His forged bonds from the Crédit municipal of Bayonne, secured on overvalued jewels, held up only through his protectors: his criminal case had been adjourned nineteen times. Found dying at Chamonix in January 1934, he was said to have “committed suicide with a bullet fired from three metres away”. Two governments fell.
The story
Born in 1886 near Kyiv and brought to France as a child, Alexandre Stavisky led two parallel lives that never quite met. On one side the Paris man about town: theatre owner, a regular at the racecourses and at the restaurants where one is seen, married to Arlette Simon, a model at Chanel, driving cars his declared fortune did not explain. On the other the swindler the courts had been pursuing since the 1920s without ever managing to bring him to trial — bounced cheques, shell companies, loans secured on thin air. Between the two, one unique talent: making the connections that count.
His heaviest affair concerned the Crédit municipal de Bayonne, a municipal pawnbroker licensed to issue bonds secured on the objects it held. Stavisky had massively overvalued jewels pledged and bonds issued for sums bearing no relation to their real worth. Insurance companies, reassured by the public character of the institution, placed tens of millions there. The scheme held by one thing only: the political and judicial protection he enjoyed. His criminal file, open for years, had been put back nineteen times by the public prosecutor of the Seine — a figure that would become the heart of the scandal.
The machine jammed at the end of 1933: the director of the Crédit municipal was arrested, the press followed the trail, and Stavisky fled. The police found him in a chalet at Chamonix on 8 January 1934, dying of a bullet in the head. He died without speaking. The official version concluded suicide; the far-right press wrote that he had been silenced before he could name his protectors. Out of that controversy came a phrase that has stayed in the French language: “suicidé d'une balle tirée à trois mètres” — a suicide by a bullet fired from three metres away.
What followed went far beyond the affair itself. Two governments fell in a month. The prefect of police Chiappe was dismissed, which put the Paris right into the streets. On 6 February 1934 an anti-parliamentary demonstration converged on the Chamber of Deputies and turned into a riot on the place de la Concorde: the police fired, and some fifteen people were killed and hundreds wounded. The Republic wavered for the first time since 1871. Few financial scandals ever cost that much; Stavisky himself lies in Division 94 under a stone that says nothing of it.
On site, do not miss
Division 94 is that of Laurence Badie and Philippe Gaubert — Stavisky lies there with nothing to signal the affair that bears his name.
Visitors' questions
Where is Alexandre Stavisky's grave?
In Division 94 of Père-Lachaise, that of Laurence Badie and of the conductor Philippe Gaubert. Nothing on the spot points to the affair that bears his name and brought down a government.
Pierre BourdierWhat was the Stavisky affair?
An issue of forged bonds by the municipal pawnshop of Bayonne, secured on jewellery valued far above its worth, into which insurance companies poured considerable sums. The scheme held up thanks to protection in politics and in the courts: his own criminal file had been put off nineteen times.
Joseph CaillauxDid he kill himself?
That is the official version: found dying of a bullet in the head at Chamonix on 8 January 1934. The far-right press wrote that he had been silenced, and the phrase “a suicide by a bullet fired from three metres away” has stayed in the language.
Charles FloquetWhat were the political consequences?
Considerable: two governments brought down, the prefect of police Chiappe dismissed, and the anti-parliamentary demonstration of 6 February 1934 turning into a riot on the place de la Concorde — some fifteen dead. The Republic itself wavered.
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