Max Linder - Marriage and Death

Marriage and Death

As a consequence of his war service, Linder suffered from continuing health problems, including bouts of severe depression. In 1923, he married an eighteen-year-old Heléne "Jean" Peters, who came from a wealthy family and with whom he had a daughter named Maud Max Linder (also known as Josette), born on July 27, 1924. The emotional problems besetting Linder evidenced themselves when he and his wife made a suicide pact. In early 1924 they attempted suicide at a hotel in Vienna, Austria. They were found and revived, the incident being covered up by the physician reporting it as an accidental overdose of barbiturates. However, in Paris on October 31, 1925, Max and his young wife attended a theatrical performance of Quo Vadis (in which the main characters bleed themselves to death) and committed suicide later that night in the same manner. They drank Veronal, injected morphine and cut open the veins in their arms. Max Linder was buried at the Catholique cimetière de Saint-Loubès.