Manuel Benguigui

Un collectionneur allemand

De son plus jeune âge, Ludwig fut absorbé par l'art. Il vivait par les œuvres, pour les œuvres, et rien d'autre. Leur vision, leur vision seule et simple lui tenait lieu de nourriture fondamentale. Principalement les tableaux, toiles et panneaux. Ludwig se contrefichait de la Terre et de ses habitants. Il n'aimait que l'art, il ne voyait que cela, et pas les hommes derrière. C'est tout juste si les artistes y sauvaient leur peau. L'humanité ne l'intéressait pas, il ne voulait en voir que les créations.

Pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, Ludwig, officier de l'armée allemande, est en poste à Paris dans un service dévolu à la confiscation des œuvres d'art, où il excelle. Protégé par Goering, lui-même collectionneur compulsif, il attise les jalousies. Mais Ludwig ne déroge pas à sa mission, mû par une exigence et une intransigeance esthétiques qui l'éloignent de plus en plus du monde des hommes.
Pourtant, le jour où il croise Lucette, quelque chose en lui vacille. Pour la première fois de sa vie, il est ému par un visage et un corps de chair...

Bleue
Paru le 03/01/2017
Genre : Littérature française

160 pages - 140 x 205 mm
EAN : 9782715244948
ISBN : 9782715244948

Foreign Rights

A German Collector

Rights sold

Turkey - Yapi Kredi

Presentation

Ludwig has been “art-deprived” from a very young age. He looks at exhibition catalogues, frequently goes to museums and gets lost in his own thoughts while thinking about the beautiful things in life. Art is the reason he gets out of bed in the morning. During WWII, Ludwig is stationed in Paris as an officer in a unit concentrated in works of art. Hitler began a campaign dedicated to confiscating art. In occupied France, Ludwig works miracles and manages to find priceless and well-hidden pieces. Under the protection of Goering, who is a collector himself, Ludwig’s reputation proceeds himself which causes jealously amongst his comrades. However Ludwig does not seem to mind, to him he is carrying out his mission with conviction and a sense of urgency; nonetheless in so doing, he becomes even more isolated than before. Even so, a force within him shifts the day he meets the young Lucette. Ludwig recognizes his artistic alter ego in this French woman with close ties to the Resistance. More surprisingly, for the first time in his life, he is filled with emotion and desire for another person.

Will this meeting change the meaning of life for Ludwig? Will he continue to work for the Nazi regime in complete impunity?

Manuel Benguigui is born in 1976 and works in the art world. A German Collector is his first novel.

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