel published in 1952 hailed by Camus, to Mitterrand the elusive in 2016. His autobiographical works (five works) were collected in 2002 in a single volume 1,700 pages.

Wounded in Bizerte

Algeria, where he was born on July 21, 1920 in Blida, marks him for life. Raised in an Algerian family of Jewish faith, Jean-Daniel Bensaïd, name he abandoned after the war to write in Combat under the pseudonym Jean Daniel, was the last of eleven children. His father will be an adored figure, marveling " every day of being French ".

After having fought in the ranks of the Leclerc division, he studied philosophy after the war at the Sorbonne and then entered the cabinet of Félix Gouin, president of the Provisional Government in 1946. Already in the current of the non-communist left, he founded, in 1947, Caliban, a cultural review.

In the mid-1950s, Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber hired him for L'Express where he covered the "events" of Algeria . He stayed there for eight years, becoming its editor. Threatened with death, charged with endangering the security of the state, he defended Algerian independence.

In 1961, a special envoy to Tunisia, he was seriously injured in Bizerte by French army fire.

After a brief stint in Le Monde , this journalist, already with a reputation beyond French borders, co-founded Le Nouvel Observateur in 1964. The great adventure of his life begins.

“ We never thought we would succeed. The formula chosen was cultural enough, intellectual enough not to exceed 40-60,000 copies in the best of cases, "he said to AFP in 2004. In 1974, he already prints 400,000 copies!

The tandem which directs the title works wonders: to Claude Perdriel, the management, to Jean Daniel, the writing. " We managed," confided the latter, at one point, to gather around us the most brilliant journalists in Europe ".

The two men are inseparable, spend their holidays together, before the bonds are relaxed. Jean Daniel was to marry Michèle Bancilhon, first wife of Claude Perdriel. The couple will have a daughter, Sara Daniel, a future reporter for Le Nouvel Observateur .

" Pessimist amazed "

Participating in all the great debates of the time, the magazine defends anti-colonialism, publishes in one the manifesto of "343 sluts" for abortion , supports Mendès-France, Rocard then Mitterrand, controversy with the Communist Party.

On the Middle East, despite his " unwavering attachment to Israel ", Jean Daniel who, according to him, refused three times an ambassadorial post proposed by President Mitterrand, considered that " the Palestinians had the right to a state ".

After the revelations of Alexander Solzhenitsyn on the existence of gulags in the USSR, he writes: " we will never leave to the right the comfortable and unique monopoly of protest against the dementia of totalitarian bureaucrats ".

By way of professional and intellectual assessment, Jean Daniel, who was a member of the higher council of Agence France-Presse, congratulated himself for having " undertaken to" de-marxize "the left with principles of the left ".

In 2016, this " amazed pessimist ", in his words, assured: "for me, rest is death". He was then 96 years old ...

(with AFP)

► Also read: "The World" is fighting for its independence

Newsletter With the Daily Newsletter, find the headlines directly in your mailbox

Download the app

• France
• Journalism
• Culture

On the same subject

Book France

“Journalism before the Internet, in the mad days of great reporters”

Media column

Journalism remains a victim of violence worldwide

France

Visa pour l'image, a place to transmit the flame of photojournalism