Armadillo

Biography

Youth

Georges Prosper Remi was born with Etterbeek, a commune of the agglomeration of Brussels, the May 22nd 1907. His/her parents, Alexis Remi (1882 - 1970) and Elisabeth Dufour (1882 - 1946), belong to the middle-class and live with Brussels. Its four years of elementary school coincide with the First World War (1914 - 1918), whereas the city is occupied by the Germans. The small Georges shows already a great affinity for the drawing, the margins of his books are filled of the adventures of a little boy to the catches with the German invader. Hergé also had a little brother Paul Remi five year old his junior born the March 26th 1912. With beginning of the year 50, Hergé considered its irrational behavior and tried without success to adopt his/her two children of which Georges Remi Jr., born in 1946.

It starts in 1920 its secondary studies with the Institut Saint-Boniface-Parnassus with Ixelles, an establishment where a price Goncourt, François Weyergans, also carried out its schooling. It enters the troop Scout E of the college, where it will receive the name totemic of curious Renard . There it will create one of its first cartoons on a wall which survives until today. Its first drawings appear in Jamais enough , the newspaper scout of the college, then starting from 1923, in the Belgian Boy-scout , the monthly magazine of the Scout S of Belgium. As of 1924, it signs its illustrations of the name of Hergé, made phonetically of its initial RG .

Its beginnings with the newspaper the Twentieth Century

In 1925, Hergé is engaged like employee with the service of the subscriptions to the newspaper Catholique (and politically very with right) the Twentieth Century . In 1926, it creates Totor, CP of the Cockchafers for the Belgian Boy-scout . His/her parents in vain try to make him follow courses of drawing to the Saint-Luc school. He carries out then his military service in 1926-1927, service during which he continues to write to the adventures of Totor for the Belgian Boy-scout . On its return to the Twentieth Century in 1927, its director, the abbot Norbert Wallez, encourages it to be informed and to be cultivated. Hergé carries out for the newspaper of the illustrations, the portraits, the Lettrage, the Photographie S.

Small the Twentieth

In 1928, Hergé is named editor association of the Petit Twentieth , the supplement youth of the Twentieth Century . The first number leaves on November 1st. It draws with a moderate enthusiasm the Adventures of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Jack , on the scenario of Desmedt, a sports editor of the newspaper… He discovers in same American time the Comic S and their system of bubbles, which make it possible to the characters to express their opinions or speech directly in the drawing. It is this same year that it becomes engaged to Germaine Kieckens, secretary of the Wallez abbot.

The Whistle

December 28th, 1928, in the weekly magazine the Whistle Hergé draws a history entitled Christmas of the wise small child to the contents scatologic: Tintin lodges a plate with the stove by hoping that the Father Christmas does not forget his gingerbread, Milou discovers later the gift awaited by exclaiming Joie a piss of epain! , after having eaten the gift, it tests a need pressing and not being able to make on the carpet, relieves itself of a étron in the plate, Tintin the morning discovers the crime of the dog .

Tintin, Milou, Quick, Flupke and others

The January 10th 1929, in the number eleven of the Petit Twentieth appears the first episode of Tintin with the country of the Soviets , on direct direct order of the abbot Norbert Wallez: it is the beginning of the Aventures of Tintin and Milou. To defer and its faithful Fox-terrier will traverse the world during more than fifty years. The January 23rd 1930, Quick and Flupke , the two young imps of Brussels, make their first appearance. Thursday May 8th of the same year, Tintin and Milou make a triumphal return to the Gare of the North of Brussels: Small the Twentieth engaged an appear to play the part of Tintin, Lucien Peppermans, and publishes a report reporting this arrival; Tintin has just finished its first adventure. The July 9th 1931, end of the adventures of Tintin in Congo : Small the Twentieth again organizes a setting in scene at the Station of North, an enormous crowd accommodates Tintin, however incarnated by another appear!

With the beginning of the year 1930, Hergé is seen providing an assistant in the person with Paul Jamin which will be later known as a caricaturist under the name of Alidor.

In September, our to defer sets out again for the New World ( Tintin in America ). Hergé starts a little to be documented, it reads in particular a work on the history of the Redskins. The July 20th 1932, Georges Remi marries Germaine Kieckens. In 1934, Casterman, the editor of Turned, starts to publish the albums of Tintin (until there, they are the editions of Small the Twentieth which took care some).

An album stitched colors of Hergé appears in addition, which will remain without continuation: Popol and Virginia at Lapinos .

It should be noted that a source of inspiration for Hergé of the character of Tintin could be Benjamin Rabier with his Tintin Lutin .

Extension of the work of Hergé

Tchang Tchong-Jen

After the Cigars of the Pharaon , Hergé wishes to send its hero in China. One puts it in liaison with young Chinese, Tchang Tchong-jen, studying with the royal Académie of the Art schools of Brussels. This one pushes Hergé to be informed and to be documented seriously on the countries which Tintin visit. He sensitizes it with the situation in China. Through the blue Lotus , first adventure of Tintin equipped with a solid scenario, Hergé gives an opinion in favor of the Chinese people, which undergo the Japanese occupation. One is far from the first adventures of Tintin, where Hergé did nothing but reflect the mentality of its time and its medium: virulent anticommunism ( Tintin with the country of the Soviets ) and the Colonialism ( Tintin in Congo ) or the anti-Americanism ( Tintin in America ), very with the mode at the time. For Hergé, the cartoon becomes less and less one amusing pastime, and more and more a very serious work.

OJ, Zette and Jocko

In 1935, the French weekly magazine Valiant Cœurs finds that Tintin is not inevitably a model good for youth: no the known parents, it does not go to school, it does not work much… Hergé had however been contacted several front years for the publication of Tintin first manner in Valiant Cœurs , but this newspaper only estimated a band containing Phylactère S too not very literary for its public (the “stories with balloons” as they then were named were regarded as impoverishing the vocabulary of the young readers taking into account their absence of narrative and descriptive text). He thus asked comments in lower part of each image, as in works of the previous century of Christophe. Hergé was tested there, and one can sometimes see in the exposures which to him are devoted part of these tests, but at the end of the day, he considered that this style would be too redundant and would in addition break the rate/rhythm of the scenes of action. The business had then remained without continuation.

The newspaper, which ended up opening on the “stories with balloons”, places order to Hergé of a new series: OJ, Zette and Jocko . The catholic review wishes to have a history which puts in scene a " famille" (Tintin does not have parents). Three stories will be published in the form of five albums.

Period 1935-1940

Between 1935 and 1940, appear successively:

the broken Ear (1935) which is a transposition of the Guerre of Chaco between the Bolivia and the Paraguay on bottom of combinations between various oil companies.
the Black Island (1937), which makes following a voyage of Hergé in Great Britain, evokes the counterfeit bills issued by the Nazis (Doctor Müller is a German) to weaken the European democracies.
the Sceptre of Ottokar (1938) is the account of a missed Anschluss. At the end of the history, in the blue layers recovered by Tintin, one can see the signature of some " Musstler" (Mussolini + Hitler).
Tintin with the country of the black gold , begun in 1939 is stopped by the mobilization of Georges Remi, then by the German invasion of Belgium. the Twentieth Century and its supplement youth disappear. The publication of the Black gold will take again only eight years, but modified later: the fights in Palestine between Jews, Arabs and British disappear. Hergé will find at the end of the album only one pirouette, which one can find frustrating, to explain the absence, throughout the album, of the Haddock captain, become meanwhile character impossible to circumvent of the adventures of Tintin.

the Occupation

Many researchers particularly excavated the life of Hergé for this turbid period (as the length testifies some to this part of the article). Various authors thus tried (according to some, primarily for reasons of sensationnalism) to interpret such or such element and to relate, a half century later, judgments categorical to the personality and the ideas (real or supposed) of the author.

Facts

Thus it was noted that right before the war, Hergé had lent its contest to a newspaper financed by the embassy from Germany to Brussels: the West , whose editor association was the Belgian journalist Raymond de Becker and which it will publish there a series qualified today " neutraliste" (it acts actually 4 strips anti-hitlériens appeared from December 7th to 28th 1939) entitled Adventures of Mr. Bellum . Starting from 1940, the Twentieth Century for which Hergé worked, stopping its publication, it will be engaged as of October by the Belgian daily newspaper the Evening , newspaper which is then controlled by the occupant and is directed by Raymond de Becker. The adventures of Tintin appear initially in a supplement, the Evening Youth , then, continuation inter alia with paper restrictions, in the form of strips black and white; it will be the Crab with the Gold Grips , marked by the appearance of the Capitaine Haddock, then the Mysterious Star , the Secrecy of the Unicorn and the Treasury of Rackham the Red (the account on two volumes of a fantastic treasure hunt, carried out with the assistance of a newcomer, the Professor Tournesol), and finally the 7 Crystal balls (an alternative of the curse of the mummy).

It is in 1943 that it meets Edgar P. Jacobs. The future creator of Blake and Mortimer Hergé assistance to remelt its old albums, for the coloriser and to make them hold within the strict framework of the sixty two pages (up to now, some of the adventures of Tintin made to a hundred and thirty pages), because of the paper restrictions due to the war.

The publication of the 7 Crystal balls will be stopped the September 3rd 1944. In a few days, Hergé is stopped with four recoveries, by the State security, the judicial police, the Belgian National movement and the Front of independence. All the journalists having taken part in the drafting of a newspaper during the Occupation see themselves prohibiting any publication temporarily. For this disturbed period, Hergé wrote accounts of escape, avoiding referring to the international political situation.

Charges

Even if Hergé then avoids referring to the political situation in its works, it were noted that in the first edition of the Mysterious Star , the international forwarding in which takes part Tintin counts only neutral countries or members of the Axe, and which them unfair competitor is under house American and financed by certain Blumenstein, name with the Jewish connotation (the name of Blumenstein in later versions will be replaced by Bohlwinkel and the American house by that of an imaginary country). A strip which caricatured merchants Jewish amusing businesses that they were going to make thanks to the end of the world had been removed in the album.

The work of Hergé contains also some drawings considered in the light of the later events as doubtful in this register; they all were practically corrected thereafter (except notable for the nose of Blumenstein, that Hergé projected to redraw - without never however taking time to do it - because it evoked too the caricatures anti-semites of the time). Before the Occupation, Hergé can be indicated like having been near to Leon Degrelle and the rexists. It illustrated the booklet of this last “History of the school war”, in 1932.

Maxime-Benoit Jannin is the leader of those which think that Hergé benefitted from the situation, by noting that whereas the newspaper of Hergé the Twentieth Century cannot appear any more, the Evening passes to the hands New supporters of law and order and German propaganda. It thus joined drawn newspaper with: 15000 specimens with a drawn newspaper with: 200000 then: 300000 specimens. He adds collapse of 1940, date, he is necessary to remember it, the entry of Hergé in success and his corrolaire, the richness… , thus, Hergé sold: 600000 albums during the Occupation. The same author sought to show in load that there was a proximity between the future director of the “stolen Evening”, Raymond De Becker and Hergé, that there were sympathies of the draftsman of Tintin to Leon Degrelle and that he had made caricatures of the position of France in December 1939 in the transitory weekly magazine the West .

Some will treat Hergé of " providence of the inciviques" to have helped after the release of the people whom he will regard as " easy victims of resistant of the last heure" , and that it found wrongfully treated whereas others which were not worried (it will refer to the butchers and bakers who sold with all the population, occupants included/understood). According to him, they continued simply, like the others, to make their trade.

Does Hergé deserve these charges?

According to some, which is interpretable like Antisémitisme, or at least Judéophobie, in the cartoons of Hergé is only revealing dominant collective thought of the time when they were drawn. It is also advisable to take into account the few Germanic anti caricatures published through Quick and Flupke .

Admittedly, the album the mysterious Star opposes the Europe (Europe without English nor French), in the USA with the ideological connotations and anti-semites whom one can deduce. Contrary, one can note that, in the Sceptre of Ottokar (which one can interpret as a fable referring to Anschluss) its sympathies obviously go to the " Syldaves" royalists, victims of the Fascistic S " Bordures" under the direction of called Musstler (name which probably results from the bringing together of the names of Mussolini and Hitler, two principal dictators of extreme-right-hand side then to the capacity).

In an interview in 1973 Hergé will say: “ I agree that me as I believed as the future of the Occident could depend on the new Order. For much, the democracy had been disappointing, and the new Order brought a new hope. Within sight of all that occurred, it was naturally a coarse error to have been able to accept one moment the new Order ” (interview granted to the Haagse Post in March 1973).

And the same year, it will analyze: “ My naivety at that time confined with the silly thing, one can even say to the imbecillity ” (interview granted to the Flemish magazine Elsevier .).

The newspaper of Tintin and the Hergé Studios

Interdict of publication, Hergé cannot (even under the pseudonym of Olav (taken in common with E.P. Jacobs) continue to work, except with the recasting of its old albums. In 1946, it is contacted by old resistant, Raymond Leblanc, which proposes to him to create a newspaper. The September 26th 1946 appears the first number of the weekly magazine Tintin . Many draftsmen come to collaborate in the magazine. The adventures of Tintin continue: the Temple of the Sun (which continues the intrigue of the '' Seven Crystal balls ''), With the country of the black gold , Objectif the Moon , One went on the Moon . Hergé wishing to be particularly rigorous and wanting to document itself to the maximum for these lunar adventures, it founds in 1950 the Studios Hergé . These studios will count until ten collaborators who will help Hergé in his task. The adventures of Tintin continue to be published in the newspaper of the same name: the Business Sunflower , Coke in stock .

Personal crisis

A connection began in 1956 between Georges Remi and Fanny Vlamynck, colourist with the Studios. Its marriage with Germaine breaks (the divorce will be marked only in 1960, and Georges will marry with Fanny only in 1977). Moreover, Hergé is attacked by recurring nightmares, where all is white. He consults a Swiss Psychanalyste, raises Jung, which advises to him to stop working. It is however through Tintin in Tibet , undoubtedly its darkest album and most intense, that Hergé will exorcize its demons. It is also starting from 1960 that he discovers the Contemporary art, which will become a passion at his place.

Tintin in all the forms

Tintin becomes a world success. The sales of albums fly away, it is translated into a number increasingly larger of languages, and it starts to interest the advertizing executives. Tintin is adapted to the cinema, initially in the form of films with actors ( Tintin and the mystery of the Golden Fleece in 1960, Tintin and blue oranges in 1964). It is a young Belgian, Jean-Pierre Talbot, who interprets the role of Tintin. Cartoons are then produced by the studios Belvision. One will retain in particular an adaptation of the Temple of the Sun (1969), and an adventure on an original screenplay of Greg, Tintin and the lake with the sharks , realized by Raymond Leblanc in 1972 (as well as an advertizing film of 10 ', Tintin and the SGM in 1970, always by Belvision).

At the same time, the publications of the adventures of Tintin are spaced more and more: Jewels of Castafiore in 1963, Flight 714 for Sydney in 1968 and Tintin and Picaros in 1976. A portfolio (the only one of the author) also leaves in 1966 at Casterman (the 8 Portraits " Tintin" , with stripped fripé), as well as a history in 4 boards for Paris Match, Apollo XII - They went on the Moon , in 1969. Tintin is less one priority for Hergé, which starts to travel: in 1971, it goes for the first time to the the United States, then it earlier honors in 1973 a made invitation thirty-five years by the government with the Guomindang (to thank it for the standpoint in favor of the Chinese people in the blue Lotus ) while going to Taiwan.

Last years

In 1978, Hergé begins its work for a new episode from Tintin.

The following year, Andy Warhol carries out on him a series of four portraits, and the editions Septimus republish in six volumes the Chromos See and To know of the Tintin newspaper of the Années 1950, devoted to the various human means of transport through time, with Tintin and Milou in various costumes for introductory support with the images (the cars, planes, boats and other airships having been reproduced by Bob de Moor, Roger Leloup and Jacques Martin: this last will take up this didactic idea later 45 years, for its Voyages of Lefranc ).

In 1980, Georges Remi falls sick. A Leucémie will be diagnosed thereafter. It is weakened and very weak. The March 18th 1981 take place the meeting again between Hergé and Tchang Tchong-jen, the friend Chinese which had inspired the blue Lotus and the character of Tchang, the only one which will have been able to draw from the tears with Tintin ( Tintin in Tibet ).

Hergé dies out after one week of Coma the March 3rd 1983 with the Clinique Saint-Luc of Brussels. Although he officially died of leukemia, Philippe Goddin, one of its more famous biographers, affirms that Hergé could be dead AIDS. Indeed, because of a rare congenital disease, Hergé was to change its blood regularly (" to make the plein" he said). However at that time the HIV was very badly known and still undetectable in blood. Hergé would thus have contracted the AIDS at the time of one of these transfusions what would explain the frequent influenzas, pneumonias and bronchitides that it had with repetition at the end of its life. Thanks to an exceptional exemption, the authorization is granted, according to the wish of Hergé, to be buried within the framework of the Cimetière of Dieweg, which did not accommodate any more a new burial since about thirty years.

Tintin and Alph-Art , the last adventure of the To defer, appears in its unfinished form in 1986 (one second version presenting of the new boards was published in 2004).

Distinctions around the Universe Tintin

Hergé (functions: 1928 - Editor association of the Small Twentieth ; 1947 - Artistic director of the Newspaper of Tintin ):

1972 : Yellow Kid of Honor, with Lucca
1973: Grand Prix Saint-Michel , with Brussels
1974: President of the 1 International convention of the Cartoon , with Angouleme
1977: Medal of vermeil of the town of Angouleme, at the time of the 4th Living room
1978: Officer of the Order of the Crown, in Brussels
1979: statuette Mickey of Honor of the hands of Pierre Tchernia, for the Company Walt Disney (distinction stopped since 1967)

the Belvision Studios:

1973 : Price Saint-Michel for Tintin and the Lake with the Sharks

the Newspaper of Tintin and Editions of Lombard:

1972 : Yellow Kid of the Better editor of Newspaper European of cartoons

(and the Editions Casterman in 1978 for their variation for adults (TO BE FOLLOWED) : Yellow Kid of the Better foreign editor Cartoons )

Tintin and Me of Anders Ostergaard (starting from the talks of Numa Sadoul):

2004 : Price of the Festival European of the Documentary film

2007: Tintin is regarded as being racist in its adventure " Tintin in Congo".

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