Germaine Tillion
| Germaine Tillion | |
|---|---|
| Born |
30 May 1907 Allègre, Haute-Loire, France |
| Died | 18 April 2008 (aged 100) Saint-Mandé, France |
| Occupation | Anthropologist |
Germaine Tillion (30 May 1907 – 18 April 2008) was a French ethnologist, best known for her work in Algeria in the 1950s on behalf of the French government. A member of the French resistance, she spent time in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
She spent her youth with her family in Clermont-Ferrand. She left for Paris to study social anthropology with Marcel Mauss and Louis Massignon, obtaining degrees from the École pratique des hautes études, the École du Louvre, and the INALCO. Four times between 1934 and 1940 she did fieldwork in Algeria, studying the Berber and Chaoui people in the Aures region of northeastern Algeria, to prepare for her doctorate in anthropology.
As she returned to Paris from the field in 1940, France had been invaded by Germany. As her first act of resistance, she helped a Jewish family by giving them her family's papers. She became one of the leading commanders in the French Resistance in the network of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. Her missions included helping prisoners to escape and organizing intelligence for the allied forces from 1940 to 1942.
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