Robert d'Harcourt

Robert d'Harcourt (23 November 1881 – 18 June 1965) was a French Catholic intellectual, scholar of German culture and anti-Nazi polemicist.

Early years A member of the aristocratic Norman House of Harcourt, d'Harcourt was born at Lumigny-Nesles-Ormeaux in Seine-et-Marne, the second son and fourth child of Count Pierre d'Harcourt and Adelaide-Alix de Mun. He was the nephew of Albert de Mun, a half-brother of his mother.

D'Harcourt studied Germanic literature at university. His doctoral dissertation was on the Swiss poet and novelist Conrad Ferdinand Meyer.

During World War I, d'Harcourt served in the artillery with the rank of sergeant. He was severely wounded twice during the conflict. Eventually taken prisoner, he recounted his experiences in his memoir, Souvenirs de captivité et d'évasion d'un camp de Bavière. After the war, he obtained the chair of German language and literature at the Institut catholique de Paris.

Anti-Nazism D'Harcourt's knowledge of German culture and his anti-Nazi views led him to publish numerous detailed articles attacking the new Nazi regime after Hitler achieved power in 1933. In 1936 he published l'Évangile de la force (The Gospel of Force), his best-known work. It was a harsh attack on Nazism and particularly drew attention to the indoctrination of young Germans in Nazi ideology. Harcourt stressed the incompatibility between the radical racist nature of Nazi ideology and Christianity.

During the Occupation, d'Harcourt became a leading intellectual figure in the Resistance, publishing in the clandestine press.

Works C. F. Meyer, sa vie, son œuvre (1825–1898), 1913 Souvenirs de captivité et d'évasions 1915–1918, 1922 La Jeunesse de Schiller, 1928 L'Éducation sentimentale de Goethe, 1931 Goethe et l'Art de vivre, 1935 L'Évangile de la force, le visage de la jeunesse du IIIe Reich, 1936 Catholiques d'Allemagne, 1938 Le Nazisme peint par lui-même, 1946 Les Allemands d'aujourd'hui, 1948 La Religion de Goethe, 1949 Visage de l'Allemagne actuelle, 1950 Konrad Adenauer, 1955 L'Allemagne d'Adenauer, 1958 L'Allemagne et l'Europe, Allemagne européenne, 1960 L'Allemagne, d'Adenauer à Erhard, 1964