“Coco Chanel lived in the Ritz with a Nazi officer and had loves with another”

Philippe Collin has rescued a legendary character, Frank Meier (Austria, 1884-Paris, 1947), who learned the cocktail arts at the Hoffman House Hotel in New York, before acquiring French nationality after serving in the foreign legion, to become a legend in the Parisian Ritz, between 1921 and 1947 Confident of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Jean Cocteau, Ernst Jünger, Sacha Guitry, Coco Chanel, between a pleyade of cosmopolitan personalities. To end up witnessing, accomplice, collaborator? and confidant of the highest and characters who wrote atrocious pages in the history of France and Europe.

“The sentence” Madame Bovary is lent to Flaubert, it’s me. ” Could you say Frank Meier, the Ritzm bartender is me?

“When I discovered the character fascinated me quickly.” I tried to understand it. I tried to get into his head, his doubts, his torments, his anguish, his relationships with the great world and the under world that crossed drinking glasses in the Ritz bar. Hence it is true, you are right, Ritz’s bartender is me. My character is, at the same time, real and imaginary.

–In a certain measure, it could be said that Scott Fitzgerald, the author of ‘The Great Gatsby’, is at the ultimate origin of his book. It is he who suggests to the Ritz Buman to write his memoirs to change many things, change the world, to some extent.

“It’s a kind of tribute, for my part.”

“From there, you tell” another “story of the Nazi occupation. While France lived under poverty, misery, persecution, its characters take drinks in the most refined bar of the most refined and cosmopolitan hotel, where crime can be crossed with absolute resistance.

“If … Ritz was a kind of model or mirror of the rest of occupied France.” And in the heart of that hotel the spies, the chivatos, the Wehrmacht officers, the resistant, crossed. The bartender, Frank Meier, listened, protected, covered, was a diplomat, by character, and to survive. He was also an actor, to some extent. He could count the divisions that occurred between the Nazis and the divisions that were evident among the French. Without forgetting that both shared beds and bodies in the same rooms in the same halls.

—Enst Jünger, one of the great greats of the German literature of the twentieth century, an officer of the Wehrmach, occupies an eminent position in his book. In truth, he lived at the Hotel Raphael and “worked” at the Majestic hotel, two steps from the “Rue” Lauriston, where the French deed tortured. In his book, dialoguing with his bartender, readers will discover, delighted, that the Ritz was also one of the scenarios where a group of the highest conjured launched their project of murdering Hitler to end the war …

“So, that story is well known.” Some of the protagonists committed suicide, such as Rommel, others were killed by Hitler’s minions, others, such as Jünger, Speidel and Stülpnagel, crossed in the Ritz, which served as “cover” for the exchange of messages from the conjurers who aspired to kill Hitler to end the war.

– At the same time, the Ritz barman was witness and complicit, on many occasions, of the “loving collaboration” of famous women, such as Arletty and Coco Chanel.

“Arletty was a famous actress, playing legendary characters. His love story with Hans Jürgen Soehring was one of the great love events of occupation. He was a narrow Goering collaborator, who degraded him for this scandalous story. It is famous a replica of the actress when a court judged her: «Hey, my heart is French; But my c … is international ». Chanel, on the other hand, lived in the Ritz with a Nazi officer, had loves with another, and did business with that coverage.

– Through those and other stories the Ritz, during the occupation, was also a public space of “sexual liberation.”

“I am like that finely.” Nazi officers used sinks as prostibular spaces, with girls, boys, ladies, ladies, paid or delivered freely. On another plane, Jünger’s appearances with Florence Gould, gave the Ritz bar a sexy high comedy tone.

—The Ritz was also a place of crap stores. Goering and their minions bought and sold stolen works from Jewish families. Did your barman participate in those dirty businesses?

“He’s not proven … but he could suspect.” Frank Meier walked in Bentley in Paris, during the occupation. It seems reasonable to suspect that he could benefit from his contacts behind the bar of such a chic bar.

Frank Meier created a world of knowing how to live cosmopolitan. Could you keep some of the Jewish ancestors who lent some confidants and police?

“Frank’s end is also very dark.” It took decades to discover that he was buried in Pantin in the “Banlieue”, the periphery of Paris. It is not clear what was the fortune that managed to accumulate with two parallel accounting. Some of his successors ended up militating on the extreme right. Police archives prove that the French and German police suspected their Jewish origins as a possible enemy of Nazism. We have the legend.