Jacques Hébert

Jacques -René Hébert, also known as Le père Duchesne, (* November 15, 1757 in Alençon, † March 24, 1794 in Paris) was a journalist and Church opponents and as leader of the Revolutionary Ultra one of the key figures in the French Revolution.

Youth

Hébert was born in a family of goldsmiths and grew up in a sheltered childhood in relative prosperity. He studied law and practiced as a lawyer, but was ruined by a lost process. Hébert fled to Paris, where he got by with different jobs. From 1786 to 1788 he worked as a cashier of a vaudeville theater.

Journalistic work

As the author of the journal Le père Duchesne, published since November 1790 in a total of 385 numbers and wrote in the Hébert under this same name, Hébert grabbed an active part in the revolutionary events and eventually surpassed even Jean- Paul Marat in journalistic activity. The magazine was named after a popular character of the then popular theater, which had enormous for that time circulation of up to 600,000 copies and was distributed in the army for free. As agitator Hébert turned mainly to the sans-culottes, small tradesmen and businesses in the suburbs of Paris, the 1792/94 were the driving force of the revolution. In his journal, he tried to imitate the simple and rough language of certain craftsmen.

Hébert called the " Pere Duchesne ," said Ernst Schulin on to coherent action against all those he saw as enemies of the revolution: nobles, clergy, but also all the moderate revolutionaries like the Girondins, Hebert did not share the social-revolutionary views.

The main program points of Hebert's journal were: the overthrow of the monarchy and the introduction of direct democracy on the model of Rousseau, fight against the attacking foreign monarchies and the establishment of a world republic, but above all - and herein lies Hebert's special position among all revolutionaries justified - radical action against the church, which looked Hébert as an organizational and ideological backbone of both internal and external counterrevolution.

The anticlerical thrust of the journal lit up already from the title of the first number ( "Down with the bells! "); Three years later, at the height of his ministry in the fall of 1793, Hébert was one of the initiators of the relevant de-Christianization, which made ​​it his goal to replace Christianity by a "cult of reason." The criticism of religion of the Enlightenment found in Hébert their logical continuation and severity.

Revolution and death

In addition to his literary activities Hébert was in the people's revolutionary societies, such as the Club of the Cordeliers, active. After the storming of the Tuileries and the arrest of the king Hébert initiated together with Pierre- Gaspard Chaumette and the concentrated around her anti-clerical social revolutionary Hébertists the " insurrectionary commune" of Paris, the bundled as a community institution, the activities of the 48 city sections and the French National Parliament temporarily surpassed in importance.

Hébert and his followers were able to end 1793 increase their influence in the religion question. On December 8, 1793, a decree was issued after the citizens had the right to practice the cult of their choice and pick up those religious institutions that displeased them. Hébert and his followers laid the like, that the Christian Church was now completely abolish, but here it turned them against Robespierre. This was not in the service of the Catholic Church, which he declined, but as a Deist, he represented the right to freedom of religion, as long as the clergy office not abused to operate policy. Robespierre and his group refused Hébert and his group from a long time. In addition to the different views on religion this was in opposing political beliefs. They were also against the socialist revolutionary ideas of the sans-culottes; So they started a smear campaign and threw Hébert before, not even to defend the proposals formulated by the sans-culottes social revolutionary theses and to live in luxury.

Therefore Hébert and his followers was made a show trial in March 1794: Apparently she had taken part in a controlled by foreign conspiracy against the revolution. ( Schulin, 234) Hébert and his principal followers (known Hébertists ) were guillotined on March 24, 1794 on the Place de Grève in Paris.