Marietta Martin

Marietta Martin (1902–1944) was a French writer, journalist and French Resistance worker. She was an editor of , a clandestine Resistance newspaper, transformed, after her death, into Ici Paris.

Marietta Martin (also called Marietta Arthur-Martin or Marietta Martin-Le Dieu) was born 4 October 1902 at Arras (Pas-de-Calais). She was the daughter of Arthur Martin, editor-in-chief of Le Courrier du Pas-de-Calais, and Henriette Martin-Le Dieu. When she was four, her father died, and she lived with her mother, a piano teacher at Arras, and her sister Lucie. During the German offensive in the north of France in August 1914, the family took refuge in Paris.

After attending high school at the , she enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine then switched to study for a degree in literature. She learned several languages, becoming fluent in English, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish and Danish. She was a musician, playing the piano and the violin. She travelled in several countries, and had long stays in Poland, where she lived with her sister and her brother-in-law, , a diplomat and minister. Her travels inspired her to write an essay on Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin.

In 1925, under the guidance of thesis supervisor , she presented her thesis for the degree of doctor of comparative literature. Its subject was the life and work of David Ferdinand Koreff, a German doctor whose connections included some notable French writers.

Suffering from lung disease, Marietta Martin spent several years between 1927 and 1931 in Switzerland, in a sanatorium in Leysin in the Canton of Vaud.

In 1933, her first literary work was published, Histoires du paradis (Stories of Paradise).

In a letter written from Switzerland, she summarised her thought: "If a message has to be sent around the world, it shouldn't be based on suffering, that would increase suffering; it would be a false message. If it is a message for the earth, it should be a message for body and spirit. To really live, according to all the rules, the definitive teaching is: be joyous."

In 1936, Martin was approached by (1873-1951), out-going deputy of the second electorate of Pas-de-Calais (Arras), where he belonged to the group. He asked her to prepare documents for his political campaign. She accepted the work, in the name of support given by her father to , Maurice's father, who had been deputy in the same electorate from 1885-1910.

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