Marthe Betenfeld, daughter of a brewer, was born on 15 Aug 1889 in Blamont, France and died 9 Feb 1982 in Paris.
On 13 Apr 1915 she married Henri Richer, a pilot serving in WWI. She was approached by French counter-intelligence at about this time and was recruited for service based on her language skills as well as her daring personality. After her husband was killed in battle, Marthe distracted herself from grief by travelling to Spain to undertake intelligence duties.
CODE NAMES:
None Known
A postwar heroine who fooled France
By Mary Blume
The New York Times
August 3, 2006
PARIS — Later than, say, Switzerland and England but too soon for many of the French, Parliament closed the brothels of France in the spring of 1946. The measure had been introduced in the Conseil Municipal of Paris by Marthe Richard, a respectable widow in a light-colored suit and a white hat.
The public was aghast. Paris, with its world-famous houses, where the beau monde gathered and the décor was so gorgeous that guided tours were sometimes held mornings when trade was slow, naughty gay Paree giving up its birthright as the world's capital of pleasure to succumb to postwar prudery? No!
It was no secret that the better brothels during the Occupation had been frequented mostly by Germans and French collaborators, and perhaps it was time to cleanse the country's soul - but, to paraphrase St. Augustine, not yet. Still, the houses closed, their furnishings sold at well-attended auctions, and the wrath of pimps, madams and corrupt cops turned to Marthe Richard.
The Loi Marthe Richard was morally impeccable, but its initiator turned out to be very peccable indeed. Her real name was not Richard, she had no right to public office as she was a British citizen, she did join the Résistance very late in the day, undoubtedly to mask her earlier collaboration, and - best of all - she had herself been a hooker since her teens.
Police records, much sought by those wishing to discredit her after the law passed, were helpful as she had a file dating back to 1905 when, at 16, she was given the card issued to prostitutes who were known carriers of venereal disease.
Blessed with the boldness of a true pathological liar, she had covered her tracks for decades as she rose to respectability. Her past is more outlandish than sordid, but what is interesting is how the spite lingers: the French hate being fooled, and they were. Two biographies written to commemorate the 60th year of the closing of the brothels - Natacha Henry's Marthe Richard: L'Aventurière des Maisons Closes (published by Punctum) and Marthe Richard: De la Petite à la Grande Vertu (Payot) by Elizabeth Coquart - are unhumorously stern. Marthe's problem was that, while good-looking and greedy, she lacked the great courtesan's redeeming grand style. So she came to be detested as a hypocritical prude.
Marthe Betenfeld was born poor in Alsace in 1889 and walked the streets of Nancy, a garrison town, until she was able to move to Paris, where she met a rich and jolly fish merchant called Henri Richer, 10 years her senior. He set her up, helped her learn grammar and horse riding and when he went to the front in 1915 he married her.
Two years earlier, with Henri's encouragement, she had taken up aviation and got a pilot's license. Hanging around the airfield she met a ambiguous Russian nicknamed Zozo who became her lover. Within a month of Henri's death at the front, Zozo had persuaded France's spymaster, Captain Georges Ladoux, an incompetent whose other star was Mata Hari, to recruit Marthe for what was delicately known as "patriotisme horizontal." She was horrified, of course, as she reiterated in her five autobiographies, but, finally persuaded, was sent off to Spain to seduce Baron von Krohn, an older submarine specialist with a glass eye. When the moment came, she relates, she had a stiff drink, lay back and said, fortunately under her breath, "Vive la France."
She did well enough for von Krohn to recruit her as well, making her a double agent. What exactly she did is not clear, though anyone has to love her tale about being shipped to Argentinian 1917 by von Krohn with eight thermoses of poisonous weevils with which she was to spike wheat in the ship's hold that was destined for the Allies. (Patriotically, she drowned her weevils in the sink).
Back in Paris at wars end, Marthe soon returned to her old habits and her old - and perhaps only - passion, flying, which gave her entry to the British colony of Paris. There she met Thomas Crompton, a director of the Rockefeller Foundation in France. Their marriage in 1926 made her a British citizen, dual nationality being unavailable, and brought her respectability. She achieved glory soon after Crompton's sudden early death.
Seeking to promote himself, Ladoux had begun writing a series about famous spies he had recruited, starting with Mata Hari. For the second volume he wanted to show the other side of the coin - a heroic Frenchwoman - and remembered Marthe. His book was almost entirely made up, including the heroine's name, which he changed from Richer because there was a sewer pipe manufacturer of that name, and it was a huge success. Marthe disclaimed none of Ladoux's inventions, triumphed on the lecture circuit, and fabricated her first book of memoirs in 1935.
Two years earlier she had received the Legion d'Honneur and always neglected to state that in truth she was accepting a posthumous reward for Crompton's Rockefeller Foundation work. Neat, but the best was yet to follow.
In 1937 a film came out, "Marthe Richard au Service de la France," starring Edwige Feuillère, a fine French actress even better at virtuous renunciation than Garbo. Erich von Stroheim inevitably played von Krohn and Feuillère was intensely noble as she confirmed that she would sacrifice her purity to revenge the murder, invented by the scenarist, of her entire family at the gloved hands of horrible von Krohn.
By then Marthe could do no wrong, although of course she did. She spent the first two years of the war in Vichy, which a collaborator described as "gay as Deauville at its height," and eventually returned to Paris where it was said that she procured girls for evenings attended by Germans, practiced some small time swindling, and joined, or affected to join, the Résistance at the opportune time.
When at wars end French women were enfranchised, Marthe was recruited to run for the Municipal Council on a ticket grouping Résistance factions. She was probably chosen to head the anti-brothel campaign because she was famous but politically obscure and thus expendable if it failed.
It passed, but for Marthe there was nothing but trouble ahead, and it is interesting that her present biographers swallow all the sordid revelations about her without inquiring into whom the tales might have served and whether they were true. Even the copious police reports were filled with such phrases as "is said to have" and "may have been."
She was a charmless mythomaniac and, as the problems of prostitution became ever more complex, an easy prey for lazy journalists while she faded into great old age: She was gabby, contradictory and often downright silly as she pronounced against the pill, abortion rights, immigrants, feminism and sex in general. "Abstinence has helped me age so well," she informed France-Soir.
She died in 1982 at the age of 93, never having succeeded in regaining French citizenship. Her ashes at Père Lachaise bear the label Marthe Crompton and not the well-honored, if fictitious, name of Marthe Richard.
No comments:
Post a Comment