Germaine Brée

Germaine Brée ( ; 2 October 1907 – 22 September 2001) was a French-American literary scholar, who wrote extensively on Marcel Proust, Andre Gide, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Life Born in Paris, Germaine Brée grew up in the English-speaking Channel Islands. After graduating from the University of Paris, she was caught abroad when World War II began in 1939. She joined the Rochambeau Group, a volunteer ambulance unit organized in New York, later known as the Rochambelles. The ambulance group, taken into the Free French forces, became the first women's unit integrated in the French Army, joining the Second Armored Division of General Leclerc in Morocco in October 1943. Two months later, with the death of her mother, she left the ambulance group and was assigned to the intelligence section of the Free French in Algiers. Promoted to the rank of lieutenant, she received a Bronze Star and was named to the Legion of Honor. At this time Brée befriended Albert Camus.

In 1952, Brée gained her American citizenship. The following year, Brée was appointed chair of the French department at New York University College of Arts & Science, the second woman to be appointed a department chair at the university.

Brée died in her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on 22 September 2001 at the age of 93.

Works Marcel Proust and Deliverance From Time, 1955 Camus, 1959 Gide, 1963 Camus and Sartre: Crisis and Commitment, 1972 Women Writers in France, 1973