Le Corbusier, un fascisme français

Over an eighteen month period, in 1941-42, Le Corbusier paced the corridors of the administrations of the French State, in the hotels of Vichy, to receive honors and commissions, in particular for his prefabricated houses, the “murondins”. But to no avail. Was that his only form of allegiance to French fascism? Certainly not, according to the author who dug out the anti-semitic behavior he showed in the period between the two world wars, a sort of admiration for Hitler (who could have “crowned his life with a grand work: the development of Europe”) and the not very recommendable people he befriended. Pierre Winter, for example, a doctor and one the ideologues of the Revolutionary Fascist Party and director of the magazine La Révolution fasciste. When in 1934 Le Corbusier’s building went up rue Nungesser and Coli, where he kept the seventh floor for himself, Winter settled in the fourth – and their relations would be solid and lasting. In 1943, Le Corbusier was named counselor for the fondation Carrel – the famous apostle of eugenics, and qualified as indignant at the time of the Liberation. In the post war period Le Corbusier found the way to play the part of the Commander and to have the public forget his dangerous relations.

• Le Corbusier, un fascisme français, by Xavier de Jarcy, Albin Michel, 288 p., €19.