Charles Marx

Biography

The doctor

He studies medicine with Strasbourg and Paris, where he will practice with the Hôtel God. In April/May 1933 it passes to Luxembourg the examination of the doctorate in medicine with distinction. Gynecologist and surgeon specialist in the stomach, it was named intern of Paris and was promoted surgical senior registrar at the medical college of Paris (Hotel God). In 1935 its thesis of doctorate on the postoperative care, and particularly on those will be published which must be brought to the patients after the operations with the stomach. In October 1935 he is elected regular member of the French Association of surgery and receives the same year the price Piez with title of prize winner of the Académie of Medicine. In February/March 1936, of return to the Grand Duchy, it rents with the commune of Ettelbruck and modernizes with its expenses part of the communal hospital of Ettelbrück held by the Croix-Rouge, located in the buildings of the old agricultural school restored by the Commune of Ettelbruck for the Red Cross, and in fact a private clinic: the surgical private clinic Saint-Louis, first surgical private clinic of the North of Luxembourg. It settles there on June 1st, 1936 It directs the private clinic starting from June 1st, 1936 and makes sure the contest of sisters of the Congregation of the Very Holy Saver of Niederbronn, which it made come from Alsace.

Six weeks thus before the avalanche Nazi, Charles Marx prevents the internment of two French aviators of recognition. Their plane, touched by the DCA German had indeed fallen between Schieren and Feulen on April 2nd, 1940. The Captain (and future general) Marcel-Pierre Faure and his regimental sergeant major Charles Lherbiet were brought to the hospital St Louis in Ettelbrück. Doctor Marx immediately takes their case in heart, and, after having provided to the authorities certificates dramatizing the situation of health of the two French, organizes their escape.

This escape and, at the same time, infringement with the rules of “neutrality” (narrowly included/understood) of the Grand Duchy, caused an outcry with the more official and diplomatic high level. The government, of which certain elements still seemed to believe in an improbable neutrality of Luxembourg, others being simply afraid to irritate Reich, the government thus, made bring a lawsuit against the instigators of this escape. But meanwhile, i.e. on May 10th, 1940, the German troops penetrate in the Grand Duchy, and Charles Marx, whose Germans “claim” the head, has of another choice only to take the broad one, and leaves the same day the Grand Duchy for France.

At the request of the Germans, the lawsuit will be reopened and Marx will be condemned by the Court of Diekirch on March 14th, 1941 to eight month of prison and 2000 Mark of fine by contumacy. Because Charles Marx is already in Montpellier. Being made register like volunteer in the sanitary services of the French Army as of February 1940, it will be during a certain deputy time of the Luxembourg Red Cross in France, (Franco-Belgian Ambulance Depage).

Then it takes again of a doctor of Perpignan a private clinic with Quillan, in the Aude, where it exerts her trade of doctor and surgeon, and will already frequently on the occasion to be used its fatherland as anybody as contact between French Résistants Luxemburgish and Maquis.

The resistant one

Marx in May 1943 organizes a maquis in the High Valley of the Aude, and definitively leaves Quillan in July, because tight of fort near by the Gestapo. He indeed will be condemned to died - once more by contumacy - at the request of the Nazis by a court of Montpellier. Louis Knaff, who had already taken his place in 1941 as delegated the Luxembourg Red Cross to Montpellier two years earlier, will replace it from now on with the head the die of escape.

In 1944 Marx becomes ordering doctor of the FFI (French Forces of the interior) and chief of the medical administration of Resistance for the area Aude and the Eastern Pyrenees in Southern the France zone. It organizes in particular a whole network of secret private clinics for resistant wounded, of which that of Sargelat in the Dordogne with his/her friend, Doctor Schumacher. It thus formed part with Doctor Schumacher of those which one called “doctors of freedom”, following the example these other doctors of Resistance who were Robert Debré, or Paul Milliez.

On September 2nd and 3rd 1944 Marx takes part as ordering in the FFI in the battle of release of Lyon. In October 1944 it is destined for Paris to occupy the station of deputy the medical Council of Resistance and attache to the cabinet of the Minister for Health, under the orders of the Secretary of State Louis Pasteur Valery-Radot. In November 1944 it re-enlists in the French Army until the armistice and organizes Franco-American militaro-surgical structures there.

The minister

Returned in August 1945 in the Grand Duchy, is candidate with the legislative elections of the 21.10.45 and becomes appointed, then Minister for the Social assistance, the Public health, the Hydropathic establishment of Mondorf-State, Repatriation and Physical education in the government of national union (dominated by the social Christians - 1st min. Pierre Dupong) of the 14.11.1945.

Charles Marx took again a very neglected Public health. One had granted this “minor” ministry to a Communist like a kind of sinecure, but Charles Marx, far from complaining that others regarded Health as the Cinderella of the Government, took the bull by the horns. In spite of the ridiculous budget (less than 1% of the global budget, including less than one quarter - 0,23% - for the Health) its Ministry had, it launched a whole series of pilot projects and made achieve with the Luxembourg public health of immense progress. That was worth to him besides, beyond cleavages in favor, the recognition of a great majority of the population, as well as the inevitable jealousy of many political adversaries and petty of all edges.

In very little time, Charles Marx took with arm-the-body the whole of the problems arising from pubic health and the social assistance, like by the repatriation of exiled. He could find all those which were laid out to go up their handles, to find the words to lead them to assist it, and quickly restores regulated conditions (while waiting, because “regulated” did not mean for him “desirable”, in field where almost all remained to be made). These first measurements however ensured already, in time of great shortage, the food of the children and their medical assistance, as well as the sending of weakest free in convalescence in Switzerland, and made it possible to reduce infant mortality. They established also generalized medical visits and ensured the satisfying equipment of pharmacies.

Marx was frightened not only by the lack of means allocated with the Public health, but also by the state of disuse in which it found it. The Medical Board was based on a law of 1901 and Pharmacy on an old legislation of more than one century. Most urgent near the population being made, Marx reorganized Health in a truly scientific official structure of instruction, regulation and council, and redefines competences of the medical inspectors, subordinating to them the Laboratory of State like scientific tool primordial.
It also made vote a law of hospital planning, made compulsory the indication of the infectious illness, (that other Luxembourg doctors had claimed for twenty years, without nothing being undertaken) and threw the bases of a true preventive medicine. A “national council for the protection of the mother and the child” was creates according to his instructions, in which the interested ministries, the doctors, the teachers and the mothers were represented. The thermal baths of Mondorf, until there place of cure for privileged people, were opened to the members of National Insurance Scheme, all classes and categories of income confused. It removed for example the institution from the midwives of many moyenâgeuses practices and organized the hands-on training of the young people médecins.
Marx seems to be inspired of the policy of the Popular front of 1936, as well as reforms implemented in France by the government of National union. It founded in particular the 11.3.46 the National council for the protection of the mother and the child, whose it entrusted the presidency to Doctor Charles Jones (ministerial decree 20.5.46). However, several great projects of Charles Marx, whom it worked out with the assistance of Doctor Charles Jones, ran up against the right-wing opposition within the Government and of the Parliament of the time, and will be realized only much later; others will never be born and others still will be or are seen today called little by little in question.

Man of ground, it traversed without truce the country in all the directions, spoke to the mothers, went down in the mines to discuss with the minors their conditions health and of work, went in the factories and on the building sites, distributed booklets of information and leaflets, and created advisory commissions. In less than one year, Charles Marx thus managed to constitute an intelligent network of institutions, solidarity and directives. This one will form the base and the essence of the Luxembourg medical policy of “the thirty glorious ones”.

June 13rd, 1946, in the return of a voyage in southernmost France and in Paris, Charles Marx dies following an car accident in Ile-de-France, close of the Ferté-sous-Jouarre and of Meaux (Seine-et-Marne). Fernande, his wife, died on the blow. Charles dies at the hospital of Meaux, three hours after the accident, without to have begun again knowledge.

At Luxembourg, where the bodies of the Marx husbands were transferred immediately after the death from Charles, the flags were put in Bern as of on June 14th, and couples it Marx was buried the 17 in Luxembourg city in the presence of the prince of Luxembourg, of the representatives of the Large-duchess, the members of the government, the principal constitutional body, the comrades of the party and a many crowd. “I incline myself with the expression of my higher regard in front of the skin of the large patriot and resistant”, exclaimed at the time of the funeral ceremony, during a dithyrambic speech the Prime Minister, Pierre Dupong.

Distinctions

Charles Marx was quoted with the Day order of the Army corps by the general Marie-Pierre Koenig with Military Cross and star of vermeil , decorated by the French authorities with the Médaille with honor with the military Health service , received personally Général de Gaulle the Médaille of French Resistance , was named ''' commander of the Legion of honor '''. The Luxembourg government moreover decreed to him the Croix about Resistance on a purely posthumous basis .

Major publication

the Operation of the stomach after gastrectomy (Note: Work with the surgical Private clinic of the Hospital), Editor: Louis Arnette, Paris, 1935,259 p. ill. 8°, BnL: catalog collective bibnet.lu

To read

Giulio-Enrico Pisani : Charles Marx - a Luxembourg Hero - Considering and action of a Doctor, Resisting and Minister of Ettelbruck, Quillan (Aude) & elsewhere , Editions Zeitung vum Lëtzebuerger Vollek, the Esch-Alzette, 2007,250 pages.

External bonds

Page of the Luxembourg Communist party (KPL) on Charles Marx

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