André Ruplinger

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André Ruplinger wearing the uniform of the 92nd infantry regiment

André Ruplinger (14 July 1889 – 20 August 1914) was a French man of letters.

Biography

André Ruplinger was born in Lyon, the son of Jean Ruplinger, who left his native Lorraine after the defeat of France in 1870 to avoid living under German rule, and settled in Lyon, where he married Adélaïde Pascalin, with whom he had six children.

André was the eldest of three boys. A brilliant student, he collected prizes in high school (the honorary prize in the Première class and then in the Philosophy class), continued after the baccalaureate in "higher letters", and was admitted in June 1908 to the entrance exam to the École normale supérieure, literature section. As was customary, he did a first year of military service (which lasted two years at the time) before entering the École in October 1909.

At the Sorbonne, he was a student of Gustave Lanson, to whom he submitted his project to work on eighteenth-century writers. He obtained his Diplôme d'études supérieures (DES), then took the agrégation in Letters, but failed — "to the great astonishment of all his teachers", Lanson said. He nevertheless continued his work, which he now devoted to Charles Borde. At the end of his second year of military service (the duration of which had been extended to three years), he applied again for the agrégation in 1914. He passed and was in Paris in July for the oral exam when he was called back to the 92nd infantry regiment in Clermont-Ferrand.

As soon as war was declared, his regiment was sent to the front in a zone considered to be dangerous. On August 20, near Brouderdorff, during a violent confrontation, Second Lieutenant Ruplinger was killed by a bullet in the head while crossing a ridge to take orders from his commanding officer. He was cited in the regimental order. In 1917, his status as "died for France" was officially recognized.

His younger brother Henri, a medical student, died in 1915 of an illness contracted in the military hospital where he was posted. His other brother Pierre, gassed, was brought back to the rear and survived.

André, Henri, and Pierre (who died in 1979) are buried in the Loyasse Cemetery in Lyon.

See also

• Bernard Marcotte

Writings

André Ruplinger's works were published posthumously, at the behest of Camille Latreille, professor at the Faculté des Lettres de Lyon, colleague and friend of Jean Ruplinger, and president of the Academy of Lyon, to whom André had submitted his texts shortly before his death. Gustave Lanson insisted on prefacing the main work on Charles Bordes, as a tribute to his esteemed student.

Tributes

• André Ruplinger's name has been engraved in stone at the Pantheon in Paris among those of the fallen writers.
• André Ruplinger's name appears on the Monument to the Dead on Remembrance Island at the Park of the Golden Head, Lyon.
• The name of André Ruplinger was given to a street in the 4th arrondissement of Lyon (Ruplinger street) in 1916.
• The names of André and his brother Henri appear on the Great War commemorative plaque in the church of Notre-Dame de l'Assomption in Neuville-sur-Saône (Rhône), a town where their family had (and still has) a property.
• His name is mentioned in various establishments that he attended: memorial monument of the Lycée Ampère in Lyon, 1914-1918; memorial monument of the École Normale Supérieure, 1914-1918; memorial plaque of the Sorbonne.
• His classmate at the École normale supérieure, Paul Tuffrau, dedicated to him his book La Légende de Guillaume d'Orange.

Works

• "Un Contradicteur de J.-J. Rousseau: Le Lyonnais Charles Bordes", Revue d'Histoire de Lyon, Vol. XIII (1914), pp. 305–21.
• Un Représentant Provincial de l'Esprit Philosophique au XVIIIe Siècle en France, Charles Bordes, Membre de l'Académie de Lyon (1711-1781) (1915; awarded the Prix Bordin by the Académie française in 1916)

External links

• Works by André Ruplinger at Gallica
• Works by André Ruplinger at Hathi Trust