Hélène Rytmann

Hélène Rytmann (15 October 1910 – 16 November 1980) was a French revolutionary and sociologist. She was active as a Communist militant in the French resistance to Nazism. A member of the French Communist Party, she was expelled after accusations of Trotskyism and having participated in summary executions of former Nazi collaborators.

Hélène Rytmann
Born(1910-10-15)15 October 1910
Paris, France
Died16 November 1980(1980-11-16) (aged 70)
Paris, France
Occupation(s)Revolutionary and sociologist

Rytmann was murdered by strangulation in 1980 by her husband Louis Althusser. Her murder attracted much attention from the French media and there were requests to sentence Althusser as an ordinary criminal, but he was instead declared unfit to stand trial by reason of insanity and committed to a psychiatric institution for three years.[1]

Early life

Rytmann was born in Paris in 1910 to a Jewish family of Russian and Lithuanian origin. According to Althusser, Rytmann was sexually abused as a child by her family doctor. At age 13, the doctor forced Rytmann to administer a lethal dose of morphine to her father who was suffering from terminal cancer; the following year, Rytmann was forced to administer another lethal dose to her terminally ill mother. However, this story could have been invented by Althusser, who admitted to incorporating "imagined memories" into his "traumabiography."[2][3]

Resistance activities

During the German occupation of France, Rytmann refused to wear the yellow star mandated by the Nazis and instead joined the French resistance.[4] As a militant, she was a comrade of Jean Beaufret and was affiliated with the "Pericles" division of the French resistance. She joined the French Communist Party, but was later expelled for "Trotskyist deviation" and "crimes". It was alleged that she had participated in summary executions of former Nazi collaborators in Lyon. Hélène Rytmann is also sometimes known as Hélène Legotien or Hélène Legotien-Rytmann because her cover name during the French Resistance was "Legotien", a name she continued to use.[5]

Murder

On 16 November 1980, Rytmann was murdered by her husband by strangulation at their apartment at the École normale supérieure. Her husband crushed her larynx and killed her. The murder was never thoroughly investigated. In January 1981, Althusser was deemed unfit to serve trial under Article 64 of the French penal code, with Althusser claiming "diminished responsibility" due to mental illness.[4]

Rytmann is buried in the Jewish section of Cimetière parisien de Bagneux in Paris.[6]

Legacy

John Banville's 2002 novel Shroud was partly inspired by the scandal of Rytmann's murder.[7]

The Forward has cited Rytmann as an example of an historically important Jewish woman who had "changed France" and that it was "high time that Hélène Rytmann be remembered with dignity as an individual" for her role in the French Resistance.[8]

Bibliography
  • Althusser, Louis; Althusser, Hélène; Corpet, Olivier. Lettres à Hélène : 1947–1980, Grasset, Paris, 2011.
  • Francis Dupuis-Déri, « La banalité du mâle : Louis Althusser a tué sa conjointe, Hélène Rytmann-Legotien, qui voulait le quitter », Nouvelles Questions Féministes, 2015/1 (Vol. 34), p. 84-101.

Further reading
  • Rytman, Helene; Istomina, Tatiana; Veasey, Richard. Fhilosophy of the Encounter, Pinsapo, Highland NY, 2019.

References
  1. "Getting away with murder: It's the talk of Paris – how Louis Althusser killed his wife, how he was an intellectual fraud. It's all in his posthumous autobiographical memoir. Gilbert Adair turns the pages". The Independent. July 1992. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  2. Sturrock, John (17 December 1992). "The Paris Strangler". London Review of Books. 14 (24). Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  3. Dupuis-Déri, Francis (2015). "La banalité du mâle. Louis Althusser a tué sa conjointe, Hélène Rytmann-Legotien, qui voulait le quitter=" [The banality of the male. Louis Althusser killed his wife, Hélène Rytmann-Legotien, who wanted to leave him]. Nouvelles Questions Féministes (in French). 34 (1): 84–101. doi:10.3917/nqf.341.0084. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  4. "The murder of Hélène Rytman". Verso Books. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  5. Roudinesco, Elisabeth (2008). Philosophy in Turbulent Times: Canguilhem, Sartre, Foucault, Althusser, Deleuze, Derrida. New York City: Columbia University Press. p. 116. ISBN 978-0231143004.
  6. "Louis Althusser (1918–1990)". Pegasos. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  7. "Shroud". The Sydney Morning Herald. 16 November 2002. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  8. "The 110 Jewish Women Who Changed France". The Forward. 13 September 2014. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
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