Remarkable set of documents from the collection of Marcel NER, who was a famous university professor in France and Indochina during the French period of the 1920s/30s. In 1936, Marcel NER was invited by the University of Hawaii to lecture on his expeditions among the tribes of the Vietnamese highlands.
His Hawaiian archives include 7 Hawaiian postcards (two of which were sent to his wife in Hanoi / North Vietnam), a photo of him dressed in traditional Hawaiian garb (size 13 x 18 cms) , 14 small photos (6.8 x 11.2 cms ; 13 are legend on the back) including 4 of the French Consul in Honolulu Victor Lappe, a large photo of an official meal in which he is shown (size : 19.5 x 25 cms), one magazine (Honolulu Star bulletin august 1936) whose front page is devoted to his expeditions, and one magazine published by Pan-Pacific Union, Honolulu Hawaii in october-december 1938 concerning French Indochina (this magazine is complete, 58 pages + 12 advertising pages, size : 21.5 x 29 centimetres).
Born May 7, 1888 in La Môle (Var), died January 11, 1960 in Grasse (Var); philosophy professor in Indochina, ethnologist; Freemason, member of the French Communist Party, Resistance fighter, militant for the Mouvement de la Paix (Peace Movement).
The son of a couple of schoolteachers stationed in Tarascon (Bouches-du-Rhône), Marcel Ner continued his schooling there until he passed his baccalauréat in 1907. After two years' military service in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes / South of France), he passed the entrance exam to the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the bachelor's scholarship exam in 1909. In 1914, he obtained a degree in philosophy from the Faculty of Letters in Montpellier (Hérault). In March 1915, he was drafted into the 15th section of military nurses. In July 1918, he was transferred to the 19th train squadron, then demobilized in August 1919.
Having passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1925 (special ranking), Marcel Ner was seconded to Indochina in 1926 and appointed professor at the Lycée Albert Sarrault in Hanoi in 1929. His pupil was Vo Nguyên Giap (the future General Giap), and he befriended him, taking him on his ethnographic expeditions. He was also an associate member of the École française d'Extrême-Orient from 1929 to 1937, then a correspondent, and in 1937 authored a monograph on the Chams that is still a reference today.
In 1944, he and his students were evacuated to the Tam Dao high altitude station, out of reach of Japanese bombing raids. As head of the local section of the resistance network set up by Captain Marcel Mingant, Marcel Ner built up a stock of weapons and trained some of his students in their use. In March 1945, he exfiltrated to China at the head of some fifteen of them, most of whom joined the DGER (special services) to continue the war against Japan.
After the war, Marcel Ner was certified as part of the Mingant network of the Forces françaises combattantes (FFC) in Indochina, from December 1, 1943 to March 9, 1945. He was awarded the French Resistance medal and the Légion d'honneur. He was appointed Director of Education for Indochina, before returning to Paris, where he worked for the CNRS for three years. He then settled in Grasse (Var), where he died in January 1960 at the age of 72. At the time, he was a member of the national committee of the Mouvement de la Paix, president of its departmental committee, and a delegate to the international congresses in Berlin, Stockholm, Prague and Warsaw.