Posterity
Just after the war, Brossolette was considered the main leader of the French Resistance, though many were claimed heroes by their political family (such as Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves by royalists and Gabriel Péri by communists). Brossolette's fame was helped by his media notoriety before the war on Radio-PTT and on wartime BBC emissions, his networking role that made his name or codename known and remembered over almost every Resistance member in northern France and by flattering early accounts of BCRA's chief Passy in his memoirs. Although, he had also created, through his independent position and sarcastic wit, many enemies among party leaders, Gaullists and communists that survived him.
De Gaulle himself thought otherwise and as he started writing his memoirs on 1954 and later assumed power, he attributed the main leading role to his representative Jean Moulin rather than field leaders as De Gaulle emphasized the top-down unification work that objectively allowed him to be recognized by the Allies. This was formalized in 1964 by the transfer of Moulin's ashes to the Panthéon, and backed by an emotional speech by André Malraux.
With time, Brossolette was relegated to a second place and became the hero of his party SFIO while Moulin came to symbolize the myth of the French Resistance unity while the country struggled with the Algerian war and as De Gaulle tried to avoid civil war calling for union while noticing the growing popular clout of the Resistance legend on the postwar imagination.
Later, Brossolette's memory suffered another blow when the 1981 elected socialist president François Mitterrand chose to honour Moulin at a Panthéon investiture ceremony instead of rehabilitating Brossolette's role. This further enhanced his relegation - even inside the socialist political family, as evidenced by the modest celebrations of his birth centenary in 2003 and the SFIO/PS centenary. Since then, he has been fairly better remembered than heroes such as Bingen, Jean Cavaillès or Berty Albrecht or important leaders such as Henri Frenay, but overall eclipsed by Moulin's popularity.
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Famous quotes containing the word posterity:
“No man ever walked down to posterity with so small a book under his arm.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in its totality, in its structure: posterity discovers it in the stones with which he built and with which other structures are subsequently built that are frequently better—and so, in the fact that that structure can be demolished and yet still possess value as material.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)