Professor Erich Merkel recently published a review of my book, Aristide ‘le Juste’ (BMCR 2025.02.20). This is not a response to the review itself, but to Erich Merkel’s commentary on page 100, note 45.
I wrote “Carcopino 1935, 151[1] associe son bannissement à ‘sa réputation de haute intégrité morale’. Jugement savoureux quand on se rappelle les actes de l’historien en tant que ministre de l’Éducation Nationale dans le gouvernement Darlan et son application sans faille ni états d’âme des lois antisémites de Vichy. Il est vrai que son livre sur l’ostracisme est antérieur à sa nomination ministérielle et qu’en ce temps-là, ses notions de “moralité” étaient peut-être plus solides”.
Erich Merkel wrote in his review “The argumentation is also occasionally marred by gratuitous censure which gives the impression that Brun is a prosecutor rather than an impartial judge. This culminates in one of the most savage footnotes I have ever encountered, which I do not think would have made it past the editors of BMCR—and which is all the more unnecessary because it is aimed at a book from 1935 whose author is long dead”.
I should have pointed out—and I’m taking advantage of this opportunity to do so—that Jérôme Carcopino was not only a great researcher, author of several works recognized for their value (Histoire de l’ostracisme athénien, La vie quotidienne à Rome à l’apogée de l’Empire, Jules César). What the vast majority of foreign historians do not know is that under the Nazi occupation of France, Carcopino was Minister of Education and of Youth, a position in which he signed several decrees excluding Jews from high schools and universities, both students and teachers, applying the anti-Semitic laws promulgated by Marshal Pétain. Although he protected a few Jewish teachers recommended to him, Carcopino never really denied the pro-Nazi policies of the French state after the war.[2] That is why I wanted to show the contradiction between his praise for Aristides’ high moral standards and his personal attitude during the Nazi occupation. So I take nothing back from what I said and, once again, I think that Erich Merkel’s reaction was due to the vagueness of my sentence.
Notes
[1] L’ostracisme athénien, Paris, 1935
[2] On Carcopino, see, e.g., Stéphanie Corcy-Debray, Jérôme Carcopino, un historien à Vichy, Paris, 2001.