Boris Fraenkel
Encyclopedia
Boris Fraenkel was a Communist politician active in French and international politics.

To 1950

Fraenkel was born to Jewish parents in 1921 in Danzig
Free City of Danzig
The Free City of Danzig was a semi-autonomous city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig and surrounding areas....

 (then an independent territory, thus allowing him a stateless status) now in northern Poland. He began by fighting for extreme-left Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

 under Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair
Hashomer Hatzair is a Socialist–Zionist youth movement founded in 1913 in Galicia, Austria-Hungary, and was also the name of the group's political party in the Yishuv in the pre-1948 British Mandate of Palestine...

, where Marxist ideology
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 mixed with Jewish nationalism
Jewish political movements
Jewish political movements refer to the organized efforts of Jews to build their own political parties or otherwise represent their interest in politics outside of the Jewish community...

. Arriving in France in 1938, to study agriculture at Nancy, he moved to study chemistry and in 1940 joined his mother at Grenoble
Grenoble
Grenoble is a city in southeastern France, at the foot of the French Alps where the river Drac joins the Isère. Located in the Rhône-Alpes region, Grenoble is the capital of the department of Isère...

, where he just missed being raided by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...

. He then fled to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 and was interned in the Gierenbad camp in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, where he met the novelist and philosopher Manes Sperber
Manès Sperber
Manès Sperber was an Austrian-French novelist, essayist and psychologist. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Jan Heger and N.A. Menlos....

, the future Racine
Jean Racine
Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...

 specialist, Lucien Goldmann, and Aby Wieviorka, a major translator from Yiddish in Paris. Despite the very difficult conditions, he managed to take a course in political economy in the camp and there for the first time in a clandestine cell of a Trotskyite party, joining with Jost von Steiger (nephew of conseiller fédéral Eduard von Steiger
Eduard von Steiger
Eduard von Steiger was a Swiss politician and member of the Swiss Federal Council .He was elected to the Federal Council on December 10, 1940 and handed over office on December 31, 1951...

, then chef du département de Justice et Police). Expelled from Switzerland in 1949 for participating to a conference on Marxism and Judaism, he was assigned to the French police at Grenoble. He then took several jobs, such as secretary to the painter Sonia Delaunay
Sonia Delaunay
Sonia Delaunay was a Jewish-French artist who, with her husband Robert Delaunay and others, cofounded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes. Her work extends to painting, textile design and stage set design...

 and as an organiser for CEMEA, where he met his wife Denise Salomon.

1950-1979

An "intellectual without a work", Fraenkel passed his life reading, translating and popularising theses by authors such as Reich
Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry...

, Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...

 ("Eros et Civilisation"), Lukács
Georg Lukács
György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic. He is a founder of the tradition of Western Marxism. He contributed the concept of reification to Marxist philosophy and theory and expanded Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. Lukács' was also an influential literary...

, and Trotsky. He met the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, with whom he had an intellectual conversation marked by mutual respect. Organisor of the Partisans review, edited by François Maspero
François Maspero
François Maspero ) is a French author and journalist, best known as a publisher of leftist books in the 1970s. He has also worked as a translator, translating the works of Joseph Conrad and John Reed, author of Ten Days that Shook the World, among others...

, he was one of the founders of the Internationalist Communist Organisation
Internationalist Communist Organisation
The Internationalist Communist Organisation was a Trotskyist political party in France. Its successor is the Internationalist Communist Current of the Workers Party.-Origins:...

 in 1958 at the time of the Trotskyite
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...

 secession. He was expelled from it in 1966 by Pierre Boussel alias Lambert, for having published texts by Wilhelm Reich without having gained the copyright for them.

In 1966, he translated the La Lutte sexuelle des jeunes (Young people's sexual struggle) with Jean-Marie Brohm, announcing one of the themes highlighted in May 1968. On 22 March 1967, at Nanterre
Nanterre
Nanterre is a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France. It is located west of the center of Paris.Nanterre is the capital of the Hauts-de-Seine department as well as the seat of the Arrondissement of Nanterre....

, he set up a conference entitled Jeunesse et sexualité (Youth and Sexuality) within the university, marked by its successes in May 1968. On 9 June 1968 the police tried to expel him to West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

, which refused to take him and denied him German nationality since his birthplace of Danzig no longer existed as a state. He found himself put under house arrest at Sarlat in Dordogne
Dordogne
Dordogne is a départment in south-west France. The départment is located in the region of Aquitaine, between the Loire valley and the High Pyrénées named after the great river Dordogne that runs through it...

 (he was freed thanks to a protest campaign launched by François Maspero). To accelerate his release, Denise married him on 25 December 1969. In the course of the 1970s he began to retire.

During the 1960s and 70s Fraenkel crossed the path of many persons who became public personalities - politicians like Alain Krivine
Alain Krivine
Alain Krivine is a leader of the Trotskyist movement in France. He is a member of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire , which is the French section of the reunified Fourth International. He was a member of the LCR's political bureau until March 2006, when he resigned from that committee...

 and Lionel Jospin
Lionel Jospin
Lionel Jospin is a French politician, who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002.Jospin was the Socialist Party candidate for President of France in the elections of 1995 and 2002. He was narrowly defeated in the final runoff election by Jacques Chirac in 1995...

, university lecturers like Jean-Marie Brohm and Georges Vigarello
Georges Vigarello
Georges Vigarello is a French historian and sociologist. He is a Research Director at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales of Paris...

, as well as many journalists.

2001-2006

Fraenkel re-appeared in public life in 2001, when he had an impact on the French presidential campaign
French presidential election, 2002
The 2002 French presidential election consisted of a first round election on 21 April 2002, and a runoff election between the top two candidates on 5 May 2002. This presidential contest attracted a greater than usual amount of international attention because of Le Pen's unexpected appearance in...

 by revealing (as he had already done in 1997) Lionel Jospin's Trotskyite past. Jospin had been introduced to him by Robert Lacondemine, one of his comrades in Dugny's cell (other members were Fraenkel, Denise and the historian Pierre Broué
Pierre Broué
Pierre Broué was a French historian and Trotskyist. His work covers various topics including the history of the Bolshevik Party, the Spanish Revolution and biographical works on Leon Trotsky...

, who located him at a wedding in Burgundy and referred to Fraenkel as "a young intellectual with a happy air who joined the ENA").

Fraenkel told the Nouvel Observateur:
In 2002 he decided to join the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire
Revolutionary Communist League (France)
See Revolutionary Communist League for the other Ligue communiste révolutionnaire.The Revolutionary Communist League was a French democratic revolutionary socialist political party. It was the French section of the Fourth International...

 "to break his isolation", but was disappointed by it and did not long remain a member.

Boris Fraenkel committed suicide on 23 April 2006 by jumping into the Seine
Seine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...

 from Pont du Garigliano
Pont du Garigliano
-Location and construction:The Pont du Garigliano links Boulevard Martial-Valin in the quartier de Javel , to Boulevard Exelmans in the Auteuil quartier . It is a metal bridge made of three spans soldered to six beams and carried on only two piles, close to the river banks...

 (the highest bridge in Paris, near parc André Citroên). His body was found two days later at the level of the 8e arrondissement de Paris.
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