Célestin Lainé
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Célestin Lainé (1908–1983), was a Breton nationalist involved in the Nazi reich, for the creation of an independent Breton state. His Breton language name is Neven Hénaff. He was a chemical engineer by training and an officer in the French army reserve.
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[edit] Breton terrorism
He was born in 1908 in Nantes and was brought up in Ploudalmézeau, Finistère. In 1929, he founded a secret society, the Kentoc'h Mervel (Rather death) and entered the École Centrale. In 1930 he set up the terrorist organisation, Gwenn ha du1. In July 1932, he claimed he made a bomb in his bedroom. It was made from nitroglycerin in a condensed milk carton with a detonator supplied by a forestry worker but contrary to the legend, it was not he but André Geffroy who made the bomb which blew up a statue in Rennes. It happened on the morning of August 7, 1932, Geffroy placed the bomb on the (it has to be said, provocative) monument which commemorated the union of Brittany and France by representing the duchess Anne of Brittany on her knees in front of the King of France. It had been erected in 19??
Two people were crossing the Town Hall Square at the time but they subsequently refrained from saying what they had seen despite the offer of a reward. The explosion tore the mass of bronze from its niche and smashed it on the ground. All the windows within a hundred metres were shattered.
In 1936 Lainé created the Kadervenn (combat Sillon2 or special-service), a paramilitary unit based on the IRA model, comprising a dozen members engaged in military manoeuvres. This organisation instructed the new recruits and participated in exercises in the Landes de Lanvaux3 in 1938. The next year, he spent a period in Germany where he organized the delivery of a cargo of arms, which was shipped on board of the Gwalarn, which beached at Locquirec in the night of the 8th and 9th of August 1939. The arms were recovered and stored in the abbey at Boquen.
[edit] Collaboration
Before and during the Second World War, Lainé sided with the Germans. He favoured strong-arm tactics and had a fixed idea: create a Breton army. ('We will continue the tradition of those who, throughout the centuries, have struggled, arms in hand, to affirm our national rights.') With Yann Goulet, he participated in the creation, of the Bagadou Stourm (combat troops)4. where he ensured the instruction of volunteers by setting up a unit that he controlled more personally (the Service Spécial). This was a paramilitary unit which was also in charge of the maintenance of order within the PNB5. In 1942, there was split between the Bagadou Stourm and the Service Spécial, also known as Lu Brezhon, 'the Breton Army'. On the 11 September 1943, at Rennes, he and Colonel Hartmut Pulmer (chief of the SD at Rennes) signed the foundation convention of the unit called Bezrn Kadoudal. In 1944 Lu Brezhon took the name [[Bezen Perrot]], (Perrot Militia) the name referring to abbé Perrot, a parish priest who was an ardent defender of the Breton language and who had been assassinated in circumstances which are still open to discussion. His group brought together around a hundred people, his deputy was Alan Heusaff. In 1943, the organisation undertook the position of auxiliary police of the Nazis against the French Resistance. The soldiers of Bezen Perrot enrolled in the Sicherheitsdienst in German uniform. In May 1944, he symbolically founded a new Breton national party on the most radically nationalist lines. However, at the Liberation, these collaborationist activities brought opprobrium on the whole of the Breton movement.
[edit] Exile
Hunted out of Brittany by the defeat of the Nazis, the last fighters of this unit found themselves at Tübingen, gathered around him. Condemned to death in his absence, and long sought, he lived in Ireland until his death in 1983.
Olier Mordrel, co-founder of the Breton independence party, wrote that he "was a strange man. He had become the prophet of a Celtic religion made for himself, where Nordic racism was married to the Nietzschian will to power, and not without flirting with an air of romantic druidism."
[edit] References
- Breiz, E. Dictionnaire Breton. Garnier. Paris (1986) ISBN 2-7370-0253-2
- Meurig Evans, H. & Thomas, W. O. Y Geiriadur Newydd (The New Welsh Dictionary) Llandybie, (1953)
- Mordel, O. Breiz Atao (from fr. Wikipedia)
[edit] Footnotes
- Note 1: 'White and Black'. It was named after the Breton flag, designed by Morvan Marchal in 1923. See the external link, Gwen ha Du. davantage en français.
- Note 2: Sillon is a French word which generally means 'furrow' but the Breton ervenn is translated by Breiz (Garnier), as sillon in that word's meaning of planche de jardin (horticultural bed). While the Welsh erfyn does mean 'weapon' as well as 'tool' (Meurig Evans & Thomas), it looks as though the idea behind the name Kadervenn is the cultivation of fighting.
- Note 3: An extensive belt of heath and woodland north of Vannes.
- Note 4: Bagadou means 'troops': stourm means 'combat' or 'struggle': a name clearly based on that of the German Sturmtruppen, developed during the First World War to pass through enemy lines in small numbers and to harass the enemy's immediate rear while other troops followed up with a frontal attack.
- Note 5: Parti National Breton (Breton National Party)
